Teachers’ conceptions about the origin of life in three Latin American countries with contrasting levels of secularism were analyzed: Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. A European survey questionnaire was used and the interpretation of the results drew on Barbour's four categories concerning the relationships of science and religion. A large majority of Argentinian and Uruguayan teachers were clearly evolutionist, even when believing in God, with no difference between Argentina and Uruguay. The majority of Brazilian teachers assumed a religious position about the (...) origin of life, being creationist or evolutionary creationist. Differences of Brazilian teachers’ conceptions may result from the higher percentage of evangelicals and lower proportion of agnostics/atheists. Brazilian Catholic teachers were more creationist than their Catholic colleagues in Argentina and Uruguay. Distinct patterns were found, but further research is needed to understand possible classroom impacts. (shrink)

In the digital age, the global software development sector has been a forerunner in implementing new ways and configurations for remote teamwork using information and communication technologies on a widespread basis. Crises and technological advances have influenced each other to bring about changes in the ways of working. In the 70’s of the last century, in the middle of the so-called oil crisis, the concept of teleworking was defined using remote computer equipment to access office equipment and thus avoid moving (...) around using traditional vehicles. Then from the 90s, with the advent of communications and the widespread use of the Internet, the first virtual work teams were implemented in software development companies that already had some of the important characteristics needed to work in this way, such as, cultural diversity, characterized tasks, geographical distribution of members, communication, interdependence of tasks, leadership, cohesion, empowerment, confidence, virtuality. This manuscript groups the main factors into different models proposed by the literature and also analyzes the results of a study conducted in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis on 317 software development teams that had to work in virtual teams. The results of the quantitative methodology with structural equation modeling based on variance using the partial least squares route method are analyzed. The results of the research focus on some determinants that can directly affect the performance of the virtual team. A first determinant is communication in relation to the tasks. The second is trust in relation to leadership, empowerment and cohesion. The results of virtual teams provide information that can serve as a basis for future research lines for the implementation of virtual work strategies in post-pandemic work. (shrink)

Human nature has always been a foundational issue for philosophy. What does it mean to have a human nature? Is the concept the relic of a bygone age? What is the use of such a concept? What are the epistemic and ontological commitments people make when they use the concept? In What’s Left of Human Nature? Maria Kronfeldner offers a philosophical account of human nature that defends the concept against contemporary criticism. In particular, she takes on challenges related to (...) social misuse of the concept that dehumanizes those regarded as lacking human nature (the dehumanization challenge); the conflict between Darwinian thinking and essentialist concepts of human nature (the Darwinian challenge); and the consensus that evolution, heredity, and ontogenetic development results from nurture and nature. After answering each of these challenges, Kronfeldner presents a revisionist account of human nature that minimizes dehumanization and does not fall back on outdated biological ideas. Her account is post-essentialist because it eliminates the concept of an essence of being human; pluralist in that it argues that there are different things in the world that correspond to three different post-essentialist concepts of human nature; and interactive because it understands nature and nurture as interacting at the developmental, epigenetic, and evolutionary levels. On the basis of this, she introduces a dialectical concept of an ever-changing and “looping” human nature. Finally, noting the essentially contested character of the concept and the ambiguity and redundancy of the terminology, she wonders if we should simply eliminate the term “human nature” altogether. (shrink)

This paper revisits Donnellan’s distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions and argues that it is not exhaustive. Donnellan characterizes the distinction in terms of two criteria: the speaker’s intentions and the type of content the speaker aims to express. I argue that contrary to the common view, these two criteria are independent and that the distinctive features may be coinstantiated in more than two ways. This leaves room for nonattributive and nonreferential uses of definite descriptions. Kripke’s notions (...) of general and specific intentions provide a framework that accommodates such cases. Additionally, it proves useful for the analysis of the use of proper names with specific nonsingular intentions. The paper also discusses how the interpretation of the use of definite descriptions as attributive or referential (or neither) is sensitive to which theory of singular thoughts one adopts. (shrink)

This chapter contains a brief review of some relevant literature by American scholars that mostly reference to American cultural settings. This literature ranges from viewing will as universal psychological phenomena and others discuss some features of willing that can be found within a certain sociocultural milieu. This chapter also reveals the variable and dynamic nature of assessments and attributions of volitional states in connection to events within the social world.

El estudio buscó evaluar los niveles de dominio de las competencias investigativas en posgraduados de Perú y Ecuador desde un enfoque pedagógico socioformativo. Se desarrolló bajo el método deductivo de alcance descriptivo. El análisis de los resultados ubica a los posgraduados de ambos países en el nivel medio o resolutivo, lo cual indica que existen competencias aceptables y suficientes para investigar, pero no logran expresarse eficientemente ni de manera creativa e innovadora. Asimismo, existen limitaciones en el afrontamiento de distintas competencias (...) inherentes a la investigación científica. (shrink)

"Dr. Montessori was par excellence the great interpreter of the child; and though she herself has passed on from the scene of her labours her work will still go on."-- Westminster Cathedral Chronicle One of the landmark books in the history of education--and one of the least expensive editions now available--this volume describes a new system for educating youngsters. Based on a radical concept of liberty for the pupil and highly formal training of separate sensory, motor, and mental capacities, the (...) system enabled youngsters to master reading, writing, and arithmetic rapidly and substantially. Included are discussions of scientific pedagogy; discipline; the importance of proper diet, gymnastics, and manual labor; and many other topics. Unabridged reprint of the classic 1912 edition. (shrink)

This paper addresses whether the often-bemoaned loss of unity of knowledge about humans, which results from the disciplinary fragmentation of science, is something to be overcome. The fragmentation of being human rests on a couple of distinctions, such as the nature-culture divide. Since antiquity the distinction between nature (roughly, what we inherit biologically) and culture (roughly, what is acquired by social interaction) has been a commonplace in science and society. Recently, the nature/culture divide has come under attack in various ways, (...) in philosophy as well as in cultural anthropology. Regarding the latter, for instance, the divide was quintessential in its beginnings as an academic dis-cipline, when Alfred L. Kroeber, one of the first professional anthropologists in the US, rallied for (what I call) the right to ignore—in his case, human nature—by adopting a separationist epistemic stance. A separationist stance will be understood as an epistemic research heuristic that defends the right to ignore a specif-ic phenomenon (e.g., human nature) or a specific causal factor in an explanation typical for a disciplinary field. I will use Kroeber’s case as an example for making a general point against a bias towards integration (synthesis bias, as I call it) that is exemplified, for instance, by defenders of evolutionary psychology. I will claim that, in principle, a separationist stance is as good as an integrationist stance since both can be equally fruitful. With this argument from fruitful sepa-ration in place, not just the separationist stance but also the nature/culture di-vide can be defended against its critics. (shrink)

This paper reflects on the notion and structural components of two concepts: the human condition and human nature. Likewise, it is proposed that both concepts should be included in the basic themes not only in the field of Educational Philosophy, but also in all disciplines where the human being occupies a privileged place. Human condition is understood as a state of subjection to everything with which human beings interact and represents the starting point to ascend to three natures that correspond (...) to human beings. Hegel emphasizes two natures of man. The first is characterized by having a biological structure governed by instincts. The second is culture and to ascend to it requires processes of intellection that can be objectified through consciousness. The third human nature proposed in this paper is rooted in Ernst Bloch’s principle of hope. It is materialized by human actions tending to the construction of the future from the discovery of what is not-yet-conscious that, when identified, is achieved through actions. (shrink)

La integración de la tecnología en el ámbito del derecho penal plantea desafíos significativos debido a la falta de regulación de la inteligencia artificial (IA), lo que podría comprometer los derechos fundamentales. Este estudio se centra en abordar estos desafíos y proponer soluciones mediante un análisis exhaustivo de la situación actual y las posibles implicaciones de la IA en el sistema jurídico penal. El objetivo principal de esta investigación es analizar los problemas, desafíos y oportunidades que surgen con la implementación (...) de la inteligencia artificial en el ámbito penal. Se busca identificar la necesidad de una regulación específica para la IA en el derecho penal, con el fin de proteger los derechos fundamentales de las personas y garantizar un sistema jurídico justo y equitativo. Para abordar esta problemática, se adoptó un enfoque metodológico cualitativo. Se llevó a cabo una revisión bibliográfica detallada para examinar los antecedentes, problemas y desafíos asociados con la IA en los sistemas jurídicos, especialmente en el ámbito penal. Además, se realizaron análisis de criterios y opiniones de expertos en derecho para obtener una comprensión más profunda de la situación y las posibles soluciones. Los resultados de este estudio revelan la necesidad urgente de establecer una normativa específica para regular la aplicación de la inteligencia artificial en el ámbito penal. Se destaca que la falta de regulación representa un riesgo significativo para los derechos fundamentales, especialmente en lo que respecta a la configuración de delitos con el apoyo de la IA. Además, se identifican diferentes dimensiones que deben abordarse en la regulación, incluyendo principios y reglas básicas del derecho, supervisión humana de los sistemas de IA y la promoción de la innovación responsable en este campo. Este artículo subraya la importancia de establecer una regulación efectiva para la inteligencia artificial en el ámbito penal. Esta regulación no solo protegerá los derechos fundamentales de las personas, sino que también promoverá un uso responsable y progresivo de la IA como una herramienta valiosa para los profesionales del derecho. Es crucial que la regulación sea integral y adaptable para garantizar un sistema jurídico justo y equitativo en la era digital. (shrink)

Julián Marías (1914-2005) è un pensatore ancora poco conosciuto al lettore italiano, spesso oscurato dall’ombra del suo celebre maestro, José Ortega y Gasset. Filosofo indipendente e coraggioso, offre una proposta più coerente rispetto a Ortega sul tema essenziale comune a entrambi: il poter “dare ragione” della vita evitando gli opposti scogli del razionalismo e del vitalismo. “Dare ragione” della vita significa comprenderla nella sua “condizione morale” che trova espressione nel desiderio di felicità, nell’esigenza di amore e di amicizia, nei differenti (...) vissuti di ciascuna età. Significa riconoscerne la dimensione elettiva: vivere è preferire, saper fornire ragioni per l’opzione di qualcosa rispetto a qualcos’altro. Per questo motivo, più che alla categoria del bene, l’attenzione è rivolta a quella del meglio, fondamentale per comprendere il senso pieno delle proprie scelte e dell’intera trama della propria biografia. (shrink)

In 1626, the Neapolitan Ottavio Sammarco published the Discorso politico intorno la conseruatione della pace dell'Italia in which the author referred to the King of Spain as arbiter among the Italian princes and his ministers in Italy as efficient instruments to ensure the stability. This piece of political literature shows an explicit practical orientation, through which the author carries out a systematisation of the political means to achieve quietness in Italy. In articulating the praxis into formal language, Sammarco looks to (...) the past searching for the wisdom of History and uses Tacitus’ account to build a discourse around the tools and mechanisms for preserving stability and avoiding conflicts. The aim of this article, in the first instance, is to examine Sammarco's discursive programme and the purpose of his discourse; in the second place, how Tacitus serves the author's aim and how his account means a fundamental anchor. Furthermore, it will be useful to trace how the political language that transforms the continuous threat of war into politics is modelled by 1626 in Italy and how Sammarco contextualizes his political vocabulary within the Spanish Monarchy political dialectic at the beginning of XVII century. (shrink)

This book addresses the need to create an "axiological epistemology". This term refers to knowledge of what is axiological, id est everything related to human values, and the know-how on how to manage the study of values. In knowledge societies, we know and live axiological projects that we do not receive from anyone, but that we must construct ourselves in a situation of continuous change. In view of the fact that the axiological crisis in which we are immersed is the (...) most serious one that humanity has suffered over its long history, the seriousness and urgency of the issue in question is evident. Adequate knowledge is required to solve this problem, which is at the root of all the problems we are experiencing. This work offers a potential solution that, in contrast to the past, cannot be definitive, but must be transformed throughout the continuous changes to ways of life as a result of technoscience. It will prove of great value to all those who must operate within human values and motivate groups, as well as to those interested in spirituality. (shrink)

This book is the first collective volume specifically devoted to the multifaceted phenomenon of intensification, which has been traditionally regarded as related to the expression of degree, scaling a quality downwards or upwards. In spite of the large amount of studies on intensifiers, there is still a need for the characterization of intensification as a distinct functional category in the domain of modification. The eighteen papers of the volume contribute to this aim with a new approach (mainly corpus-based). They focus (...) on intensification from different perspectives (both synchronic and diachronic) and theoretical frameworks, concern ancient languages (Hittite, Greek, Latin) and modern languages (mainly Italian, German, English, Kiswahili), and involve different levels of analysis. They also identify and examine different types of intensifiers, applied to different forms and structures, such as adverbs, adjectives, evaluative affixes, discourse markers, reduplication, exclamative clauses, coordination, prosodic elements, and shed light on issues which have not been extensively studied so far. (shrink)

In der gegenwartigen Auseinandersetzung mit dem Thema Tierschutz fehlt es an uberzeugenden Begrundungen; ungenugende Argumente fuhren zu uneinlosbaren Forderungen und schaden der Sache mehr als sie ihr nutzen. VOn entscheidender Bedeutung ist dabei die Frage, welches Verstandnis wir vom Tier haben. DIe philosophische Herausforderung einer Tierschutzethik beginnt mit der Einsicht, daSS das Tier weder als Sache noch als Person begriffen werden kann. DIe vorgelegte Tierschutzethik diskutiert das Thema auf philosophischem Niveau, bedenkt den Umgang des Menschen mit dem Tier in seiner (...) Vielschichtigkeit und leistet eine fundierte Begrundung der notigen Beschrankungen menschlicher Willkur zugunsten des Tieres. (shrink)

Current technology and surveillance practices make behaviors traceable to persons in unprecedented ways. This causes a loss of anonymity and of many privacy measures relied on in the past. These de facto privacy losses are by many seen as problematic for individual psychology, intimate relations and democratic practices such as free speech and free assembly. I share most of these concerns but propose that an even more fundamental problem might be that our very ability to act as autonomous and purposive (...) agents relies on some degree of privacy, perhaps particularly as we act in public and semi-public spaces. I suggest that basic issues concerning action choices have been left largely unexplored, due to a series of problematic theoretical assumptions at the heart of privacy debates. One such assumption has to do with the influential conceptualization of privacy as pertaining to personal intimate facts belonging to a private sphere as opposed to a public sphere of public facts. As Helen Nissenbaum has pointed out, the notion of privacy in public sounds almost like an oxymoron given this traditional private-public dichotomy. I discuss her important attempt to defend privacy in public through her concept of ‘contextual integrity.’ Context is crucial, but Nissenbaum’s descriptive notion of existing norms seems to fall short of a solution. I here agree with Joel Reidenberg’s recent worries regarding any approach that relies on ‘reasonable expectations’ . The problem is that in many current contexts we have no such expectations. Our contexts have already lost their integrity, so to speak. By way of a functional and more biologically inspired account, I analyze the relational and contextual dynamics of both privacy needs and harms. Through an understanding of action choice as situated and options and capabilities as relational, a more consequence-oriented notion of privacy begins to appear. I suggest that privacy needs, harms and protections are relational. Privacy might have less to do with seclusion and absolute transactional control than hitherto thought. It might instead hinge on capacities to limit the social consequences of our actions through knowing and shaping our perceptible agency and social contexts of action. To act with intent we generally need the ability to conceal during exposure. If this analysis is correct then relational privacy is an important condition for autonomic purposive and responsible agency—particularly in public space. Overall, this chapter offers a first stab at a reconceptualization of our privacy needs as relational to contexts of action. In terms of ‘rights to privacy’ this means that we should expand our view from the regulation and protection of the information of individuals to questions of the kind of contexts we are creating. I am here particularly interested in what I call ‘unbounded contexts’, i.e. cases of context collapses, hidden audiences and even unknowable future agents. (shrink)

Formal semantics - the scientific study of meaning in natural language - is one of the most fundamental and long-established areas of linguistics. This Handbook offers a comprehensive, yet compact guide to the field, bringing together research from a wide range of world-leading experts. Chapters include coverage of the historical context and foundation of contemporary formal semantics, a survey of the variety of formal/logical approaches to linguistic meaning and an overview of the major areas of research within current semantic theory, (...) broadly conceived. The Handbook also explores the interfaces between semantics and neighbouring disciplines, including research in cognition and computation. This work will be essential reading for students and researchers working in linguistics, philosophy, psychology and computer science. (shrink)

The last few years have seen the emergence of critical phenomenology as an exciting paradigm in phenomenology and beyond, spanning disciplines such as anthropology, urban studies, gender studies an...

Drawing on a rich variety of Indian texts across multiple traditions, including Vedanta, Buddhist, Yoga and Jain, this collection explores how emotional experience is framed, evoked and theorized in order to offer compelling insights into human subjectivity. Rather than approaching emotion through the prism of Western theory, a team of leading Indian philosophers showcase the unique literary texture, philosophical reflections and theoretical paradigms that classical Indian sources provide in their own right. From solitude in the Saundarananda and psychosomatic theories of (...) disease in the Yogavasistha to female lament in Greek, Sinhala Buddhist and Sanskrit epic tales, their chapters reveal the range and diversity of the phenomena encompassing the English term 'emotion'. In doing so, they contribute towards a more cosmopolitan, comparative and pluralistic conception of human experience. Adopting a broad phenomenological methodology, this handbook reframes debates on emotion within classical Indian thought and is an invaluable resource for researchers and students seeking to understand the field beyond the Western tradition. (shrink)

The term ‘human nature’ can refer to different things in the world and fulfil different epistemic roles. Human nature can refer to a classificatory nature (classificatory criteria that determine the boundaries of, and membership in, a biological or social group called ‘human’), a descriptive nature (a bundle of properties describing the respective group’s life form), or an explanatory nature (a set of factors explaining that life form). This chapter will first introduce these three kinds of ‘human nature’, together with seven (...) reasons why we disagree about human nature. In the main, this chapter focuses on the explanatory concept of human nature, which is related to one of the seven reasons for disagreement, namely, the scientific authority inherent in the term ‘nature’. I will examine why, in a number of historical contexts, it was attractive to refer to ‘nature’ as an explanatory category, and why this usage has led to the continual contestation of the term within the sciences. The claim is that even if the contents of talk about ‘nature’ varied historically, the term’s pragmatic function of demarcation stayed the same. The term ‘nature’ conveys scientific authority over a territory; ‘human nature’ is a concept used to divide causes, as well as experts, and thereby conquer others who threaten to invade one’s epistemic territory. Analysing this demarcation, which has social as well as epistemic aspects, will help us to understand why the explanatory role has been important and why it is unlikely that people will ever agree on either the meaning or the importance of ‘human nature’ as an explanatory category. (shrink)

En estas páginas hemos presentado varios argumentos para defender que existe una conexión entre el empleo de heurísticas y los procesos de deliberación. En lugar de caracterizar las heurísticas en función de las disciplinas, los campos y/o los ámbitos en que se emplean—tal y como hace, por ejemplo, el grupo ABC, i.e. racionalidad ecológica—las hemos proyectado sobre nuestros enclaves deliberativos, esto es, sobre un espacio eminentemente retórico y político. En dichos enclaves, tal y como solía recordarnos Quintín Racionero, la téchne (...) de la persuasión se nos presenta como parte del órganon de la filosofía práctica porque está aplicada a un espacio ontológico fundado por la comunicación humana. Y es en el seno de dicha comunicación como cabe entender la proliferación de razonamientos heurísticos encaminados al cálculo, la estimación y/o la ponderación, con ayuda de los cuales no sólo se orienta la acción colectiva sino las mismas fases de la deliberación. (shrink)

Hubertus Kohle ist ein Kunsthistoriker und Hochschullehrer, der sich besonders mit seinen Forschungen zur Kunst der europäischen Aufklärung und des 19. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland einen Namen gemacht hat. Schon früh hat er seine Disziplin digitalen Verfahren und Konzepten geöffnet und setzt sich seit Jahren für das elektronische Publizieren im Open Access ein. Aktuell widmet er sich als einer der beiden Leiter des renommierten DFG-Schwerpunktprogramms „Das digitale Bild“ auch fachübergreifend dem Thema des Digitalen. Anlässlich seines 60. Geburtstags ehren ihn zahlreiche Freunde (...) und akademische Weggefährten mit der vorliegenden Festschrift, die inhaltlich an die Schwerpunkte seines kunsthistorischen Wirkens anknüpft – von den analogen Anfängen, die der Kunst des Aufklärungszeitalters gewidmet waren, bis hin zum aktuellen Feld der „Digitalen Kunstgeschichte“. Diese Festgabe versteht sich als experimentelle Online-Publikation, die dem Jubilar zum Geburtstagstermin in einer ersten Version rein virtuell präsentiert wird. Da es sich dabei bewusst um ein „digital work in progress“ handelt, werden später weitere Beiträge ergänzt (im Inhaltsverzeichnis im unteren Abschnitt zu finden), die die Festschrift zu einem finalen E-Book komplettieren, das dann Ende 2019 parallel auch als eine analoge Buchausgabe erhältlich ist. (shrink)

"Como pensar hoje na escrita da história? Como enfrentar a página em branco que não se apresenta como um espaço neutro, mas um espaço onde quem escreve - o historiador - deixa rastros do passado e também os seus próprios rastros? Essas são algumas das questões colocadas pelos ensaios que compõem "Arte e pensamento: operações historiográficas". Num primeiro momento, são fornecidos o ritmo, o tom e os compassos por meio de discussões e reflexões sobre uma teoria da experiência para a (...) escrita da história, sobre a historicidade do artístico, sobre o inespecífico do contemporâneo, sobre o pensamento na fronteira, sobre a nomeação dos anônimos em Machado de Assis. A partir dessas harmonizações dissonantes e consoantes, iniciam-se 3 operações que delineiam o segundo momento do livro, cuja intenção maior é fazer operar a escrita da história na imbricada conjunção história-arte-pensamento."--Contratapa. (shrink)

Émilie Du Châtelet is the only French woman author of a work included in the corpus of clandestine philosophical literature: a set of treatises, dissertations, or letters that circulated in Europe, and especially in France, mainly in manuscript form, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the main purpose of which was to subject religion to rigorous rational criticism (philosophical, historical, scientific). These Examens de la religion, one of the most controversial works in this corpus, circulated during the eighteenth century and (...) gave rise to a form of legend: sometimes said to be the work of Émilie Du Châtelet, sometimes the result of a form of collaboration between Du Châtelet and the one whose life she shared for a long time: Voltaire. If the feminine point of view on the Bible played a role in the recent attribution of this text to Émilie Du Châtelet, the existence of a properly feminine writing in the wider context of clandestine philosophical literature can now be discussed. This article aims to put this debate into perspective, at both the methodological and philosophical level. (shrink)

La oposición a una estricta separación entre las dimensiones dialéctica y retórica de la actividad argumentativa es una de las aportaciones más destacadas y peculiares de la denominada escuela holandesa sobre argumentación. Frans H. van Eemeren y Peter Houtlosser reaccionaron contra una separación estricta entre dialéctica y retórica en varios trabajos, pero uno de los más inspiradores es sin duda su artículo “William the Silent’s argumentative discourse” (1998) presentado en la ciudad de Ámsterdam con ocasión de la cuarta conferencia organizada (...) por la International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA). Sobre este tema siguieron investigando para presentar un análisis de la perspectiva dialéctica inherente al caso de Guillermo I de Orange en un congreso de la Japan Debate Association en Tokio (van Eemeren y Houtlosser, 2000). (shrink)