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)

Reseña al más reciente libro de David Soto Carrasco "Filosofía política y ética. Claves conceptuales para comprender el presente" (2023). En su obra, el autor, desde la perspectiva de la historia conceptual, recorre algunos de los conceptos fundamentales de la política moderna. Asimismo, realiza un análisis ético-crítico de problemas que atañen directamente a nuestro actualidad. El libro en conjunto constituye una crítica ético-política para comprender nuestro presente.

Dice Polo que el ser humano es un espíritu en el tiempo, y ello se manifiesta también en el cuerpo. Por eso, las explicaciones que nos ofrece la biología evolucionista sobre nuestra realidad vital no son completas si no tienen en cuenta su dualidad con lo superior. En este trabajo pretendemos profundizar en la idea de que el hombre no se finaliza en la especie, sino que la trasciende; en esto consiste el concepto de continuatio naturae.

Norms have been widely enacted in human and agent societies to regulate individuals’ actions. However, although legislators may have ethics in mind when establishing norms, moral values are only sometimes explicitly considered. This paper advances the state of the art by providing a method for selecting the norms to enact within a society that best aligns with the moral values of such a society. Our approach to aligning norms and values is grounded in the ethics literature. Specifically, from the literature’s (...) study of the relations between norms, actions, and values, we formally define how actions and values relate through the so-called value judgment function and how norms and values relate through the so-called norm promotion function. We show that both functions provide the means to compute value alignment for a set of norms. Moreover, we detail how to cast our decision-making problem as an optimisation problem: finding the norms that maximise value alignment. We also show how to solve our problem using off-the-shelf optimisation tools. Finally, we illustrate our approach with a specific case study on the European Value Study. (shrink)

We investigated the role of honour concerns in mediating the effect of nationality and gender on the reported intensity of anger and shame in reaction to insult vignettes. Spain, an honour culture, and The Netherlands, where honour is of less central significance, were selected for comparison. A total of 260 (125 Dutch, 135 Spanish) persons participated in the research. Participants completed a measure of honour concerns and answered questions about emotional reactions of anger and shame to vignettes depicting insults in (...) which type of threat was manipulated. It was found that Spanish participants responded especially intensely to insults that threaten family honour, and that this effect of nationality on emotional reactions to threats to family honour was mediated by individual differences in concern for family honour. (shrink)

Domestic violence is an important social problem that strongly impacts the healthcare system. It is estimated that two to four million women are physically abused each year by their husbands, ex-husbands, or boyfriends. Many of these abused women enter the medical system as patients with physical injuries, somatic symptoms, or psychiatric problems. These patients represent a large proportion of women patients in a variety of clinical settings: 22–35% of women presenting to emergency departments, up to 37% of obstetric patients, and (...) over 25% of women seeking primary care. Despite the significant health implications of marital abuse, healthcare providers often fail to identify and treat this problem when signs are present. (shrink)

The activism of institutional investors tends more and more toward the supervision and control of the behavior of the managers of big companies. In this article, we present a model based on the creation of an activism index that lets us evaluate such activism's effect on the sensitivity of the investment policies of a company in the face of financial variables and market variables . To test our assertions, we analyze firm-level data for United Kingdom , Germany, France, Denmark, and (...) Spain during the period 1995-2004. Our results point to a significant reduction in the sensitivity of company investment decisions in the face of these variables, especially relative to intangible capital, as a result of the neutralizing effect of activism on the high agency costs of free cash flow and on the information asymmetries of the market. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTwo studies examined anger and shame, and their associated appraisals and behavioral intentions, in response to harm to an in-group's social-image. In Study 1, 37 British Muslims reported incidents in which they were devalued as Muslims. In Study 2, 108 British Muslims were presented with objective evidence of their in-group's devaluation: the controversial cartoons about Prophet Muhammad The appraisal of harm to social-image predicted anger and shame, whereas the appraisal of offense only predicted anger. Anger was a more empowering response (...) than shame, as anger predicted willingness for public confrontation, institutional punishment, and written disapproval. In contrast, shame only predicted written disapproval. Furthermore, independent of individual differences in identification as Muslim, a mediation model showed that individual differences in honor orientation pre... (shrink)

In this paper a definition of n-valued system in the context of the algebraizable logics is proposed. We define and study the variety V3, showing that it is definitionally equivalent to the equivalent quasivariety semantics for the “Three-valued BCK-logic”. As a consequence we find an axiomatic definition of the above system.

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)

In this paper we consider twelve classical laws of negation and study their relations in the context of BCK-algebras. A classification of the laws of negation is established and some characterizations are obtained. For example, using the concept of translation we obtain some characterizations of Hilbert algebras and commutative BCK-algebras with minimum. As a consequence we obtain a theorem relating those algebras to Boolean algebras.

Families play an essential role in deceased organ procurement. As the person cannot directly communicate his or her wishes regarding donation, the family is often the only source of information regarding consent or refusal. We provide a systematic description and analysis of the different roles the family can play, and actions the family can take, in the organ procurement process across different jurisdictions and consent systems. First, families can inform or update healthcare professionals about a person’s donation wishes. Second, families (...) can authorize organ procurement in the absence of deceased’s preferences and the default is not to remove organs, and oppose donation where there is no evidence of preference but the default is to presume consent; in both cases, the decision could be based on their own wishes or what they think the deceased would have wanted. Finally, families can overrule the known wishes of the deceased, which can mean preventing donation, or permitting donation when the deceased refused it. We propose a schema of 4 levels on which to map these possible family roles: no role, witness, surrogate, and full decisional authority. We conclude by mapping different jurisdictions onto this schema to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the consent system for organ donation and some important nuances about the role of families. This classificatory model aims to account for the majority of the world’s consent systems. It provides conceptual and methodological guidance that can be useful to researchers, professionals, and policymakers involved in organ procurement. (shrink)

Elaboramos una versión del disposicionalismo experimental que esclarece la relación entre capacidades y leyes fenomenológicas. Tras algunas consideraciones introductorias, presentamos el disposicionalismo experimental en vistas de las nociones de modalidad física y ambiente de estímulo. Trazamos las líneas generales para una epistemología experimentalista de las capacidades y esclarecemos la modalidad física e invariancia de las leyes fenomenológicas. Luego examinamos las generalizaciones físicas y extrapolaciones de las leyes fenomenológicas y exponemos el caso de la ley de Fresnel, que ilustra aspectos de (...) nuestro argumento. Concluimos con algunas consideraciones sobre los límites del disposicionalismo experimental. (shrink)

Resumen En el marco de un estudio mayor, cuyo principal objetivo es postular la existencia de diferencias entonativas entre zonas lingüísticas de Chile en la emisión de oraciones subordinadas sustantivas objetivas, en este trabajo se expone una caracterización de tres tipos de pausas halladas al interior de las estructuras oracionales indicadas anteriormente, emitidas por hablantes profesionales provenientes de Iquique y de Punta Arenas. El propósito principal del estudio consistió en determinar si se manifestaban diferencias en los tipos de pausas observadas (...) en relación con la complejidad oracional analizada, el género de los informantes y su procedencia geográfica. Para ello se analizaron 100 enunciados extraídos de entrevistas realizadas a 37 profesionales nacidos en ambas ciudades. Los resultados indicaron que hubo diferencias en las pausas observadas, en relación con los tipos de oraciones analizadas, la procedencia geográfica y el género de los informantes.As part of a larger study, whose main objective is to postulate the existence of intonation differences between linguistic regions of Chile in the issuance of subordinate clauses substantive objective, this work exposes a characterization of three types of pauses found inside the sentence structures listed above, issued by professional speakers from Iquique and Punta Arenas. The main purpose of the study was to determine the existence of differences in the types of pauses observed in relation to the sentence complexity analyzed, the gender of the informants and their geographical origin. For this, a total of 100 statements taken from interviews of 37 professionals born in both cities were analyzed. The results indicated that there were differences in the observed pauses, in relation to the types of sentences analyzed, the geographic origin and gender of the informants. (shrink)

The somatic mutation theory (SMT) of cancer has been and remains the prevalent theory attempting to explain how neoplasms arise and progress. This theory proposes that cancer is a clonal, cell‐based disease, and implicitly assumes that quiescence is the default state of cells in multicellular organisms. The SMT has not been rigorously tested, and several lines of evidence raise questions that are not addressed by this theory. Herein, we propose experimental strategies that may validate the SMT. We also call attention (...) to an alternative theory of carcinogenesis, the tissue organization field theory (TOFT), which posits that cancer is a tissue‐based disease and that proliferation is the default state of all cells. Based on epistemological and experimental evidence, we argue that the TOFT compellingly explains carcinogenesis, while placing it within an evolutionarily relevant context.magnified imagemagnified imageAna Soto and Carlos Sonnenschein are at Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA. (shrink)

Despite continuing controversies regarding the vital status of both brain-dead donors and individuals who undergo donation after circulatory death (DCD), respecting the dead donor rule (DDR) remains the standard moral framework for organ procurement. The DDR increases organ supply without jeopardizing trust in transplantation systems, reassuring society that donors will not experience harm during organ procurement. While the assumption that individuals cannot be harmed once they are dead is reasonable in the case of brain-dead protocols, we argue that the DDR (...) is not an acceptable strategy to protect donors from harm in DCD protocols. We propose a threefold alternative to justify organ procurement practices: (1) ensuring that donors are sufficiently protected from harm; (2) ensuring that they are respected through informed consent; and (3) ensuring that society is fully informed of the inherently debatable nature of any criterion to declare death. (shrink)

The dominant position in Philosophy of Science contends that downward causation is an illusion. Instead, we argue that downward causation doesn’t introduce vicious circles either in physics or in biology. We also question the metaphysical claim that “physical facts fix all the facts.” Downward causation does not imply any contradiction if we reject the assumption of the completeness and the causal closure of the physical world that this assertion contains. We provide an argument for rejecting this assumption. Furthermore, this allows (...) us to reconsider the concept of diachronic emergence. (shrink)

The somatic mutation theory has been the prevailing paradigm in cancer research for the last 50 years. Its premises are: (1) cancer is derived from a single somatic cell that has accumulated multiple DNA mutations, (2) the default state of cell proliferation in metazoa is quiescence, and (3) cancer is a disease of cell proliferation caused by mutations in genes that control proliferation and the cell cycle. From this compelling simplicity, an increasingly complicated picture has emerged as more than 100 (...) oncogenes and 30 tumor suppressor genes have been identified. To accommodate this complexity, additional ad hoc explanations have been postulated. After a critical review of the data gathered from this perspective, an alternative research program has been proposed. It is based on the tissue organization field theory, the premises of which are that carcinogenesis represents a problem of tissue organization, comparable to organogenesis, and that proliferation is the default state of all cells. The merits of these competing theories are evaluated herein. BioEssays 26:1097–1107, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Clerical learning appears to have been an instrumental good rather than a good in its own right, in literature that was designed for those clerics who would have charge of parish churches. The acquisition of knowledge in the Middle Ages was justified and conditioned by the post that each person occupied in the Church and in society. The expression to know Latin or to know: grammar sums up the requirements for being a cleric.

This paper presents Domingo Gundisalvo's theory of knowledge and the end of our cognitive process at the light «of the active Intelligence». For human beings participate in this light wen at in effectu or in adeptus ab alio. The research takes into account Gundisalvo's metaphysics background as exposed in his De processione mundi.

It would be ahistorical to ridicule vitalists. When one reads the writings of one of the leading vitalists like Driesch one is forced to agree with him that many of the basic problems of biology simply cannot be solved by a philosophy as that of Descartes, in which the organism is simply considered a machine…. The logic of the critique of the vitalists was impeccable.At the turn of the new millennium, concomitant with the development of the evo-devo and eco-devo disciplines (...) within developmental biology, critical appraisals of the reductionist stance of the molecular biology revolution became more numerous and noticeable. Several books and papers address the problems posed by this reductionist agenda and suggest... (shrink)

Synaesthesia is a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces photisms, i.e. mental percepts of colours. R is a 20 year old colour blind subject who, in addition to the relatively common grapheme-colour synaesthesia, presents a rarely reported cross modal perception in which a variety of visual stimuli elicit aura-like percepts of colour. In R, photisms seem to be closely related to the affective valence of stimuli and (...) typically bring out a consistent pattern of emotional responses. The present case study suggests that colours might be an intrinsic category of the human brain. We developed an empirical methodology that allowed us to study the subject's otherwise inaccessible phenomenological experience. First, we found that R shows a Stroop effect elicited by photisms despite the fact that he does not show a regular Stroop with real colours. Secondly, by manipulating the colour context we confirmed that colours can alter R's emotional evaluation of the stimuli. Furthermore, we demonstrated that R's auras may actually lead to a partially inverted emotional spectrum where certain stimuli bring out emotional reactions opposite to the normal ones. These findings can only be accounted for by considering R's subjective colour experience or qualia. Therefore the present paper defends the view that qualia are a useful scientific concept that can be approached and studied by experimental methods. (shrink)

Using microdata from the Wage Structure Survey, we analyse the gender wage gap in the private and public sectors, considering the whole wage distribution. The main contribution is to assume that the decision to work in a sector is a prior process determined endogenously in the model. Thus, the usual Ordinary Least Square estimation is inconsistent, and it is necessary to use alternative techniques. We use quantile regression techniques to calculate how much of the gap is due to differences in (...) returns between men and women and sectors, taking into account the sample selection bias. We find that the size of the gap attributed to different returns varies substantially across the wage distribution. Public sector employees are paid higher wages, on average, than their counterparts in the private sector, and the gap is wider for women. Moreover, the proportion of the gender wage gap explained tends to be greater for workers who are at the bottom of the wage distribution in both sectors. A look at the whole wage distribution reveals that discrimination in the gender wage gap is typically higher at its top than at its bottom, suggesting that glass ceilings are more prevalent than sticky floors for both men and women. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to examine whether business performance is affected by the adoption of practices included under the term Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). To achieve this goal, we analyse the relation between CSR and certain accounting indicators and examine whether there exist significant differences in performance indicators between European firms that have adopted CSR and others that have not. The effects of compliance with the requirements of CSR were determined on the basis of firms included in the (...) Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI), and specific accounting indicators were applied to measure performance. For the purposes of this study, we selected one group of firms belonging to the DJSI and another comprised of firms quoted on the Dow Jones Global Index (DJGI) but not on the DJSI. The sample was made up of two groups of 55 firms, studied for the period 1998–2004. Empirical analysis supports the conclusion that differences in performance exist between firms that belong to the DJSI and to the DJGI and that these differences are related to CSR practices. We find that a short-term negative impact on performance is produced. (shrink)

El fraile capuchino Antonio de Fuentelapeña escribió en 1676 El ente dilucidado, obra de filosofía escolástica en la que su autor pretende demostrar la existencia de duendes. Sin embargo, la crítica posterior juzgó como extravagancia y locura la obra, sin reparar en que sus argumentos escolásticos analizaron muchos temas filosóficos de extrema importancia, como la racionalidad de los animales, tan en boga hoy día gracias al estudio de la conducta animal comparada, la Etología.

Against the modern theory of representation, which makes the world opaque, Polo Suggests reviviting the classical theory of ilumination. Intentionality of knowledge, according to Polo, makes possibe the "deveiling" of reality, and shows its radical dependence from God.

David Waldron Smithers was, among other things, a physician and a pioneer of cancer radiotherapy and a well-respected figure in British medicine and public health. From the 1940s until his retirement from medical practice in 1973, he was the director of the Radiotherapy Department at the Royal Marsden Hospital and London University Chair of Radiotherapy at the Institute of Cancer Research. Using massive amounts of clinical observations, which he interpreted from an organicist viewpoint, and his impressive synthetic thinking, he proposed (...) a coherent alternative perspective to the somatic mutation theory (SMT) which was then, and still is, the dominant theory of cancer. The purpose of this essay is to acquaint the modern audience with his seminal paper, published in 1962, because it deserves to be recognized as a true classic. In it, he examined the lack of fit between clinical observations and the SMT and proposed the rejection of this reductionist perspective. In addition, he built an organicist alternative in which carcinogenesis is seen as a problem of biological organization. His conceptual contribution to the cancer problem has inspired us and other authors over the last two decades. His essay “Cancer: An Attack on Cytologism,” originally published in The Lancet in 1962, is available as supplementary material in the online version of this article. (shrink)

This review presents a state of the art in artificial intelligence applied to urban planning and particularly to land-use predictions. In this review, different articles after the year 2016 are analyzed mostly focusing on those that are not mentioned in earlier publications. Most of the articles analyzed used a combination of Markov chains and cellular automata to predict the growth of urban areas and metropolitan regions. We noticed that most of these simulations were applied in various areas of China. An (...) analysis of the publication of articles in the area over time is included. (shrink)

Raimundo Lulio sees law, and all created things in the world, from the philosophical viewpoint and the kind of reasoning favoring theology, since that reasoning gets the arguments to prove christian faith. Law is an unclair, although necessary, science, due to the absence of charity. To Raimundo Lulio, who seems to know this very well, the legalized activity is complex and complicated. And that's why he proposes in his Arte a guiding methodology, which is a simplified and mechanic system to (...) apply law and do justice, based on principles of theology and natural law. Raimundo Lulio plays utopia. (shrink)

Several studies have explored differences between North American and European doctor patient relationships. They have focused primarily on differences in philosophical traditions and historic and socioeconomic factors between these two regions that might lead to differences in behaviour, as well as divergent concepts in and justifications of medical practice. However, few empirical intercultural studies have been carried out to identify in practice these cultural differences. This lack of standard comparative empirical studies led us to compare differences between France and the (...) USA regarding end-of-life decision-making. We tested certain assertions put forward by bioethicists concerning the impact of culture on the acceptance of advance directives in such decisions. In particular, we compared North American and French intensive care professional's attitudes toward: (1) advance directives, and (2) the role of the family in decisions to withhold or withdraw life-support. (shrink)