Conflict resolution practitioners consistently struggle with access to structured armed conflict data, a dataset already rife with uncertainty, inconsistency, and politicization. Due to the lack of a standardized approach to collating conflict data, publicly available armed conflict datasets often require manipulation depending upon the needs of end users. Transformation of armed conflict data tends to be a manual, time-consuming task that nonprofits with limited budgets struggle to keep up with. In this paper, we explore the use of a deep natural (...) language processing model to aid the transformation of armed conflict data for conflict analysis. Our model drastically reduces the time spent on manual data transformations and improves armed conflict event classification by identifying multiple incidence types. This minimizes the human supervision cost and allows nonprofits to access a broader range of conflict data sources to reduce reporting bias. Thus, our model contributes to the incorporation of technology in the peace building and conflict resolution sector. (shrink)

Evaluative markers of diminution and augmentation typically express quantity or intensity. Prior evidence suggests that they also convey emotions, although it remains unexplored as to whether this function is mediated by their role in expressing quantification/intensification. Here we investigated the effects of evaluative suffixes on the assessment of word affective properties by asking participants (N = 300) to score valence and arousal features for augmentatives, diminutives and base words with negative, positive or neutral valence. Diminutives and, to a lesser extent, (...) augmentatives were assessed more positively than base forms in negative words and more negatively than bases in positive words. The capacity of diminution to express attenuated emotions is in line with its function in conveying quantity. By contrast, valence effects for augmentatives suggests a role in expressing pejoration and amelioration that is not mediated by quantification. With regard to arousal, negative, neutral and positive augmentatives showed higher scores than base words, which, in addition, were also rated higher than diminutives. These incremental effects suggest that suffixes which convey larger quantity are also associated with increased arousal. Thus, with the exception of valence effects in augmentatives, it seems that evaluative suffixes encode both valence and arousal through quantification. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of discrete emotions in lexical processing and memory, focusing on disgust and fear. We compared neutral words to disgust-related words and fear-related words in three experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants performed a lexical decision task, and in Experiment 3 an affective categorisation task. These tasks were followed by an unexpected memory task. The results of the LDT experiments showed slower reaction times for both types of negative words with (...) respect to neutral words, plus a higher percentage of errors, this being more consistent for fear-related words than for disgust-related words. Furthermore, only disgusting words exhibited a higher recall accuracy than neutral words in the memory task. Moreover, the advantage in memory for disgusting words disappeared when participants carried out an affective categorisation task during encoding, suggesting that the superiority in memory for disgusting words observed in Experiments 1 and 2 could be due to greater elaborative processing. Taken together, these findings point to the relevance of discrete emotions in explaining the effects of the emotional content on lexical processing and memory. (shrink)

The way of coding letter position has been extensively assessed during the recognition of native words, leading to the development of a new generation of models that assume more flexible letter position coding schemes compared to classical computational models such as the interactive activation model. However, determining whether similar letter position encoding mechanisms occur during the bilingual word recognition has been largely less explored despite its implications for the leading model of bilingual word recognition as it assumes the input-coding scheme (...) of the IA model. In this study, we aimed to examine this issue through the manipulation of the position of the deviant letter of cognate words. Two experiments were conducted with Catalan–Spanish bilinguals and their respective monolingual controls. The results revealed a differential processing for the first letter in comparison to the other letters as well as modulations as a function of language cue, suggesting amendments to the input-coding scheme of the multilink model. (shrink)

Sound symbolism refers to non-arbitrary associations between word forms and meaning, such as those observed for some properties of sounds and size or shape. Recent evidence suggests that these connections extend to emotional concepts. Here we investigated two types of non-arbitrary relationships. Study 1 examined whether iconicity scores (i.e. resemblance-based mapping between aspects of a word’s form and its meaning) for words can be predicted from ratings in the affective dimensions of valence and arousal and/or the discrete emotions of happiness, (...) anger, fear, disgust and sadness. Words denoting negative concepts were more likely to have more iconic word forms. Study 2 explored whether statistical regularities in single phonemes (i.e. systematicity) predicted ratings in affective dimensions and/or discrete emotions. Voiceless (/p/, /t/) and voiced plosives (/b/, /d/, /g/) were related to high arousing words, whereas high arousing negative words tended to include fricatives (/s/, /z/). Hissing consonants were also more likely to occur in words denoting all negative discrete emotions. Additionally, words conveying certain discrete emotions included specific phonemes. Overall, our data suggest that emotional features might explain variations in iconicity and provide new insight about phonemic patterns showing sound symbolic associations with the affective properties of words. (shrink)

This essay is a revision of ?Rudiments of an Ethics of News Reporting,?; which won honorable mention in the 1985 Carol Burnett/University of Hawaii/ AEJMC Prize for Student Papers on Journalism Ethics. It argues that news reporting suffers from a misplaced faith in individual autonomy, a faith that resists a sense of social duty on the basis of negative freedom; therefore, journalism stands in need of a moral theory that recognizes community and personhood as fundamental human characteristics essential to ethical (...) decision?making. (shrink)

Industrial shrimp farming has been promoted by international development and financial institutions in coastal indebted poor countries as a way to obtain foreign exchange earnings, reimburse external debt, and promote development. The promotion of the shrimp industry is a clear example of a more general trend of support of export-oriented primary products, consisting in monocultures of commodities, as opposed to the promotion of more diverse, traditional production directed to feed the local population. In general, it is assumed that export-oriented aquaculture (...) and agriculture, in a framework of liberalization policies, facilitates economic growth and this is associated with poverty reduction and the improvement of food security. However, it has been shown that the promotion of export-oriented production, mostly in the hands of big corporations, can have detrimental consequences for the livelihoods of local populations and the environment. As a result, international institutions, NGOs, and the industry aim to minimize these impacts by promoting sustainable export-oriented production. But some impacts may remain, since the main issue is the primary focus on international deregulated markets and the search for cheap primary products. To illustrate the relationships between the mainstream concept of development, the environmental and social impact of industrial farming systems, and the promotion of export-oriented production in developing countries, this article analyzes the case of the shrimp aquaculture industry. (shrink)

Meat?eating as a human practice has been under ethical attack from philosophers such as Peter Singer and Tom Regan on both utilitarian and deontological grounds. An organicist ethic, on the other hand, recognizes that all life other than the primary producers, the plants, must feed on life. This essay affirms, with many environmental ethicists, the moralconsiderability of biota other than the human, but denies that this enlargement of the moral community beyond Homo sapiens necessarily precludes our eating of meat. First, (...) absolute deontological arguments against meat?eating are disputed, then utilitarian?hedonistic arguments are shown not to be sufficient to require ethical vegetarianism. Both sorts of arguments have strengths, however, that set us on guard against current abuses in the meat?raising and slaughtering industries. If the principle of ?due respect? for beings with different degrees of intrinsic value is honored, then moderate meat?eating under reformed social practices can be seen as licit. Two final problems then require investigation: the problem of dietary justice for poor humans and the problem of ?speciesism?. Dealing with the latter requires discussion of cannibalism and the ethics of humans being eaten by still higher ?aliens? (shrink)

Mass media ethics and the classical liberal ideal of the autonomous individual are historically linked and professionally dominant--yet the authors of this work feel this is intrinsically flawed. They show how recent research in philosophy and social science--together with a longer tradition in theological inquiry--insist that community, mutuality, and relationship are fundamental to a full concept of personhood. The authors argue that "persons-in-community" provides a more defensible grounding for journalists' professional moral decision-making in crucial areas such as truthtelling, privacy, organizational (...) culture, and balanced coverage. With numerous examples drawn from life as well as from theory, this book will interest journalists, editors, and professionals in media management as well as students and scholars of media ethics, reporting, and media law. (shrink)

Prior reports suggest that affective effects in visual word processing cannot be fully explained by a dimensional perspective of emotions based on valence and arousal. In the current study, we focused on the contribution of approach and avoidance motivational systems that are related to different action components to the processing of emotional words. To this aim, we compared frontal alpha asymmetries and brain oscillations elicited by anger words associated with approach motivational tendencies, and fear words that may trigger either avoidance, (...) approach or no action tendencies. The participants’ task was to make decisions about approaching or distancing from the concepts represented by words. The results of cluster-based and beamforming analyses revealed increased gamma power band synchronization for fear words relative to anger words between 725 and 750 ms, with an estimated neural origin in the temporal pole. These findings were interpreted to reflect a conflict between different action tendencies underlying the representation of fear words in semantic and emotional memories, when trying to achieve task requirements. These results are in line with the predictions made by the fear-hinders-action hypothesis. Additionally, current data highlights the contribution of motivational features to the representation and processing of emotional words. (shrink)

The founding operation of the American States involves a mediating mechanism that enables the connection between the ideals supporting it and the intent for its popularization among people. Such is the function assigned to the founding heroes, which is analyzed as a cultural operation that aims to enshrine these ideals, thereby eliding the violence contained in the formation of modern States.

In the international sphere, sovereignty and fundamental rights are often at odds, giving these rights little space for action and, in general, only after crisis has led to tragedy, and tragedy to disgrace. International Law, on the other hand, consistently succumbs to forms of domination and power, and its scope of action is often limited to certain codifications which are frequently suspended by political exception. Sixteenth century Dominican theologian, Francisco de Vitoria, established the principles for a Law of the people, (...) based on secular civil power that, while still exercising internal sovereignty, could defend and privilege the “rights of all men” over the exercise of power and private interest. This article focuses on this dispute to show Vitoria’s position, who long preceded the great declarations of human rights of the 18 th century, presenting an original doctrine within the framework of an emerging globalization and based on the defense of fundamental rights. (shrink)

In several works H. Putnam has developed an argument addressed against "realist" semantic theories (in particular, against causal theories of reference ). In this paper I argue that Putnam's argument is weaker than what is generally supposed, as Devitt has shown in Realism and Truth. I disagree, however, with Devitfs latest strategy against model-theoretic arguments as presented in an ''Afterword'' to that book.

I attempt to clarify the specificity of Spinoza’s hermeneutic proposal of the Scripture in the Political-Theological Treatise. In this regard, I assume two levels of analysis in Spinoza interpretation: the historic-critical and the philosophical one. My aim is to find out the relationships between these two levels, and also the differences of Spinoza’s interpretation with others, in particular, that one developed by Lodewijk Meyer in his Philosophia S. Scripturae Interpres.

Presentación del número de la revista Ideas y Valores dedicado a la obra de W.V.O Quine con ocasión de su fallecimiento.

Although recent scholarship in diverse professional areas shows an ongoing interest in the application of agape - the New Testament's term for the highest order of self-giving love - no published work has made an in-depth exploration of agape in relation to journalism. This article explores what agape can contribute to media theory and practice. After explaining what distinguishes agape from other concepts of altruism and how agape can complement other approaches to compassion or minimizing harm, the analysis turns to (...) three questions raised by applying agape to mainstream journalism: (a) Does agape have a place for self-interest? (b) What does agape imply for notions of journalistic neutrality? (c) Can agape speak to journalists who don't accept its religious roots? Agape provides a test case for the application of religiously based ethical perspectives to journalism. (shrink)

Ce volume collectif montre que l'herméneutique fictionnalisée permet de réfléchir sur les procédures de l'interprétation, de penser les limites de la fiction et de prendre en charge des discours que les disciplines savantes ne sont pas toujours en situation de produire.

AbstractSocial Ecological System research highlights the importance of understanding the potential of collective actions, among other factors, when it comes to influencing the transformative configuration of agri-food systems in response to global change. Such a response may result in different desired outcomes for those actors who promote collective action, one such outcome being food sovereignty. In this study, we used an SES framework to describe the configuration of local agri-food systems in Andean Ecuador in order to understand which components of (...) the SES interact, and how they support outcomes linked to five food sovereignty goals. Through a survey administered to mestizo and indigenous peasants, we analyze the key role played by the Agroecological Network of Loja in transforming the local agri-food system through the implementation of a Participatory Guarantee System. This study demonstrates that participation in the RAL and PGS increases farmers’ adoption of agroecological practices, as well as their independence from non-traditional food. Additionally, RAL lobbying with the municipality significantly increases households’ on-farm income through access to local markets. Being part of indigenous communities also influences the configuration of the food system, increasing the participation in community work and access to credit and markets, thus positively affecting animal numbers, dairy production and income diversification. The complexity of the interactions described suggests that more research is needed to understand which key factors may foster or prevent the achieving of food sovereignty goals and promote household adaptation amid high uncertainty due to global change. (shrink)

A geometrical model of the emergence of a primordium at the shoot apex in dicotyledons is proposed. It is based on recent fundamental results on plant morphogenesis, i.e.:- the emergence is preceded by the reorganization of the microtubules of the cortical cytoskeleton, leading to a new orientation of the synthesis of the cell wall microfibrils; - the resulting global stress is related to the general orientation of the cell growth. So the model sums up the continuous interactions linking the microtubules, (...) the microfibrils and the cell growth axis. (shrink)

The first half of the book concentrates on key definitions and epistemological issues, including an overview of philosophy as applied to technology, a definition of technology, and an examination of technology as it relates to practical and ...

We propose a view of identity beyond the individual in what we call interpersonal interidentities (IIIs). Within this approach, IIIs comprise collections of entangled stabilities that emerge in recurrent social interaction and manifest for those who instantiate them as relatively invariant though ever-evolving patterns of being (or more accurately, becoming) together. Herein, we consider the processes responsible for the emergence of these IIIs from the perspective of an enactive cognitive science. Our proposal hinges primarily on the development of two related (...) notions: enhabiting and coenhabiting. First, we introduce the notion of enhabiting, a set of processes at the individual level whereby structural interdependencies stabilise and thereafter undergird the habits, networks of habits, and personal identities through which we make sense of our experience. Articulating this position we lean on the notion of a tendency towards an optimal grip, though offering it a developmental framing, whereby iterative states of selective openness help realise relatively stable autonomous personal identities with their own norms of self-regulation. We then extend many of the notions found applicable here to an account of social coenhabiting, in particular, we introduce the notion of tending towards a co-optimal grip as central to the development of social habits, networks of habits, and ultimately IIIs. Such structures, we propose, also emerge as autonomous structures with their own norms of self-regulation. We wind down our account with some reflections on the implications of these structures outside of the interactions wherein they come into being and offer some thoughts about the complex animations of the individual embodied subjects that instantiate them. (shrink)

Recently, Indigenous commentators have begun to analyse the way in which institutional Research Ethics Boards engage with Indigenous researchers and participants, respond to Indigenous peoples’ concerns with academic research activities, and scrutinise the ethics proposals of Indigenous scholars. Of particular concern for Indigenous commentators is that the work of REBs often results in the marginalisation of Indigenous approaches to knowledge construction and dissemination, especially in relation to the vexed issue of informed consent. Based on analysis of the results of research (...) with Indigenous researchers and research participants, this paper argues that institutionalised REBs’ preference for ‘universal’ and ‘individualised’ approaches for determining ethical research conduct marginalises Indigenous approaches to ethical research conduct. The paper concludes by calling for a decolonisation of REB processes through recognition of the validity of communal processes for attaining the informed conse... (shrink)

En este articulo me centro en las referencias de Maimónides al alma, fundamentalmente en los escritos médicos. El alma es un tema frecuente en las obras de medicina tanto por sus facultades, que definen funciones esenciales para la vida humana, como por las afecciones anímicas, pero se puede decir que Maimónides no trata el asunto de una manera convencional. Además de reflejar en estos escritos el hecho de que no es sólo médico sino también filósofo y un hombre de religión, (...) lo más peculiar son sus convicciones personales acerca de la prevención, y cura de las enfermedades mentales. (shrink)