Despite the availability of safe vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, some people will remain vulnerable because they will not be vaccinated. Who are these non-vaccinated people? We can distinguish two groups: (i) persons who cannot be vaccinated for clinical reasons and who, despite having been vaccinated, have not achieved immunity; (ii) persons who voluntarily refuse to get vaccinated. These groups have in common an immune system that will make them vulnerable to COVID-19. The reasons for their vulnerability and the ethical judgment they (...) deserve are different; the solutions offered to them are also different. In the case of those who voluntarily avoid vaccination, States are not compromised to introduce new protective policies. In the case of people who remain involuntarily vulnerable, instead, the response should be articulated on the same rules and principles that inform the social model of disability because they will live with an organic disability. (shrink)

Regularization may be used as an alternative to dimensionality reduction when the number of variables in a model is much larger than the number of available observations. In a recent study from our group regularized regression was employed to quantify brain functional connectivity in a sample of healthy controls using a brain parcellation and resting state fMRI images. Here regularization is applied to evaluate resting state connectivity abnormalities at the voxel level in a sample of patients with schizophrenia. Specifically, ridge (...) regression is implemented with different degrees of regularization. Results are compared to those delivered by the weighted global brain connectivity method, which is based on averaged bivariate correlations and from the non-redundant connectivity method, a dimensionality reduction approach that applies supervised principal component regressions. Ridge regression is able to detect a larger set of abnormally connected regions than both GBC and NRC methods, including schizophrenia related connectivity reductions in fronto-medial, somatosensory and occipital structures. Due to its multivariate nature, the proposed method is much more sensitive to group abnormalities than the GBC, but it also outperforms the NRC, which is multivariate too. Voxel based regularized regression is a simple and sensitive alternative for quantifying brain functional connectivity. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a philosophical and theoretical account of biological communication grounded in the notion of organisation. The organisational approach characterises living systems as organised in such a way that they are capable to self-produce and self-maintain while in constant interaction with the environment. To apply this theoretical framework to the study of biological communication, we focus on a specific approach, based on the notion of influence, according to which communication takes place when a signal emitted by a (...) sender triggers a change in the behaviour of the receiver that is functional for the sender itself. We critically analyse the current formulations of this account, that interpret what is functional for the sender in terms of evolutionary adaptations. Specifically, the adoption of this etiological functional framework may lead to the exclusion of several phenomena usually studied as instances of communication, and possibly even of entire fields of investigation such as synthetic biology. As an alternative, we reframe the influence approach in organisational terms, characterising functions in terms of contributions to the current organisation of a biological system. We develop a theoretical account of biological communication in which communicative functions are distinguished from other types of biological functions described by the organisational account (e.g. metabolic, ecological, etc.). The resulting organisational-influence approach allows to carry out causal analyses of current instances of phenomena of communication, without the need to provide etiological explanations. In such a way it makes it possible to understand in terms of communication those phenomena which realise interactive patterns typical of signalling interactions – and are usually studied as such in scientific practice – despite not being the result of evolutionary adaptations. Moreover, this approach provides operational tools to design and study communicative interactions in experimental fields such as synthetic biology. (shrink)

El presente artículo es la primera traducción española de un artículo del jurista alemán Hermann Heller titulado "¿Liberalismo autoritario?", en el que pretende dar cuenta de una nueva forma de articulación política que se desarrolla al comienzo de los años 30 en Alemania y que combina el autoritarismo político con el liberalismo económico.

An account of assertion along truth-relativistic lines is offered. The main lines of relativism about truth are laid out and the problematic features that assertion acquires in the presence of relative truth are identified. These features are the possibility of coherently formulating norms of assertion and the possibility of grounding a rational practice of assertion upon relative truth. A solution to these problems is provided by formulating norms for making and assessing assertions that employ a suitably relativized truth predicate and (...) a perspectival notion of correctness. Two potential objections to this proposal are addressed. (shrink)

Neutral Counterpart Theories of slurs hold that the truth-conditional contribution of a slur is the same as the truth-conditional contribution of its neutral counterpart. In, DiFranco argues that these theories, even if plausible for single-word slurs like ‘kike’ and ‘nigger’, are not suitable for complex slurs such as ‘slanty-eyed’ and ‘curry muncher’, figurative slurs like ‘Jewish American Princess’, or iconic slurring expressions like ‘ching chong’. In this paper, we argue that these expressions do not amount to genuine counterexamples to neutral (...) counterpart theories of slurs. We provide a positive characterization of DiFranco's examples that doesn't deviate from the core of those theories. (shrink)

¿Dónde hallar al marxismo hoy? Contestar esta pregunta suscita el problema que Jacques Derrida (1995: 40) asume cuando sostiene: “hay más de uno, debe haber más de un (Marx)”. ¿Cuál es entonces el Marx que Althusser nos invita a leer y a llevar a la acción política? El objetivo de este texto es rastrear los lineamientos del Marx que sugiere Althusser (a través de los conceptos de práctica política y práctica teórica) en el pensamiento de Álvaro García Linera.Estos conceptos althusserianos (...) nos llevan a plantear a Álvaro García Linera como “heredero” (Derrida, 1995) de la filosofía marxista. Por su condición de militante y vicepresidente de Bolivia, su producción teórica se desarrolla dentro de una coyuntura muy particular. Es así como podemos entender que García Linera no hace más que abordar en su producción teórica un problema que está objetivamente planteado por el proceso en el que se encuentra: la potencia emancipadora del componente comunitario indígena.Pondremos el foco en la relectura del Manifiesto comunista que propone García Linera a través de estos conceptos althusserianos para adentrarnos en un pensamiento que invoca a Marx al mismo que tiempo que resalta la necesidad de pensar dentro de la coyuntura. De esta manera, no buscamos sacar conclusiones sobre su verdad o falsedad sino más bien producir un análisis político de su discurso con el fin de rastrear las contradicciones que surgen de leer a Marx a través de las variantes que propone la coyuntura, y así profundizar los análisis en comunicación y política.También nos valdremos de entrevistas, conferencias y otros escritos suyos para situar su pensamiento en la actualidad. Finalmente nos proponemos rastrear una serie de interlocutores con los que discute y argumenta para sentar las bases de un proyecto de investigación que profundice el análisis de su obra. (shrink)

The work is a philosophical essay that deals with the human condition - "subjugated to unprecedented levels of uncertainty" - and contemporary art as a form of knowledge. Author Ramiro Garavito is an art curator, artist, philosopher and promoter of contemporary art in Bolivia.

El artículo parte de un interrogante por el estatuto teórico-epistemológico de las condiciones de producción del discurso desde una perspectiva que combina el análisis materialista del discurso francés con la sociología de las problematizaciones. Propone tres modos de puesta en juego de las condiciones de producción, según el momento del proceso de investigación en que intervienen y el peso explicativo que revisten en el resultado: descriptivo, indiciario y estratégico. Establece la necesidad de dar cuenta de la multiplicidad de trayectorias, redes, (...) dispositivos y prácticas que conforman las condiciones de producción del discurso, lo que conduce a una nueva pregunta por modos de re-anudar lo disperso. Finalmente, propone la figura de la “nebulosa” como un modo de presentación y exploración de los datos que no sacrifique su constitutiva heterogeneidad. (shrink)

O presente artigo se propõe a uma análise das possibilidades de se alcançar a justiça no mundo pós-moderno, apresentando um estudo que dá suas noções iniciais, reflete sobre o itinerário a ser seguido para tal e alguns dos dilemas que impedem sua concretização.

Presento una extensión del marco de Stalnaker para modelar los efectos conversacionales de la aserción, de modo que este pueda aplicarse a la aserción de proposiciones cuya verdad es relativa a parámetros adicionales respecto de un mundo posible. Desarrollo dos maneras de aplicar este marco a la aserción de proposiciones evaluativas, según la apreciación de las emisiones evaluativas mismas refleje una concepción relativista moderada de sus condiciones de corrección o una concepción radical. Argumento que, en virtud de la diferencia que (...) existe a la hora de concebir la aserción, el relativismo radical tiene una ventaja por sobre el relativismo moderado, dado que el relativismo moderado tiene inconvenientes a la hora de interpretar los desacuerdos evaluativos. I present an extension of Stalnaker's framework for modeling the conversational effects of assertion, so that it may be applied to the assertion of propositions whose truth is relative to parameters beyond a possible world. I develop two ways in which the new framework may be applied to the assertion of evaluative propositions, depending on whether the assessment of evaluative utterances reflects a moderate or a radical conception of their correctness conditions. I argue that, in virtue of this difference in the conceptualization of assertion, radical relativism has an advantage over moderate relativism, for moderate relativism faces problems with respect to the interpretation of evaluative disagreement. (shrink)

Pensar el 2001, interpelar a las subjetividades de la crisis. Entrevista a Diego Sztulwark.

El texto intenta mostrar los rasgos que señalan la vinculación de la obra cosmológica de Bruno con el acontecimiento histórico cultural denominado Revolución Copernicana, y se centra en una primera fase que documenta las relaciones entre infinitismo y astronomía copemicana. El horizonte de la argumentación lo constituye la intención de situar el pensamiento de Bruno entre las primeras aportaciones teóricas a la modernidad.

Como han puesto de relieve Evans y García-Carpintero, uno de los problemas más importantes respecto de la aserción en el marco de una concepción relativista radical de los discursos evaluativos es dar un tratamiento coherente de los compromisos y de las responsabilidades que la aserción misma genera cuando sus condiciones de corrección son inestables. Construyendo sobre la base de un trabajo de Losada, el presente trabajo busca ofrecer dicho tratamiento.

Perner and Roessler Causing human action: new perspectives on the causal theory of action, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 199–228, 2010) hold that children who do not yet have an understanding of subjective perspectives, i.e., mental states, explain actions by appealing to objective facts. In this paper, we criticize this view. We argue that in order to understand objective facts, subjects need to understand perspectives. By analysing basic fact-expressing assertions, we show that subjects cannot refer to facts if they do (...) not understand two types of perspectivity, namely, spatial and doxastic perspectivity. To avoid conceptual confusion regarding different ways of referring to facts, we distinguish between reference to facts de re and de dicto. (shrink)

Introducción al dossier: “A 20 años del 2001: memorias, representaciones, militancias y reverberancias”.

Patients with strokes to the Anterior Communicating Artery pose an important challenge to rehabilitation teams due to a particular mix of cognitive and behavioral impairments. These deficits often compromise engagement with rehabilitation, learning and generalization. The goal of this article is to describe the long-term presentation of a patient with an ACoA stroke as well as her rehabilitation needs and the many challenges experienced by the rehabilitation team when attempting to facilitate functional, vocational and psychosocial recovery. Based on this case, (...) and the existing literature, a neuropsychological rehabilitation framework to understand and address the specific problems and needs of this population is proposed. This framework demands rehabilitation teams to consider: the slow pattern of recovery of this population, the interaction between cognitive and behavioral impairments, the relevance of physical and social environments, the value of personal projects and the need to include psychological and relational interventions. (shrink)

Kant emphatically denied the people’s right to resist legally established authority. Nevertheless, this posture leads to critical difficulties on his conception of politics. This paper encompasses such issue, attempting to show the tensions resulting from such denial, compared to other ideas focused on his political philosophy and to the value he assigns to modern revolutions. Moreover, some relevant interpretations of these discussions are critically analyzed and a way to appropriately understand the sense and scope of Kant’s point of viewis proposed.

This study investigates the relationship between mental health and emotional intelligence among senior high school students in a public school. Thus, the study employed a correlational design to measure the relationship between mental health and emotional intelligence among 152 Grade 12 senior high school students in a public school. Hence, to measure the study’s variables - Mental Health Inventory and Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS) were utilized. Based on the inferential statistics, the r coefficient of 0.32 indicates a low positive correlation (...) between the variables and a p-value of 0.00, indicating a significant relationship between the respondents' mental health and emotional intelligence. Implications and recommendations were discussed in the study. (shrink)

Political communication in modern democratic societies often requires the speaker to address multiple audiences with heterogeneous values, interests and agendas. This creates an incentive for communication strategies that allow politicians to send, along with the explicit content of their speech, concealed messages that seek to secure the approval of certain groups without alienating the rest of the electorate. These strategies have been labeled dogwhistling in recent literature. In this article, we provide an analysis of overt intentional dogwhistling. We recognize two (...) main stages within the OIDs’ way of conveying a concealed message: the expression of a perspective together with the transmission of an accompanying positioning message vis-à-vis the OID targeted sub-audience, and the inferential extraction of a set of cognitive and non-cognitive contents inferred on the basis of the former stage. Furthermore, we identify three linguistic mechanisms whereby these contents may be transmitted: conventional meaning, conversational implicature and perlocutionary inferencing. Hence, on our view OIDs are not a uniform category, as they may differ as to what extent the concealed content is speaker-meant, and thus actually communicated by the speaker. (shrink)

The Midewiwin is the traditional religious belief system central to the world view of Ojibwa in Canada and the US. It is a highly complex and rich series of sacred teachings and narratives whose preservation enabled the Ojibwa to withstand severe challenges to their entire social fabric throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. It remains an important living and spiritual tradition for many Aboriginal people today. The rituals of the Midewiwin were observed by many 19th century Euro-Americans, most of whom (...) approached these ceremonies with hostility and suspicion. As a result, although there were many accounts of the Midewiwin published in the 19th century, they were often riddled with misinterpretations and inaccuracies. Historian Michael Angel compares the early texts written about the Midewiwin, and identifies major, common misconceptions in these accounts. In his explanation of the historical role played by the Midewiwin, he provides alternative viewpoints and explanations of the significance of the ceremonies, while respecting the sacred and symbolic nature of the Midewiwin rituals, songs, and scrolls. (shrink)

The explanatory role of natural selection is one of the long-term debates in evolutionary biology. Nevertheless, the consensus has been slippery because conceptual confusions and the absence of a unified, formal causal model that integrates different explanatory scopes of natural selection. In this study we attempt to examine two questions: (i) What can the theory of natural selection explain? and (ii) Is there a causal or explanatory model that integrates all natural selection explananda? For the first question, we argue that (...) five explananda have been assigned to the theory of natural selection and that four of them may be actually considered explananda of natural selection. For the second question, we claim that a probabilistic conception of causality and the statistical relevance concept of explanation are both good models for understanding the explanatory role of natural selection. We review the biological and philosophical disputes about the explanatory role of natural selection and formalize some explananda in probabilistic terms using classical results from population genetics. Most of these explananda have been discussed in philosophical terms but some of them have been mixed up and confused. We analyze and set the limits of these problems. (shrink)

This paper analyses conceptual and experimental work in synthetic biology on different types of interactions considered as minimal examples or models of communication. It discusses their pertinence and relevance for the wider understanding of this biological and cognitive phenomenon. It critically analyses their limits and it argues that a conceptual framework is needed. As a possible solution, it provides a theoretical account of communication based on the notion of organisation, and characterised in terms of the functional influence exerted by the (...) sender upon the receiver. It shows that this account can be operationalised in synthetic biology, and that it can supply criteria and guidelines for the design and evaluation of synthetic models. (shrink)