La metáfora conceptual es utilizada con frecuencia como estrategia divulgativa para acercar el conocimiento especializado a un público lego, pero su eficacia comunicativa para la transmisión de contenido especializado no se ha comprobado empíricamente. El objetivo de este trabajo es explorar la incidencia de las metáforas en la comprensión de textos escritos divulgativos del área de Biología. Se diseñó una prueba de comprensión lectora con 4 fragmentos de textos de divulgación con expresiones metafóricas y sin expresiones metafóricas, acompañados de 16 (...) preguntas de selección múltiple. La prueba se aplicó a 30 estudiantes de segundo año medio de un colegio chileno, y se complementó con una entrevista semiestructurada a tres de los estudiantes. Los resultados obtenidos demostraron que, a nivel local, las metáforas estructurales de una correspondencia y las de imagen posibilitan una mejor comprensión. Sin embargo, a nivel global, no se evidenció un mejor desempeño en la lectura de textos con presencia de expresiones metafóricas. Estos hallazgos permiten caracterizar el nivel de eficacia de la metáfora conceptual en el proceso de comprensión de contenido especializado, así como informar sobre el diseño de textos divulgativos con propósitos didácticos. (shrink)

Este artículo presenta un estudio sobre la terminología empleada para referirse al período histórico del Golpe y Dictadura Militar en los textos escolares de enseñanza media de historia de Chile. Los términos representan los conceptos especializados de una disciplina y reflejan la conceptualización particular de la realidad por parte de una determinada comunidad disciplinar en un contexto socio-temporal. Por ello, influyen en la manera en que el receptor accede al conocimiento. Este estudio tuvo por objetivo describir el punto de vista (...) sobre el Golpe y la Dictadura Militar transmitido a través de la terminología en los manuales de historia chilenos, y determinar si esta ha evolucionado con el paso de los años. Para ello, se analizaron las variantes terminológicas de los conceptos principales que configuran el periodo histórico en la unidad didáctica sobre el tema en textos escolares de 2º y 3º Medio, licitados por el Mineduc entre el 2002 y 2014. Luego, a partir del análisis de la información conceptual reflejada en cada variante y el nivel de abstracción de la categoría seleccionada, se interpretó si las variantes reflejaban un punto de vista negativo, neutro o positivo del concepto. Los resultados demostraron que las denominaciones son relativamente estables a lo largo de los años y transmiten puntos de vista mayormente neutros. Estos resultados contrastan con la perspectiva pluralista de los hechos que promulga el Mineduc en sus bases curriculares. (shrink)

A pragmatic account of referential communication is developed which presents an alternative to traditional Gricean accounts by focusing on cooperativeness and efficiency, rather than informativity. The results of four language‐production experiments support the view that speakers can be cooperative when producing redundant adjectives, doing so more often when color modification could facilitate the listener's search for the referent in the visual display (Experiment 1a). By contrast, when the listener knew which shape was the target, speakers did not produce redundant color (...) adjectives (Experiment 1b). English speakers used redundant color adjectives more often than Spanish speakers, suggesting that speakers are sensitive to the differential efficiency of prenominal and postnominal modification (Experiment 2). Speakers were also cooperative when using redundant size adjectives (Experiment 3). Overall, these results show how discriminability affects a speaker's choice of referential expression above and beyond considerations of informativity, supporting the view that redundant speakers can be cooperative. (shrink)

In the last 30 years, the key issue in developmental Theory of Mind has been if and when children are capable of representing false beliefs. Moving away from this research question, the aim of this study was to investigate the role of attentional processes in false-belief tasks. We focused on the design of the test phase and investigated two factors that may be critical for 3-year-old children’s success: the form of the wh-question and the salience of the target object. The (...) results of two experiments confirmed that 3-year olds are able to explicitly choose the correct answer in a false-belief task provided that they are allowed to focus on the protagonist throughout the task. The salience of the target object, however, was a critical factor in the design of the test phase, as increasing it had a negative effect on children’s performance. These results suggest that the experimental record of the last 30 years may be skewed since standard false-belief tasks do not control for the relative salience of the wrong response, potentially hindering the performance of children under 4. We conclude that a careful investigation of performance factors in false-belief tasks has the potential to reveal deep insights into the development of Theory of Mind skills, even if not directly focused on children’s representation of beliefs. (shrink)

Language and Theory of Mind come together in communication, but their relationship has been intensely contested. I hypothesize that pragmatic markers connect language and Theory of Mind and enable their co-development and co-evolution through a positive feedback loop, whereby the development of one skill boosts the development of the other. I propose to test this hypothesis by investigating two types of pragmatic markers: demonstratives and articles. Pragmatic markers are closed-class words that encode non-representational information that is unavailable to consciousness, but (...) accessed automatically in processing. These markers have been associated with implicit Theory of Mind because they are used to establish joint attention and mark shared knowledge. Here I develop a theoretical account of how joint attention is the basis for children’s later tracking of common ground. The developmental path from joint attention to common ground parallels language change, with demonstrative forms giving rise to definite articles. This parallel opens the possibility of modelling the emergence of Theory of Mind in human development in tandem with its routinization across language communities and generations of speakers. I therefore propose that, in order to understand the relationship between language and Theory of Mind, we should study pragmatics at three parallel timescales: during language acquisition, language use, and language change. (shrink)

La influencia de la obra y doctrina de Francisco Suárez en la conformación del pensamiento moderno ha sido ampliamente estudiada en áreas como la filosofía política y del derecho, la metafísica o la epistemología. Sin embargo, la filosofía moral de Suárez, en concreto aquella que, como él mismo explica, habrá de servir de base a sus tratados de teología moral, está todavía por analizar. El objetivo de este trabajo es traer a luz algunos aspectos de la teoría suareciana sobre la (...) causalidad final en los agentes libres, confrontando su doctrina sobre la causalidad del fin en dos comentarios, escritos en distintos períodos, a las cuestiones I-IIae de la Suma de Teología de Tomás de Aquino: el manuscrito inédito De beatitudine y el tratado De ultimo fine hominis, publicado por Baltasar Álvares. La cuestión aquí analizada —qué significa actuar por un fin— se asume como un instrumento heurístico para dar a conocer sea estas dos fuentes estudiadas, sea el interés filosófico de las doctrinas de Suárez a respecto de la causalidad final. Las conclusiones apuntan a los siguientes aspectos: i) la proximidad, aun con dudas, de Suárez a la doctrina tomista de la causalidad del fin, en el comentario de 1579; ii) la asunción parcial de la doctrina tomista en cuanto a la función del intelecto en el actuar libre, y la afirmación de que el locus finis es la voluntad, en el comentario de 1628. Trabajando con estos matices hemos querido establecer algunos puntales de encuentro que permitan hacer visibles los puentes que emergen entre una tradición escolástica que enfrenta una nueva imagen del hombre, y la filosofía moral inmediatamente posterior que despojando aquella de su fundamento teológico, avanza con paso firme hacia la modernidad. (shrink)

In standard Relevance Theory, hyperbole and metaphor are categorized together as loose uses of language, on a continuum with approximations, category extensions and other cases of loosening/broadening of meaning. Specifically, it is claimed that there are no interesting differences between hyperbolic and metaphorical uses. In recent work, we have set out to provide a more fine-grained articulation of the similarities and differences between hyperbolic and metaphorical uses and their relation to literal uses. We have defended the view that hyperbolic use (...) involves a shift of magnitude along a dimension which is intrinsic to the encoded meaning of the hyperbole vehicle, while metaphor involves a multi-dimensional qualitative shift away from the encoded meaning of the metaphor vehicle. In this article, we present three experiments designed to test the predictions of this analysis, using a variety of tasks (paraph. (shrink)

It has been generally assumed in the Theory of Mind literature of the past 30 years that young children fail standard false-belief tasks because they attribute their own knowledge to the protagonist. Contrary to the traditional view, we have recently proposed that the children's bias is task induced. This alternative view was supported by studies showing that 3 year olds are able to pass a false-belief task that allows them to focus on the protagonist, without drawing their attention to the (...) target object in the test phase. For a more accurate comparison of these two accounts, the present study tested the true-belief default with adults. Four experiments measuring eye movements and response inhibition revealed that adults do not have an automatic tendency to respond to the false-belief question according to their own knowledge and the true-belief response need not be inhibited in order to correctly predict the protagonist's actions. The positive results observed in the control conditions confirm the accuracy of the various measures used. I conclude that the results of this study undermine the true-belief default view and those models that posit mechanisms of response inhibition in false-belief reasoning. Alternatively, the present study with adults and recent studies with children suggest that participants' focus of attention in false-belief tasks may be key to their performance. (shrink)

The present study aims to investigate the extent to which the process of lexical interpretation is context dependent. It has been uncontroversially agreed in psycholinguistics that interpretation is always affected by sentential context. The major debate in lexical processing research has revolved around the question of whether initial semantic activation is context sensitive or rather exhaustive, that is, whether the effect of context occurs before or only after the information associated to a concept has been accessed from the mental lexicon. (...) However, within post-lexical access processes, the question of whether the selection of a word's meaning components is guided exclusively by contextual relevance, or whether certain meaning components might be selected context independently, has not been such an important focus of research. I have investigated this question in the two experiments reported in this paper and, moreover, have analysed the role that context-independent information in concepts might play in word interpretation. This analysis differs from previous studies on lexical processing in that it places experimental work in the context of a theoretical model of lexical pragmatics. (shrink)

Categorisation models of metaphor interpretation are based on the premiss that categorisation statements and comparison statements are fundamentally different types of assertion. Against this assumption, we argue that the difference is merely a quantitative one: ‘x is a y’ unilaterally entails ‘x is like a y’, and therefore the latter is merely weaker than the former. Moreover, if ‘x is like a y’ licenses the inference that x is not a y, then that inference is a scalar implicature. We defend (...) these claims partly on theoretical grounds and partly on the basis of experimental evidence. A suite of experiments indicates both that ‘x is a y’ unilaterally entails that x is like a y, and that in several respects the non-y inference behaves exactly as one should expect from a scalar implicature. We discuss the implications of our view of categorisation and comparison statements for categorisation models of metaphor interpretation. (shrink)

Gricean pragmatics has often been criticised for being implausible from a psychological point of view. This line of criticism is never backed up by empirical evidence, but more importantly, it ignores the fact that Grice never meant to advance a processing theory, in the first place. Taking our lead from Marr, we distinguish between two levels of explanation: at the W-level, we are concerned with what agents do and why; at the H-level, we ask how agents do whatever it is (...) they do. Whereas pragmatics is pitched at the W-level, processing theories are at the H-level. This is not to say that pragmatics has no implications for psychology at all, but it is to say that its implications are less direct than is often supposed. (shrink)

As companies increasingly communicate CSR initiatives through social media, viral message propagation has become a crucial prerequisite for CSR success. Evidence from two experimental studies, one based on a national representative online sample, shows that social media peers’ endorsement of a CSR message in terms of number of shares, likes and positive replies contributes to an individual’s intention to share it on the social network and thereby participate in message propagation, and that this process can be explained by normative influences (...) exerted by the social media community through the activation of injunctive and descriptive norms, as well as social identity motives. Findings further confirmed that the norm-activating effects of social media endorsement are moderated by the empowering qualities of the CSR message, the sharing source of the message by affecting CSR credibility, and the recipient’s interdependent self-construal. Corporate communication managers are advised to achieve a high degree of initial social media endorsement of their CSR message, for recipients of the message to perceive social pressure motivating message sharing with their social media peers. (shrink)

Este artículo de revisión examina la importancia que tienen las comunidades microbianas que colonizan los ambien­tes y equipos de procesado de alimentos formando biopelículas o biofilms en la persistencia microbiana en la industria alimen­taria y consecuentemente, en la seguridad y la calidad de los alimentos. La atención se centra especialmente en biopelículas formadas por microorganismos no deseados, es decir, microor­ganismos alterantes y patógenos. Se presenta información so­bre la variabilidad intraespecífica en la formación, la ecología y la arquitectura de las biopelículas, (...) y los factores que influyen en su formación. Asimismo, se resume la información disponible sobre nuevos agentes o estrategias para el control de la forma­ción o eliminación de biopelículas. (shrink)

El confinamiento 2020 – 21 obligó a la humanidad a adaptarse al nuevo modo de vida y creación de nuevos escenarios con tecnologías que transformaron espacios físicos y tradicionales de enseñanza, abruptamente reemplazados por escenarios virtuales. Este estudio transversal, exploratorio y descriptivo, realizado aplicando formularios y entrevistas semiestructuradas a estudiantes y docentes de Diseño UCTemuco; recogió la percepción e implementación de la docencia a distancia realizada y evaluó el retorno presencial. Levantamos fortalezas, dificultades y oportunidades en esta nueva forma de (...) enseñanza que se nos desafía interpelándonos a raíz de aprendizajes adquiridos, emergentes metodologías, plataformas educativas y políticas de internacionalización institucionales. (shrink)

In his introductory textbook, Philosophy of natural science, Hempel presents, as an illustration and a starting point for an analysis of the processes of inventing and testing scientific theories, an account of the researches of Semmelweis the Hungarian physician who, in the middle of the xixth century, discovered the cause of puerperal fever and an effective method of prevention. The account does not involve anything that is factually untrue, but it is quite succinct, leaving out many important aspects of the (...) case. Our thesis is that, although those omissions are justified in view of the aims of the account, they are also convenient to Hempel, because they help to propagate an image of science which goes much beyond the processes of invention and test. It is an image which reflects the positivist conception of science, and thus, whatever the intentions of the author, contributes to the dissemination and strengthening of that conception, but which, at least in this case, does not correspond to reality. To demonstrate the thesis, we give an account of the parts of Semmelweis's story omitted by Hempel, and we show how they do not fit in with the positivist image of science. Along the way, we distinguish three types of critique of positivist historiography: the Kuhnian, the post-modern, and the engagé. In the conclusion, we present some considerations concerning the medical research of today. -/- . (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 218 Seiten: 91-117.

An experimental study was designed to analyze the effect of school-based training in self-regulation learning strategies on academic performance. Class-level variables were considered and the effects of the intervention were measured at the end of the intervention and 3 months later. A sample of 761 students from 3rd and 4th grades, from 14 schools, participated in the study. Data were analyzed using three-level analysis with within-student measurements at level 1, between-students within-classes at level 2, and between-classes at level 3. Data (...) showed a positive effect of the intervention on student performance, both at post-test and at follow-up considering the four school subjects together. However, the effect was significant just at follow-up when subjects were considered separately. Student performance was significantly related to the students’ variables and the context. Finally, students’ gender and level of reading comprehension, as well as the teacher’s gender, were found to moderate the effect of the intervention on students’ academic performance. Two conclusions were highlighted: first, data emphasize the importance of considering time while conducting intervention studies. Second, more teaching experience does not necessarily translate into improvements in the quality of students’ instruction. (shrink)

La reciente reelección de Cristina Fernández en la Argentina con una mayoría abrumadora y las ceremonias y memorial inaugurados en honor del ex- presidente Néstor Kirchner a poco más de un año de su muerte vuelven más necesaria la revisión del origen del kirchnerismo para comprender su relación con la política democrática y el populismo. Por suerte contamos con un buen libro para iniciar esta tarea. Me refiero a En el Nombre del Pueblo, un esfuerzo mancomunado de cinco jóvenes (...) investigadoras... (shrink)

The core of the problem discussed in this paper is the following: the Church-Turing Thesis states that Turing Machines formally explicate the intuitive concept of computability. The description of Turing Machines requires description of the notation used for the input and for the output. Providing a general definition of notations acceptable in the process of computations causes problems. This is because a notation, or an encoding suitable for a computation, has to be computable. Yet, using the concept of computation, in (...) a definition of a notation, which will be further used in a definition of the concept of computation yields an obvious vicious circle. The circularity of this definition causes trouble in distinguishing on the theoretical level, what is an acceptable notation from what is not an acceptable notation, or as it is usually referred to in the literature, “deviant encodings”. Deviant encodings appear explicitly in discussions about what is an adequate or correct conceptual analysis of the concept of computation. In this paper, I focus on philosophical examples where the phenomenon appears implicitly, in a “disguised” version. In particular, I present its use in the analysis of the concept of natural number. I also point at additional phenomena related to deviant encodings: conceptual fixed points and apparent “computability” of uncomputable functions. In parallel, I develop the idea that Carnapian explications provide a much more adequate framework for understanding the concept of computation, than the classical philosophical analysis. (shrink)

Our memories elicit, in us, both beliefs about what the external world was like in the past, and beliefs about what our own past experience of it was like in the past. What explains the power of memories to do that? I tackle this question by offering an account of the content of our memories. According to this account, our memories are ‘token-reflexives’, in that they represent their own causal origin. My main contention will be that our memories are able (...) to provide us with evidence for the two types of beliefs due to the self-referential nature of their content. First, I will put forward a series of thought-experiments intended to raise several intuitions about the veridicality of memories. Next, I will introduce the view that memories are token-reflexives, and I will motivate it by pointing out that the view accommodates the relevant intuitions. And, then, I will return to the two types of beliefs prompted by our memories, and argue that conceiving memories as token-reflexives allows us to explain why memory has the power to elicit the two types of beliefs in us. (shrink)

Memories are mental states with a number of interesting features. One of those features seems to be their having an intentional object. After all, we commonly say that memories are about things, and that a subject represents the world in a certain way by virtue of remembering something. It is unclear, however, what sorts of entities constitute the intentional objects of memory. In particular, it is not clear whether those are mind-independent entities in the world or whether they are mental (...) entities of some kind. The purpose of this chapter is to map the different positions on this issue, and to highlight the virtues and difficulties for each of the options. In Section 2, I will specify the question of what the intentional objects of memory are by clarifying the relevant notions of memory and intentional object. In Section 3, I will motivate the significance of identifying the intentional objects of memory by exploring the relations between, on the one hand, the intentionality of memory and, on the other hand, the phenomenology and the epistemology of memory. In Section 4, I will consider two natural candidates for being the intentional objects of memory, namely, worldly entities and mental entities, and I will raise some concerns for each of the two candidates. A promising alternative will emerge, in Section 5, as preserving the virtues of the two original candidates while avoiding their difficulties. The alternative will concern a certain combination of worldly and mental entities; a combination that involves both causal and truth-making relations. I will conclude by sketching how the alternative candidate can shed some light on the phenomenological and epistemological issues raised in the third section. (shrink)

This chapter provides an overview of how existential phenomenology has influenced qualitative research methods across a range of disciplines across the social, health, educational, and psychological sciences. It focuses specifically on how the concepts of “existential structures,” or “existentials”—such as selfhood, temporality, spatiality, affectivity, and embodiment—have been used in qualitative research. After providing a brief introduction to what qualitative research is and why philosophers should be interested in it, the chapter provides clear, straightforward examples of how qualitative researchers have used (...) existentials to analyze qualitative data and design qualitative studies. The chapter is intended to introduce philosophers to existential approaches to phenomenological qualitative research, with the aim of facilitating interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration. (shrink)

O nosso intuito é refletir sobre a noção de ética e cegueira aspetual na filosofia de Wittgenstein. Trata-se de abordar a ética, apresentada de forma tantas vezes fragmentada, a partir da “Conferência sobre ética” e das noções de cegueira aspetual e inexprimível, para além de se tomar em consideração tudo aquilo que Wittgenstein escreveu sobre ele próprio. É nesta relação entre ética, interpretação e biografia que se pode vislumbrar a perspetiva de Wittgenstein.

Claudia Blöser has recently proposed that Kant’s duty to be forgiving is grounded on the need to be relieved from the burden of our moral guilt, a need we have in virtue of our morally fallible nature, irrespectively of whether we have repented. I argue that Blöser's proposal does not fit well with certain central aspects of Kant’s views on moral guilt. For Kant, moral guilt is a complex phenomenon, that has both an intellectual and an affective aspect. I argue (...) that it is not even possible for us to fully overcome our intellectual guilt, and to the extent that it is possible to ameliorate our felt guilt, this is largely a matter of self-forgiveness. However, self-forgiveness is only appropriate when there is repentance for the wrongful action and rejection of its underlying immoral maxim by the wrongdoer as part of a project of moral transformation. I offer an alternative account of the human need for forgiveness, an account that makes forgiveness conditional on repentance. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to introduce a new concept of “pain-related bodily doubt,” which complements current concepts currently in use, such as pain-related fear, pain catastrophizing, and pain self-efficacy. This new concept, adapted from recent philosophical work on illness experience, has the potential to positively contribute to pain research and clinical practice by providing a vocabulary for clinicians and patients to discuss implicit or tacit dimensions of pain-related experiences.

The author investigates how to produce realistic and workable ethical codes or regulations in this rapidly developing field to address the immediate and realistic longer-term issues facing us. She spells out the key ethical debates concisely, exposing all sides of the arguments, and addresses how codes of ethics or other regulations might feasibly be developed, looking for pitfalls and opportunities, drawing on lessons learned in other fields, and explaining key points of professional ethics. The book provides a useful resource for (...) those aiming to address the ethical challenges of AI research in meaningful and practical ways. (shrink)

El artículo propone una contribución al debate contemporáneo sobre el futuro de la educación, enmarcado en las discusiones entre la escuela crítica de J. Habermas y el transhumanismo de S. Sorgner. Se somete a crítica, desde una perspectiva crítica y decolonial, los olvidos y omisiones de las condiciones materiales en las cuales se realizan las relaciones de enseñanza/aprendizaje. En términos metodológicos optamos por una hermenéutica crítica y democrática que nos permitió diseñar un cuadro propositivo de ‘Dimensiones de transformación’. Estas pueden (...) contribuir en la democratización y universalización de las educaciones futuras, a través de la definición de cuatro dimensiones claves: ‘Relaciones con la comunidad y la otredad’, ‘Saberes y sentires éticos y políticos’, ‘Inclusión de agentes invisibilizados’ y ‘Herramientas de transformación social’. (shrink)