Unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS, previously known as vegetative state) occurs after patients survive a severe brain injury. Patients suffering from UWS have lost awareness of themselves and of the external environment and do not retain any trace of their subjective experience. Current data demonstrate that neuronal functions subtending consciousness are not completely reset in UWS; however, they are reduced below the threshold required to experience consciousness. The critical factor that determines whether patients will recover consciousness is the distance of their (...) neuronal functions from this threshold level. Recovery of consciousness occurs through functional and/or structural changes in the brain, i.e., through neuronal plasticity. Although some of these changes may occur spontaneously, a growing body of evidence indicates that rehabilitative interventions can improve functional outcome by promoting adaptive functional and structural plasticity in the brain, especially if a comprehensive neurophysiological theory of consciousness is followed. In this review we will focus on the pathophysiological mechanisms involved in UWS and on the plastic changes operating on the recovery of consciousness. (shrink)

In this report, we describe the case of a patient who has remained in a comatose state for more than one year after a traumatic and hypoxic brain injury. This state, which we refer to as long-lasting coma (LLC), may be a disorder of consciousness with significantly different features from those of conventional coma, the vegetative state, or brain death. On the basis of clinical, neurophysiological and neuroimaging data, we hypothesize that a multilevel involvement of the ascending reticular activating system (...) is required in LLC. This description may be useful for the identification of other patients suffering from this severe disorder of consciousness, which raises important ethical issues. (shrink)

We use Padoa's principle of independence of primitive symbols in axiomatic systems in order to show that time is dispensable in continuum thermodynamics, according to the axiomatic formulation of Gurtin and Williams. We also show how to define time by means of the remaining primitive concepts of Gurtin and Williams system. Finally, we introduce thermodynamics without time as a primitive concept.

This paper tackles the issue of the diversity of déjà experiences. According to the standard view in the neuropsychological literature, they should all be defined by means of a psychological criterion, by which they are experiences triggered by a perceived item and consist of a conscious clash between a first-order feeling of familiarity about the item and a second-order evaluation that assesses the first-order feeling as erroneous. This paper dismisses the standard view and contends there are two types of déjà (...) experiences, labeled déjà vu and déjà vécu respectively. But it also takes issue with the rare proponents of a distinct déjà vécu type. Contrary to their achievement view, it argues that recollection is not involved in déjà vécu experiences as an actual mental state or a component thereof. In our ability view, déjà vécu involves the feeling that one could recollect past occurrences of a currently lived episode of experience. (shrink)

Recently, Bohr’s complementarity principle was assessed in setups involving delayed choices. These works argued in favor of a reformulation of the aforementioned principle so as to account for situations in which a quantum system would simultaneously behave as wave and particle. Here we defend a framework that, supported by well-known experimental results and consistent with the decoherence paradigm, allows us to interpret complementarity in terms of correlations between the system and an informer. Our proposal offers formal definition and operational interpretation (...) for the dual behavior in terms of both nonlocal resources and the couple work-information. Most importantly, our results provide a generalized information-based trade-off for the wave–particle duality and a causal interpretation for delayed-choice experiments. (shrink)

In previous decades, numerous involvements of adolescents in deviant behavior have been increasing, and previous researchers examined different variables that may influence these phenomena. This study was designed to look for the possible predictors of deviant behavior, as well as its association with family satisfaction and personality traits. The study was conducted on 1500 participants ages 12–19 years old from selected schools in Nueva Ecija. The researchers used the Deviant Behavior Variety Scale by Sanches et al.. It consists of 19 (...) items of a variety of deviant action such as thefts, drug and alcohol consumption, verbal and physical aggression, possession of weapons, vandalism, truancy, lies and defiance of authority, and selling drugs among adolescents. Out of 1500 samples, 1227 met the criteria for the deviant behavior scale. Descriptive and Inferential statistics such as Mean, sd, frequency, percentage, Regression analysis, Pearson-correlation, and Mann Whitney U test were used to analyze this study. The research found that there are differences in levels of deviant behavior among sexes. Results showed that female participants have higher tendency to engage in minor infractions of deviant acts, while males had a higher rate of participation in severe infractions of deviant acts. Moreover, there is a negative/inverse association between family satisfaction and deviant behavior. This implies that respondents who participate more in deviant behaviors are found to be less satisfied with their family life, while respondents who participate less in deviant behavior are more satisfied in their family life. Lastly, the current study found that personality trait-agreeableness is found to be the best predictor of deviant behavior among adolescents. (shrink)

The debate over the objects of episodic memory has for some time been stalled, with few alternatives to familiar forms of direct and indirect realism being advanced. This paper moves the debate forward by building on insights from the recent psychological literature on memory as a form of episodic hypothetical thought (or mental time travel) and the recent philosophical literature on relationalist and representationalist approaches to perception. The former suggests that an adequate account of the objects of episodic memory will (...) have to be a special case of an account of the objects of episodic hypothetical thought more generally. The latter suggests that an adequate account of the objects of episodic hypothetical thought will have to combine features of direct realism and representationalism. We develop a novel pragmatist-inspired account of the objects of episodic hypothetical thought that has the requisite features. (shrink)

The structure of natural languages is usually studied from three major different but interconnected points of view: syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. If we consider that the main purpose of natural languages is communication, we should consider another dimension for languages, which deals with the influence of internal states of communicating individuals on meanings. Such a dimension we refer to as internalism. Within this context, internalism cannot be confused with psycholinguistics, in the same way pragmatics cannot be confused with sociolinguistics. In (...) particular, we argue, language is tied to its systematic use. This view leads us to a non-realist perspective on linguistics. We analyze the role of natural languages into dialogues, by comparing our proposal to the dialogical approach to logic, which considers a dialogue as a game. Within our approach, there is no way to guarantee that two parties involved in a dialogue are playing the same game, due to unavoidable differences in their respective internal states. Another contribution of this paper is to argue that semantics plays a more fundamental role than syntax in the cognitive acquisition of languages. (shrink)

Initially identified as a key phosphoinositide that controls membrane trafficking at the Golgi complex, phosphatidylinositol‐4‐phosphate (PI4P) has emerged as a key molecule in the regulation of a diverse array of cellular functions. In this review we will discuss selected examples of the findings that in the last few years have significantly increased our awareness of the regulation and roles of PI4P in the Golgi complex and beyond. We will also highlight the role of PI4P in infection and cancer. We believe (...) that, with the increasing number of regulators and effectors of PI4P identified, the time is ripe for a more integrated approach of study. A first step in this direction is the delineation of PI4P‐centered molecular networks that we provide using data from low and high throughput studies in yeast and mammals. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between a prominent version of the relational view of memory and recent work on forms of unsuccessful remembering or memory errors. I argue that unsuccessful remembering poses an important challenge for the relational view. Unsuccessful remembering can be divided into two kinds: misremembering and confabulating. I discuss each of these cases in light of a recent relational account, according to which remembering is characterized by an experiential relation to past events, and I argue that experiential (...) relations do not adequately distinguish between remembering and unsuccessful remembering. This is because there are, on the one hand, cases of remembering that do not instantiate the relevant experiential relations, and, on the other hand, cases of confabulation and misremembering that do instantiate the relevant experiential relations. I conclude by suggesting that any successful relationalist attempt to explain remembering needs to come to grips with unsuccessful remembering. (shrink)

The work examines the influence of the relationship that football players have with significant others on their psychological wellbeing (PWB), adopting a psychosocial perspective. According to this perspective, PWB can be considered a basic condition for an effective talent development and holistic growth of young athletes. Current literature on talent development in sport has been analyzed to support the theoretical hypothesis of psychosocial perspective. Thus, it has been tested empirically through a Structural Equation Model. Analysis reveals a strong and positive (...) influence of some dimensions of the relationships with significant others on the psychological wellbeing, specifically team effort, coach closeness and parental learning climate. Following ANOVA shows that élite players perceive significantly better relationships than sub-élite and amateurs and have significantly higher levels of PWB. Those results provide a first evidence for the importance of relationships within and outside sport for an effective talent development, since they positively influence players’ PWB, that is higher in higher competitive level players. It emerges the necessity to further investigate different aspects of psychological wellbeing and to deepen the knowledge about the meaning of relationship in developmental athletes according to a psychosocial approach. (shrink)

‘Epistemic structural realism’ (ESR) insists that all that we know of the world is its structure, and that the ‘nature’ of the underlying elements remains hidden. With structure represented via Ramsey sentences, the question arises as to how ‘hidden natures’ might also be represented. If the Ramsey sentence describes a class of realisers for the relevant theory, one way of answering this question is through the notion of multiple realisability. We explore this answer in the context of the work of (...) Carnap, Hintikka and Lewis. Both Carnap and Hintikka offer clear structuralist perspectives which, crucially, accommodate the openness inherent in theory change. Unfortunately there is little purchase for a viable form of realism in either case. Lewis’s approach, on the other hand, offers more scope for realism but, as we shall see, concerns arise as to whether a relevant form of structuralism can be maintained. In particular his thesis of Ramseyan humility undermines certain conceptions of scientific laws that the structural realist might naturally cleave to. Our overall conclusion is that the representational device of Ramsey sentence plus multiple realisability can accommodate either the structuralist or realist aspects of ESR but has difficulties capturing both. (shrink)

This paper investigates the nature of emotional experience in relation to the senses, and it defends the thesis that emotional experience is partly non-sensory. In §1 I introduce my reader to the debate. I reconstruct a position I call ‘restrictivism’ and motivate it as part of a reductive approach to mind’s place in nature. Drawing on intuitive but insightful remarks on the nature of sensation from Plato, I map out the conditions under which the restrictivist thesis is both substantive and (...) plausible. I then present two arguments against it. The first argument, which I lay out in §2, draws on recent empirical results in emotion research to show that restrictivism cannot be reconciled with the possibility of knowledge of one’s own emotional state by acquaintance. The second argument, which I present in §3, individuates a claim on which most contemporary theories of emotional valence converge and uses it to demonstrate that restrictivism has a false implication: it must deny that valence is experientially felt. (shrink)

Naturaleza y clasificación de los derechos humanos - Un intento de definición - La libertad como hilo conductor para la clasificación de los derechos - Nuevas clases de derechos - Tradiciones políticas: liberalismo, socialismo y democracia - Tradición liberal y derechos humanos - La tradición socialista - La tradición demócrata. Modelos de fundamentación. El paradigma iusnaturalista - Utilitarismo y derechos humanos - El modelo kantiano - El historicismo.

In a recent paper, Conway and Kochen proposed what is now known as the “Free Will theorem” which, among other things, should prove the impossibility of combining GRW models with special relativity, i.e., of formulating relativistically invariant models of spontaneous wavefunction collapse. Since their argument basically amounts to a non-locality proof for any theory aiming at reproducing quantum correlations, and since it was clear since very a long time that any relativistic collapse model must be non-local in some way, we (...) discuss why the theorem of Conway and Kochen does not affect the program of formulating relativistic GRW models. (shrink)

Laspro et al. (2024) have articulated a number of important considerations in order for the first-in-human whole-eye transplant (WET) to be an ethically acceptable endeavor. These authors have clea...

A standard view in social science and philosophy is that a lie is a dishonest assertion: to lie is to assert something that you think is false in order to deceive your audience. We report four behavioral experiments designed to evaluate some aspects of this view. Participants read short scenarios and judged several features of interest, including whether an agent lied. We found evidence that ordinary lie attributions can be influenced by aspects of audience uptake, are based on judging that (...) the agent made an assertion (assertion attributions), and, at least in some contexts, are not based on attributions of deceptive intent. The finding on assertion attributions is predicted by the standard view, but the finding on intent attributions is not. These results help to further clarify the ordinary concept of lying and shed light on the psychological processes involved in ordinary lie attributions and related judgments. (shrink)