School achievement and failure have become growing political and social concerns due to the negative consequences of school failure for individuals and society. The inclusive educational movement, which calls for equal access, permanence, participation, and promotion of all students worldwide, poses many challenges for schools and school systems. As a public policy strategy, some countries have provided additional funds for incorporating non-teaching professionals such as school psychologists and social workers in regular K-12 schools. However, there is lack of research on (...) the effects of these psychosocial professionals on student outcomes. This national multilevel study explored the effect of psychologists (n= 8,469) and social workers (n= 3,524) on indicators of eighth-grade (n= 147,531) and 10th-grade (n= 106,347) students' academic achievement and dropout in Chile. A multilevel secondary analysis was performed using national records of non-teaching professionals working as school staff members, achievement scores on the national SIMCE test, and dropout rates based on official records. Results showed that after controlling for individual and school variables known to affect achievement and dropout, schools with psychologists and social workers working as staff members had lower short- and long-term dropout rates. The presence and higher number of school psychologists per school was positively associated with higher math achievement, with a reduced effect in low-SES schools. Lower-SES schools with more social workers had higher math scores. These results support policies that increase funding for school psychologists and social workers, since their incorporation partly explains better school achievement and less school failure when controlling for individual and school characteristics, but emphasize the need to further explore the mechanisms through which school achievement and failure are developed with the support of psychologists and social workers in schools. We discuss the need to regulate the type of prevention and intervention strategies from a whole-school, evidence-based approach, as well as to incorporate psychosocial training modules and comprehensive guidelines as part of professional training programs and as certified requisites for working in schools. (shrink)

Este artículo da cuenta de una entrevista realizada a doce profesores que ejercen docencia en un programa de Pedagogía en Inglés de una universidad chilena, que busca identificar los géneros que solicitan leer y escribir a los estudiantes durante su formación de pregrado, y las principales dificultades detectadas en ambas habilidades. Mediante análisis de contenido se pudo identificar una variedad de géneros en lecturas asignadas, no así en escritura, en donde tanto la práctica como la enseñanza explícita de los géneros (...) apareció limitada. Las principales debilidades declaradas incluyen conocimiento limitado de vocabulario en L1 y L2, falta de hábitos y estrategias de lectura y escritura, y dificultad para expresar ideas en forma escrita. Esta información es relevante para la planificación de actividades de lecto-escritura que ayuden a estos profesores en formación a superar los problemas identificados. (shrink)

What happens during a near-death experience? In an accessible style, this text reviews recent research about unbelievable events, creating an account of activity at the boundaries of science. It also examines research concerns, current theories, methodological issues and clinical implications.

At the outset of an ethnographic inquiry, we navigated national and international resources to search for theoretical and practical guidance on obtaining parents and children’s informed consent/assent. While much theoretical guidance debating ethical issues to children’s participation in research was found, a paucity of published papers offering practical guidance on assent processes and/or visual representations of child assent forms and information sheets was discovered. The purpose of this article is to describe our experiences, both theoretically and practically, of negotiating the (...) process of obtaining informed consent and assent with parents and children for a non-therapeutic qualitative research study. We hope this article instigates a platform for others to explicate their experience and contributes to the construction of a coherent body of knowledge which will clearly delineate important elements that must be considered when negotiating children’s agreement to participate in research. (shrink)

This article presents a description and a critical reflection of some methodological issues involved in a number of participative planning projects that have been carried out in several cities and/or communities in Mexico and other Latin-American countries since 1994. The projects involved the design of regional development plans based on a vision shared by the corresponding communities. The projects include the participation of a large number of people, representing the various sectors of the populations concerned as well as the leading (...) opinion groups of those communities. The methodological approach of the projects is based on prospective and participative planning techniques. (shrink)

The organism-in-its-environment is recognized as the basic unit of analysis when dealing with living beings. This paper seeks to define the fundamental implications of the concept of the organism-in-its-environment in terms of the biosemiotic concept of human distributed cognition. Human distributed cognition in a biosemiotic context is defined as the ability of a self-referencing organism-in-its-environment to interact with its environment to satisfy its physiological and social needs to survive and sustain itself. The ontogenetic development of the organism-in-its-environment serves as the (...) backdrop to discover the implications of distributed cognition that have general applicability in organisms, but in this paper, are made relevant to human beings. (shrink)

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a developing technology. New generations of DBS technology are already in the pipeline, yet this particular fact has been largely ignored among ethicists interested in DBS. Focusing only on ethical concerns raised by the current DBS technology is, albeit necessary, not sufficient. Since current bioethical concerns raised by a specific technology could be quite different from the concerns it will raise a couple of years ahead, an ethical analysis should be sensitive to such alterations, or (...) it could end up with results that soon become dated. The goal of this analysis is to address these changing bioethical concerns, to think ahead on upcoming and future DBS concerns both in terms of a changing technology and changing moral attitudes. By employing the distinction between inherent and noninherent bioethical concerns we identify and make explicit the particular limits and potentials for change within each category, respectively, including how present and upcoming bioethical concerns regarding DBS emerge and become obsolete. Many of the currently identified ethical problems with DBS, such as stimulation-induced mania, are a result of suboptimal technology. These challenges could be addressed by technical advances, while for instance perceptions of an altered body image caused by the mere awareness of having an implant may not. Other concerns will not emerge until the technology has become sophisticated enough for new uses to be realized, such as concerns on DBS for enhancement purposes. As a part of the present analysis, concerns regarding authenticity are used as an example. (shrink)

many symbols. We define o, as the probability that an arbitrary machine be circular and we prove that o, is a random number that goes beyond..

It is commonly thought that that the best system account of lawhood ((Mill (1843), Ramsey (1978)[fp. 1928], Lewis (1973)) makes available a nice explanation for why laws are ‘distinctively appropriate targets of scientific inquiry’ (Hall, 2015). The explanation takes the following general form: laws are especially valuable for agents like us because they efficiently encode a lot of valuable (non-nomic) information in a tractable format. The goal of this paper is to challenge this style of explanation: I argue that the (...) general principle it presupposes is in conflict with our best account of practical rationality. After considering and rejecting a number of proposals for dissolving the tension, I conclude that BSA proponents may need to scale back the explanatory ambitions of their theory; in particular, they may need to give up the hope of non-circular explanations of the value of nomic information. I end by outlining some challenges for the humean world-view that results after this shift. (shrink)

El asesinato de George Floyd en Minneapolis (Estados Unidos) ha desatado múltiples manifestaciones sociales antirracistas en distintos países del mundo, las cuales han adquirido diferentes formatos: marchas, disturbios, pintadas callejeras, militancia hashtag a partir del lema #BlackLiveMatters y el accionar contra diferentes estatuas de personajes históricos polémicos. Dichos monumentos, conmemoraciones a, principalmente, esclavistas y colonizadores, han sido pintados, mutilados o derribados en señal de protesta, pero también como un modo de disputa por los sentidos y las memorias legitimadas en el (...) espacio público, que, además, tiene como antecedente las manifestaciones en Chile a fines de 2019. (shrink)

This paper deals with epistemological and methodological complexities in gender studies, when applied to the social movements of indigenous and peasant women in rural Mexico. Their problems, actions, achievements, projects and utopia, allow the appropriation and redefinition of concepts from local ..

Este artículo revisa el proceso histórico de la ‘Conquista del desierto’ y la existencia de campos de concentración para indígenas en Argentina a través de una lectura de hermenéutica filosófica. El objetivo del artículo es interpretar el periodo y el uso de campos como instancias que configuraron la diferenciación del pueblo mapuche como sujeto racializado en la sociedad argentina. Los resultados de la exposición muestran que la marginación del cuerpo mapuche ocurre por el registro de excepciones y que aquella es (...) disputada por sujetos mapuche. This paper reviews the historical process of the ‘Conquest of the Desert’ and the existence of concentration camps for indigenous people in Argentina. The research is conducted through philosophical hermeneutics. The objective of the paper is to read the period and the use concentration camps as instances that shaped the differentiation of the Mapuche people as a racialized subject in Argentine society. The results of the argumentation show that marginalization of the Mapuche body occurs through the registration of exceptions, which is disputed by Mapuche subjects. (shrink)

Humans are social animals that rely on different ways to interact with each other. The COVID-19 pandemic strongly changed our communication strategies. Because of the importance of direct contact for our species, we predict that immediately after the forced social isolation, people were more prone to engage in direct rather than in virtual interactions, thus showing a lower mimicry response in the use of smartphones. In a non-longitudinal study, we collected behavioral data under naturalistic contexts and directly compared the data (...) of the mimicry response gathered immediately following the Italian lockdown (May–September 2020) with those gathered one year later (May–October 2021). Contrary to our expectations, the mimicry response in the use of smartphones was higher immediately after the lockdown than a year later. Probably the large use of these devices during the lockdown translated into a greater sensitivity to be affected by others’ smartphone manipulation. Indeed, social isolation modified, at least in the short term, the ways we interact with others by making us more prone to engage in “virtual” social interactions. The bright side of the coin unveiled by our findings is that the effect seems to diminish over time. The large behavioral dataset analyzed here (1,608 events; 248 people) also revealed that the mimicry response in the use of smartphones was higher between familiar subjects than between strangers. In this view, mimicry in manipulating smartphones can be considered an example of joint action that fosters behavioral synchrony between individuals that, in the long-term, can translate into the formation of social bonding. (shrink)

The doctor-patient relationship -- Consent, choice, and refusal : adults with capacity -- Treating adults who lack capacity -- Children and young people -- Confidentiality -- Health records -- Contraception, abortion, and birth -- Assisted reproduction -- Genetics -- Caring for patients at the end of life -- Euthanasia and physician assisted suicide -- Responsibilities after a patient's death -- Prescribing and administering medication -- Research and innovative treatment -- Emergency situations -- Doctors with dual obligations -- Providing treatment and (...) care in detention settings -- Education and training -- Teamwork, referral, delegation, and shared care -- Public health dimensions of medical practice -- Reducing risk, clinical error, and poor performance. (shrink)

Este trabajo busca reflexionar en torno al siguiente problema: ¿cuál es la mejor forma de concebir la felicidad en la filosofía contemporánea? Para ello, dividiremos esta interrogante en dos. En primer lugar, indagaremos si acaso la felicidad es algo similar a lo que los griegos entendían por “eudaimonia”, i.e., una vida buena o digna de ser vivida; o si, en cambio, la felicidad es mejor entendida como un estado de la mente, postura que comienza a recibir mayor aceptación desde los (...) inicios de la modernidad. Nuestra opinión es que actualmente la felicidad se debería concebir de la segunda forma: en primer lugar, “eudaimonia” es un término que está revestido de un innegable componente evaluativo. Esto, sumado al “criterio de pertinencia descriptiva” —según el cual, la definición técnica de un concepto no debería alejarse demasiado de la concepción cotidiana del mismo— y al hecho de que en el lenguaje vernáculo “felicidad” es de naturaleza eminentemente descriptiva y no evaluativa, nos lleva a concluir que el uso técnico de este término debe ser también descriptivo, coincidiendo así con un estado mental más que con una vida buena. Una vez resuelta esta dimensión del problema, procedemos a abordar la segunda cara del mismo: si la felicidad es un estado mental, ¿cómo debe describirse ese estado? Las teorías más aceptadas al respecto son el hedonismo con respecto a la felicidad, la satisfacción con la vida como un todo, y la condición emocional positiva. Ninguna de estas propuestas está libre de dificultades; sin embargo, concluimos que la teoría más prometedora es la de la condición emocional positiva, puesto que las incongruencias internas y los inconvenientes que debe resolver son de menor gravedad. De esta manera proponemos que actualmente la mejor manera de concebir la felicidad es como un estado mental que se puede describir como una condición emocional positiva, la cual consistiría, grosso modo, en la posesión de emociones positivas y/o placenteras, así como también en propensiones o disposiciones de ánimo positivos. (shrink)

Husserlian phenomenology of time, as it is developed on theLectures on the Phenomenology of Inner Time Consciousness, shows some difficulties to explain certain temporal experiences. This is the case of the incompatibility between the rigidity of the retentional modification and the effective approach that a subject may have with his memories. On the one hand, according to the Lectures’ explanation, the darkening of the past occurs in an homogeneous way: The more distant an experience is, the lower the clarity of (...) the associated retention. However, our relation with the past is not so direct. Complementing the studies of the Lectureswith those of the Analysis concerning passive synthesiscould allow to explain this kind of temporal phenomena. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to respond to the following question: how did Charles S. Peirce find unity for his pragmatist philosophy through the formulation of Scholastic Realism? The author proposes the said doctrine to be a reading guide, leading us through the different stages of Peirce's work as a philosopher. By understanding his realist doctrine, we can see why he believed it was a viable theory for understanding the problem of Universals. This book demonstrates why, in Peirce's mind, (...) such a problem has pervaded the history of philosophy. The author's line of argument reveals that Scholastic Realism is crucial to the understanding of his philosophy, which is a new approach in Peirce scholarship. It provides a useful framework for asking questions about reality in the same way that Peirce himself did. As a result, the author shows that Peirce's realism addresses different yet related philosophical problems, leading Peirce to brand the final version of his philosophy as «Scientific Metaphysics». The conclusion offers an interpretation of the Scholastic Realism principle as a solution to Peirce's concerns - a useful idea to achieve a better theory of reality in his struggle to realize metaphysics a posteriori. Peirce's doctrine is presented alongside some of its uses, especially in the fields of abstraction theory, and also in the fundamental principles of mathematics. This work should advance our comprehension of the problems related to Peirce's philosophy as well as shedding light on pragmatism and its origins as well as the battle between realism and nominalism. (shrink)

The place that Arthur Danto gives to history, as constitutive to as and our world, as well as a discipline able to produce knowledge of the past, reach its cenit with his philosophy of art. In “the End of Art”, Danto announces an end of the history of the search of the philosophical definition of art and the beginning of the era of pluralism. It is in this account where essencialism and historicism are combined in a way that estimules a (...) heat debate that continues today. In this paper, I give a reconstruction of Danto’s Philosophy of historical language in order to show why this combination is possible and which compromises that should be assumed by an authentic historicism. (shrink)

The concept of information has been extensively studied and written about, yet no consensus on a unified definition of information has to date been reached. This paper seeks to establish the basis for a unified definition of information. We claim a biosemiotics perspective, based on Gregory Bateson’s definition of information, provides a footing on which to build because the frame this provides has applicability to both the sciences and humanities. A key issue in reaching a unified definition of information is (...) the fundamental problem of identifying how a human organism, in a self-referential process, develops from a state in which its knowledge of the human-organism-in-its-environment is almost non-existent to a state in which the human organism not only recognizes the existence of the environment but also sees itself as part of the human-organism-in-its-environment system. This allows a human organism not only to self-referentially engage with the environment and navigate through it, but also to transform it in its own image and likeness. In other words, the Fundamental Problem of the Science of Information concerns the phylogenetic development process, as well as the ontogenetic development process of Homo sapiens sapiens from a single cell to our current multicellular selves, all in a changing long-term and short-term environment, respectively. (shrink)

Right from the start of the Spanish Civil War, thousands of prisoners were executed by shooting. Today, many of them remain anonymous, but others, thanks to their writing, have passed into history. In the final hours before their execution, these men and women had the chance to write a few farewell letters to their nearest and dearest. These letters, known by historians as ?chapel letters,? passed either through official channels exercising prior censorship or else were sent clandestinely. In their farewell (...) letters, the condemned to death informed their families of their tragic fate and dedicated their last words to them. Genuine family relics, material and spiritual testaments, instruments of denunciation and propaganda, these chapel letters are regarded as the most sincere documents of any historical period. Since prisoners expressed in them their most intimate feelings and thoughts, they constitute the most exceptional testimony of all epistolary forms practised behind bars. By using an interdisciplinary approach this essay seeks to define the material and functional characteristics of this genre and to contextualise it in the framework of ordinary writings and scribal culture. (shrink)

As críticas de Newton e Voltaire endereçadas à negação do vazio por parte de Descartes compartilham uma estrutura básica: ambos parecem concordar que tal tese cartesiana conduz a implicações indesejáveis tanto no campo da mecânica, quanto no que diz respeito à teologia. Entretanto, embora Newton admita as implicações teológicas da negação do vazio, elas não constituem o fim último de sua crítica, o que parece ocorrer na crítica de Voltaire. Ao contrário, os argumentos newtonianos para assumir o vazioencontram na mecânica (...) não apenas um campo de prova; eles constituem uma parte importante da fundamentação de um dos pilares do newtonianismo: o espaço absoluto. (shrink)

Pluralistic approaches in the philosophy of biological individuality suggest that reality is divisible into multiple types of biological individuals (evolutionary, genetic, physiological, etc.). In this research I will argue in favor of this pluralistic ontology. Inspired mainly by John Dupré’s processual metaphysics, Ronald Giere’s perspectivism, and Hasok Chang’s active realism, I will suggest that: (i) biological individuals are temporarily stable nexuses in a flow of causal processes, (ii) individuations in biology represent real individuals only under the scientific perspectives that support (...) them, (iii) biology’s ability to recognize diverse types of individuals comes from epistemically successful individuation practices. These practices not only contact us with multiple sites of reality, but also invite us to embrace pluralism as an effective way to increase our scientific knowledge of nature. (shrink)

Este trabajo examina diferentes perspectivas docentes para externalizar criterios de evaluación. Se presentan hallazgos de una investigación doctoral que abordan, por una parte, una metodología analítica, que cautela la claridad y transparencia en la comunicación de criterios, segmentando la meta de aprendizaje en pequeñas secuencias, transmitiendo de este modo una idea atomizada acerca del conocimiento. Por otra parte, se explora una visión más holística, sustentada en la interdependencia de los criterios de evaluación, favoreciendo la comprensión del propósito de la tarea (...) en su conjunto. Se analiza la significancia de estos enfoques para la retroalimentación y evaluación formativa. (shrink)

Abstract:Brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) can enable communication for persons in severe paralysis including locked-in syndrome (LIS); that is, being unable to move or speak while aware. In cases of complete loss of muscle control, termed “complete locked-in syndrome,” a BCI may be the only viable solution to restore communication. However, a widespread ignorance regarding quality of life in LIS, current BCIs, and their potential as an assistive technology for persons in LIS, needlessly causes a harmful situation for this cohort. In addition (...) to their medical condition, these persons also face social barriers often perceived as more impairing than their physical condition. Through social exclusion, stigmatization, and frequently being underestimated in their abilities, these persons are being locked out in addition to being locked-in. In this article, we (1) show how persons in LIS are being locked out, including how key issues addressed in the existing literature on ethics, LIS, and BCIs for communication, such as autonomy, quality of life, and advance directives, may reinforce these confinements; (2) show how these practices violate the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and suggest that we have a moral responsibility to prevent and stop this exclusion; and (3) discuss the role of BCIs for communication as one means to this end and suggest that a novel approach to BCI research is necessary to acknowledge the moral responsibility toward the end users and avoid violating the human rights of persons in LIS. (shrink)

Paniel Reyes Cárdenas provides a novel reading of Josiah Royce’s Absolute Pragmatism in the context of the nineteenth-century origins of Classical Pragmatism. Royce’s proposal leads to an integrated philosophy that unfolds the synthetic-semiotic theory of community.

Las Tecnologías de Información y Comunicación se presentaron como una alternativa “efectiva o no”, tanto para quienes enseñan su uso como para quienes las utilizan; es un hecho, se quiera o no, que arribaron a nuestra sociedad para permanecer y multiplicarse, una realidad compleja ante la cual tenemos dos alternativas: las proporcionamos, las profundizamos. Tecnológicamente hablando, hasta el ocaso de la era paleolítica, nuestros congéneres no tenían nada que decir…, sin embargo, si podían hablar y comunicarse por medio de la (...) palabra. El lenguaje es consustancial al ser humano; es importante hacer esta aclaración. El cuerpo humano, sobre todo ambas extremidades, fueron los primeros instrumentos que empleó la humanidad como apoyo para recordar y contar. Los dedos de la mano, pueden considerarse los primeros apoyos de los que se valieron hombres y mujeres de la antigüedad para contar y constituyen, por tanto, la noción más elemental de la aritmética, anterior incluso a la noción de número. Es muy probable que los dedos de las manos y los pies hayan sido el origen de los sistemas numéricos quinario, decimal y vigesimal: es decir, el Hombre podía contar cinco, diez o veinte. Los constantes cambios tecnológicos —políticos y filosóficos— que se manifestaron en el Siglo XX dieron como resultado la aparición a lo que se ha dado en llamar “Era de las Tecnologías o Informática” que ha cambiado radicalmente la situación mundial en todos los aspectos, y que ha dado origen a una revolución tecnológica presente cada día. (shrink)

In this volume, Veronica Roberts Ogle offers a new reading of Augustine's political thought as it is presented in City of God. Focusing on the relationship between politics and the earthly city, she argues that a precise understanding of Augustine's vision can only be reached through a careful consideration of the work's rhetorical strategy and sacramental worldview. Ogle draws on Christian theology and political thought, moral philosophy, and semiotic theory to make her argument. Laying out Augustine's understanding of the earthly (...) city, she proceeds by tracing out his rhetorical strategy and concludes by articulating his sacramental vision and the place of politics within it. Ogle thus suggests a new way of determining the status of politics in Augustine's thought. Her study clarifies seemingly contradictory passages in his text, highlights the nuance of his position, and captures the unity of his vision as presented in City of God. (shrink)