Joseph Conrad’s ‘The secret sharer’ has often been associated with what can be called initiation stories. However, in this article I argue that Conrad’s text is more than that. It can, I suggest, be read as an allegory of the inaccessibility to reveal the essence of being in command, being in education, and also the inaccessibility of the essence of the meaning of the text itself. It keeps its secret by allegorically staging alternative readings. This inaccessibility gives rise to a (...) feeling of strangeness, of the uncanny, that must be faced in order to pass through the initiation into the unknown that all the possible allegorical meanings of the text produce. In other words, ‘The secret sharer’ has an educational value that goes beyond the act of merely using it to exemplify a certain type of initiation. In this way I connect Conrad’s text to the themes of strangeness and the stranger and show how they mutually can involve a reading of education and literature as two distinct discourses of learning. (shrink)

Carroll shaped the corporate social responsibility discourse into a four-dimensional pyramid framework, which was later adapted to corporate citizenship and sustainability approaches. The four layers of the pyramid—structured from foundation to apex as economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities—drew considerable managerial attention. An important criticism of the economic foundation of the Carroll pyramid concerns the identification and ordering of the four dimensions, which are inadequately justified theoretically. The authors of this article propose an alternative approach that builds on the public (...) value concept, which integrates a microfoundation of psychological research into basic human needs. Drawing on their Swiss Dialogue process, the authors argue that a four-dimensional pyramid does have heuristic value for managers. The advantage of this alternative pyramid logic is that it may be contingently adapted to different cultural contexts, because it allows adaptive internal reordering. (shrink)

Gómez Pereira's _Antoniana Margarita_ represents one of the most original works of his time. Its author develops some issues of great impact in later philosophy, such as animal automatism, soul-body radical separation and self-awareness.

Despite recent efforts by the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community to move towards standardised procedures for documenting models, methods, systems or datasets, there is currently no methodology focused on use cases aligned with the risk-based approach of the European AI Act (AI Act). In this paper, we propose a new framework for the documentation of use cases that we call use case cards, based on the use case modelling included in the Unified Markup Language (UML) standard. Unlike other documentation methodologies, we (...) focus on the intended purpose and operational use of an AI system. It consists of two main parts: firstly, a UML-based template, tailored to allow implicitly assessing the risk level of the AI system and defining relevant requirements, and secondly, a supporting UML diagram designed to provide information about the system-user interactions and relationships. The proposed framework is the result of a co-design process involving a relevant team of EU policy experts and scientists. We have validated our proposal with 11 experts with different backgrounds and a reasonable knowledge of the AI Act as a prerequisite. We provide the 5 use case cards used in the co-design and validation process. Use case cards allows framing and contextualising use cases in an effective way, and we hope this methodology can be a useful tool for policy makers and providers for documenting use cases, assessing the risk level, adapting the different requirements and building a catalogue of existing usages of AI. (shrink)

We propose a semiotic framework to underpin a posthumanist philosophy of education, as contrasted to technological determinism. A recent approach to educational processes as semiotic phenomena lends itself as a philosophy to understand the current interplay between education and technology. This view is aligned with the transhumanist movement to defend techno-scientific progress as fundamental to human development. Particularly, we adopt a semiotic approach to education to tackle certain tensions in current debates on the human. Transhumanism scholars share the optimistic belief (...) that there is no limit to how the ethical use of technology can help alleviate suffering and increase our health and wisdom. From this perspective, it appears possible to acquire capacities that require rethinking the notion of human altogether. For others, this undermining of essentialist concepts of humanity entails serious risks, especially related to ethical egalitarianism. We adopte the perspective of edusemiotics, a framework that brings together semiotics, educational theory and philosophy of education. As a theoretical-practical framework, edusemiotics affords a hermeneutic and semiotic method for our approach. Peirce’s logic of signs is used to analyze socio- educational interactions as environmental. We observe two lines of thought. On the one hand, technological transhumanism enhances Cartesian mind–body dualism. On the other hand, philosophical posthumanism seeks to overcome this dichotomy. The former proposal construes human transformation as an artifactualization derived from techno-scientific enhancements. The latter position proposes an integrative posthumanism, capable not only to include edusemiotic theory but also to rethink the concept of learning as mutual to that of human. (shrink)

I defend the hypothesis that the semantic paradoxes, the paradoxes about collections, and the sorites paradoxes, are all paradoxes of reference fixing: they show that certain conventionally adopted and otherwise functional reference-fixing principles cannot provide consistent assignments of reference to certain relevant expressions in paradoxical cases. I note that the hypothesis has interesting implications concerning the idea of a unified account of the semantic, collection and sorites paradoxes, as well as about the explanation of their “recalcitrance”. I also note that (...) it does not necessarily imply that one should not expect the sometimes hoped for “unique” solution to a paradox of these kinds. (shrink)

“Hay momentos en la vida en los que la cuestión de saber si se puede pensar distinto de como se piensa o percibir distinto de como se ve es indispensable para seguir contemplando o reflexionando” (Foucault, 2003, p. 8). Esta declaración foucaultiana es la que impulsa la voluntad genealógica que presenta este ensayo, así como su pretensión proyectiva para pensar hoy la educación. El momento filosófico crítico consiste en volver sobre las prácticas que día a día llevamos a cabo y (...) configuran nuestras vidas y nuestras instituciones. Este es necesario para realimentar y reorientar la savia de las instituciones, y especialmente la savia de nuestras instituciones académicas, suelo en el cual se teje la sustancia ética que posteriormente dará lugar a la articulación social. Si se aplica el elemento crítico que la actividad filosófica supone a la experiencia de la educación, entendiendo por ella la correlación dentro de una cultura entre campos de saber, tipos de normatividad y formas de subjetividad, podemos preguntarnos: qué es la educación y qué función desempeña hoy con respecto al ejercicio mismo del pensamiento en un contexto atravesado por las nuevas tecnologías y la IA. (shrink)

Explorar la posibilidad de una nueva micropolítica crítica del signo a partir de Foucault, inspirada en la genealogía nietzscheana, y examinar las políticas y estrategias de alfabetización mediática e informacional necesarias para desarrollar competencias digitales en la transformación del ecosistema mediático es una tarea fundamental del quehacer filosófico actual. La pregunta por la posibilidad de la verdad retorna en un contexto en el que el pluralismo semiótico y la conducción mediática son dos elementos que rigen y ordenan la sociedad actual, (...) sociedad que se caracteriza por la abundancia de información y la omnipresencia de los medios de comunicación como tecnologías de poder. Desgranar su significado y vínculo nos conduce directamente al estudio del poder y el signo en relación con los efectos de la verdad de la posverdad. En este marco conceptual, la obra de Foucault proporciona herramientas teóricas valiosas para afrontar esta problemática. (shrink)

La sociedad del siglo XXI ha sufrido una mutación histórica en lo que respecta a los métodos de producción y los impactos derivados de la generación de información. Este período se caracteriza por su inmersión en el entorno digital, donde los individuos, como ciudadanos, se encuentran bajo la manipulación, por un lado, de sus datos mediante técnicas de vigilancia y, por otros, expuestos a cámaras de resonancia mediática. Este panorama plantea desafíos significativos en cuanto a la manera en que interactúan (...) con la información y cómo esta afecta sus vidas. La relación entre los medios de comunicación y los acontecimientos, además, se encuentra atravesada por el concepto de interpretación, donde la capacidad de comprender y la habilidad para reconstruir narrativas son elementos que determinan la comprensión y el sentido de lo que ocurre en nuestro mundo. (shrink)

Quien enseña sin emancipar no solo embrutece, predicaba Joseph Jacotot, sino que también adoctrina. Pasado un siglo y medio desde entonces, el filósofo y esteta francés emérito de la Universidad de París VIII y European Graduate School Jacques Rancière, en un ejercicio característico de la filosofía de la educación, publica en 1987 El maestro ignorante a partir de la experiencia de Jacotot. A lo largo de su vida y producción literaria, Rancière reflexiona concienzudamente sobre la naturaleza del proceso de enseñanza (...) y aprendizaje humano y se pregunta: ¿es posible enseñar? ¿qué decide el alumnado en su proceso de aprendizaje? ¿Cuáles son los límites de la palabra transmitida en el aprendizaje? ¿Es la determinación del saber un ejercicio del poder? ¿Son todos los seres humanos capaces de comprender lo que otros hacen y saben? ¿Qué relación hay entre el poder del maestro y el poder de la palabra? (shrink)

As I write this, in November 1971, people are dying in East Bengal from lack of food, shelter, and medical caxc. The suffering and death that are occurring there now axe not inevitable, 1101; unavoidable in any fatalistic sense of the term. Constant poverty, a cyclone, and a civil war have turned at least nine million people into destitute refugees; nevertheless, it is not beyond Lhe capacity of the richer nations to give enough assistance to reduce any further suffering to (...) very small proportions. The decisions arid actions of human beings can prevent this kind of suffering. Unfortunately, human beings have not made the necessary decisions. At the individual level, people have, with very few exceptions, not responded to the situation in any signihczmt way. Generally speaking, people have not given large sums to relief funds; they have not written t0 their parliamentaxy representatives demanding increased government assistance; they have not demonstrated in the streets, held symbolic fasts, or done anything else directed toward providing thc refugees with the means to satisfy their essential needs. At thc government level, no govcrmmcnt has given the sort of massive aid that would enable the refugees to survive fm: more than a few days. Britain, for instance, has given rather more than most countries. It has, to date, given £14,750,000. For comparative purposes, B1~itain’s share of thc nonreccverabla development costs of the Anglo-French Concorde project is already in excess of £275,000,000, and on present estimates will reach £440,000,¤00. The implication is that the British government values a supersonic transport more than thirty times as.. (shrink)

Concern about air-quality in urban areas has led to the implementation of Low Emission Zones as one of many other initiatives to control it. Recently in Spain, the enactment of a law made this mandatory for cities with a population larger than 50k inhabitants. The delimitation of these areas is not without controversy because of possible negative economic and social impacts. Therefore, clear assessments of how these initiatives decrease pollutant concentrations are to be provided. Madrid Central is a major initiative (...) of Madrid city council for reducing motor traffic and the associated air pollution in the city centre. This Low Emission Zone starts at the end of 2018, but the first fully-operational period corresponds to the second quarter of 2019. In this work, a methodology based on the Gaussian Process to analyse the evolution of Nitrogen Dioxide inside Madrid Central is undertaken. A Gaussian Process is a stochastic process suitable for interpretable model selection and predictions. Due to its probabilistic nature it provides error estimation at predictions. After the activation of Madrid Central, a relevant reduction of Nitrogen Dioxide has been observed. However, the role of the meteorology during this period must be ascertained to correctly evaluate the role of the activation of the Low Emission Zone against a prone weather. In this work, a model based on the Gaussian Process is trained with meteorological information to predict the concentration of Nitrogen Dioxide at Madrid Central, $[NO_{2}]$. This probabilistic description allows extracting statistical information on the reduction affected by the meteorological scenario and separately by the Madrid Central activation. (shrink)

BackgroundThis article aims to contribute to a better conceptualization of pain and suffering by providing non-essential and non-naturalistic definitions of both phenomena. Contributions of classical evidence-based medicine, the humanistic turn in medicine, as well as the phenomenology and narrative theories of suffering and pain, together with certain conceptions of the person beyond them are critically discussed with such purpose.MethodsA philosophical methodology is used, based on the review of existent literature on the topic and the argumentation in favor of what are (...) found as better definitions of suffering and pain.ResultsPain can be described in neurological terms but cognitive awareness, interpretation, behavioral dispositions, as well as cultural and educational factors have a decisive influence on pain perception. Suffering is proposed to be defined as an unpleasant or even anguishing experience, severely affecting a person at a psychophysical and existential level. Pain and suffering are considered unpleasant. However, the provided definitions neither include the idea that pain and suffering can attack and even destroy the self nor the idea that they can constructively expand the self; both perspectives can b e equally useful for managing pain and suffering, but they are not defining features of the same. Including the existential dimension in the definition of suffering highlights the relevance of suffering in life and its effect on one’s own attachment to the world. An understanding of pain and suffering life experiences is proposed, meaning that they are considered aspects of a person’s life, and the self is the ever-changing sum of these experiences.ConclusionsThe provided definitions will be useful to the identification of pain and suffering, to the discussion of how to relieve them, and to a better understanding of how they are expressed and experienced. They lay the groundwork for further research in all these areas, with the twofold aim of a) avoiding epistemological mistakes and moral injustices, and b) highlighting the limitations of medicine in the treatment of suffering and pain. (shrink)

This article proposes a method for the semi-automatic extraction of resemblance metaphor terms from a manually annotated corpus of marine biology texts in English and Spanish. The corpus was first searched for target domain terms as well as for lexical markers indicative of metaphors. The combination of these search strategies for metaphor extraction resulted in a set of English-Spanish term pairs. After analysing and comparing these metaphor candidates, a quantitative analysis provided comparative statistical data regarding marine biology metaphor. Finally, the (...) metaphorical nature of marine biology terms was verified in three ways. The first verification strategy entailed an adapted version of the Metaphor Identification Procedure (CitationPragglejaz Group, 2007). The second involved the analysis of contextual data extracted from the corpus, and the third involved the analysis of visual images from an online marine biology database and from the Google search engine. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to what I have called an epistemological objection to a dialetheist approach to the doctrine of the Incarnation, of which one example is Beall’s contradictory Christ. I discuss Anderson’s book Paradox in Christian theology, in which the author claims to account for the rationality of the doctrine of the Incarnation as a merely apparently contradictory doctrine, and I present my model, based on Anderson’s model, according to which the doctrine has the possibility to be rational (...) by understanding it as genuinely contradictory. I show that this model fits perfectly well with the criteria that, according to Anderson, any model for the rationality of a paradoxical doctrine should meet. Beall does not address the problem of the rationality of the doctrine in his works about the contradictory Christ, and he asserts that he is not interested in it. However, I think that if he wants to make his theory more robust, less suspicious, and more convincing for theologians, philosophers, and ordinary people, he should consider this problem. (shrink)

This paper argues that a set of questioning attitudes are among the foundations of human and animal minds. While both verbal questioning and states of curiosity are generally explained in terms of metacognitive desires for knowledge or true belief, I argue that each is better explained by a prelinguistic sui generis type of mental attitude of questioning. I review a range of considerations in support of such a proposal and improve on previous characterizations of the nature of these attitudes. I (...) then broaden their explanatory scope to include a number of forms of exploratory search. The paper has three main goals: to characterize the nature of the questioning attitudes, outlining their causal role and type of content; to argue that they are fundamental components of the mind, being widespread among animals and not constructed during ontogeny out of other attitudes; and to suggest that they explain a great deal more behavior than one might think. (shrink)

El presente artículo describe un proyecto de innovación educativa de aprendizaje de competencias, realizado en el Curso Propio de Liderazgo de la Universidad San Pablo CEU, transversal a toda su oferta educativa. Se trata de nuevo proyecto basa- do en una docencia híbrida, donde las masterclass más teóricas se han complemen- tado con un aprendizaje basado en retos vinculados a materias de comunicación y sostenibilidad, aplicando la metodología Design Sprint. De esta forma, se consigue formar al alumno en las llamadas (...) habilidades blandas, cada vez más demandadas por el entorno laboral. (shrink)

El artículo trata sobre la labor litúrgica del insigne Arzobispo de Sevilla san Isidoro. Se contextualiza su trabajo en la metodología usada y en el periodo histórico-evolutivo de la Liturgia Hispánica. Se exponen los textos que se le han atribuido tanto por criterios externos como por criterios internos. Se analizan los cánones de los Concilios en que participó: particularmente el Concilio II de Sevilla y el Concilio IV de Toledo. También se estudian las disposiciones litúrgicas de las Reglas para los (...) Monjes. Por último, se analiza los temas litúrgicos tratados en sus obras Los Oficios Eclesiásticos y las Etimologías. (shrink)

We propose a solution to the problem of logical omniscience in what we take to be its fundamental version: as concerning arbitrary agents and the knowledge attitude per se. Our logic of knowledge is a spin-off from a general theory of thick content, whereby the content of a sentence has two components: an intension, taking care of truth conditions; and a topic, taking care of subject matter. We present a list of plausible logical validities and invalidities for the logic of (...) knowledge per se for arbitrary agents, and isolate three explanatory factors for them: the topic-sensitivity of content; the fragmentation of knowledge states; the defeasibility of knowledge acquisition. We then present a novel dynamic epistemic logic that yields precisely the desired validities and invalidities, for which we provide expressivity and completeness results. We contrast this with related systems and address possible objections. (shrink)

De acuerdo con el Instituto Nacional de Medicina Legal y Ciencias Forenses, en su informe Forensis 2017. Datos para la vida, los hechos de discriminación y violencia de pareja contra las mujeres en Colombia se han incrementado en los últimos años; esta situación podría catalogarse como producto de una sociedad que ha sido moldeada a partir del esquema machista y patriarcal que caracteriza a las sociedades que han estado influenciadas por tradiciones como la religión católica, que parecen justificar, en algunos (...) de los relatos de sus textos sagrados, la condición de dominación que ejerce el hombre sobre la mujer. El Estado colombiano, que en sus inicios normativos se vio influenciado por esta tradición, ha buscado, a partir de la Constitución de 1991, y a través de su posterior normatividad, no solo la reivindicación de la mujer, sino la sanción a los agresores; sin embargo, estas medidas no han sido eficientes ya que no se ha podido garantizar un verdadero ambiente de seguridad y respeto por los derechos fundamentales de las mujeres. Por lo tanto, se hace necesario intervenir la configuración de la cultura colombiana, en aras de modificar las bases culturales sobre las cuales se construyó el imaginario social que perpetúa la estructura de dominación y discriminación contra la mujer. (shrink)

The present study focuses on a grammatical category called evidentiality. The primary meaning of evidentiality is concerned with information source. That is, it expresses whether something has been seen, heard or inferred. The aim here is to conduct a conceptual study of evidentiality in which use is made of formal tools. The fundamental intuition is that the distinction between ‘evidence’as ‘proof’and ‘evidentiality’as ‘to do with proof’is a crucial one. Evidentiality is a dynamic notion to be analysed through the use of (...) knowledge by the agents, a knowledge in action, which involves an in-coming state and an out-coming state that is typical of the transmission of information. We propose our own approach in which the dynamics of knowledge in action is grasped in the context of a dynamic epistemic logic. (shrink)

What is ethics? Where do moral standards come from? Are they based on emotions, reason, or some innate sense of right and wrong? For many scientists, the key lies entirely in biology---especially in Darwinian theories of evolution and self-preservation. But if evolution is a struggle for survival, why are we still capable of altruism? In his classic study The Expanding Circle, Peter Singer argues that altruism began as a genetically based drive to protect one's kin and community members but (...) has developed into a consciously chosen ethic with an expanding circle of moral concern. Drawing on philosophy and evolutionary psychology, he demonstrates that human ethics cannot be explained by biology alone. Rather, it is our capacity for reasoning that makes moral progress possible. In a new afterword, Singer takes stock of his argument in light or recent research on the evolution of morality.--Publisher's description. (shrink)

Narrative thinking -- Narrative thinking about one's past -- Grief : a case study -- Narrative thinking about one's future -- Self-forgiveness : a case study -- The narrative sense of self -- Narrative, truth, life, and fiction.

Single-premise epistemic closure is the principle that: if one is in an evidential position to know that P where P entails Q, then one is in an evidential position to know that Q. In this paper, I defend the viability of opposition to closure. A key task for such an opponent is to precisely formulate a restricted closure principle that remains true to the motivations for abandoning unrestricted closure but does not endorse particularly egregious instances of closure violation. I focus (...) on two brands of epistemic theory that naturally incorporate closure restrictions. The first type holds that the truth value of a knowledge ascription is relative to a relevant question. The second holds that the truth value of a knowledge ascription is relative to a relevant topic. For each approach, I offer a formalization of a leading theory from the literature and use this formalization to evaluate the theory’s adequacy in terms of a precise set of desiderata. I conclude that neither theory succeeds in meeting these desiderata, casting doubt on the viability of the underlying approaches. Finally, I offer a novel variant of the topic-sensitive approach that fares better. (shrink)

Quadruple Helix Collaborations (QHCs) is a cooperation model in which industry, government, academia, and the public interact to innovate. This paper analyses the impact of a training intervention to provide specific knowledge, skills, and attitudes to deal with barriers commonly found in the progress of QHCs. We designed, implemented, and evaluated three training programs in Austrian, Colombian, Danish, and Spanish institutions. We analysed trainees’ (n = 66) and trainers’ (n = 9) perceptions to identify the competencies acquired with the intervention (...) and the approach’s limitations. We used online questionnaires (35 trainees; 9 trainers), semi-structured interviews (10 trainees), and a focus group (6 trainers). Trainees answered positively regarding their self-perception about the impact of the course and highlighted the acquisition of inspiration for their practice (score 4.1 out of 5.0) and knowledge (3.7). In contrast, they perceived that a deeper interaction with other participants (2.7) was challenging. After the courses, 74% of respondents indicated that they know more about how QHCs work in practice, and 86% about collaboration or engagement methods. Moreover, participants plan to be more sensitive towards setting common goals (71%) and power imbalances (63%). Trainers’ perceptions align with those expressed by participants, except that they considered that the interaction amongst participants during the course was higher. Qualitative analysis of interviews with participants and the focus group with trainers provides more detail about the strengths and weaknesses of the intervention. Our study shows that the collaborative design and implementation of training impact the participant’s learning competencies, with potential implications in their medium- to long-term practice. (shrink)

This chapter provides an introduction to higher-order metaphysics as well as to the contributions to this volume. We discuss five topics, corresponding to the five parts of this volume, and summarize the contributions to each part. First, we motivate the usefulness of higher-order quantification in metaphysics using a number of examples, and discuss the question of how such quantifiers should be interpreted. We provide a brief introduction to the most common forms of higher-order logics used in metaphysics, and indicate a (...) number of questions which can be raised in such systems using logical vocabulary alone. Using a further example, we return to applications of higher-order logics in metaphysics. We also mention key developments in the history of higher-order logic as it pertains to metaphysics. Finally, we mention certain arguments which have been raised against the use of higher-order logic, and some ways of responding to them. (shrink)