This article examines whether people share the Gettier intuition (viz. that someone who has a true justified belief that p may nonetheless fail to know that p) in 24 sites, located in 23 countries (counting Hong Kong as a distinct country) and across 17 languages. We also consider the possible influence of gender and personality on this intuition with a very large sample size. Finally, we examine whether the Gettier intuition varies across people as a function of their disposition to (...) engage in “reflective” thinking. (shrink)

In the remainder of this article, we will disarm an important motivation for epistemic contextualism and interest-relative invariantism. We will accomplish this by presenting a stringent test of whether there is a stakes effect on ordinary knowledge ascription. Having shown that, even on a stringent way of testing, stakes fail to impact ordinary knowledge ascription, we will conclude that we should take another look at classical invariantism. Here is how we will proceed. Section 1 lays out some limitations of previous (...) research on stakes. Section 2 presents our study and concludes that there is little evidence for a substantial stakes effect. Section 3 responds to objections. The conclusion clears the way for classical invariantism. (shrink)

Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and sixteen languages. Overall, participants tended (...) to ascribe moral responsibility whether the perpetrator lacked sourcehood or alternate possibilities. However, for American, European, and Middle Eastern participants, being the ultimate source of one’s actions promoted perceptions of free will and control as well as ascriptions of blame and punishment. By contrast, being the source of one’s actions was not particularly salient to Asian participants. Finally, across cultures, participants exhibiting greater cognitive reflection were more likely to view free will as incompatible with causal determinism. We discuss these findings in light of documented cultural differences in the tendency toward dispositional versus situational attributions. (shrink)

Since at least Hume and Kant, philosophers working on the nature of aesthetic judgment have generally agreed that common sense does not treat aesthetic judgments in the same way as typical expressions of subjective preferences—rather, it endows them with intersubjective validity, the property of being right or wrong regardless of disagreement. Moreover, this apparent intersubjective validity has been taken to constitute one of the main explananda for philosophical accounts of aesthetic judgment. But is it really the case that most people (...) spontaneously treat aesthetic judgments as having intersubjective validity? In this paper, we report the results of a cross‐cultural study with over 2,000 respondents spanning 19 countries. Despite significant geographical variations, these results suggest that most people do not treat their own aesthetic judgments as having intersubjective validity. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for theories of aesthetic judgment and the purpose of aesthetics in general. (shrink)

Does the Ship of Theseus present a genuine puzzle about persistence due to conflicting intuitions based on “continuity of form” and “continuity of matter” pulling in opposite directions? Philosophers are divided. Some claim that it presents a genuine puzzle but disagree over whether there is a solution. Others claim that there is no puzzle at all since the case has an obvious solution. To assess these proposals, we conducted a cross-cultural study involving nearly 3,000 people across twenty-two countries, speaking eighteen (...) different languages. Our results speak against the proposal that there is no puzzle at all and against the proposal that there is a puzzle but one that has no solution. Our results suggest that there are two criteria—“continuity of form” and “continuity of matter”— that constitute our concept of persistence and these two criteria receive different weightings in settling matters concerning persistence. (shrink)

Is behavioral integration a necessary feature of belief in folk psychology? Our data from over 5,000 people across 26 samples, spanning 22 countries suggests that it is not. Given the surprising cross-cultural robustness of our findings, we argue that the types of evidence for the ascription of a belief are, at least in some circumstances, lexicographically ordered: assertions are first taken into account, and when an agent sincerely asserts that p, nonlinguistic behavioral evidence is disregarded. In light of this, we (...) take ourselves to have discovered a universal principle governing the ascription of beliefs in folk psychology. (shrink)

Este artículo perteneciente a la sección de Bioética en Práctica de la revista Persona y Bioética 24, fue publicado originalmente en El Mundo, el primero de abril de 2019. La columna puede consultarse en esta URL https://www.elmundo.com/noticia/ Diagnosticospresupuestos-y-mercados/376170. Así mismo, el texto se dejó tal y como aparece en el publicado. El autor autorizó la publicación en esta revista y por ser una publicación para El Mundo, los derechos de autor no están bajo la licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 4.0 Internacional (...) de la Revista. (shrink)

Resumen:En el marco de su filosofía de la moneda Locke desarrolla un concepto de ésta como algo que pertenece a la naturaleza de las cosas, pero cuyo valor debe promulgarse políticamente una sola vez y para siempre. A su juicio la moneda es el oro o la plata, y su ordenamiento está dictado por el orden de la razón natural, lo que obliga a los hombres a erigir su institución respetando esta norma natural de las cosas con la actitud de (...) una promesa inquebrantable. Más allá de la fijación que ordena el valor de la moneda a la naturaleza intrínseca del buen orden social, la intervención estatal en la creación y gestión de la moneda es juzgada en cambio como esencialmente perniciosa. El presente artículo estudia la función que cumple este peculiar concepto de la moneda en cuanto antecedente temprano del mito liberal de la economía como una supuesta disciplina científica cuyo objeto epistémico sería el mercado, entendido éste análogamente, bajo el influjo de las ideas deístas del siglo XVIII, como un producto del orden espontáneo y virtuoso de la sociedad.Palabras clave: Locke; moneda; liberalismo; marginalismo; patrón oro. (shrink)

El revisionismo austríaco discutió la tesis de la historiografía económica clásica en torno a una supuesta incomprensión escolástica del mercado fundada en el �justo precio� y en la concepción aristotélica del valor, y vio en dicha concepción la raíz de la teoría subjetiva del valor sostenida por la primera generación de austríacos. Aquí mostramos, sin embargo, que los principales revisionistas austríacos realizaron una interpretación sesgada de la distinción entre valor de uso y valor de cambio en Aristóteles, e indicamos (...) las claves esenciales en torno a las cuales debería girar la recuperación de la auténtica dimensión del valor económico en Aristóteles. (shrink)

This paper compares two normative theories of education in Chile, one centered in the republican tradition, mainly in the XIX and partly in the XXth century, and the other imposed by the military dictatorship and who uses the market freedom and the market efficiency as justificatory devices. The republican theory argues in favor of a central role of the state in the design of a public, universal, obligatory and tuitionless educational system, understood as essential to the formation of citizens in (...) common and to the construction of an egalitarian society. One can think of education, in this perspective, as a common property, a public good of which nobody can, in principle be excluded. To the market theory, education is conceived as a consumer good –or, in another version, as an investment– who means high rates of return to individual users and for that reason must be paid by them. From another perspective, a private system of education is justified in terms of the freedom to offer educational goods in the market, and the freedom to choose this goods by theconsumers. In Chile an educational system very similar to the republican one, has existed till 1973. This system has had a relatively peaceful coexistence with private education in all levels. In current discussions on education, this mixed system is considered a good thing. The paper argues that this coexistence is no more possible with the actual market model who seeks to exclude any other system, which is incompatible with a strong public system of high quality and who points therefore to the destatisation of all education. (shrink)

Las actuales sociedades de mercado han dado lugar a situaciones de extrema desigualdad y descontento social, lo que constituye una de las principales causas de la actual crisis de la democracia en casi todos los países de Occidente, en especial en Latinoamérica. Debido a lo anterior, han vuelto a cobrar vigencia las tesis que desde un principio hicieron frente a la concepción liberal de la libertad y la democracia. En este ensayo se examinan brevemente estas corrientes “contraliberales” de la (...) democracia y se ponen en evidencia serios inconvenientes a los que pueden llevar por cuenta de uno de sus elementos esenciales: el cultivo de la virtud cívica de las personas y la identidad y responsabilidad con la sociedad que aquélla implica. (shrink)

El artículo presenta un análisis de la categoría “estado de naturaleza” en John Locke para lo cual se hace un recorrido por el capítulo II del texto Segundo Tratado sobre el Gobierno Civil publicado por el autor en 1690. Para ello se identifican las características que, según el autor, configuran el estado de naturaleza del hombre, como son la libertad, la igualdad, la vida, la relación con Dios. Se analiza además, la actividad primordial y fundante del estado de naturaleza como (...) es la actividad económica que a partir del trabajo, conduce a la propiedad y al mercado. (shrink)

En los estudios de Marx sobre el modo de producción específicamente capitalista en la periferia, más allá de Europa occidental, encontramos un doble movimiento: sus estudios históricos configuran todo un campo de tensiones en el que podemos examinar sus posiciones políticas y teóricas entrecruzadas con los cambios y las contradicciones históricas del siglo xix. Analizando las opiniones de Marx sobre la cuestión colonial y la cuestión nacional en casos tan variados como los de India, América Latina, China, Irlanda, Polonia o (...) Rusia comprobamos su distanciamiento creciente pero irregular con respecto al “sistema” hegeliano, que nunca dejó de inspirarlo, en un intento de superar la teleología de la historia. En cuestionamiento se encontraba el presupuesto de que las formas sociales superiores surgen del agotamiento y la aniquilación de las directamente inferiores. Aunque imperfecta, la superación de la teleología acercó a Marx al reconocimiento de la coexistencia en el espacio y en el tiempo de formas sociales heterogéneas, lo que apuntaba hacia una concepción diferente de la teoría y la acción política. (shrink)

En la actualidad algunas de las tradicionales diferencias entre lo rural y lo urbano se van haciendo menos claras y existe una corriente de pensamiento denominada nueva ruralidad, para designar los cambios ocurridos en las sociedades agrarias con la ampliación de la pluriactividad no agrícola de los campesinos y en las ciudades con la llamada agricultura periurbana e incluso urbana. Actualmente entre el campo y la ciudad existen mayores interconexiones que en el pasado, dando lugar a que el engranaje entre (...) ambos se intensifique y, en algunas partes (principalmente en los países desarrollados) algunas ciudades de hacen más “rurales” (huertos familiares) y el campo se “urbaniza” por el acceso a servicios metropoli-tanos (drenaje, electricidad, telefonía, etc.) y por la instalación en el medio rural de industrias y establecimientos de servi-cios otrora inexistentes. Los vínculos entre los dos sectores se han intensificado y se complejizan, lo que se expresa en la diversificación de actividades y de relaciones que antes no se presentaban, todo lo anterior dentro del marco de una mayor integración de la agricultura al mercado internacional. Sin embargo en el nuevo panorama de mayor articulación entre ambos sectores, persiste la antagónica relación entre campo-ciudad ya que la contradicción agricultura-industria, no ha desaparecido, por el contrario, se volvió más compleja; y esta variación la neoruralidad sólo la describe, sin llegar a constituir un nuevo paradigma explicativo. (shrink)

La posmodernidad es una tendencia emergente a lo largo del siglo XX, un proceso general de la cultura occidental que fue aglutinando síntomas contrapuestos, y que acabó por dominar la escena filosófico-cultural a medida que avanzaba el siglo. En la época de la multiplicación de los discursos y del triunfo universal del mercado, y tras la pérdida posmoderna de los horizontes totalizantes de la civilización, se impone cartografiar de nuevo nuestra comprensión de la realidad. Índice: Prólogo de Miguel Morey.- (...) Introducción.- Notas para una genealogía de la posmodernidad.- De la crítica de la alienación a la fragmentación de la subjetividad.- Últimas tribulaciones (¿la decadencia de la posmodernidad?).- Cronología filosófica del siglo posmoderno.- Bibliografía. (shrink)

Uno de los fenomenólogos de la nueva generación que sigue la línea de Husserl, Heidegger, Marion y Lévinas es Richard Kearney. Este filósofo irlandés, católico, propone una cuarta reducción fenomenológica, esto es, volver al eschaton enraizado en la existencia cotidiana: encontrar la voz y el rostro de lo más alto en lo más bajo. Es como la realización de aquella idea heideggeriana de que “Sólo aquello del mundo que es de poca monta llegará alguna vez a ser cosa.” . En (...) el lenguaje cotidiano, en la vida diaria, se encuentra una posibilidad de superar el escepticismo, la indiferencia y el hastío del mundo vuelto consumo y del hombre convertido en pieza del mercado. En el encuentro cara a cara se da la posibilidad de una revelación que hace de la relación con el otro, y especialmente con el extranjero, un maravillarse y nos implemente una duda, una sospecha y una desconfianza. (shrink)

En este trabajo argumentaré primero que para entender las relaciones entre el populismo la democratización y el autoritarismo hay que partir de las experiencias latinoamericanas donde los populismos han retado al poder y han gobernado desde los años 40. Los científicos sociales latinoamericanos teorizaron y debatieron sobre el populismo desde que Gino Germani escribió en los años 50 sobre el peronismo y los investigadores europeos y norteamericanos deberían tomar en serio la larga y compleja bibliografía latinoamericana sobre el tema. Además, (...) Latinoamérica es la región en la que se han dado los populismos más benignos e incluyentes, mientras que las caras más autoritarias del populismo de derecha se han manifestado en los Estados Unidos y en algunos países de Europa. Mi segundo argumento es que hay que diferenciar las críticas populistas al poder constituido que señalan los déficits de participación y representación de las democracias de sus soluciones que reducen la complejidad de la democracia, la sociedad civil y la esfera pública a la lucha entre dos campos antagónicos. Mi tercer argumento es que hay que diferenciar entre inclusión y democratización. Los populismos latinoamericanos, desde el peronismo hasta el chavismo, han incluido políticamente, étnicamente y socio-económicamente a los sectores marginados. Sin embargo a su vez han atentado en contra del pluralismo, han manufacturado enemigos y han cerrado espacios a la oposición. Mi cuarto argumento es que si bien los populismos comparten una lógica política no todos son iguales. Algunos politizan las exclusiones alrededor del eje mercado-estado, otros alrededor de temas culturales como la identidad del pueblo y la nación. Unos usan criterios étnicos para construir al pueblo, mientras que otros politizan las exclusiones socioeconómicas. (shrink)

El punto de partida de esta investigación se concentra en el estudio de la crisis de lashumanidades en una economía de mercado hegemónica, movida por el lucro y la explotación. Enel proyecto del que se deriva este artículo y que tiene la fenomenología hermenéutica como enfoquemetodológico, conforme lo presentó Max van Manen (2016), se muestra el alcance y el aporte de una ética contemporánea frente a estos dos movimientos; asimismo, desde una lectura crítica de conjunto, las variantes de la (...) formación ética frente a la crisis actual de las humanidades en la que se reduce la persona a sujeto de rendimiento. El artículo se estructura en cuatro partes: primero, se contextualiza la investigación y la publicación misma; segundo, se detalla el proceso metodológico;tercero, se muestra brevemente el estado de la cuestión; y cuarto, se precisa el sedimento teóricocon variantes que integran la respuesta a la pregunta problema del proyecto, esto es: fundamentarla importancia de atender a la temporalidad como un problema ético sustantivo; la necesidad dedeconstruir la libertad como estrategia neoliberal de control; el sentido de desinstrumentalizar las emociones; y, la necesidad de cultivar la capacidad de indignarse y de promover una vidacontemplativa como prácticas experienciales del mundo de la vida. (shrink)

Durante la última década se ha producido un importante desarrollo de prácticas que formulan propuestas alternativas a los modos de producción, consumo e intercambio dominantes. Este artículo analiza el tejido de prácticas económicas alternativas en la ciudad de Valladolid, una ciudad media alejada de los contextos urbanos sobre los que se ha construido el cuerpo teórico que indaga en el potencial transformador de redes de consumo, mercados de trueque, bancos de tiempo, monedas sociales o huertos comunitarios. El trabajo, consciente del (...) valor del contexto y de la escala, propone para ciudades como la estudiada una relectura que sitúa dicho potencial no en el ámbito económico, sino en el de la práctica y la experiencia social y en el de la cultura política.The last decade has witnessed an important development of practices that involve alternative proposals to the dominant production, consumption and exchange patterns. In the present article, we present an analysis of the interwoven patterns of alternative economic practices in Valladolid, a mid-sized city in Spain. This urban profile differs from the cities that have typically been used to design the body of research on the transformation power that consumer networks, bartering, time banking, social coin and community orchards have. Taking into account the value of both the context and the scale under investigation, this study proposes a reanalysis for these types of cities: under this view, the potential is not placed in the economic sphere but rather in the social practice and experience as well as in the political culture. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the similarity between Wittgenstein’s use of thought experiments and Relativity Theory. I begin with introducing Wittgenstein’s idea of “thought experiments” and a tentative classification of different kinds of thought experiments in Wittgenstein’s work. Then, after presenting a short recap of some remarks on the analogy between Wittgenstein’s point of view and Einstein’s, I suggest three analogies between the status of Wittgenstein’s mental experiments and Relativity theory: the topics of time dilation, the search for invariants, and (...) the role of measuring tools in Special Relativity. This last point will help to better define Wittgenstein’s idea of description as the core of his philosophical enterprise. (shrink)

Chaque fois que nous "donnons forme" à quelque chose, cette représentation nous figure, par signes, l'objet évoqué, mais nous confirme également qu'il ne s'agit que d'un simulacre. D'où le besoin, à chaque époque, de créer du vivant pour pallier cette déception : tel est le sens du mythe de Pygmalion. Ce livre s'organise donc autour de deux pôles : d'un côté la nécessité de figurer, et de figurer l'acte même de la perception (voir le chapitre "Un oeil immense artificiel") ; (...) de l'autre, l'impératif de dépasser le signe. Il s'agit d'un défi radical, qui concerne l'avenir même des arts. C'est la raison de ce titre, A vif, qui témoigne d'un "coup d'oeil" : un regard et une incision pratiquée à vif dans l'objet, un désir de définitif qui ne caresse plus la forme, mais qui pénètre, met à nu, éviscère dans les paroles et dans les actes. Dedans et derrière l'oeil, comme dans l'un des plus impassibles traités d'anatomie du Cinquecento. Aujourd'hui, est-il encore vif notre oeil qui cherche le vivant? N'est-il pas lui-même défiguré par l'informe qui s'est logé en nous? Où est la pupilla viva qui illumine le Paradis et qui, de Dante à Baudelaire, a animé, de longs siècles durant, tant de quête mentale? Il faut remonter à ces origines, parcourir les espaces séculaires et sidéraux dans lesquels le cosmos était ordre, beauté, compréhension ; où, justement, il était nécessaire de "captiver les yeux pour avoir l'âme". Cet essai se voudrait une parabole déployée au fil de l'ardente soif humaine d'"exorbiter", de brûler la distance du point de vue, pour accéder, maintenant et à jamais, au vivant. (shrink)

The relationship between phenomenology and the sciences is of complex nature. In particular, the transcendental phenomenological position seems to promote skeptical reservations about the scientific attitude. Phenomenological anthropology and psychology, however, are an exception. The work of the Spanish philosopher Javier San Martin addresses the relationship of Husserlian phenomenology to these two particular sciences. In this paper, the work of Navarrese will be revisited as an occasion to reflect on the relationship between phenomenology and the sciences. In the first part, (...) San Martin’s philosophical approach is presented and put in relation to its counterpart, namely ratiovitalism, which has dominated phenomenological research in the Spanish-speaking world throughout the last decades. The second part is devoted to the question of whether phenomenological transcendentalism is compatible with anthropological research. It also describes San Martin’s contribution to cultural philosophy. The relationship between phenomenology and psychology is discussed in the third part. San Martin develops a critical account of empiricist psychology which he confronts with his proposal for a ’posttranscendental’ psychology that is based on the critique of psychologism and representationalism. The last section compares San Martin’s idea of anthropological and psychological science with other forms of scientific theory which contribute to phenomenological methodology in empirical research. (shrink)

Although inclusion in formal value chains extends the prospect of improving the livelihoods of rural small-scale producers, such a step is often contingent on compliance with internationally-promoted food safety standards. Limited research has addressed the challenges this represents for small rural producers who, grounded in culturally-embedded food safety conceptions, face difficulties in complying. We address this gap here through a multiple case study involving four public school feeding programs that source meals from local rural providers in the Bolivian Altiplan. Institutional (...) logics theory is used to describe public food safety regulations and to compare them to food safety conceptions in the local indigenous Aymara rural setting. We identify a value-based conflict that leads to non-compliance of formal food safety rules that jeopardizes the participation of small farmers in the market. These include: partial adoption of formal rules; selective adoption of convenient rules; and ceremonial adoption to avoid compliance. Decoupling strategies allow local actors to largely disregard the formal food safety regulations while accommodating traditional cultural practices and continuing to access the market. However, these practices put the long-term sustainability of the farmers’ participation in potentially favorable opportunities at risk. (shrink)

Many of the computing systems programmed using Machine Learning are opaque: it is difficult to know why they do what they do or how they work. Explainable Artificial Intelligence aims to develop analytic techniques that render opaque computing systems transparent, but lacks a normative framework with which to evaluate these techniques’ explanatory successes. The aim of the present discussion is to develop such a framework, paying particular attention to different stakeholders’ distinct explanatory requirements. Building on an analysis of “opacity” from (...) philosophy of science, this framework is modeled after accounts of explanation in cognitive science. The framework distinguishes between the explanation-seeking questions that are likely to be asked by different stakeholders, and specifies the general ways in which these questions should be answered so as to allow these stakeholders to perform their roles in the Machine Learning ecosystem. By applying the normative framework to recently developed techniques such as input heatmapping, feature-detector visualization, and diagnostic classification, it is possible to determine whether and to what extent techniques from Explainable Artificial Intelligence can be used to render opaque computing systems transparent and, thus, whether they can be used to solve the Black Box Problem. (shrink)

The received view of dynamical explanation is that dynamical cognitive science seeks to provide covering law explanations of cognitive phenomena. By analyzing three prominent examples of dynamicist research, I show that the received view is misleading: some dynamical explanations are mechanistic explanations, and in this way resemble computational and connectionist explanations. Interestingly, these dynamical explanations invoke the mathematical framework of dynamical systems theory to describe mechanisms far more complex and distributed than the ones typically considered by philosophers. Therefore, contemporary dynamicist (...) research reveals the need for a more sophisticated account of mechanistic explanation. (shrink)

Models developed using machine learning are increasingly prevalent in scientific research. At the same time, these models are notoriously opaque. Explainable AI aims to mitigate the impact of opacity by rendering opaque models transparent. More than being just the solution to a problem, however, Explainable AI can also play an invaluable role in scientific exploration. This paper describes how post-hoc analytic techniques from Explainable AI can be used to refine target phenomena in medical science, to identify starting points for future (...) investigations of causal relationships, and to generate possible explanations of target phenomena in cognitive science. In this way, this paper describes how Explainable AI—over and above machine learning itself—contributes to the efficiency and scope of data-driven scientific research. (shrink)

In this passage, Zavaleta describes the connections between the moment of real subsumption, social totalisation, the production of social-scientific knowledge that takes the resultant totality as its object, including Marxist theory, and finally, the emergence of a broad intersubjectivity with the capacity to become a revolutionary historical actor.

To date, no definition of life has been unequivocally accepted by the scientific community. In frustration, some authors advocate alternatives to standard definitions. These include using a list of characteristic features, focusing on life’s effects, or categorizing biospheres rather than life itself; treating life as a fuzzy category, a process or a cluster of contingent properties; or advocating a ‘wait-and-see’ approach until other examples of life are created or discovered. But these skeptical, operational, and pluralistic approaches have intensified the debate, (...) rather than settled it. Given the failure of even these approaches, we advocate a new strategy. In this paper, we reverse the usual line of reasoning and argue that the “life problem” arises from thinking incorrectly about the nature of life. Scientists most often conceptualize life as a class or kind, with earthly life as a single instance of it. Instead, we advocate thinking about Earth’s Life as an individual, in the way that species are now thought to be. In this view, Life is a monophyletic clade that originated with a last universal common ancestor, and includes all its descendants. We can continue to use the category ‘life’ pragmatically to refer to similarities between various phenomena and Life. But the relevant similarities are a matter of interest and preference, not a matter of fact. The search for other life in the Universe, then, is merely a search for entities that resemble parts of Life in whatever sense astrobiologists find most appealing. This does not mean that the search for evolved complexity elsewhere in the universe or its creation in the lab are futile endeavors, but that debates over whether they count as ‘life’ are. Ironically, finally abandoning the concept ‘life’ may make our searches for evolved complexity more fruitful. We explain why. (shrink)

Selective mutism is an anxiety disorder in which an individual is unable to speak in certain social situations though may speak normally in other settings (Hua & Major, 2016 ). Selective mutism in adults is rare, though people with this condition might have other methods of communicating their needs outside of verbal communication. Healthcare professionals rely on a patient’s ability to communicate to establish if they have decision-making capacity. This commentary responds to a case of a young adult patient with (...) selective mutism and social anxieties that significantly limited his ability to communicate with anyone in the healthcare team. This required a creative, patient-centered approach to engage in meaningful communication. (shrink)

"Epistola a Memeceo, Maximas capitales, Sentencias vaticanas, fragmentos y testimonios; texto griego y traduccion": p. [87]-161.

This paper discusses the varieties of capitalism in transitional societies in Latin America and Central / Eastern Europe. The intended purpose of these transitions from semi-closed import-substituting economies in the first case and state socialist ones in the second was to institutionalize open-market economies. Twenty or thirty years later, there is a variety of types of capitalism in these countries, which I classify into three: open-market, neo-mercantilist, and anemic. The question for sociology is whether these quite different variants represent temporary (...) stages or distortions in the same process of transition or whether, on the contrary, they may institutionalize as discrete forms of peripheral capitalism. Neither standard “legacy” argu­ments nor institutionalist theories offer satisfactory answers to this question. The multiple modernities approach, on the other hand, is more appropriate as a theoretical perspective, but it has not produced yet specific propositions applicable to this question. My paper makes two claims. First, the successful transfer of institutions depends on the congruence between these institutions and the broader institutional framework of the recipient economies, a point not developed by institutionalist theories. I offer a hypothesis in this regard: Two critical nodes of congruence are the regulatory and extractive capacity of the state and the strength of civil society. Second, market capitalism (as liberal democracy as well) is a complex institution, and some of its components “travel” more easily across societies and institutional frameworks, and therefore are easier to institutionalize. This is the source of the hybrid variants. (shrink)

Bayesian reverse-engineering is a research strategy for developing three-level explanations of behavior and cognition. Starting from a computational-level analysis of behavior and cognition as optimal probabilistic inference, Bayesian reverse-engineers apply numerous tweaks and heuristics to formulate testable hypotheses at the algorithmic and implementational levels. In so doing, they exploit recent technological advances in Bayesian artificial intelligence, machine learning, and statistics, but also consider established principles from cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Although these tweaks and heuristics are highly pragmatic in character and (...) are often deployed unsystematically, Bayesian reverse-engineering avoids several important worries that have been raised about the explanatory credentials of Bayesian cognitive science: the worry that the lower levels of analysis are being ignored altogether; the challenge that the mathematical models being developed are unfalsifiable; and the charge that the terms ‘optimal’ and ‘rational’ have lost their customary normative force. But while Bayesian reverse-engineering is therefore a viable and productive research strategy, it is also no fool-proof recipe for explanatory success. (shrink)

The philosophical conception of mechanistic explanation is grounded on a limited number of canonical examples. These examples provide an overly narrow view of contemporary scientific practice, because they do not reflect the extent to which the heuristic strategies and descriptive practices that contribute to mechanistic explanation have evolved beyond the well-known methods of decomposition, localization, and pictorial representation. Recent examples from evolutionary robotics and network approaches to biology and neuroscience demonstrate the increasingly important role played by computer simulations and mathematical (...) representations in the epistemic practices of mechanism discovery and mechanism description. These examples also indicate that the scope of mechanistic explanation must be re-examined: With new and increasingly powerful methods of discovery and description comes the possibility of describing mechanisms far more complex than traditionally assumed. (shrink)

El periodo de duelo tras la pérdida de un ser querido presenta experiencias y actitudes inusuales que juegan un papel importante en la vida cognitiva de las personas dolientes; por ejemplo, la sensación momentánea de que la persona difunta se encuentra presente, así como creencias de carácter religioso o espiritual. Frecuentemente esto involucra el mantenimiento activo de un vínculo con la persona difunta a través de diversas prácticas en la vida cotidiana. Tanto los estados mentales relacionados con el duelo como (...) las prácticas correspondientes al mantenimiento de vínculos tienen un valor epistémico, en la medida en que proveen un aporte a la funcionalidad del agente en su búsqueda por adquirir conocimiento, comprensión y otros bienes epistémicos. Esto tiene consecuencias éticas y sociales, ya que estos bienes epistémicos pueden ser destruidos o afectados por las intervenciones en el duelo, tanto clínicas como no-clínicas. A pesar de ello, esta dimensión no ha sido suficientemente reconocida por la literatura filosófica. Este trabajo busca motivar el interés por estudiar epistemológicamente el duelo de dos maneras. En primer lugar, ofreciendo una caracterización de los estados mentales asociados con el duelo en términos de estados subdoxásticos (como aliefs). Posteriormente, se muestra el papel que juegan dichos estados mentales en el espacio de affordances estructuradas en un nicho afectivo que permite el desempeño exitoso de la persona doliente en tanto agente epistémico. Con ello se busca proveer un marco de análisis que se pueda desarrollar y extender en futuros trabajos para estudiar los aspectos epistemológicos del duelo. (shrink)

Taylor's political proposal is based on a particular way of explaining human action. The modern ideal of authenticity is used to underline the role of responsibility in personal agency. Aristotelian prudence or phronesis is considered one of the best interpretations of practical reason for completing the ideal of authenticity because it includes the distinction among goods and their influence in everyone's life. The contemporary notion of horizon is an aid for understanding the role of cultural frames and dialogical exchange in (...) the construction of personal identity. (shrink)

We agree with Rendell and Whitehead that cetaceans acquire knowledge from caretakers and peers, and that a clear understanding of this process can provide insight into the evolution of mammalian cognition. The passive observational methods they advocate, however, are inadequate for determining what cetaceans know. Only by experimentally investigating the cognition of cetaceans can we hope to understand what they learn through social interactions.