In the middle of the twentieth century, Wittgenstein warned that “the method of reducing the explanation of natural phenomena to the smallest possible number of primitive natural laws…leads…into complete darkness” (1958, p. 18). At the time, few philosophers and even fewer scientists were prepared to heed his warning. A half-century later, however, the reductive method of science—the method famously defined by Descartes, brilliantly exemplified by Newtonian physics, and long upheld as the gold standard of scientific explanation—seems to have finally lost (...) its luster. While reduction is still widely defended, in the last decades alternative views have gained credibility, to the extent that a “non-reductive science” is no longer dismissed as an oxymoron. (shrink)

This paper is a response to the opening of new lines of research on CSR and SMEs (Thompson & Smith, 1991; Spence, 1999; Moore & Smith, 2006; Spence, 2007). It seeks to explore the business case for CSR in this corporate segment. The paper, which is based on four case studies of medium-sized firms in the automotive sector, took the distinctive approach of trying to understand the nature of CSR-like activities developed not by best-in-class CSR-driven companies but by purely competitiveness-driven (...) firms. The case studies provide explicit evidence that the CSR activities of SMEs and the notion of social capital are interrelated, turning social capital into a powerful instrument to better explain what academic literature has called silent CSR practices . The analysis that follows questions some of the basic tenets that underpin the branch of business ethics that deals with the nature of SMEs' approach to CSR. Four basic concerns, which take the form of propositions for further research, serve as the basis for this analysis: a) A definition of CSR that includes most of the actions taken by all companies in the territory contributes no academic value to the discipline b) Any study of the motivation behind these CSR actions must reflect their essentially pragmatic nature. Actions are linked to social values but also, more importantly, to the nature of the competitive environment c) Business ethics must seek common ground with other more sociological disciplines if it is to explain the reasons behind this type of action d) Any study of this kind of practice requires a dual approach: a) normative when using tools developed by CSR; and b) descriptive and instrumental using the notion of social capital. (shrink)

En el presente artículo se hace un análisis del cuento “¡Tierra!”, de Pedro Gómez Valderrama, desde dos perspectivas: la de cuento histórico y la del erotismo. El análisis, que evalúa los aspectos históricos recreados por el autor en el relato, confronta las fuentes históricas que éste utiliza para la construcción de su cuento e intenta indagar en la posición desde la que se interpretan literariamente los hechos, en la cual el erotismo es fundamental. Para, finalmente, señalar que el cuento presenta (...) el descubrimiento de América como el hallazgo de una utopía. (shrink)

Em analogia com outras discriminações, como o racismo ou o sexismo, o especismo é concebido como uma forma de discriminação moral com base na espécie. Em grande medida, a discussão contemporânea sobre a importância moral dos animais surgiu e desenvolveu-se em torno da crítica e da defesa do especismo. Este artigo oferece uma visão da discussão filosófica contemporânea sobre o especismo. Após uma breve introdução, apresenta-se uma definição de especismo e caracterizam-se vários tipos de especismo, sendo o Antropocentrismo o mais (...) relevante. Depois, expõe-se um argumento proeminente contra o Antropocentrismo: o argumento dos casos marginais. Por fim, algumas posições antropocêntricas são criticamente discutidas. (shrink)

Representations are not only used in our folk-psychological explanations of behaviour, but are also fruitfully postulated, for example, in cognitive science. The mainstream view in cognitive science maintains that our mind is a representational system. This popular view requires an understanding of the nature of the entities they are postulating. Teleosemantic theories face this challenge, unpacking the normativity in the relation of representation by appealing to the teleological function of the representing state. It has been argued that, if intentionality is (...) to be explained in teleological terms, then the function of a state cannot depend on its phylogenetical history, given the metaphysical possibility of a duplicate of an intentional being that lacks an evolutionary history. In this paper, I present a method to produce, according to our current knowledge in genetic engineering, human-like individuals who are not the product of natural selection in the required sense. This variation will be used to shed light on the main replies that have been offered in the literature to the Swampman thought experiment. I argue that these replies are not satisfactory: representations should better not depend on natural selection. I conclude that a non-etiological notion of function is to be preferred for characterizing the relation of representation. (shrink)

Political thought, from Aristotle to Lefebvre, has placed importance on the control of space as an activity of political power. Extraordinary measures taken by global policy-makers since the early 2020s as part of efforts to to combat the pandemic have included mass lock-downs, closed borders, social distancing and other forms of spatial control. Importantly, spaces dedicated to religious worship (churches, etc.) were subjected to extraordinary regulation. In the exercise of this new control of space, social control has played an important (...) role (obligation to declare one’s health condition, incitement to denounce offenders...) fostered by the authorities through various means of new social education, generating new social habits in terms of the management of space. Religious freedom and the autonomy of the Church thus faced new challenges as a result of the extraordinary control of religious space by civil power and the pressure of social control. The new forms of control incorporated into our habits deserve to be critically reviewed in our search for true spaces of freedom that are not sacrificed in the name of supposed science. (shrink)

The current crisis has come at a cost not only for big business but also for business schools. Business schools have been deemed largely responsible for developing and teaching socially dysfunctional curricula that, if anything, has served to promote and accelerate the kind of ruthless behavior and lack of self-restraint and social irresponsibility among top executives that have been seen as causing the crisis. As a result, many calls have been made for business schools to accept their responsibilities as social (...) institutions and to work toward becoming more socially embedded and better attuned to public interests. In this paper, however, we point to some of the barriers there may be in the way of business schools developing into responsible organizational citizens proper. We argue that there are lines of resistance against responsibilization operating at epistemological, institutional, and organization levels and that we need to take account of barriers on all these levels in order to properly capture the challenges that are involved in making the modern business school amenable to demands for more social responsibility. In terms of working toward overcoming such barriers, we discuss how business education can become more socially embedded via the inclusion of ethical reflection and critical thinking. (shrink)

A long‐standing debate in the study of human communication centers on the degree to which communicators tune their communicative signals (e.g., speech, gestures) for specific addressees, as opposed to taking a neutral or egocentric perspective. This tuning, called recipient design, is known to occur under special conditions (e.g., when errors in communication need to be corrected), but several researchers have argued that it is not an intrinsic feature of human communication, because that would be computationally too demanding. In this study, (...) we contribute to this debate by studying a simple communicative behavior, communicative pointing, under conditions of successful (error‐free) communication. Using an information‐theoretic measure, called legibility, we present evidence of recipient design in communicative pointing. The legibility effect is present early in the movement, suggesting that it is an intrinsic part of the communicative plan. Moreover, it is reliable only from the viewpoint of the addressee, suggesting that the motor plan is tuned to the addressee. These findings suggest that recipient design is an intrinsic feature of human communication. (shrink)

Research on individual differences in facing the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be crucial in order to design diverse and highly effective intervention strategies. This study uses a sample of 302 North American participants who were recruited through the crowdsourcing platform ProA; different profiles were established, profiling variables of interest in facing the COVID-19 outbreak. Socio-demographic and psychological (personality traits, gratitude, life purpose, and religiosity) variables were explored. These results are of interest if we want to deepen the study of individual (...) differences at both a theoretical and applied level. (shrink)

Despite the emergence of computer games as a dominant cultural industry, we know little or nothing about the ethics of computer games. Considerations of the morality of computer games seldom go beyond intermittent portrayals of them in the mass media as training devices for teenage serial killers. In this first scholarly exploration of the subject, Miguel Sicart addresses broader issues about the ethics of games, the ethics of playing the games, and the ethical responsibilities of game designers. He argues (...) that computer games are ethical objects, that computer game players are ethical agents, and that the ethics of computer games should be seen as a complex network of responsibilities and moral duties. Players should not be considered passive amoral creatures; they reflect, relate, and create with ethical minds. The games they play are ethical systems, with rules that create gameworlds with values at play. Drawing on concepts from philosophy and game studies, Sicart proposes a framework for analyzing the ethics of computer games as both designed objects and player experiences. After presenting his core theoretical arguments and offering a general theory for understanding computer game ethics, Sicart offers case studies examining single-player games, multiplayer games, and online gameworlds from an ethical perspective. He explores issues raised by unethical content in computer games and its possible effect on players and offers a synthesis of design theory and ethics that could be used as both analytical tool and inspiration in the creation of ethical gameplay. (shrink)

Why computer games can be ethical, how players use their ethical values in gameplay, and the implications for game design.

The well-known distinction between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness has moved away from the conceptual domain into the empirical one, and the debate now is focused on whether the neural mechanisms of cognitive access are constitutive of the neural correlate of phenomenal consciousness. In this paper, I want to analyze the consequences that a negative reply to this question has for the cognitive phenomenology thesis – roughly the claim that there is a “proprietary” phenomenology of thoughts. If the mechanisms responsible (...) for cognitive access can be disentangled from the mechanisms that give rise to phenomenology in the case of perception and emotion, then the same disentanglement is to be expected in the case of thoughts. This, in turn, presents, as I argue, a challenge to the cognitive phenomenology thesis: either there are thoughts with cognitive phenomenology we lack cognitive access to or there are good reasons to doubt that there is such a thing as cognitive phenomenology. I discuss a... (shrink)

La existencia de representaciones del cuerpo, en especial aquellas que se requerirían para actuar, ha sido objeto de largas controversias. El objetivo de este artículo es defender la idea de que hay representaciones del cuerpo involucradas en la realización de acciones cotidianas. Nuestra tesis será que lo que realmente muestran algunas dudas sobre este tipo de representaciones es que deben tener cierto tipo de contenido no-conceptual. Primero, abordamos dichas dudas, mostrando que no refutan la existencia de las representaciones en cuestión. (...) Sin embargo, señalamos que contienen dos intuiciones clave para cualquier caracterización del contenido de dichas representaciones. Así, pasamos a proponer una caracterización tal, que acomode adecuadamente las intuiciones señaladas. Finalizamos examinando una posible objeción a la propuesta y ofreciendo una lectura tentativa de la relación entre contenidos mentales y acción. (shrink)

Explaining agency is a significant challenge for those who are interested in the sciences of the mind, and non-representationalists are no exception to this. Even though both ecological psychologists and enactivists agree that agency is to be explained by focusing on the relation between the organism and the environment, they have approached it by focusing on different aspects of the organism-environment relation. In this paper, I offer a suggestion for a radical embodied account of agency that combines ecological psychology with (...) recent trends in enactive cognitive science. According to this proposal, while enactivism focuses primarily on describing how our acquired sensorimotor schemes and habits mutually equilibrate, affecting our tendency to act upon some affordances instead of others, ecological psychology focuses on studying how perceptual information contributes to the actualization of the sensorimotor schemes and habits without mediating representations, inferences, and computations. The paper concludes by briefly exploring how this ecological-enactive theory of agency can account for how socio-cultural norms shape human agency. (shrink)

Digital COVID certificates are a novel public health policy to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. These immunity certificates aim to incentivize vaccination and to deny international travel or access to essential spaces to those who are unable to prove that they are not infectious. In this article, we start by describing immunity certificates and highlighting their differences from vaccination certificates. Then, we focus on the ethical, legal, and social issues involved in their use, namely autonomy and consent, data protection, equity, and (...) international mobility from a global fairness perspective. The main conclusion of our analysis is that digital COVID certificates are only acceptable if they meet certain conditions: that they should not process personal data beyond what is strictly necessary for the aimed goals, that equal access to them should be guaranteed, and that they should not restrict people’s autonomy to access places where contagion is unlikely. We conclude that, if such conditions are guaranteed, digital COVID certificates could contribute to mitigating some of the most severe socioeconomic consequences of the pandemic. (shrink)

La literatura especializada ha solido reproducir la distinción scheleriana entre “actos” y “funciones” sin aventurar, por lo general, una justificación teórica satisfactoria de la misma; la cual tampoco es ofrecida con claridad por el fenomenólogo muniqués. En este artículo propongo una interpretación de dichos conceptos que ayude a clarificarlos y que haga comprensible su diferenciación. Se comprobará que la distinción entre acto y función es de importancia decisiva para la antropología filosófica y, en particular, para el contraste entre el “mundo” (...) (Welt) de la persona humana y el “entorno” (Umwelt) del animal. Como contribución al tratamiento de tales cuestiones, plenamente vigentes un siglo después de la muerte de Scheler, me permito introducir el concepto adicional de “mera función”. (shrink)

En este artículo analizamos la figura de Alexandra Elbakyan y su proyecto Sci-Hub, en cuya web se encuentran alojados más de 85 millones de documentos científicos a los que se puede acceder gratuitamente.Reflexionaremos sobre los cercamientos al conocimiento científico, el colonialismo en la producción académica y las propuestas que trabajan por un acceso abierto a la información científica. Tomaremos como referencia la desobediencia protagonizada por Elbakyan que, como mujer joven, no occidental e ideológicamente comprometida con posiciones anti neoliberales, representa una (...) identidad no hegemónica. (shrink)

Physical activity, body composition and sedentary behavior may affect the health of children. Therefore, this study examined the effect of an educational hybrid physical education program on physical fitness, body composition and sedentary and PA times in adolescents. A 9-month group-randomized controlled trial was conducted in 150 participants allocated into the control group and experimental group. Cardiorespiratory fitness, speed, strength, agility, flexibility and body mass index were assessed through previously validated field tests. Sedentary time, PA at school and afterschool were (...) evaluated with the Youth Activity Profile-Spain questionnaire. Significant differences were observed concerning to the CG in APA-weekend, speed-agility and agility. Regarding the intervention, cardiorespiratory fitness, speed-agility, strength, flexibility, agility, PA in school, APA-weekday, APA-weekend, APA-week, and sedentary time increased significantly in the EG. The use of a hybrid program based on teaching personal and social responsibility and gamification strategies produced enhancements in cardiorespiratory fitness, agility, speed, APA-weekdays and APA-weekends, reducing the sedentary time. (shrink)

Algunos autores contrarios a la práctica constitucional actualmente dominante han defendido una rigidez constitucional “mínima” como una forma “débil” del constitucionalismo en la que la voluntad mayoritaria puede identificar el alcance de los derechos fundamentales por encima de las determinaciones judiciales. El objetivo de este trabajo es plantear algunas reflexiones críticas sobre dicha propuesta, adoptando para ello como parámetro normativo la racionalidad intrínseca de la práctica constitucional contemporánea en las democracias liberales. Dicha argumentación crítica avanza del siguiente modo: en primer (...) lugar, se discute la distinción formal entre sistemas de control jurisdiccional “fuerte” y “débil”; en segundo lugar, se pone en duda la supuesta relevancia de la reforma constitucional en la concreción histórica de los derechos básicos; y, por último, se rechaza la rigidez constitucional mínima entendida como parte de un modelo constitucional genuinamente alternativo diseñado para superar la práctica constitucional dominante. (shrink)

Algunos autores contrarios a la práctica constitucional actualmente dominante han defendido una rigidez constitucional “mínima” como una forma “débil” del constitucionalismo en la que la voluntad mayoritaria puede identificar el alcance de los derechos fundamentales por encima de las determinaciones judiciales. El objetivo de este trabajo es plantear algunas reflexiones críticas sobre dicha propuesta, adoptando para ello como parámetro normativo la racionalidad intrínseca de la práctica constitucional contemporánea en las democracias liberales. Dicha argumentación crítica avanza del siguiente modo: en primer (...) lugar, se discute la distinción formal entre sistemas de control jurisdiccional “fuerte” y “débil”; en segundo lugar, se pone en duda la supuesta relevancia de la reforma constitucional en la concreción histórica de los derechos básicos; y, por último, se rechaza la rigidez constitucional mínima entendida como parte de un modelo constitucional genuinamente alternativo diseñado para superar la práctica constitucional dominante. (shrink)

En Los Cuatro Acuerdos, un éxito de ventas en todo el mundo, don Miguel Ruiz revelaba cómo el proceso de educación, o «domesticación», nos hace olvidar nuestra sabiduría innata. A lo largo de la vida establecemos muchos acuerdos que van en nuestra contra y nos causan un sufrimiento innecesario. Los Cuatro Acuerdos nos ayudan a romper estos acuerdos limitadores y a substituirlos por otros que nos aportan libertad, felicidad y amor. Ahora don Miguel Ruiz, junto con su hijo (...) don Jose Ruiz, nos ofrece una nueva perspectiva de Los Cuatro Acuerdos y un acuerdo nuevo y poderoso para transformar nuestra vida en nuestro cielo personal: el quinto acuerdo. El Quinto Acuerdo nos permite adquirir una conciencia más profunda del poder del yo verdadero y recuperar la autenticidad con la que nacimos. En esta absorbente continuación del libro que ha cambiado la vida de millones de personas de todo el mundo, se nos recuerda el mejor regalo que podemos hacernos: la libertad de ser quienes realmente somos. Más sobre el libro Imagínate llevando una vida totalmente nueva: una vida en la que eres libre de ser quien realmente eres. Ya no te riges por lo que los demás piensan de ti. Imagínate viviendo sin juzgarte a ti mismo ni juzgar a los demás, sin temer ser juzgado. Te aceptas tal como eres y aceptas a los demás tal como son. Imagínate viviendo sin estar en conflicto contigo ni con la gente. Te respetas a ti mismo y a los demás, y a cambio ellos te respetan a ti. Imagínate viviendo sin miedo a expresarte ni a explorar la vida. Vives sin temor, sin culparte, sin avergonzarte, sin arrepentirte. Imagínate que te encanta ser como eres. Te gusta tu cuerpo tal como es, te gustan tus emociones tal como son. Imagínate siendo tú mismo. Eres feliz y disfrutas verdaderamente de tu vida. ¡Imagínate viviendo con esta clase de libertad personal! Esta manera de vivir es completamente posible. Otros lo han conseguido y tú también lo harás. Sólo necesitas hacer de los Cinco Acuerdos tu estilo de vida y pronto vivirás tu sueño personal del cielo. (shrink)

This paper aims to analyse how the discourse of CEO letters and other factors influence community involvement and Social Licence to Operate (SLO) in the mining industry. The analysis is based on qualitative information disclosed in sustainability reports and CEO letters from 32 mining firms. Content analysis was undertaken to obtain data for the study, and then a regression analysis and a multiple correspondence analysis were used to test the hypotheses defined in the study. The results indicate that the CEO (...) discourse influences how a firm expresses the importance of gaining its SLO, the philanthropic activities in which companies become involved and the destinations of the investments in the communities in which they operate. The results also show changes in the discourse between 2011 and 2015, which are, in part, explained by the difficult situation experienced by the sector during this period. The paper contributes to the Corporate Social Responsibility literature by integrating different theories from this field into the SLO framework. The analysis carried out and the results obtained are useful for both CEOs and Sustainability Managers, especially in managing their relationships with the communities where they operate or intend to operate. (shrink)