Knowledge and true relations represent the principal task of Theory of Knowledge. This paper argues about various solutions to the justification of knowledge, given by William James, Richard Rorty and Jürgen Habermas. For classic Pragmatism Knowledge and Truth converge with the idea of a guideline, direction and orientation with an effective value for men. The Newpragmatism represented by Rorty tries out the way of the widest possible widening of justification contexts, taking as last referent the features of a western liberal (...) culture. Habermas pleads for a strong idealization in his discussion with Rorty up to the ideal speech situation. (shrink)

There have been two main lines in the literature on restricted games: the first line was started by Myerson (1977) that studied graph-restricted games an the second one was initiated by Faigle (1989). The present paper provides a unified way to look on the literature and establishes connections between the two different lines on restricted games. The strength and advantages of this unified approach becomes clear in the study of the inheritance of the convexity from the game to the restricted (...) game where an interesting result by Nouweland and Borm (1991) on the convexity of graph-restricted games is turned into a direct consequence of the corresponding result by Faigle (1989), by means of this relation. (shrink)

Este trabajo tiene como objeto fundamental llevar a cabo una reconstrucción de la teoría trascendental del conocimiento en las experiencias filosóficas de Kant y Habermas. En ambas se produce un peculiar tránsito de la subjetividad a la intersubjetividad, gracias al cual se rompe el paradigma de la filosofía de la conciencia y emerge una específica experiencia comunicativa a través del sensus communis y de la razón comunicativa. A lo largo de esta investigación se intenta poner de manifiesto el paralelismo entre (...) ambos proyectos filosóficos, cuyo fundamento es la ilustración o la autonomía de la razón. Subjetividad trascendental, sensus communis, intereses del conocimiento y razón comunicativa representan distintas soluciones al problema de la comunicabilidad de los juicios mediante los que declaramos la posibilidad, realidad y necesidad de los estados de cosas. (shrink)

An additional compartment of vaccinated individuals is considered in a SIS stochastic epidemic model with infection reintroduction. The quantification of the spread of the disease is modeled by a continuous time Markov chain. A well-known measure of the initial transmission potential is the basic reproduction number $$R_0$$, which determines the herd immunity threshold or the critical proportion of immune individuals required to stop the spread of a disease when a vaccine offers a complete protection. Due to repeated contacts between the (...) typical infective and previously infected individuals, $$R_0$$ overestimates the average number of secondary infections and leads to, perhaps unnecessary, high immunization coverage. Assuming that the vaccine is imperfect, alternative measures to $$R_0$$ are defined in order to study the influence of the initial coverage and vaccine efficacy on the transmission of the epidemic. (shrink)

La tesis que deseo discutir en este trabajo es la siguiente: las ciencias humanas (ciencias del espíritu según Dilthey, ciencias histórico-hermenéuticas según Habermas) son posibles en la medida en que pueda ser epistemológicamente justificado el método que las hace posibles, a saber, la comprensión hermenéutica del sentido cuyo núcleo central lo constituye el círculo hermenéutico. Se trata, pues, de justificar epistemológicamente la hermenéutica como comprensión del sentido de las vivencias propias y ajenas, para lo cual es preciso analizar la reflexividad (...) y reciprocidad que impregna la estructura del lenguaje ordinario. En el diálogo que Habermas establece con Dilthey en Conocimiento e interés aparecen los suficientes argumentos para dicha fundamentación. Nuestro texto hará especial hincapié en los siguientes tópicos: distinción entre ciencias de la naturaleza y ciencias del espíritu, comprensión hermenéutica del sentido, lenguaje ordinario y reflexividad, especificidad del círculo hermenéutico, ciencia y contexto vital, y, finalmente, haremos un balance de la interpretación habermasiana de Dilthey a partir de las relaciones entre ciencias histórico-hermenéuticas e interés práctico del conocimiento. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to explore the concept of Philosophy within the works written by Wittgenstein if we take into account the ambivalent sense of the term phármakon. Thus, it will be outlined a contest of paradoxes between, on the one hand, healthiness, sanity, and the adaptable confidence produced by western rationality materialized into objective science, and, on the other hand, sickness, insanity, the world of perplexities, and the realm of desire and death, essential to philosophical thought. Bearing (...) in mind last Wittgenstein’s approaches, we will understand the Tractatus both critical to the deficiencies of western Reason and imprisoned within them. But the “enchanting” power of western Reason, conducting to identify rationality and scientificity in that work, will be conjured in the last Wittgenstein through the opening of plural realms of rationality and of discourses. In this way, philosophical questions will be rescued from silence and absurdity. (shrink)

I propose in this paper a reflection, a self-analysis, about my extensive teaching experience, not from a formal point of view of the specificity of the program and the subjects of my courses, but about the singularity of the teaching activities. The commitment with the students, with the topic taught and with the Institution in which I have the honor to work, constitute the fundamental motive that leads and conducts my profession as teacher. My explanation displays ten items. Each of (...) them presents a speculation about one of the ideal elements of the good teacher all of us aim to be. For that reason this essay is not a positivist description of the teaching reality, but it expects to reconstruct the critical demarcation between the ideality which all of us try to achieve and the empirical reality that constantly pull us in the opposite direction. The coercion without coercions of the exemplariness pushes us to maintain alive the faith in the appropriation of the nature and soul of the ideal teacher. (shrink)

Este trabajo consiste en una reconstrucción de los motivos de reflexión en ese ámbito privilegiado de la experiencia filosófica al que de la mano de Habermas, vamos a denominar pensamiento postmetafísico, como superación mediadora de la eterna disputa entre el pensar metafísico y el pensar antimetafísico. En él desarrollaremos aquellas categorías empírico-trascendentales que van a constituir las condiciones de posibilidad de esta nueva experiencia filosófica, a saber, racionalidad procedimental, razón sin trascendencia, razón comunicativa, giro lingüístico y deflación de lo extracotidiano.

AI research is being challenged with ensuring that autonomous agents learn to behave ethically, namely in alignment with moral values. Here, we propose a novel way of tackling the value alignment problem as a two-step process. The first step consists on formalising moral values and value aligned behaviour based on philosophical foundations. Our formalisation is compatible with the framework of (Multi-Objective) Reinforcement Learning, to ease the handling of an agent’s individual and ethical objectives. The second step consists in designing an (...) environment wherein an agent learns to behave ethically while pursuing its individual objective. We leverage on our theoretical results to introduce an algorithm that automates our two-step approach. In the cases where value-aligned behaviour is possible, our algorithm produces a learning environment for the agent wherein it will learn a value-aligned behaviour. (shrink)

We present a map of standard quantum mechanics onto a dual theory, that of the classical thermodynamics of irreversible processes. While no gravity is present in our construction, our map exhibits features that are reminiscent of the holographic principle of quantum gravity.

The first European settlements in the new world faced technical issues with the help of the XVI century scientific advances. Besides briefly exposing the scientific and technological situation, this paper explores, with the help of reverse engineering, two singular mechanical wits representative of the technological advances introduced in America to overcome different problems. Firstly, a pump, based on an alternative movement system through crankshafts and pistons used against the continuous flooding suffered in the Ciudad de México valley. Although flooding remained (...) a problem (it was solved in the XX century), hydraulic pumps were essential for continuous soil drainage. Secondly, a port crane for handling cannons, military devices, and construction materials during the Lima fortification in the XVII century. For both cases, reverse engineering, through engineering methods, Computer-Aided Design CAD programs, and additive manufacturing, provides virtual and/or tangible mockups that help to analyze and improve our knowledge about the dimensions, materials, and functions of used (and currently lost) mechanical systems during the American colonization. (shrink)

En el siguiente artículo intentaremos mostrar cómo la definición de Contingencia individual, dentro del discurso de Richard Rorty, genera ciertos problemas. Este autor menciona que debemos deslastrarnos de las siguientes dicotomías conceptuales: objetivo-subjetivo, moralidad-prudencia, apariencia-realidad, esencia-accidente, absoluto-relativo, entre otras. A todo esto Rorty propone un nuevo concepto: Contingencia, el cual sería una definición útil que lograría justificar la desaparición de las concepciones como algo que petrifica el conocimiento y lo hace inútil para entender la realidad, es decir, el conocimiento no (...) sería útil en el momento en que intenta “representar” la realidad porque la vacía. Luego de un recorrido por algunos autores representativos en lo concerniente a la conceptualización de “esencia”, nuestra conclusión es que la definición de Contingencia rortyana es una nueva petrificación de la realidad, es decir, Contingencia también termina “representado” lo que es “real”. Is Contingency an essence? A review of the theory of Contingency in Richard RortyIn the following article, it is shown how the definition of individual Contingency, within the discourse of Richard Rorty, produces certain problems. This author mentions we should put an end of the following conceptual dichotomies: objective-subjective, morality-prudence, appearance-reality, essence-accident, and absolute-relative, among others. To all this Rorty proposes a new concept: Contingency, which could be a useful definition which would achieve the justification of the loss of conceptions as something that petrifies knowledge, and renders it useless for understand reality, i.e., knowledge is not useful in the moment you try to "represent" reality because simply empties it. After a tour of some representative authors with regard to the conceptualization of "essence", our conclusion is that the definition of Rorty's Contingency is a new petrifaction of reality, i.e., Contingency also ends "representing" what is "real.". (shrink)

In ecology, if the considered area or space is large, the spatial distribution of individuals of a given plant species is never homogeneous; plants form different patches. The homogeneity change in space or in time (in particular, the related change-point problem) is an important research subject in mathematical statistics. In the paper, for a given data system along a straight line, two areas are considered, where the data of each area come from different discrete distributions, with unknown parameters. In the (...) paper a method is presented for the estimation of the distribution change-point between both areas and an estimate is given for the distributions separated by the obtained change-point. The solution of this problem will be based on the maximum likelihood method. Furthermore, based on an adaptation of the well-known bootstrap resampling, a method for the estimation of the so-called change-interval is also given. The latter approach is very general, since it not only applies in the case of the maximum-likelihood estimation of the change-point, but it can be also used starting from any other change-point estimation known in the ecological literature. The proposed model is validated against typical ecological situations, providing at the same time a verification of the applied algorithms. (shrink)

Objective: To measure the stability of life-sustaining treatment preferences amongst older people and analyse the factors that influence stability. Design: Longitudinal cohort study. Setting: Primary care centres, Granada (Spain). Eighty-five persons age 65 years or older. Participants filled out a questionnaire with six contexts of illness (LSPQ-e). They had to decide whether or not to receive treatment. Participants completed the questionnaire at baseline and 18 months later. Results: 86 percent of the patients did not change preferences. Sex, age, marital status, (...) hospitalisation, and self-perception of health and pain did not affect preferences. Morbidity and the death of a relative did. Conclusion: Stability of preferences of older persons in relation to end-of-life decisions seems to be more probable than instability. Some factors, such as the death of a relative or the increase in morbidity, can change preferences. These findings have implications for advance directives (ADs) and advance care planning. (shrink)

The European project European and Latin American Systems of Ethics Regulation of Biomedical Research Project (EULABOR) has carried out the first comparative analysis of ethics regulation systems for biomedical research in seven countries in Europe and Latin America, evaluating their roles in the protection of human subjects. We developed a conceptual and methodological framework defining ‘ethics regulation system for biomedical research’ as a set of actors, institutions, codes and laws involved in overseeing the ethics of biomedical research on humans. This (...) framework allowed us to develop comprehensive national reports by conducting semi-structured interviews to key informants. These reports were summarised and analysed in a comparative analysis. The study showed that the regulatory framework for clinical research in these countries differ in scope. It showed that despite the different political contexts, actors involved and motivations for creating the regulation, in most of the studied countries it was the government who took the lead in setting up the system. The study also showed that Europe and Latin America are similar regarding national bodies and research ethics committees, but the Brazilian system has strong and noteworthy specificities. (shrink)

There can be no doubt that discrimination based on sex, race, ethnicity, religion or beliefs should not be tolerated in academia. Surprisingly, however, in recent years, policies of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DIE), officially introduced to counteract discrimination, have increasingly led to quite the opposite result: the exclusion of individuals who do not share a radical 'woke' ideology on identity politics (feminism, other gender activisms, critical race theory, etc.), and to the suppression of the academic freedom to discuss such dogmas. (...) This subversion of academia — disguised Trojan-horse style as universal human rights advocacy — is unacceptable because academia must be politically neutral and protect freedom of speech, a cornerstone of professional scholarly activity without which universities as we know them will slowly but surely suffocate. Our purpose here is to put together some particularly illustrative cases of such repression in a single book, testifying to a ubiquitous trend within western culture, irreducible to a few isolated complaints. The essays contained here illustrate the abuse of power, censorship and witch-hunts at many universities and research centres in the name of DIE. List of coauthors in alphabetical order: Dorian Abbot, Tomonori Agoh, Gerhard Amendt, Ivar Arpi, David Benatar, Peter Boghossian, Civitas Research Team, David Díaz Pardo de Vera, Pedro Domingos, Janice Fiamengo, Étienne Forest, Jorge Gibert Galassi, Norman Goldstuck, José L. González Quirós, Lawrence M. Krauss, Patrick LaBelle, Martín López Corredoira, Heather Mac Donald, Martin Malmgren, Jordan Peterson, Constantin Polychronakos, Erik. J. Olsson, Philip C. Salzman, Alessandro Strumia, Tom Todd, Andrei Yafaev. (shrink)

We present PhrasIS, a benchmark dataset composed of natural occurring Phrase pairs with Inference and Similarity annotations for the evaluation of semantic representations. The described dataset fills the gap between word and sentence-level datasets, allowing to evaluate compositional models at a finer granularity than sentences. Contrary to other datasets, the phrase pairs are extracted from naturally occurring text in image captions and news headlines. All the text fragments have been annotated by experts following a rigorous process also described in the (...) manuscript achieving high inter annotator agreement. In this work we analyse the dataset, showing the relation between inference labels and similarity scores. With 10K phrase pairs split in development and test, the dataset is an excellent benchmark for testing meaning representation systems. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:A wide range of research uses patterns of genetic variation to infer genetic similarity between individuals, typically referred to as genetic ancestry. This research includes inference of human demographic history, understanding the genetic architecture of traits, and predicting disease risk. Researchers are not just structuring an intellectual inquiry when using genetic ancestry, they are also creating analytical frameworks with broader societal ramifications. This essay presents an ethics framework in the spirit of virtue ethics for these researchers: rather than focus on (...) rule following, the framework is designed to build researchers’ capacities to react to the ethical dimensions of their work. The authors identify one overarching principle of intellectual freedom and responsibility, noting that freedom in all its guises comes with responsibility, and they identify and define four principles that collectively uphold researchers’ intellectual responsibility: truthfulness, justice and fairness, anti-racism, and public beneficence. Researchers should bring their practices into alignment with these principles, and to aid this, the authors name three common ways research practices infringe these principles, suggest a step-by-step process for aligning research choices with the principles, provide rules of thumb for achieving alignment, and give a worked case. The essay concludes by identifying support needed by researchers to act in accord with the proposed framework. (shrink)

IntroductionCognitive impairment is a highly prevalent non-motor feature of Parkinson’s disease. A better understanding of the underlying pathophysiology may help in identifying therapeutic targets to prevent or treat dementia. This study sought to identify metabolic alterations in the prefrontal cortex, a key region for cognitive functioning that has been implicated in cognitive dysfunction in PD.MethodsProton Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy was used to investigate metabolic changes in the PFC of a cohort of cognitively normal individuals without PD, as well as PD participants (...) with either normal cognition, mild cognitive impairment, or dementia. Ratios to Creatine resonance were obtained for glutamate, glutamine and glutamate combined, N-acetylaspartate, myoinositol, and total choline, and correlated with cognitive scores across multiple domains administered to the PD participants only.ResultsWhen individuals retain cognitive capabilities, the presence of Parkinson’s disease does not create metabolic disturbances in the PFC. However, when cognitive symptoms are present, PFC Glu/Cre ratios decrease with significant differences between the PD-NC and PPD groups. In addition, Glu/Cre ratios and memory scores were marginally associated, but not after Bonferroni correction.ConclusionThese preliminary findings indicate that fluctuations in prefrontal glutamate may constitute a biomarker for the progression of cognitive impairments in PD. We caution for larger MRS investigations of carefully defined PD groups. (shrink)

The output from motor neuron pools is influenced by the integration of synaptic inputs originating from descending corticomotor and spinal reflex pathways. In this study, using paired non-invasive brain and peripheral nerve stimulation, we investigated how descending corticomotor pathways influence the physiologic recruitment order of the soleus Hoffmann reflex. Eleven neurologically unimpaired adults completed an assessment of transcranial magnetic stimulation -conditioning of the soleus H-reflex over a range of peripheral nerve stimulation intensities. Unconditioned H-reflex recruitment curves were obtained by delivering (...) PNS pulses to the posterior tibial nerve. Subsequently, TMS-conditioned H-reflex recruitment curves were obtained by pairing PNS with subthreshold TMS at short and long intervals. We evaluated unconditioned and TMS-conditioned H-reflex amplitudes along the ascending limb, peak, and descending limb of the H-reflex recruitment curve. Our results revealed that, for long-interval facilitation, TMS-conditioned H-reflex amplitudes were significantly larger than unconditioned H-reflex amplitudes along the ascending limb and peak of the H-reflex recruitment curve. Additionally, significantly lower PNS intensities were needed to elicit peak H-reflex amplitude for long-interval facilitation compared to unconditioned. These findings suggest that the influence of descending corticomotor pathways, particularly those mediating long-interval facilitation, contribute to changing the recruitment gain of the motor neuron pool, and can inform future methodological protocols for TMS-conditioning of H-reflexes. By characterizing and inducing short-term plasticity in circuitry mediating short- and long-interval TMS-conditioning of H-reflex amplitudes, future studies can investigate supraspinal and spinal circuit contributions to abnormal motor control, as well as develop novel therapeutic targets for neuromodulation. (shrink)

ObjectiveTest anxiety (TA) is a construct that has scarcely been studied based on Lang’s three-dimensional model of anxiety. The objective of this article is to investigate the repercussion of sociodemographic and academic variables on different responses for each component of anxiety and for the type of test in adolescent students.MethodA total of 1181 students from 12 to 18 years old (M= 14.7 and SD = 1.8) participated, of whom 569 were boys (48.2%) and 612 girls (51.8%). A sociodemographic questionnaire and (...) theCuestionario de Ansiedad ante los examenes-Adaptado (CAEX-A)[Test Anxiety Questionnaire-Adapted] an adaptation for Spanish secondary school levels (ESO) and Bachillerato were administered.ResultsGirls scored higher on the cognitive and physiological components of TA than boys, the intensity of the physiological response increasing with age. Bachillerato level students reported more physiological anxiety than those of ESO level. Students with better marks in the previous year presented more anxiety in the cognitive component, while those who obtained the lower mark presented higher anxiety values in the behavioral component. Participants reported that the types of tests that cause them more anxiety were oral tests in front of the class, oral presentation in front of a panel, and mathematics tests.ConclusionAdolescents show a differential response of TA based on the physiological, cognitive and motor components, mediated by the variables of gender, age, grade, academic performance and type of exam. These results serve to design specific intervention programs to manage anxiety in situations of academic assessment. (shrink)