In Mexico, there is little research on the study of self-injury and even less on possible explanatory models. With this in mind, this study aimed to determine the relationship between self-injury and depression, emotional dysregulation, and coping styles, to generate an explanatory model of the problem. The study was carried out using a quantitative, cross-sectional, explanatory scope, design and a sample of 5835 adolescents enrolled in 62 public high schools in the state of Sonora. Logistic regressions were performed for data (...) analysis, and as a result it was found that, for students with severe self-injury, the model explains 61 % of the variance in the data and correctly classifies 84.1 % of the participants; whereas, in mild self-injury, the model explains 72 % of the variance in the data and correctly classifies 88.2 % of the students. Likewise, the depression dimensions showed the highest explanatory level and positive correlations with emotional dysregulation and avoidance coping style, as well as negative correlations with approach coping style. At the end, the importance of the independent variables for future research is discussed, as well as anomalous results and other data of interest. (shrink)

El objetivo fue analizar la adquisición de vocabulario en idioma inglés de estudiantes de bachillerato a partir de la implementación de actividades de resolución de problemas. Se empleó un diseño cuasiexperimental de pre y post test, con grupo experimental y control. Los resultados sugieren que las actividades de resolución de problemas son estrategias didácticas efectivas para la enseñanza del inglés.

Secular culture often advocates for the liberation of human libido and views Christian morality as a source of damaging restrictions. However, closer examination of Church teaching reveals a depth of understanding of human nature not found in contemporary secular culture. One Church father in particular, St. Augustine, offers a keen understanding of human sexuality and its importance not only as a means of promulgating the human race but also as a means of fostering the sort of spousal unity that improves (...) life in general. Studies of neurochemistry seem to confirm much of what Augustine claimed about human sexuality over fifteen hundred years ago. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to know the role of learning tasks within the pedagogical content knowledge of novel sports coaches in initial stages of sports training of children/young people and their impact on their daily work. Participants are two coaches in their first or second working year. A mixed methodology was used by means of polar coordinates analysis. The results agree with previous studies that established that PCK of novel coaches presents deficits in task selection and modification, motivation (...) is the key factor determining tasks selection process, and they do not know how much time they should dedicate to each task. Even so, better development was found in the PCK of the coaches. (shrink)

El presente artículo quiere acercarse al misterio del mal en la obra de S. Kierkegaard. Tomando como punto de partida la obra lanzada al mundo en vida del autor, tanto la pseudónima como la firmada por él mismo, este texto aborda el misterio del mal y su relación con el Amor de Dios, misterio central del citado pensador. Aquí se pone en valor la importancia de acercarse al misterio de la iniquidad también desde los discursos edificantes así como en Las (...) obras del amor. Al hacer esto aportamos una aproximación diferente al misterio del mal en la recepción kierkegaardiana y se pone de relevancia el amor como la manera de abordar el mal sin hacernos cómplices del mismo. Esto se hace posible, entre otros elementos, porque Dios y el que ama, mutatis mutandis, no ven lo malo del mal. (shrink)

This manuscript shows Kierkegaard's idea of paganism. We use the complete author´s work published during his life, including the one written under a pseudonym. In our analysis we discover that Kierkegaard used the term paganism in three different ways: The paganism of the one who lives in the world without God, the Christian paganism, and the paganism of Socrates. By showing the richness of Kierkegaard's approach to paganism we determine that this idea is not defined by its adherence to one (...) particular religion or moment in history. Rather, it refers to the way of living one's existence and relationship with God. Therefore, the idea of paganism is not necessarily something negative for a 19th century Lutheran Christian. To the point that Kierkegaard says that what Denmark really needs, and this could be extended to Europe today, is a new Socrates. (shrink)

Resumen: El objeto de estudio es mostrar la relevancia de la paciencia en el pensamiento kierkegaardiano. Abordaremos, en primer lugar, los textos fundamentales donde Kierkegaard la analiza. Mostraremos seguidamente la idea que tiene sobre la paciencia el paradigma clásico de San Agustín y Santo Tomás para valorar la peculiaridad del pensamiento de Kierkegaard. Explicaremos, en tercer lugar, las características de la paciencia en relación con el tiempo, el bien, el sufrimiento, la libertad y Dios en el pensador danés. Esto nos (...) permitirá valorar su aporte y la actualidad del tema.: The purpose of the study is to show the relevance of patience in kierkegaardian thought. First of all, we will deal with the fundamental texts where Kierkegaard analyses it. We will then show the idea that the classical paradigm of St. Augustine and St. Thomas has about patience in order to assess the peculiarity of Kierkegaard's thought. Thirdly, we will explain the characteristics of patience in relation to time, good, suffering, freedom and God in the Danish thinker. This will enable us to assess his contribution and the topicality of the subject. (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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

En este trabajo examino el memoir Ilegal: Reflexiones de un inmigrante indocumentado (2019), de José Ángel Navejas. A raíz de una lectura de este texto, exploro las formas en que el narrador describe cómo los inmigrantes mexicanos indocumentados crean espacios de alianza y pertenencia en Estados Unidos. Para eso, parto del concepto de ‘ciudadanía casera’ de Mitchell (2020), quien apunta a que el ‘pertenecer’ no depende de la inclusión cívica o el reconocimiento estatal, sino que es una noción que se (...) construye por medio de las prácticas comunitarias informales. Por ende, sugiero que en Ilegal son espacios de ‘ciudadanía casera’ para el narrador: 1) el lenguaje y el acceso a la educación formal; 2) el barrio de Pilsen, en Chicago; y 3) la red familiar, ya que por medio de esas esferas el narrador encuentra un sentido de pertenencia. Palabras clave: literatura mexicana, ensayo personal, memoir, ciudadanía casera, ciudadanía cultural. (shrink)

As its Latin title says, this article inquires whether there is a single correct list of the moral virtues. Virtue ethics tells us to “act in accordance with the virtues” but can often be accused, for example in Aristotle's Ethics, of helping itself without argument to an account of what the virtues are. This paper is, stylistically, an affectionate tribute to the Angelic Doctor, and it works with a correspondingly Thomistic background and approach. It argues for the view that there (...) is at least one correct list of the virtues, and that we can itemise at least seven items in the list, namely, the four cardinal and the three theological virtues. (shrink)

This paper discusses the discourse contrasts that arise in connection to direct evidentiality in Southern Aymara (henceforth, Aymara), an understudied Andean language. Aymara has two direct evidentials, the enclitic _=wa_ and the covert morpheme _-_∅, which are used whenever the speaker has the best possible grounds for some proposition. I make the novel observation that a sentence with _=wa_ can be felicitously uttered if the speaker attempts to update the common ground by addressing an issue on the table. In fact, (...) the sentence with _=wa_ that is uttered must be congruent with prior discourse; I tie this to the claim that _=wa_ is a (presentational) focus marker (Proulx in Language Sciences 9(1):91–102, 1987 ). This paper thus claims that _=wa_ is a marker that combines evidentiality and focus. In contrast, uttering a sentence with _-_∅ entails that the speaker’s contribution is already in the common ground, which likens this evidential to common ground management operators—there is no congruence requirement in this case. I identify which construction can be used in different discourse settings (conversation openers and telling anecdotes). I implement a formal analysis based on Farkas and Bruce (Journal of Semantics 27:81–118, 2010 ) and Faller (Semantics and Pragmatics 12(8):1–53, 2019 ) that links evidentiality and discourse. (shrink)

Individuals and businesses make numerous payments every day. They sometimes have choices about what forms of payment to make or accept, and at other times are effectively forced to use a particular form. Often there is an asymmetric power relationship between payer and payee that raises the issue of whether one side unfairly exploits the other. Is it unethical exploitation for an employer to pay employees with a fee-laden payroll card over other more convenient forms of payment? Does the fee (...) structure of payment networks such as Visa and MasterCard unfairly exploit merchants? The bitcoin payment system is an ethical as well as technological evolution as it was designed to be an electronic payment system that does not rely upon trust. Can an entire payment system like bitcoin be “evil,” as charged by Krugman? Payment tools as such are ethically neutral, but can be used in an ethical or unethical manner. (shrink)

El análisis que se desarrolla en este artículo, está dirigido a desconstruir el modelo de episteme de la racionalidadmoderna, que tiene por pretensión la reconstrucción objetiva de la realidad y su validez universal y absoluta para cualquier contexto cognitivo. Se propone una alternativa a este tipo..

In this paper we show that, in Gentzen systems, there is a close relation between two of the main characters in algebraic logic and proof theory respectively: protoalgebraicity and the cut rule. We give certain conditions under which a Gentzen system is protoalgebraic if and only if it possesses the cut rule. To obtain this equivalence, we limit our discussion to what we call regular sequent calculi, which are those comprising some of the structural rules and some logical rules, in (...) a sense we make precise. We note that this restricted set of rules includes all the usual rules in the literature. We also stress the difference between the case of two-sided sequents and the case of many-sided sequents, in which more conditions are needed. (shrink)

Si Michel Henry ha reclamado para su filosofía el título de “fenomenología material”, ello se debe a un intento por desentrañar la “substancia fenomenológica invisible” del aparecer en tanto la inmediación patética en la cual la vida se experimenta a sí misma. Si dicho auto-aparecer de la vida consiste en la “unidad no tautológica” del “sufrir” en tanto la pasividad originaria a sí mismo y el “gozo” en tanto la efectuación en la que el sentirse se lleva a cabo, proponemos (...) reinterpretar dicha unidad a partir de una “estructura antinómica”. Así, si el sufrimiento designa la excedencia de la pasividad originaria en tanto “imposibilidad”, el gozo debe ser entendido en tanto la excedencia de una “transpasibilidad”. Dicho sobrepasamiento tiene como consecuencia el que la “hiper-potencia” se traduzca en una “hiper-contingencia” en un doble sentido. Por un lado, como la contingencia de todo pretendido “estar-en-posesión-de-sí”, incluido el del fenomenólogo mismo, es decir, como la “transgresión” de su propia arquitectónica. Por otro lado, si dicha contingencia aspira a sobrepasar todo “monismo ontológico”, entonces solo puede tener lugar en tanto “con-tagio”, es decir, en tanto una sobreabundancia de “con-tactos”. (shrink)

Low‐back pain can be invalidating physically as well as mentally. Despite professional help to treat and prevent low‐back pain, the pain often persists, and so do the problems related to low‐back pain. An intervention that made it possible for a significant part of patients with low‐back pain to improve health and well‐being raised the question: Why was it possible to help some and not others? The aim of the present paper was to achieve a deeper understanding of factors patients experienced (...) as helpful in professional support related to low‐back pain. This was explored using a hermeneutic‐phenomenological approach while analysing 20 interviews with patients with low‐back pain purposively chosen interviews conducted in relation to the intervention. An analysis was made using Ricoeur's interpretation theory. Data on both positive and negative experiences were read and reflected upon. We found that healthcare professionals’ adoption of a narrative approach facilitating the patient's perspective was perceived as helpful. Patients experienced this as being taken seriously; an experience that could be explained at a deeper, more nuanced level using Heidegger's philosophy. Facilitating the patient's perspective was conditional not only on the professional obtaining access to the patient's perspective but also on understanding and acknowledging the patient's existence. The challenge for healthcare professionals in this respect is to bridge the gap between the consultation's fact‐focused concern with the medical implications of low‐back pain and the patient's concern with the implications low‐back pain has for his or her personal identity and life. Listening to the patient's perspective in itself supports the subjective recovery process, while also supporting the quality of patient‐centred support and strengthening the patient's trust in its helpfulness. (shrink)

This article reviews the research of “top rebirth scientist” Ian Stevenson on spontaneous past-life memory cases, focusing on three key problems with Stevenson’s work. First, his research of entirely anecdotal case reports contains a number of errors and omissions. Second, like other reincarnation researchers, Stevenson has done no controlled experimental work on such cases; yet only such research could ever resolve whether the correspondences found between a child’s statements and a deceased person’s life exceed what we might find by chance. (...) Finally, the best reincarnation research should at least meet the standards met by typical empirical research, but Stevenson’s methodology does not even meet the standards expected of third- or fourth-year college students. -/- 1. How Controlled Experimental Work is Possible -- 2. The Anecdotal Record - 2.1 Reincarnation and Biology - 2.2 The Imad Elawar Case -- 3. Conclusion. (shrink)

Recently there has been an outpouring of consumer frustration over rising food and energy prices. Many politicians railed against “speculators” who allegedly drove up the prices of key necessities. Is speculation unethical? This article reviews the traditional arguments against speculation. Many of the standard criticisms confuse speculation with gambling. In much the same way as ethicists now draw distinctions between usury and normal business interest, we draw a distinction between socially useful speculation and gambling. Gambling involves taking on risk with (...) no plausible expectation of making a profit. Gambling may provide entertainment value to some people, but like other addictive activities causes grave harm to a subset of users. Speculation involves taking on a business risk with a plausible expectation that a profit will result. Speculators provide an important risk bearing service by taking on risks that others do not want. They help markets to function better by helping to incorporate information into prices as well as providing liquidity. Speculators may actually reduce shortages by causing quicker price increases that motivate producers to increase production and consumers to conserve. But even socially useful speculation may have an ethical dark side. Does such speculation cause damage by adding excess volatility to prices? Speculators may contribute to price bubbles. At what point does legitimate speculation become odious “price gouging?” We also draw an ethical distinction between speculation, which seeks to benefit from changing prices, and manipulation, actions taken to push prices away from their economically appropriate levels. (shrink)

La terminología más exacta para hablar de los derechos del hombre, es la de ser «fundamentales», porque afectan a las dimensiones más básicas del ser humano y,por ello mismo, tienen que ser protegidos y garantizados por los poderes públicos. Se trata de derechos públicos subjetivos que son universales, imprescriptibles, irrenunciables e inalienables. Tienen límites filosóficos, de naturaleza sociológica o por razón de su finalidad. Poseen un fundamento iusnaturalista y no meramente positivista. Las primeras declaraciones de derechos fundamentales universales no aparecen (...) hasta finales del siglo XVIII, con carácter de individuales y personales, para, después, incorporar también derechos sociales, económicos, culturales y a los actuales de protección del medio ambiente, minusválidos, etc. Es lo propio del actual Estado social y democrático de derecho. (shrink)

A model of Zeno's dichotomy paradox is presented in Newtonian collision mechanics. One of several resolutions of the paradox illustrates the point that even in Newtonian ontology there is a spacetime weave. In a Newtonian system in which the base rules permit only spatial contact interactions, we find the mechanical emergence of action-at-a-distance effects.

La presente ponencia se origina a partir de la siguiente pregunta: ¿«raza» (Rasse) y «sexo» (Geschlecht) son conceptos bajo los cuales es posible hallar una filosofía latente del cuerpo en Heidegger? En cuanto concierne al concepto de «raza», es patente el carácter ambiguo de dicha pregunta, si se toma en consideración la recepción que han tenido los Cuadernos negros, a saber, como el material a partir del cual cabría determinar hasta qué punto el antisemitismo «contaminaría» la filosofía de Heidegger. Y (...) ello porque la aproximación heideggeriana al concepto de lo «racial» (rassisch) consistirá precisamente en rechazar toda comprensión naturalista o biológica para transponerla de manera digamos «ontológica» en el concepto de lo «de buena casta» (rassig), el cual está fundamentado en el «ser-arrojado» (Geworfenheit) como constituyente del «pueblo» (Volk) en su carácter historial. Por otro lado, es de común acuerdo el carácter problemático tanto de la corporalidad como de la espacialidad en la ontología heideggeriana, en tanto parece otorgárseles un lugar meramente «óntico» que debe ser reconducido asimismo de manera ontológica al «corporar» (leiben) codeterminante del «ser-en-el-mundo». Dicha aproximación a la corporalidad, por ejemplo, en los Seminarios de Zollikon, que consiste en calificarla de «condición necesaria pero no suficiente», es la misma que caracteriza su posición crítica con respecto a la «raza», la cual consistiría en el gesto impropio de elevar «una condición al estatuto de lo incondicionado». Dicho gesto mostrará su aporía en tanto debe al mismo tiempo expulsar fuera de sí un «resto»: en el caso de la raza, un pueblo que rehúsa su carácter de «pueblo». Finalmente, se abordará un intento de pensar la «raza» en su materialidad a través del concepto de «mestizaje». (shrink)

Como afirma Roland Vaschalde en Suivant Michel Henry (2022), el título se sirve de la expresión «siguiendo a» (suivant) tanto con el sentido de «según» como con el de «como se sigue de», con lo cual no pretende «repetir» a Henry, sino asimismo prolongar los horizontes de la fenomenología de la praxis viviente. Si, de acuerdo con la tópica henriana, dicho «seguir» en tanto uno de los haceres propios a mi «yo puedo» se funda en una «persecución», es decir, en (...) un «sufrirse» ya sea en la imposibilidad de apropiarse del otro, ya sea en tanto sentirse «perseguido», es decir, hallarse bajo la dominación del otro en la imposibilidad de liberarse del peso de mi propio yo, el cual a su vez se «goza» en el olvido de dicha imposibilidad en la ilusión trascendental de su «consecución» en tanto la coincidencia de mi yo con la vida, lo que queda por pensar es la posibilidad del «proseguir» en tanto la transformación de la propia topología. Y es dicho «proseguir» el cual impulsará nuestra lectura a través de las figuras de lo onírico, de lo poscolonial, de la psicopatología, del judaísmo y de la cartografía del cuerpo, en tanto lo «imperseguible» de la fenomenología henriana. (shrink)

El presente texto constituye, por un lado, una continuación de una aproximación materialista al concepto de “raza” a partir de los Cuadernos negros de Heidegger, la cual nos llevó, luego de reconocer su carácter análogo a la “corporalidad”, a pensarla no como una determinación naturalista o biológica, sino como la posibilidad de un “mestizaje ontológico”. Por otro lado, “sexo”, “estirpe” y “estilo” hacen alusión a la polisemia del concepto de “Geschlecht” como una figura de lo que hemos llamado la ambigüedad (...) fenomenológica del eros en términos de una “prohibición y transgresión arquitectónicas”. Ello se traducirá, por un lado, en la prioridad del “estilo” como reunión del decir poético en lo impronunciado del poema, y no, como propondremos, en la “excripción” de una “transposición metonímica”, y, por otro lado, en el silenciamiento por Heidegger de la figura del “incesto” en la poesía de Trakl. (shrink)

¿Cómo hacer un resumen de un escrito que problematiza el propio concepto de «sumilla»? En primer lugar, señalamos el carácter problemático de la sumilla, entendida como la pretensión de traer a presencia la ponencia y al mismo tiempo de postergarla. En segundo lugar, mostramos cómo en el proceder dialógico platónico acontece dicho carácter problemático de la presencia (eîdos) en términos del continuado fracaso respecto de todo intento de fijación del ser del ente, es decir, de su constante postergación. Más aún, (...) afirmamos que la pretensión meta-dialógica del diálogo platónico, es decir, de dar cuenta de aquello que en el diálogo mismo acontece, tiene lugar en términos de una toma de distancia respecto de su propio carácter escrito. En tercer lugar, escenificamos dicho carácter meta-dialógico mediante un tramo del Parménides, en el cual dicha toma de distancia asume la forma de la historia del robo del escrito de Zenón, lo cual quiere expresar que el eîdos no tiene lugar sino en su propio ausentarse. Y es que, en efecto, esto no habrá sido sino un resumen si remitimos al resumere latino, es decir, al re-asumir, a su vez reasunción del analambánein griego. Es precisamente dicho analambánein el que Platón liga con la anámnesis, es decir, con la reminiscencia, la cual a su vez remite a una ausencia constituyente. (shrink)

From the development of Literature Theory wich based on the analogy with Architecture the author analyze the relationships between Cervantes and Vargas Llosa works. Research on Cervantes reception in Latin America it is a work to keep doing. In Peru Vargas Llosa has received Cervantes works in a peculiar way. This paper tries to clarify what are the structural relations between these two literary architecture.

ABSTRACT In this paper we study consequence relations on the set of many sided sequents over a propositional language. We deal with the consequence relations axiomatized by the sequent calculi defined in [2] and associated with arbitrary finite algebras. These consequence relations are examples of what we call Gentzen systems. We define a semantics for these systems and prove a Strong Completeness Theorem, which is an extension of the Completeness Theorem for provable sequents stated in [2]. For the special case (...) of the finite linear MV-algebras, the Strong Completeness Theorem was proved in [10], as a consequence of McNaughton's Theorem. The main tool to prove this result for arbitrary algebras is the deduction-detachment theorem for Gentzen systems. (shrink)

The term theodicy was coined by the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) and is inherent in the question of how evil can exist if an intrinsically good God guides everything. The publication of this oeuvre initiated intense philosophical and theological discourse in the subsequent centuries, during which many issues that bare upon human well-being were articulated. Also, Leibniz’s rational approach to the relationship between God and evil raised a number of issues related to the topic of belief. This topic has (...) entangled discourses on theodicy with a long-lasting debate on beliefs, which goes back to Antiquity. Recently, a paradigm-shift shed new light on the understanding of belief. Science has begun to address the neurophysiological mechanisms of the processes that underpin belief formation, modulation, and change. The term credition was coined in order to capture and reflect this new and innovative understanding of the fluidity of beliefs and believing. This paper presents various features of a pattern of interrelationships between well-being, theodicy, and credition. (shrink)

Robots should be able to represent emotional states to interact with people as social agents. There are cases where robots cannot have bio-inspired bodies, for instance because the task to be performed requires a special shape, as in the case of home cleaners, package carriers, and many others. In these cases, emotional states have to be represented by exploiting movements of the body. In this paper, we present a set of case studies aimed at identifying specific values to convey emotion (...) trough changes in linear and angular velocities, which might be applied on different non-anthropomorphic bodies. This work originates from some of the most considered emotion expression theories and from emotion coding for people. We show that people can recognize some emotional expressions better than others, and we propose some directions to express emotions exploiting only bio-neutral movement. (shrink)

can prevent non-contact interactions in Newtonian collision mechanics. The proposal is weakened by the apparent arbitrariness of what will be shown as the requirement of only an odd number of sets of some ex nihilo-created self-exciting particles. There is, however, an initial condition such that, without the ex nihilo self-exciting particles, either there is a contradictory outcome, or there is a non-contact configuration law, or there are odds versus evens indeterminacies. With the various odds versus evens arbitrarinesses and other such (...) difficulties, there seems to be an ontological unsatisfactoriness in the speed-unbounded Newtonian collision system. Introduction Taking self-excitations very seriously A problematic initial condition Another alternative. (shrink)

This paper examines the ethics of contemporary managerial compensation in the context of executive stock options. Economic considerations would dictate that executive stock options should be adjusted to eliminate the effect of overall stock market movements which are beyond the control of the executive. However, in practice, most executive stock options are not adjusted to control for these outside factors. Agency considerations are the most likely culprit. Adjusting for the influence of outside factors, such as a generally rising stock market, (...) from executive stock options sets a higher bar for managers to reach. Furthermore, traditional accounting standards permitted firms that did not adjust options to avoid reporting options as expenses. This presents CEOs and boards of directors with a major ethical dilemma. On the one hand, their duty to their shareholders and stakeholders dictates that executive stock options should be adjusted to eliminate outside noise from unrelated movements in the overall stock market. However, financial statements are presented in the language of accounting. If the overwhelming majority of the users of a language define a particular item in one way, then to deviate from the norm implies that the recipient of such a deviant statement may not properly interpret the statement. Likewise, if the standard practice is for firms to use unadjusted options and thus under-report expenses, to deviate from this industry norm risks that users of financial statements would not properly interpret the financial statements, with perhaps negative consequences for the shareholders. In short, if "everyone else does it," then it could be wrong for an individual firm to deviate from the norm as that would harm the shareholders. (shrink)

The article attempts to provide an explanation of Nicholas of Cusa's assertion regarding the actual infinity as being the unity in which image is true.

This paper suggests that an ontologically reductionist view of nature which also accepts the completeness of causality at the level of physics can support (1) the blissful transfiguration of the moral, (2) mystical release from standard ego-identification, and (3) psycho-physical transformation cultivated through meditative practice. This mystical naturalism provides the basis for a thicker, more vigorous institutional religious life, including religious life centred around meditation practices, personalist meanings, and the theology of incarnation, than current proposals for strongly naturalist religions allow.

When considering m-sequents, it is always possible to obtain an m-sequent calculus VL for every m-valued logic (defined from an arbitrary finite algebra L of cardinality m) following for instance the works of the Vienna Group for Multiple-valued Logics. The Gentzen relations associated with the calculi VL are always finitely equivalential but might not be algebraizable. In this paper we associate an algebraizable 2-Gentzen relation with every sequent calculus VL in a uniform way, provided the original algebra L has a (...) reduct that is a distributive lattice or a pseudocomplemented distributive lattice. We also show that the sentential logic naturally associated with the provable sequents of this algebraizable Gentzen relation is the logic that preserves degrees of truth with respect to the original algebra (in contrast with the more common logic that merely preserves truth). Finally, for some particular logics we obtain 2-sequent calculi that axiomatize the algebraizable Gentzen relations obtained so far. (shrink)