La teoría clásica de las ideas innatas conoció en las últimas décadas un resurgir de la mano de filosofía chomskyana del lenguaje y la mente al amparo de una coartada genética. Sin embargo, la clarificación del alcance del papel de los genes en el desarrollo y de la complejidad y pluralidad de los sistemas en que aquellos se integran ha ensombrecido, si no apagado definitivamente, la infuencia del planteamiento. En este trabajo se argumenta, además, que históricamente se produjo un efecto (...) semejante con el innatismo cartesiano, al ser interpretado como un modelo disposicional de lo innato y acomodado al modelo epigeneticista del desarrollo orgánico. El precio de la supervivencia de alguna forma de innatismo parece ser el de permanecer aislado de cualquier lectura naturalista o científica y reafirmarse como una postura metafísica, epítome de la cual sería el modelo monadológico de Leibniz. (shrink)

Desde el ámbito filosófico cada vez más autores muestran interés por abordar la reflexión filosófica de la ingeniería. Del lado de la ingeniería, existe una demanda definida por las sociedades profesionales y los organismos de acreditación de las titulaciones de ingeniería de inclusión de las ciencias sociales y humanidades en la formación de los ingenieros que, sin embargo, presenta deficiencias en su implantación. El objetivo del presente trabajo es justificar la inclusión de la reflexión filosófica en la formación de los (...) titulados en ingeniería y, para mejorar la situación actual, presentar una propuesta de asignaturas que muestre cuál pueda ser su espacio. La propuesta consiste en la inclusión de una asignatura específica que relacione la ingeniería y la sociedad, donde la reflexión filosófica juega un papel significativo, como complemento a la inclusión de la reflexión filosófica sobre problemas concretos en asignaturas específicas de corte tecnológico. (shrink)

This paper argues, contrary to Fodor’s well-known position, that the iconic and discursive modes of representation are not mutually exclusive categories. It is argued that there exists at least a third kind of representation which blends the semantic properties of icons and the syntactic properties of discourses. We reason that this iconic-discursive genus behaves differently from other representational formats, such as distributed representations or maps, previously put forward as challenging Fodor’s basic distinction. A reflection follows about how this kind of (...) representation impacts on the Fodorian issues for which the original dual distinction was argumentatively instrumental, namely, the kinds of codes and possible inter-code relations accessible to the representational mind. The suggestion is put forward that iconic-discursive representations may facilitate trade-offs between the world and the representational mind, as well as between the differently complex levels of representation that mediate between percepts and concepts. We conclude that such aspects of the computational mind, which until now appeared to be stubbornly resistant with respect to a conciliation of Hume’s empiricism and Fodor’s computationalism, may be more easily accessed and understood taking advantage of the biosemiotics perspective and acknowledging the richness of the biosemiotics codes accessible to cognition. (shrink)

Non-adjacent or long-distance dependencies (LDDs) are routinely considered to be a distinctive trait of language, which purportedly locates it higher than other sequentially organized signal systems in terms of structural complexity. This paper argues that particular languages display specific resources (e.g. non-interpretive morphological agreement paradigms) that help the brain system responsible for dealing with LDDs to develop the capacity of acquiring and processing expressions with such a human-typical degree of computational complexity. Independently obtained naturalistic data is discussed and put to (...) the service of the idea that the above-mentioned resources exert their developmental role from the outside, but in compliance with other internal resources, ultimately compounding an integrated developmental system. Parallels with other human and nonhuman developmental phenomena are explored, which point to the conclusion that the developmental system of concern can be assimilated to cases currently been conceptualized as ‘cue-response systems’ or ‘developmental hybrids’ within the ecological-developmental paradigm in theoretical biology. Such a conclusion is used to support the idea that both current externalist and internalist concepts fall short of a correct characterization of language. (shrink)

This paper argues, contrary to Fodor’s well-known position, that the iconic and discursive modes of representation are not mutually exclusive categories. It is argued that there exists at least a third kind of representation which blends the semantic properties of icons and the syntactic properties of discourses. We reason that this iconic-discursive genus behaves differently from other representational formats, such as distributed representations or maps, previously put forward as challenging Fodor’s basic distinction. A reflection follows about how this kind of (...) representation impacts on the Fodorian issues for which the original dual distinction was argumentatively instrumental, namely, the kinds of codes and possible inter-code relations accessible to the representational mind. The suggestion is put forward that iconic-discursive representations may facilitate trade-offs between the world and the representational mind, as well as between the differently complex levels of representation that mediate between percepts and concepts. We conclude that such aspects of the computational mind, which until now appeared to be stubbornly resistant with respect to a conciliation of Hume’s empiricism and Fodor’s computationalism, may be more easily accessed and understood taking advantage of the biosemiotics perspective and acknowledging the richness of the biosemiotics codes accessible to cognition. (shrink)

Abstract. The notion of similarity has been studied in many areas of Computer Science; in a general sense, this concept is defined to provide a measure of the semantic equivalence between two pieces of knowledge, expressing how “close” their meaning can be regarded. In this work, we study similarity as a tool useful to improve the representation of arguments, the interpretation of the relations between arguments, and the semantic evaluation associated with the arguments in the argumentative process. In this direction, (...) we present a novel mechanism to determine the similarity between two arguments based on descriptors representing particular aspects associated with these arguments. This mechanism involves a comparison process influenced by the context in which the process develops, where this context provides the relevant aspects that need to be analyzed in the application domain. Then, we use this similarity measure as a quantity to compute the result of attacks and supports in the argumentation process. These valuations, applied to a Bipolar Argumentation Frameworks, allowed us to refine the argument relations, providing the tools to establish a family of new argumentation semantics that considers the similarity between arguments as a crucial part for the argumentation process. (shrink)

Adults (more than 18 years old) are likely to reproduce the habits that they acquired during childhood and adolescence (from 6 to 16 years old). For that reason, teachers and parents have the responsibility to promote an active and healthy lifestyle in children and adolescents. Even though every school subject should promote healthy activities, Physical Education (PE) is the most important subject to foster well-being habits associated to healthy lifestyle during sport practice and other kinds of active tasks. Indeed, there (...) are many factors that influence the acquisition of healthy habits that should be taken into account when programs and activities are implemented in both educational and extracurricular context. In this sense, psychological and social factors are of utmost importance to achieve optimal experiences for an active and healthy lifestyle. However, due to the myriad of studies analyzing different factors in different contexts, there could be confusion when programs and pedagogical strategies are applied in educational or extracurricular contexts. The objective of this investigation is to analyze the state of art of the psychosocial factors which influence the engagement in physical activities and sport practice. The keywords used in this review were mainly: ‘Self-Determination Theory’, ‘motivation’, ‘Psychological need satisfaction, ‘physical activity and sport engagement’, ‘Elementary Education’, ‘Secondary Education’, ‘Physical Education’. The articles were selected according to the following criteria: (a) peer-reviewed original research published in international journals indexed in JCR or SJR, (b) published in English or Spanish, (c) about psychosocial factors which influence the physical activity and sport engagement, (b) in educational or extracurricular context. Research articles selected were found through nine databases. It was observed that physical activities and sport practice engagement are closely related to psychological factors. In particularly, intrinsic motivation was able to determine the active participation in any activity, including physical activity and sport practice during the implementation of Small-Sided Games and other kinds of pedagogical strategies (e.g., Pedagogical Models). Motivation was also closely related to flow state. Finally, these variables should be considered in order to organize effective programs to promote an active and healthy lifestyle in Physical Education classes. (shrink)

As a field of scientific expertise, semiotics has the interesting property of being a relevant tool for understanding how scientists represent any domain of research, including the semiotic domain itself. This feature is particularly expressive in the case of biology, as it appears to be the case that a certain range of biological phenomena are of a semiotic character. However, it is not consensual the extent to which semiotics pervades biology. This paper deals with this issue for the particular case (...) of developmental biology, stressing the role of semiotics-as-a-discipline in delimiting the extent of semiotics-as-a-natural-phenomenon and, specifically, in disentangling semiotic mechanisms from semiotic metaphors aimed at clarifying non-semiotic developmental mechanisms. (shrink)

In this article we offer a detailed assessment of current approaches to the origins of language, with a special foots on their historical and theoretical underpinnings. It is a widely accepted view within evolutionary linguistics that an account of the emergence of human language necessarily involves paying special attention to its communicative function and its relation to other animal communication systems. Ever since Darwin, some variant of this view has constituted the mainstream version in evolutionary linguistics; however, it is our (...) contention in this article that this approach is seriously flawed, and that “animal communication” does not constitute a natural kind on which a sound theoretical model can be built. As a consequence, we argue that this communicative perspective is better abandoned in favor of a structural/formal approach based on the notion of homology, and that some interesting and unexpected similarities may be found by applying this venerable comparative method founded in the 19th century by Richard Owen. (shrink)

The Mind-Brain Identity Theory lived a short life as a respectable philosophical position in the late 1950s, until Hilary Putnam developed his famous argument on the multiple realizability of mental states. The argument was, and still is, taken as the definitive demonstration of the falsity of Identity Theory and the foundation on which contemporary functionalist computational cognitive science was to be grounded. In this paper, in the wake of some contemporary philosophers, we reopen the case for Identity Theory and offer (...) a solution to the problem of multiple realizabilty. The solution is based on the necessity, at the time of establishing identity relations, of appealing to the notions of “homology” and “analogy” developed in the nineteenth century by Richard Owen. We also suggest that these notions are useful in order to correct certain shortcomings of some recent attempts at rebutting the Multiple Realizability argument. (shrink)

In this article we argue for an extension of Pere Alberch’s notion of developmental morphospace into the realm of cognition and introduce the notion of cognitive phenotype as a new tool for the evolutionary and developmental study of cognitive abilities.

Recently, there has been a growing interest, both within theoretical biology and the philosophy of biology, in the possibility and desirability of a theory of development. Among the many issues raised within this debate, the questions of the spatial and temporal boundaries of development have received particular attention. In this article, noting that so far the discussion has mostly centered on the processes of morphogenesis and organogenesis, we argue that an important missing element in the equation, namely the development of (...) language and cognition in general, may play an important role in settling the issue of temporal boundaries. After examining the idea that the development of language, cognition, and action are bona fide biological processes, we explore the consequences for a general theory of development of taking them into consideration. (shrink)

We argue that the true nature of the renormalizability of Horava-Lifshitz gravity lies in the presence of higher order spatial derivatives and not in the anisotropic Lifshitz scaling of space and time. We discuss the possibility of constructing a higher order spatial derivatives model that has the same renormalization properties of Horava-Lifshitz gravity but that does not make use of the Lifshitz scaling. In addition, the state-of-the-art of the Lorentz symmetry restoration in Horava-Lifshitz-type theories of gravitation is reviewed.

It is widely assumed that functional and dispositional properties are not identical to their physical base, but that there is some kind of asymmetrical ontological dependence between them. In this regard, a popular idea is that the former are realized by the latter, which, under the non-identity assumption, is generally understood to be a non-causal, constitutive relation. In this paper we examine two of the most widely accepted approaches to realization, the so-called ‘flat view’ and the ‘dimensioned view’, and we (...) analyze their explanatory relevance in the light of a number of examples from the life sciences, paying special attention to developmental phenomena. Our conclusion is that the emphasis placed by modern-day biology on such properties as variability, evolvability, and a whole collection of phenomena like modularity, robustness, and developmental constraint or developmental bias requires the adoption of a much more dynamic perspective than traditional realization frameworks are able to capture. (shrink)

We present a novel argumentation-based method for finding and analyzing communities in social media on the Web, where a community is regarded as a set of supported opinions that might be in conflict. Based on their stance, we identify argumentative coalitions to define them; then, we apply a similarity-based evaluation method over the set of arguments in the coalition to determine the level of cohesion inherent to each community, classifying them appropriately. Introducing conflict points and attacks between coalitions based on (...) argumentative (dis)similarities to model the interaction between communities leads to considering a meta-argumentation framework where the set of coalitions plays the role of the set of arguments and where the attack relation between the coalitions is assigned a particular strength which is inherited from the arguments belonging to the coalition. Various semantics are introduced to consider attacks’ strength to particularize the effect of the new perspective. Finally, we analyze a case study where all the elements of the formal construction of the formalism are exercised. (shrink)

Ecological developmental biology considers the phenotype as actively produced through an environmentally informed process of individual development, rather than predetermined by the genotype. Accordingly, the genotype is viewed as one among many interactants that contribute formative elements; it is understood to do so no differently from the way other organism-internal and environmental resources do. Although the EcoDevo approach is evidently particularly apt to inform approaches to human development, which mostly takes shape in rich cultural environments, it is remarkable that, at (...) least within some highly influential circles of the linguistic sciences, the study of many distinctive human cognitive traits including language remains strongly anchored to a preformationist stance. This article brings an EcoDevo approach to the biologically focused study of language to argue that an aspect of language design commonly assumed to be “blueprinted,” namely, the lexicon-syntax interface, may instead be explained as a plastic effect of ongoing developmental processes in the mind of the child, in which designated aspects of the environment fulfill a key constructive role. (shrink)

El presente artículo reconstruye una “historia” de las principales políticas de drogas en Argentina desde los inicios del siglo XX hasta 2010, su interrelación con el régimen internacional de control de drogas y el llamado paradigma prohibicionista-punitivo. Se trata de una revisión bibliográfica de los estudios disponibles sobre política de drogas en Argentina orientada por el método genealógico de Foucault. El objetivo del artículo es mostrar las condiciones de posibilidad de un paradigma prohibicionista-punitivo en política de drogas, su desarrollo, afianzamiento (...) y posibles alternativas, como así también ofrecer una orientación para la utilización de la genealogía foucaultiana en la temática. (shrink)

Entre los años 2015 y 2016 se produjo un aumento en las movilidades extraregionales a través de Centroamérica. La presencia de migrantes provenientes de varios países de África, produjo desafíos institucionales para su abordaje, así como la elaboración de discursos sociales estructurados en categorías raciales. Un concepto fundamental para entender dicha coyuntura es el cuerpo migrante, en su implicación ontológica y su carácter de trashumancia sobre las narrativas del poder representado por los Estados-nación y vinculado con el funcionamiento de regímenes (...) corporales, histórica y socialmente situados. Esta reflexión recupera la construcción racializada del cuerpo migrante en los dispositivos institucionales y en los discursos sociales vinculados con la coyuntura de las transmigraciones africanas producidas en Costa Rica en los últimos años. (shrink)

Este artigo reflete sobre a relação entre os recentes processos de mobilidade regional da América Central, os aspectos de conformação das subjetividades que respondem e as ações de controle com as quais são feitas tentativas para impedir os processos migratórios. Ele aborda alguns ângulos da abordagem da autonomia da migração e especifica exemplos específicos nos quais esses relacionamentos estão presentes.

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)

This volume has 41 chapters written to honor the 100th birthday of Mario Bunge. It celebrates the work of this influential Argentine/Canadian physicist and philosopher. Contributions show the value of Bunge’s science-informed philosophy and his systematic approach to philosophical problems. The chapters explore the exceptionally wide spectrum of Bunge’s contributions to: metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of technology, moral philosophy, social and political (...) philosophy, medical philosophy, and education. The contributors include scholars from 16 countries. Bunge combines ontological realism with epistemological fallibilism. He believes that science provides the best and most warranted knowledge of the natural and social world, and that such knowledge is the only sound basis for moral decision making and social and political reform. Bunge argues for the unity of knowledge. In his eyes, science and philosophy constitute a fruitful and necessary partnership. Readers will discover the wisdom of this approach and will gain insight into the utility of cross-disciplinary scholarship. This anthology will appeal to researchers, students, and teachers in philosophy of science, social science, and liberal education programmes. 1. Introduction Section I. An Academic Vocation Section II. Philosophy Section III. Physics and Philosophy of Physics Section IV. Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Mind Section V. Sociology and Social Theory Section VI. Ethics and Political Philosophy Section VII. Biology and Philosophy of Biology Section VIII. Mathematics Section IX. Education Section X. Varia Section XI. Bibliography. (shrink)