This article investigates three things: (1) what development might be, (2) how development and ethics might be related, and (3) what an ethics of development might look like. First, I show how if we move away from an essentialist metaphysics of being to a possibilist-functionalist metaphysics of becoming in our understanding of development, we can reconceptualize ethics as self-directed ontogeny. Thus, ethics turns out to be a part of development. Secondly, I sketch out the possibility of an ethics of development, (...) showing how it should be based on three desiderata: (1) sustainability, promoting the long-term existence of the maximum human and non-human biodiversity, (2) democracy, promoting human-human relationships that are bidirectional and, to the extent possible, non-imposing, and (3) non-ethnocentrism, promoting true modernity; a modernity not predicated on a non-existent abstract universality but on concrete syncretism. The ultimate aim of this ethics of development is the optimization of individual and collective subjectivity and agency across time. (shrink)

This anthology offers the first serious, broad-ranging collection of English translations of significant Latin American contributions to social and political thought spanning the last forty years. Iván Márquez has judiciously selected narratives of resistance and liberation; ground-breaking texts in Latin American fields of inquiry such as liberation theology, philosophy, pedagogy, and dependency theory; and important readings in guerrilla revolution, socialist utopia, and post–Cold War thought, especially in the realms of democracy and civil society, alternatives to neoliberalism, and nationalism in the (...) context of globalization. Highlighting the vitality, diversity, and originality of Latin American thought, this anthology will be invaluable for students and scholars across the social sciences and humanities. (shrink)

Philosophical feminism is the only coherent philosophy with universal implications that provides a theoretical alternative to patriarchal thought and sociopolitical structures. I distinguish between a patriarchal logic of power and a feminist logic of pleasure that leads to an enlightened ethical hedonism, a pleasure-centered, feminist ethical framework based on a cooperative rather than authoritarian model of social relations.

We study 944 shareholder proposals submitted to 343 U.S. firms on climate change issues during 2009–2022. We use logistic and two-stage regression to estimate the propensity for a firm to be targeted or subjected to a vote at the annual general meeting and, for voted proposals, the determinants of that vote. We also examine whether climate-related proposals affect investor returns and how they relate to firms’ future environmental performance and greenhouse gas emissions. Compared to a matched sample, we first find (...) that activists target larger, more carbon-intensive, and less R&D-active firms. Second, voting likelihood is higher for firms with repeated and operations-related proposals and lower pre-proposal environmental ratings. By contrast, disclosure-related proposals are likelier to be negotiated and withdrawn. Third, repeated and operations-related proposals receive higher votes in favor, whereas votes on carbon-intensive firms do not. Fourth, building on the theory that investors act as if they distinguish among the different shareholder proposals based on the expected cost to the firm, we find evidence to support this idea. We find that investors respond negatively to ex-ante costlier proposals, such as those that relate to emissions reduction and target carbon-intensive firms. Fifth, targets’ future environmental performance rating is almost twenty percent higher after a proposal than before compared to the matched sample, whereas emissions do not budge appreciably. (shrink)

Editor's suggested further reading in BioEssays: Evolution in response to climate change: In pursuit of the missing evidence AbstractHow will fish that evolved at constant sub‐zero temperatures cope with global warming? Notothenioids as a case study Abstract.

In the year 2002, I came across a manuscript by Jean-Pierre Dupuy that linked the work of Ivan Illich with that of René Girard. I immediately set about translating the text, which was published in Spanish as part of the essay collection The Other Titan: Ivan Illich.1 The original “Detour and Sacrifice” can be found in two books that pay tribute to the authors. The first was compiled by Lee Hoinacki and Carl Mitcham, Illich’s disciples;2 the second is (...) a book edited by Sandor Goodhart, Jorgen Jorgensen, Tom Ryba, and James G. Williams that celebrates Girard’s work.3The genesis of Dupuy’s text actually goes back to 1996 and was inspired by Ivan Illich’s seventieth birthday, which was celebrated with a series of... (shrink)

This book presents an exhaustive study of the three 13-century discussions explicitly dealing with the notion of Significatio. The study aims to show that the three discussions emerge because of apparently opposite claims about the signification of words in the authoritative literature of the period. It also shows that the three discussions develop in the same direction - towards a unified use of the notion of signification, which keeps its explanatory role in semiotics, but loses its role in grammar and (...) logic. (shrink)

Electricity is an indicator that shows the progress of a civilization; it is a product that has greatly changed the way we think about the world. Electricity price forecasting became a fundamental task in all countries due to the deregulation of the electricity market in the 1990s. This work examines the effectiveness of using multiple variables for price prediction given the large number of factors that could influence the price of the electricity market. The tests were carried out over four (...) periods using data from Spain and deep learning models. Two different attribute selection methods based on Pearson’s correlation coefficient have been used to improve the efficiency of the training process. The variables used as input to the different prediction models were chosen, considering those most commonly used previously in the literature. This study attempts to test whether using time series lags improves the non-use of lags. The results obtained have shown that lags improve the results compared to a previous work in which no lags were used. (shrink)

Throughout the 20th century, market capitalism was defended on parallel grounds. First, it promotes freedom by enabling individuals to exploit their own property and labor-power; second, it facilitates an efficient allocation and use of resources. Recently, however, both defenses have begun to unravel—as capitalism has moved into its “platform” phase. Today, the pursuit of allocative efficiency, bolstered by pervasive data surveillance, often undermines individual freedom rather than promoting it. And more fundamentally, the very idea that markets are necessary to achieve (...) allocative efficiency has come under strain. Even supposing, for argument’s sake, that the claim was true in the early 20th century when von Mises and Hayek pioneered it, advances in computing have rekindled the old “socialist calculation” debate. And this time around, markets—as information technology—are unlikely to have the upper hand. -/- All of this, we argue, raises an important set of governance questions regarding the political economy of the future. We focus on two: How much should our economic system prioritize freedom, and to what extent should it rely on markets? The arc of platform capitalism bends, increasingly, toward a system that neither prioritizes freedom nor relies on markets. And the dominant critical response, exemplified by Shoshana Zuboff’s work, has been to call for a restoration of market capitalism. Longer term, however, we believe it would be more productive to think about how “postmarket” economic arrangements might promote freedom—or better yet, autonomy—even more effectively than markets, and to determine the practical steps necessary to realize that possibility. (shrink)

Medieval Integration Challenge for Intellection (MICI) in Albert the Great, Siger of Brabant, and Radulphus Brito.

At this time when the development of synthetic biology and artificial intelligence are changing the world around us, philosophers and scientists, first of all, must converge to analyze the present and predict the ethical-social consequences and biological dangers associated with new “living entities” that are not the result of the natural evolutionary process. As synthetic/artificial life forms (xenobots, robots, transgenic organisms, etc.) become more and more abundant and sophisticated, it seems first of all necessary to bring some order to all (...) this new biodiversity, establishing what is alive and what is not, and analyzing the consequences of this incessant creative activity. Here I intend to organize all these human-made entities and clarify their status as living beings or artificial elements, leaving the door open to an uncertain future in which we will be able to see how “the artificial” and “the natural” could merge to originate something different from everything known. Accordingly, I propose the creation of a new domain, Lithbea, which includes all synthetic and artificial entities within a new kingdom called Humade (derived from human-made). I have also included viruses in a new realm, the Viral kingdom, because they were excluded from the classical three-domain tree of life despite playing a fundamental role in the evolution of biodiversity on Earth. Finally, I make a brief comment on the unpredictability of the unknown, the implications of this new landscape of biodiversity, and the uncertain future of all these advances. (shrink)

Television commercials are often thought of as bothersome multimedia artefacts that by their very existence spoil our viewing pleasure at regular intervals. Not only that, but they seem to have the habit of ordering us around. This aspect of TV ads has often been commented on by experts and laypersons alike. Therefore, we decided to tackle this issue and look at the prototypical expression of directives, that is, imperatives in voice-overs in television commercials. To this end we have carried out (...) an empirical analysis of imperatives in voice-overs in the MATVA corpus which contains transcriptions of nearly 800 voice-overs in British TV ads recorded on six days during 2009, 2010 and 2011. We provide an exhaustive quantitative and qualitative profile of imperatives in contemporary TV advertising. This includes information on the distribution of imperatives, the most common verbs in imperative clauses, and their discourse function. We are also able to show conclusively that the directive force of imperatives in TV ads is more akin to advice or recommendation than commands, and explain from a discourse-pragmatic perspective why this is so. (shrink)

Assuming that linguistic representation has been studied only by linguists using grammaticality judgments, Branigan & Pickering present structural priming as a novel alternative. We show that their assumptions are incorrect for cognitive-functional linguistics, exposing converging perspectives on form/meaning pairings between generativists and cognitive-functional linguists that we hope will spark the cross-disciplinary discussion necessary to produce a cognitively plausible model of linguistic representation.

The era of AI-based decision-making fast approaches, and anxiety is mounting about when, and why, we should keep “humans in the loop” (“HITL”). Thus far, commentary has focused primarily on two questions: whether, and when, keeping humans involved will improve the results of decision-making (making them safer or more accurate), and whether, and when, non-accuracy-related values—legitimacy, dignity, and so forth—are vindicated by the inclusion of humans in decision-making. Here, we take up a related but distinct question, which has eluded the (...) scholarship thus far: does it matter if humans appear to be in the loop of decision-making, independent from whether they actually are? In other words, what is stake in the disjunction between whether humans in fact have ultimate authority over decision-making versus whether humans merely seem, from the outside, to have such authority? Our argument proceeds in four parts. First, we build our formal model, enriching the HITL question to include not only whether humans are actually in the loop of decision-making, but also whether they appear to be so. Second, we describe situations in which the actuality and appearance of HITL align: those that seem to involve human judgment and actually do, and those that seem automated and actually are. Third, we explore instances of misalignment: situations in which systems that seem to involve human judgment actually do not, and situations in which systems that hold themselves out as automated actually rely on humans operating “behind the curtain.” Fourth, we examine the normative issues that result from HITL misalignment, arguing that it challenges individual decision-making about automated systems and complicates collective governance of automation. (shrink)

This article aims to improve the knowledge on Generation Z as employees within workforce and in the workplace, as well as on the main thematic trends that drive the research on the topic. To this end, and using bibliometric techniques, a sample of 102 publications on this subject from Web of Science between 2009 and 2020 is analyzed. Research discusses the most published and most cited authors and journals to have a broad view of the context of the subject. Later, (...) through a longitudinal view, the study mainly focuses on analyzing the evolution of thematic clusters, to assess the progress of the themes, as well as the network around the principal motor cluster of each period. The obtained results suggest a hardly developed topic, which started to draw attention in 2018, while still having a wide margin for growth. The core of research on the topic has evolved around “Generation-Z” “generations,” “workplace,” “management” and “attitudes,” “leadership,” “career,” or “learning-teaching-education,” although a low keyword stability among periods was noted. There is a need for further development on a variety of aspects regarding this generation and the labor market, as the study shows a clear orientation toward management and generational diversity within the workplace. (shrink)

The generation of synthetic data is becoming a fundamental task in the daily life of any organization due to the new protection data laws that are emerging. Because of the rise in the use of Artificial Intelligence, one of the most recent proposals to address this problem is the use of Generative Adversarial Networks. These types of networks have demonstrated a great capacity to create synthetic data with very good performance. The goal of synthetic data generation is to create data (...) that will perform similarly to the original dataset for many analysis tasks, such as classification. The problem of GANs is that in a classification problem, GANs do not take class labels into account when generating new data, it is treated as any other attribute. This research work has focused on the creation of new synthetic data from datasets with different characteristics with a Conditional Generative Adversarial Network. CGANs are an extension of GANs where the class label is taken into account when the new data is generated. The performance of our results has been measured in two different ways: firstly, by comparing the results obtained with classification algorithms, both in the original datasets and in the data generated; secondly, by checking that the correlation between the original data and those generated is minimal. (shrink)

Sulla base di una straordinaria analisi dei problemi deontologici riconducibili alla crisi della professione medica, Ivan Cavicchi e un gruppo di lavoro multidisciplinare – promosso e organizzato dall’Ordine dei Medici Chirurghi e Odontoiatri della Provincia Autonoma di Trento, in collaborazione con il programma FBK per la salute della Fondazione Bruno Kessler e il gruppo di Biodiritto del l’Università di Trento – hanno rielaborato le basi concettuali della tradizionale deontologia medica per mettere in condizione gli Ordini dei Medici di riformare (...) il proprio codice deontologico. Si tratta di una vera e propria «rivoluzione» destinata a modificare nei prossimi anni la deontologia nel nostro Paese, a influenzare la redazione dei futuri codici di tutte le professioni medico-sanitarie, ma soprattutto a cambiare radicalmente i rapporti tra medici e cittadini, tra professione e società, tra medicina ed economia. Assumendo il malato come «archè», la proposta di rielaborazione cambia postulati, presupposti, linguaggi, concetti, soluzioni e obiettivi, affrontando problematiche usualmente ignorate dalla deontologia convenzionale. Lo scopo di fondo è definire una nuova figura di medico capace di recuperare il rapporto fiduciario con i malati e con la società e di farsi carico dei problemi di sostenibilità economica che ormai da anni gravano su tutti i sistemi di tutela sanitaria. (shrink)

We tend to associate Henry David Thoreau with the renunciation of material possessions, projecting onto him our fantasies of a life lived beyond the modern obsession with "things." But Thoreau's practical philosophy held a special place for tools, artworks, Native American artifacts, and a variety of natural phenomena. In Mindprints, Ivan Gaskell focuses on the material items that were important to Thoreau, using them to reveal Thoreau's unique and profound aesthetics of everyday life and the environment. "Mindprint" was Thoreau's (...) term for a material object that has captured the presence of its maker and first user. Thoreau applied the term to ancient stone artifacts and other objects in an effort to capture something of the relationship between material items and humans. For Thoreau, these relationships contribute to the creation of "worlds." By looking at Thoreau's engagement with material worlds through his writings and his practical philosophical experiment at Walden Pond--but also, importantly, via his work as a designer of improved pencils, as a house builder, as a land surveyor, and as a collector--Gaskell reveals the aesthetics at the heart of Thoreau's thinking. (shrink)

The spirit in you -- We are one -- The Druid path -- Rebirth into spirit -- Starting your journey -- Becoming a bard -- Mastering awareness -- Ritual and ceremony -- Spiritual cleansing -- Sacred creativity -- The power of manifestation -- The freedom of transformation -- Magical adventures -- The spirit of Gaia -- The four elements -- Earth -- Water -- Air -- Fire -- Spirit dancer -- The continuing life of Ivan Mcbeth.

How to Do Things with Myths: A Performative Theory of Myths and How We Got There assembles a radically updated collection of the author's oft-cited publications on myth. Together, they tell how theories of myth have changed and led to a novel "performative" theory of myth.

Este artículo va a estar centrado en una cuestión fundamental: ¿pueden compararse las visiones éticas de Dostoievski e Ignacio de Loyola? Haciendo una revisión pormenorizada de las bases existenciales dostoievskianas, podremos comprobar cómo la vida de Ignacio de Loyola parece coincidir con la hoja de ruta que, más tarde, elaboraría Dostoievski en sus obras en busca de una plenitud humana. El hombre pleno propuesto por el autor ruso es un reflejo del San Ignacio que conocemos por su Autobiografía, un personaje (...) que pasó de los confines existenciales más arraigados en el yo a una vida por y para los demás basada en una idea fundamental: «En todo, amar y servir». (shrink)

Se han cumplido cincuenta años desde la publicación de Teoría de la Justicia. Sin duda, la obra de J. Rawls marcó un hito fundamental en la historia del pensamiento político del siglo XX. Nuestro trabajo se pregunta hasta qué punto la justicia como imparcialidad sigue siendo una referencia fundamental en el pensamiento político actual. Para ello abordamos la propuesta de M.C. Nussbaum. Nos planteamos si el enfoque de las capacidades de Nussbaum es realmente una continuación o supone una verdadera ruptura (...) con la propuesta de Rawls. Y a partir de las objeciones de Nussbaum a Rawls, nos interrogamos por el presente y el futuro de una obra que, a nuestro juicio, después de medio siglo, parece tener todos los ingredientes necesarios para ser verdaderamente un clásico del pensamiento político. (shrink)

L’almanacco di corte e la guida della città – nota anche come «guida dei forestieri» – rappresentano due delle derivazioni più notevoli degli almanacchi europei del diciottesimo secolo per la loro varietà e consolidamento nel tempo. Questa ricerca si propone di indagare le origini europee di questo particolare segmento editoriale, ponendo l’accento sulle sue derivazioni nel contesto dell’Europa meridionale, in particolare in Spagna, Portogallo e negli stati italiani. L’obiettivo principale è quello di evidenziare le somiglianze tra la produzione spagnola, portoghese (...) e italiana nel Settecento, tenendo conto dei criteri editoriali e testuali. Allo stesso tempo, però, questo studio intende anche mettere in evidenza le caratteristiche specifiche dell’almanacco di corte e della guida della città in ciascuno degli stati, al fine di tracciare un ritratto il più completo possibile di questo oggetto tipografico. (shrink)

The "theory of mind" framework has been the fastest growing body of empirical research in contemporary psychology. It has given rise to a range of positions on what it takes to relate to others as intentional beings. This book brings together disparate strands of ToM research, lays out historical roots of the idea, and indicates better alternatives.

The main objective of this study is to propose, from a theoretical approach, an alternative model of the communication process that includes intentionality, interest, identification, and exchange as part of the internal process of decoding the message experienced by the receiver. The proposal includes the subdivision of the responses offered by the receiver into two possible categories: one simple, which can mean the programmed response to a specific code; and another complex, which can mean a change and/or significant transformation in (...) different aspects associated with the recipient. Through a qualitative methodology, with emphasis on documentary review, and inferential and deductive reasoning, the proposed theoretical model has been developed and explained, highlighting the added value that it could offer to the understanding of communication. (shrink)

This book argues that Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra employs circular and cyclical (diurnal and seasonal) symbols to communicate both the life-affirmative and the cosmological aspect of "recurrence" as a unifying idea. It shows that twelve day cycles, which run throughout the book's narrative, and the one full annual cycle, which encompasses the circular and the diurnal images in a continuous cycle of life affirmation, track Zarathustra's ever-changing identity throughout the text. In representing the eternal recurrence, the circular and the cyclical (...) symbols respectively convey the book's central message: Zarathustra comes into being in order to affirm existence as the teacher of eternal recurrence in an endlessly repeating cosmos. The study complements recent findings that Nietzsche's book is on eternal recurrence by establishing the unity among its language, structure, and fundamental conception, which solves the century-old problem of the communication or location of the doctrine within the text. The book is designed for the specialised audience of Nietzsche studies. It would also appeal to both students and professors in various disciplines across humanities and social sciences, as well as to anyone interested in understanding the basic tenets of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. (shrink)

I discuss the role of beauty in physics. Physicists are sometimes described as platonists for their conviction that the fundamental laws are elegant and aesthetic arguments represent an important epistemic tool. After a review of the ideas of Plato and some of the leading figures of modern physics, which suggest that this is indeed the case, I present a list of current aesthetic criteria. I focus on symmetry and unity and demonstrate their increasing relevance in an array of experimentally verified (...) theories. I also deal with an open issue of naturalness as the third criterion. The laws of nature appear increasingly beautiful as we uncover them, and it is important to see if the trend continues in the future. (shrink)

¿Cómo pueden las emociones favorecer una sociedad democrática más justa y estable? El propósito de este artículo es destacar la importancia de las emociones en el pensamiento de M. C. Nussbaum, y cómo pueden contribuir, en el contexto del liberalismo político, a reforzar y dar estabilidad a la democracia. Todo ello parece exigir, según Nussbaum, integrar el papel de las emociones en el proyecto educativo de la sociedad, para superar el modelo de justicia centrado en el beneficio mutuo, ampliándolo con (...) otro, cuyo centro de gravedad serían las capacidades y el desarrollo humano. Y en tal sentido, es necesario preguntarse por el papel que han de jugar las humanidades, para dar viabilidad y continuidad a tal proyecto.How can emotions enable a fairer and more stable democratic society? The aim of this essay is to emphasize the importance of emotions in M.C. Nussbaum’s thought and how can they contribute to reinforce democracy and provide it with stability to in the context of political liberalism. All of this seems to require, according to Nussbaum, the integration of the role of emotions in society’s educational project, so as to go beyond the model of justice focused on the mutual benefit, widening it with another, whose centre of gravity would be the capacities and the human development. In this sense, it is necessary to ask ourselves about the role Humanities should play, so as to provide such a project with feasibility and continuity. (shrink)

Cómo pueden las emociones favorecer una sociedad democrática más justa y estable? En tal sentido, es necesario preguntarse por el papel que han de jugar las Humanidades, para dar viabilidad y continuidad a tal proyecto. El presente artículo se cen-tra en el análisis de dos tragedias de Sófocles, Áyax y Filoctetes. A través de sus obras, Sófocles propone una revisión crítica de la moral agonal del héroe. Es preciso desplazar la mirada desde el campo de batalla a la pólis. Por (...) ello se necesita un nuevo ciudadano, y repensar conceptos como los de venganza, crueldad, honor, justicia, compasión. Las trage-dias cumplen así una función doble: cuestionar la moral tradicional, revisando el presente, y modificar las emociones y pensamientos de los espectadores. A través de sus tragedias, Sófocles nos propondrá un humanismo cívico, donde la libertad y la responsabilidad han de ejercerse en un contexto de interacciones personales, sabiendo que es imposible tener todo bajo control. Por ello, irremediablemente surgirán conflictos trágicos, que habrá que abordar desde su complejidad, apelando a la moderación y a la prudencia, desde la plena conciencia de nuestra humana finitud y vulnerabilidad. (shrink)