The celebrated Peruvian philosopher and disciple of Heidegger, Wagner de Reyner, in his most recent essay, presents us with the antecedents and causes of the western cultural crisis. The progressive movement of a society secularized by knowledge and dominated by formal and homogeneous rational..

En palabras del rector de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, coeditora de este libro, quien lea estas páginas podrá apreciar cómo Alberto Wagner de Reyna, alumno del filósofo alemán, nos aproxima a una renovada comprensión de los temas que cautivaron la reflexión de Heidegger, y nos invita a adentrarnos con él por esas "sendas del bosque" en las que el hombre que busca su autenticidad celebra la fiesta de la meditación serena.

The prominent, catholic, existentialist philosopher, Alberto Wagner de Reyma (Lima Peru, 1915) who was a privileged witness of the XX Century, focused on Spanish-America from the beginning of the XXI century to the present and the future of the West. His criticism of pan-Americanism, globalization, ..

In the relation between man and the creator, the search for sense and the significance of faith has been permanent. From our human nature we devolvein a logical reasoning, a dialectic and in skepticism. From what we suppose to be our spiritual nature, we question what transcends from theological fai..

Everybody knows nowadays that the degree of development is measured according to a certain number of criteria, of which the most important one, and initially the only one. was the Gross National Product (or G.N.P.) of each country, related to the number of inhabitants. The arbitrarily-settled line some twenty years ago between the rich and the poor or, as called at that time, the “underdeveloped”, was based at the level of 1000 U. S. dollars per capita. The expression was badly (...) accepted by those it described, because development confers a dignity which cannot be refused to anybody. That is why the following euphemism appeared: “developing countries”, as promising as it is little compromising. Later on, this exclusively economical criterion was moderated by several additives, linked to social structure, to the rate of elimination of illiteracy, and even to cultural factors. (shrink)

Research has shown repeatedly that attention influences implicit learning effects. In a similar vein, interoceptive awareness might be involved in unaware fear conditioning: The fact that the CS is repeatedly presented in the context of aversive bodily experiences might facilitate the development of conditioned responding. We investigated the role of interoceptive attention in a subliminal conditioning paradigm. Conditioning was embedded in a spatial cueing task with subliminally presented cues that were followed by a masking stimulus. Response times to the targets (...) that were either validly or invalidly predicted by the cues served as index of conditioning. Interoceptive attention was manipulated between-subjects. Half the participants completed a heartbeat detection task before conditioning. This task tunes attention to one’s own bodily signals. We found that conditioned responding was facilitated in this latter group of participants. These results are in line with the hypothesis that a rise interoceptive attention enhances unaware conditioned responding. (shrink)

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is presented and understood as the primary reference point regarding questions of children’s rights. However, the UNCRC is not a neutral instrument deployed to meet the rights of children: it embodies a specific perception of the child, childhood and citizenship. The interpretation of the UNCRC from the point of view of children’s legal status emphasises the autonomy of children; the focus is on the rights that children possess. Conversely, the (...) social-political interpretation of the UNCRC addresses the question of how the rights of children can be realised. It is suggested that distinguishing between these interpretations is essential with regard to questions of pedagogy and education. (shrink)

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is presented and understood as the primary reference point regarding questions of children’s rights. However, the UNCRC is not a neutral instrument deployed to meet the rights of children: it embodies a specific perception of the child, childhood and citizenship. The interpretation of the UNCRC from the point of view of children’s legal status emphasises the autonomy of children; the focus is on the rights that children possess. Conversely, the (...) social-political interpretation of the UNCRC addresses the question of how the rights of children can be realised. It is suggested that distinguishing between these interpretations is essential with regard to questions of pedagogy and education. (shrink)

Depression has been linked with impaired executive control and specific impairments in inhibition of negative material. To date, only a few studies have examined the relationship between depressive symptoms and executive functions in response to emotional information. Using a new paradigm, the Affective Shift Task (AST), the present study examined whether depressive symptoms in general, and rumination specifically, are related to impairments in inhibition and set shifting in response to emotional and non-emotional material. The main finding was that depressive symptoms (...) in general were not related to inhibition. Set-shifting impairments were only observed in moderate to severely depressed individuals. Interestingly, rumination was related to inhibition impairments, specifically when processing negative information, as well as impaired set shifting as reflected in a larger shift cost. These results are discussed in relation to cognitive views on vulnerability for depression. (shrink)

Taking regular walks when living with Parkinson’s disease has beneficial effects on movement and quality of life. Yet, patients usually show reduced physical activity compared to healthy older adults. Using auditory stimulation such as music can facilitate walking but patients vary significantly in their response. An individualized approach adapting musical tempo to patients’ gait cadence, and capitalizing on these individual differences, is likely to provide a rewarding experience, increasing motivation for walk-in PD. We aim to evaluate the observance, safety, tolerance, (...) usability, and enjoyment of a new smartphone application. It was coupled with wearable sensors and delivered individualized musical stimulation for gait auto-rehabilitation at home. Forty-five patients with PD underwent a 1-month, outdoor, uncontrolled gait rehabilitation program, using the BeatWalk application. The music tempo was being aligned in real-time to patients’ gait cadence in a way that could foster an increase up to +10% of their spontaneous cadence. Open-label evaluation was based on BeatWalk use measures, questionnaires, and a six-minute walk test. Patients used the application 78.8% of the prescribed duration and enjoyed it throughout the program. The application was considered “easy to use” by 75% of the patients. Pain, fatigue, and falls did not increase. Fear of falling decreased and quality of life improved. After the program, patients improved their gait parameters in the six-minute walk test without musical stimulation. BeatWalk is an easy to use, safe, and enjoyable musical application for individualized gait rehabilitation in PD. It increases “walk for exercise” duration thanks to high observance.Clinical Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02647242. (shrink)

Although affective facial pictures are widely used in emotion research, standardised affective stimuli sets are rather scarce, and the existing sets have several limitations. We therefore conducted a validation study of 490 pictures of human facial expressions from the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces database (KDEF). Pictures were evaluated on emotional content and were rated on an intensity and arousal scale. Results indicate that the database contains a valid set of affective facial pictures. Hit rates, intensity, and arousal of the 20 (...) best KDEF pictures for each basic emotion are provided in an appendix. (shrink)

This article responds to Dominelli’s contribution by mapping three lines of discussion. The first relates to the issue of how to understand voluntary work with regard to the realization of citizenship. The authors argue that this understanding depends on the way citizenship is conceived. Whereas a rights-based conception of citizenship focuses on issues of equal access to voluntary work, a duty-oriented notion of citizenship tends to see voluntarism as embedded in an educational strategy, alongside professionalized social work. The authors plead (...) for an alternative understanding of voluntary work and social work as joined partners in practices of ‘learning democracy’. The second line of discussion revolves around the relation between social and political dimensions of citizenship. With Dominelli, the authors point out how the obscuring of the political dimension risks to nurture societal discourses that put pressure on the welfare state. The third point relates to the difficulties in positioning voluntary work with regard to professional social work. One of these difficulties is the tendency to over-romanticize voluntary work as warm, informal, generous, while giving an exclusively technical reading of social work professionalization. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe massive influx of refugees into Europe in the past few years has given rise to different kinds of challenges among which is the challenge to successfully communicate with newly arrived immigrants. In this article, we will focus on the public service provision sector where quality of service is to a large extent determined by the capability of a service provider and his or her “client” to understand one another. The article centres on a study involving public organisations providing asylum (...) services or healthcare services in the multilingual and multicultural city of Brussels. Several interviews were conducted to gain insight into the communication problems such organisations face, as well as their communication requirements and solutions when providing services to people of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. We will focus on the types of bridging functions commonly deployed by these organisations in multilingual service encounters and on the motivations for using them. In a... (shrink)

En el presente trabajo se analizan las tensiones surgidas a partir de la pregunta ¿América Latina desde Marx o Marx desde América Latina? Para hacerlo se utilizan los conceptos de escritura idealista y escritura materialista, que identifican dos de las opciones más importantes en la producción teórica marxista. La primera se asocia a la perspectiva que concibe una forma universal de la historia, ligada a ciertos textos de Karl Marx y Friedrich Engels, continuada por la socialdemocracia alemana y cuyo punto (...) máximo es la filosofía de Georg Lukács. Del otro lado están las perspectivas abiertas por el mismo Marx en ciertos segmentos de El capital y en sus cartas a Vera Zasúlich. Así mismo, se retoman algunas de las implicaciones de esta última opción en las tradiciones latinoamericanas. Particularmente se señala la importancia de la obra de Álvaro García Linera. (shrink)

En este artículo se analiza la recepción del texto de Max Horkheimer Estado autoritario, desde la perspectiva de dos filósofos latinoamericanos de gran importancia: el ecuatoriano-mexicano Bolívar Echeverría y el colombiano Rubén Jaramillo Vélez. Ubicados en contextos distintos (México y Colombia), aunque en una temporalidad similar —la década de 1980—, ambos autores procedieron a traducir y propiciar la publicación del texto, al tiempo que aventuraron interpretaciones antípodas la una de la otra. Se transita un breve recorrido en la manera de (...) tratar esta obra en las grandes biografías colectivas sobre la “Teoría crítica de la sociedad” y, posteriormente, se comparan los planteamientos de ambos filósofos. La intención es dar cuenta de un momento en la recepción de dicha obra como parte de la construcción de una geografía de la Teoría crítica desde las Américas. (shrink)

Resumen En este artículo expongo los aspectos principales del debate suscitado por la aparición del libro de Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez Ciencia y revolución: el marxismo de Althusser. Presentaré primero la crítica del filósofo hispanomexicano a la obra de Louis Althusser y después explicaré la contracrítica del también filósofo Enrique González Rojo que aparece en su libro Epistemología y socialismo. Por último, ofrezco una interpretación de ambos momentos que las concibe como partes de un capítulo significativo de la historia de la (...) filosofía en México.In this article I present the main points of a debate raised by the book Science and Revolution: The Marxism of Althusser by Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez. I begin by addressing the criticism of the Spanish-Mexican philosopher towards the work of Louis Althusser and then I explain the counter-criticism to this approach set forth by -the also philosopher- Enrique González Rojo in his book Epistemology and Socialism. Finally, I offer an interpretation in which both moments in the debate are conceived as a significant chapter in the history of philosophy in Mexico. (shrink)

Mindwandering is associated with both positive and negative outcomes. Among the latter, negative mood and negative cognitions have been reported. However, the underlying mechanisms linking mindwandering to negative mood and cognition are still unclear. We hypothesized that MW could either directly enhance negative thinking or indirectly heighten the accessibility of negative thoughts. In an undergraduate sample we measured emotional thoughts during the Sustained Attention on Response Task which induces MW, and accessibility of negative cognitions by means of the Scrambled Sentences (...) Task after the task. We also measured depressive symptoms and rumination. Results show that in individuals with elevated levels of depressive symptoms MW during SART predicts higher accessibility of negative thoughts after the task, rather than negative thinking during the task. These findings contribute to our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of MW and provide insight into the relationship between task-involvement and affect. (shrink)