En los últimos años han aparecido publicaciones que intentan generar un marco para la aplicación de conocimientos neurocognitivos para la resolución de problemáticas sociales. Bajo el mote de “ciencias de comportamiento”, este campo de estudios que se presenta como profundamente interdisciplinario se propone aportar herramientas para resolver diversas problemáticas sociales, mediante la dilucidación de los mecanismos subyacentes a la conducta humana y su posterior operacionalización en forma de políticas públicas. Enfocamos nuestra mirada en ciertos aspectos epistemológicos e ideológicos que subyacen (...) a estas iniciativas, en particular su conceptualización de la crisis climática como un problema a resolver mediante los avances de las ciencias cognitivas. Observamos, ejemplificamos y problematizamos una serie de premisas: la conducta del individuo como expresión terminal de un proceso “interno” en el cual el ambiente y por extensión lo “social” están subordinados en cuanto a su jerarquía explicativa; la simplificación de las problemáticas a resolver en términos de sesgos y limitaciones cognitivas, de modo tal que los objetivos de la intervención sean los comportamientos y decisiones de actores individuales; la apelación a la biología como sustento explicativo de los constructos psicológicos utilizados a través de narrativas adaptacionistas sobre el desarrollo de funcionalidades cognitivas innatas. Sostenemos que la generación y aplicación de los conocimientos en este tipo de iniciativas se inscribe en una línea ideológica marcada, según la cual las causas principales de la crisis climática no se hallan en las dinámicas y contradicciones del sistema socioeconómico vigente, sino en las de los sistemas cognitivos individuales. (shrink)

En este artículo, mostramos ciertos supuestos no explicitados en la noción de individuo humano en la que se basan los enfoques teóricos de la neuroeconomía y la economía conductual para desarrollar sus programas de investigación e intervención. También abordamos los compromisos epistemológicos, ideológicos y políticos desde los cuales conciben, estudian e intervienen en la conducta humana. En lugar de un individuo producto de un proceso de socialización, lo que se presenta es un cerebro aislado con numerosas funciones cognitivas atribuidas, cuya (...) conducta puede ser alterada debido a “accidentes” en su evolución como órgano rector del comportamiento. Este enfoque permite la construcción de propuestas de políticas públicas basadas en el llamado “paternalismo libertario”. Se destaca un potencial mecanismo de control cuyo objetivo es configurar los distintos espacios de la vida cotidiana de los individuos de manera que sus conductas agregadas se alineen lo más posible con los entes racionales ideales del modelo económico neoclásico. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is making a critical revision of the field of communication –understood as a field of research and reflection– and the way its existence has been tried to be legitimated since the postwar period. Our stance holds that, even though it is possible to find relatively linear and continuous narratives to understand communication, what is regarded here is reaching comprehension of the fragmentation and language games brought together in it. Besides, the core problem does not rely (...) on the consolidation of a linear and scientific epistemological narrative, but on the manner discourse is articulated, giving place to such narratives turning around their political charges and not the supposed scientific value attributed to them. (shrink)

1. Cine y vanguardias : el cine como promesa estético-política desde Dziga Vertov y Jean Epstein -- 2. Deleuze y las potencias del cine : el acontecimiento de lo inorgánico -- 3. De la vida inorgánica a la vida histórica : recuperación del carácter narrativo del cine a partir de Jacques Ranciere.

El objetivo del presente artículo es múltiple. Primero, pondera una serie de razones por las cuales la mística aún es relevante para el análisis de la condición humana del hombre actual. Segundo, propone a la promesa y a la ausencia como dispositivos de la mística. Tercero, expone, desde la lectura que hacen Alois Haas y Amador Vega de algunos sermones alemanes del Maestro Eckhart y de El peregrino querúbico de Angelus Silesius, los planteamientos fundamentales de la mística de estos autores, (...) a saber: el vaciamiento del alma, el coengendramiento, el abismo de Dios y la unión mística. Al mismo tiempo esboza cómo el pensamiento de Eckhart y Silesius, además de ser estudiado, produce ecos en algunas de las formulaciones filosóficas más importantes del siglo XX. The aim of this article is multiple. First, it weighs a series of reasons for which mysticism is still relevant for the analysis of man’s current human condition. Second, it proposes promise and absence as the devices of mysticism. Third, it exhibits, according to the reading of Alois Haas and Amador Vega of some of Meister Eckhart’s German sermons and Angelus Silesius’ The Cherubic Wanderer, the fundamental expositions of these authors’ mysticism, namely: voidance of the soul, co-conceivement, God’s abyss and mystical union. At the same time it outlines how the thought of Eckhart and Silesius, besides being studied, produces echoes in some of the most important philosophical formulations of the 20th century. (shrink)

Bégout, Bruce. Le ParK.Trad. Rubén Martín Giráldez. Barcelona: Siberia, 2014. 137 pp.

La no resolución del problema de la pobreza remite, en una de sus claves fundamentales, a actitudes manifiestamente insolidarias que tienen reflejo rotundo en las políticas abrazadas por muchos gobiernos. En el caso español lo que se halla detrás en los últimos decenios es, ante todo, el designio de una sociedad que, dramáticamente hechizada por el crecimiento y por el consumo, ha asumido sin mayor discusión que para garantizar uno y otro era preciso desplegar fórmulas de feroz competición, el "sálvese (...) quien pueda" ha sido, entonces, idolatrado como línea maestra de conducta. (shrink)

En el presente artículo se muestra que en la cosmología cartesiana no resulta claro cómo se puede hablar o referir a cuerpos individuales en el marco de un universo absolutamente compacto. Se defiende que el concepto de cuerpo individual en el interior de dicha cosmología se puede construir como una ficción del espíritu. Un cuerpo individual se puede construir como la extensión que se encuentra encerrada en una superficie maximal cuyas subdivisiones carecen de movimiento relativo entre sí. Se muestra, también, (...) que la cosmología cartesiana puede presentarse como un modelo trivial de la Teoría M. (shrink)

La noción de interpretación desarrollada en el racionalismo crítico de Karl R. Popper muestra atributos específicos que la distinguen de modo sustancial de la interpretación constitutiva de la experiencia que tanto N. R. Hanson como Th. Kuhn defienden en sus respectivas propuestas. Se muestra que la interpretación del modelo popperiano queda atrapada en una epistemología de corte empirista que la separa de modo radical de toda hermenéutica filosófica. The notion of interpretation developed in the critical rationalism of Karl R. Popper (...) displays specific attributes that substantially distinguish it from the constituent interpretation of experience defended in both N. R. Hanson and T. Kuhn proposals. The article shows that the interpretation of Popper's model is trapped in an empiricist epistemology that radically separates it from all hermeneutic philosophy. (shrink)

In this article, we studied the Corporate Sustainability Index (ISE) of the Brazilian Mercantile, Futures and Stock Exchange (BM&FBOVESPA), with the main objective of analyzing the performance of sustainable investments in the Brazilian stock market, during the period from December 2005 to December 2010. To achieve this aim, we characterized ISE portfolios and we compared its performance with the IBOVESPA (representing the market portfolio) and other BM&FBOVESPA sectoral indices. In the performance comparison, we used level of liquidity, return and risk (...) indicators, as well as the following measures: Sharpe, Treynor, Sortino, and Omega. Our results show that although sustainable investments have presented some interesting characteristics, such as increasing liquidity and low diversifiable risk, they did not achieve satisfactory financial performance in the analysis period. This indicates that the constraints imposed by this type of investment in capital allocation in Brazil may be harming their return and risk attractiveness. (shrink)

Purpose As part of an international study of knowledge of and attitudes to Snowden’s revelations about the activities of the National Security Agency/Government Communications Headquarters, this paper aims to deal with Mexico, taking its socio-cultural and political environment surrounding privacy and state surveillance into account. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire was answered by 160 Mexican University students. The quantitative responses to the survey were statistically analysed as well as qualitative considerations of free text answers. Findings Snowden’s revelations have had a limited influence (...) over Mexican youngsters’ attitudes toward privacy and state surveillance, although there is a great awareness by Mexican young people of individual rights issues. Practical implications The study results imply a need to build a collective awareness of the importance of the right to privacy and its responsibilities, the available technological options for individuals to exert their own privacy and security and the democratic means to agree and enforce appropriate legal restrictions on state surveillance. Social implications The results of this study based indicate an urgent necessity for providing Mexican youngsters with opportunities to learn more about privacy, liberty, individual autonomy and national security. Originality/value This study is the first attempt to investigate the social impact of Snowden’s revelations on Mexican students’ attitudes toward privacy and state surveillance as part of cross-cultural analyses between eight countries. (shrink)

Research in the discipline of international relations finds that the great democratic powers are less likely to pursue revisionist policies. This investigation challenges this argument by showing that the United States' decision to oust Saddam Hussein's regime in March 2003 was consistent with a modified version of John Mearsheimer's theory of offensive realism, which finds that great powers' motivation is global hegemony. This article is divided into three sections. The first section considers the value of Mearsheimer's theory and reworks it (...) by adding domestic variables to explain why states abandon defensive strategies for offensive ones. The second section shows how pre-9/11 American foreign policy strategy was, for the most part, status quo oriented, and section three explains why and how the Bush administration introduced a revisionist foreign policy strategy after the 9/11 attacks. This investigation concludes by showing how the 2003 Iraq War is the first step in the United States' quest for global hegemony. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with formal aspects of the logic of theory change, and in particular with the process of shrinking or contracting a theory to eliminate a proposition. It continues work in the area by the authors and Peter Gärdenfors. The paper defines a notion of safe contraction of a set of propositions, shows that it satisfies the Gärdenfors postulates for contraction and thus can be represented as a partial meet contraction, and studies its properties both in general and (...) under various natural constraints. (shrink)

Recent work in the philosophy of biology has attempted to clarify and defend the use of the biodiversity concept in conservation science. I argue against these views, and give reasons to think that the biodiversity concept is a poor fit for the role we want it to play in conservation biology on both empirical and conceptual grounds. Against pluralists, who hold that biodiversity consists of distinct but correlated properties of natural systems, I argue that the supposed correlations between these properties (...) are not tight enough to warrant treating and measuring them as a bundle. I additionally argue that deflationary theories of biodiversity don’t go far enough, since a large proportion of what we value in the environment falls outside bounds of what could reasonably be called “diversity”. I suggest that in current scientific practice biodiversity is generally an unnecessary placeholder for biological value of all sorts, and that we are better off eliminating it from conservation biology, or at least drastically reducing its role. (shrink)

Investigates the resolution of contradictions and ambiguous derogations in a code, by means of the imposition of partial orderings.

In game-theoretic signaling models, evolution tends to favor perfectly precise signaling systems, but in the natural world communication is almost always imprecise. I argue that standard explanations for this discrepancy are only partially sufficient, and I show that communication is often ambiguous because signal senders take advantage of context sensitivity. As evidence, I make two additions to the signaling model: a cost for more complex signaling strategies and the ability to combine information in signals with independent information. Analysis and simulation (...) of the altered model shows that it leads to the predicted outcome of evolution favoring ambiguous signaling. (shrink)

Linguists (and philosophers of language) have long disagreed about the ontology of language, and thus about the proper subject matter of their disciplines. A close examination of the leading arguments in the debates shows that while positive arguments that language is x tend to be sound, negative arguments that language is not x generally fail. This implies that we should be pluralists about the metaphysical status of language and the subject matter of linguistics and the philosophy of language. A pluralist (...) ontology of language, however, involves pitfalls for research on language, and to avoid this pitfalls researchers should temper the pluralist attitude with two strictures. First, pluralism about the ontology of language precludes agnosticism about the ontology of language. Second, pluralism should not lead to isolated research programs. (shrink)

Previous research has demonstrated that ratings of the perceived pleasantness and quality of odors can be modulated by auditory stimuli presented at around the same time. Here, we extend these results by assessing whether the hedonic congruence between odor and sound stimuli can modulate the perception of odor intensity, pleasantness, and quality in untrained participants. Unexpectedly, our results reveal that broadband white noise, which was rated as unpleasant in a follow-up experiment, actually had a more pronounced effect on participants’ odor (...) ratings than either the consonant or dissonant musical selections. In particular, participants rated the six smells used as being less pleasant and less sweet when they happened to be listening to white noise, as compared to any one of the other music conditions. What is more, these results also add evidence to support the existence of a close relationship between an odor’s hedonic character and the perception of odor quality. So, for example, independent of the sound condition, pleasant odors were rated as sweeter, less dry, and brighter than the unpleasant odors. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for the understanding of crossmodal correspondences between olfactory and auditory stimuli. (shrink)

In a context of pervasive digitalization of the social world, both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, the field of education has undergone major changes with the development of digital practices and settings. However, the physical presence of the subjects and the body remain something primordial and irreplaceable in traditional educational processes. Thus, it is often assumed that virtuality is opposed to the corporeal reality of the subjects involved in teaching, learning and studying. In this paper we aim to critically (...) challenge this assumption by addressing the phenomenon of virtuality in a more original sense: as a fundamental dimension of corporeality itself. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological insights, we argue that the experience of the virtual is inherently embodied and fully real. We understand corporeality and virtuality as entangled and multidimensional phenomena. At the same time, this leads us to rethink the digital as only one possible medium in which virtuality can appear as inherent to embodied experience. We develop our phenomenological approach in three instances. First, we question and bracket two common assumptions about corporeality. From our critical perspective, assumptions about a disembodied digitality and a devirtualized corporeality represent extremes within which educational discourses currently move. Second, we address the inherent virtuality of embodied experience. We outline the heuristic concept of the virtual body to describe corporeality and virtuality as entangled and multidimensional phenomena that encompass extension, intercorporeality and intermediality. Finally, we make some remarks on the relationships of corporeality and virtuality considering the challenges of digital education. (shrink)

La presente obra constituye el esfuerzo por rastrear la historia del pensamiento cosmovisional y filosófico latinoamericano, desde las cosmovisiones pre-colombinas hasta las corrientes filosóficas más actuales: las filosofías de la liberación, la postmodernidad y la postcolonialidad. Aunque el autor ha procurado en su voluminosa obra hacer referencia a todas las numerosas corrientes de pensamiento que se han ido dando en el amplio panorama cultural latinoamericano, se ha centrado sobre todo en rastrear la denominada filosofía americanista.

This work analyzes the ideas developed by Arendt and Sartre regarding liberty and action. For Sartre, when we act, we modify the structure of the world, hoping for a fore seen result. The condition for the act is the liberty of the for-it self, as an absolute de parture point. The act projects t..

O presente artigo aborda as concessões feitas por Husserl no texto de Prolegômenos, na segunda edição de Investigações Lógicas. O artigo mostra que a concessão mais difícil estaria exatamente na manutenção da ideia de “verdade em si”. Por um lado, Husserl afirma que a “verdade em si” não poderia depender da constituição da natureza humana, pois tal dependência abalaria o próprio sentido da ideia de “verdade”. Por outro lado, não deixaria de reconhecer a insuficiência da ideia de “verdade em si”, (...) na medida em que tal ideia encobriria o importante problema da relação entre o real e o ideal. (shrink)

A descriptive-exploratory analysis of assurance practices is presented in this paper, by analysing the patterns of sustainability assurance reporting in two national contexts with different levels of assurance activity over a period of 11 years. The study is based on theoretical insights drawn from institutional sociology and normativity production. It is framed both in the Italian situation, where assurance statements consistently include a narrow set of formal and procedural communications, and in an unsettled situation in the U.S., where assurance activity (...) is more incipient, but where experimentation in substantial assurance disclosure practices has more room to develop. Its main implication is that the diffusion of sustainability assurance and the creation of sustainability assurance disclosure norms are not without its cost: information quality does not increase with patterned practice. The results also point towards the noteworthy role of specific professionals in the earlier and later stages of assurance practice norms. They reveal a significant influence of non-Big4 firms in the diffusion of sustainability assurance disclosure norms. In contrast, the Big4 firms appear to be positively associated with the narrowing down of the assurance focus to a selected subset of this activity in later stages of the development of the assurance norm. In this regard, this study provides insight into the circumstantial—but relevant—carrier role of the Big4 firms in determining what “assurance” means. (shrink)

IN THE DISCUSSION on education in the Republic, Socrates lays down the principles which those who speak about the gods must follow if they want to avoid the errors of traditional mythology. The first typos of this rational theology is this: "God is the cause, not of all things, but only of the good." For "God, being good, cannot be responsible for everything happening in our life, as is commonly believed, but only for a small part. For we have a (...) far smaller share of good than of evil, and while God must be held to be the sole cause of good, we must look for some other factors than God as cause of the evil." Rightly celebrated, this passage has set the agenda for ages of reflection in Western thought on the cause of evil. In contrast to traditional mythology where the gods are seen as the origin of both good and evil--as Homer says, "Zeus has two jars standing on the floor of his palace, full of fates, good in one and evil in the other"--the divinity is now freed of all responsibility for evil. God, who is entirely good, can only be the cause of well-being. If this answer sets God free of all responsibility for evil, it seems to be at the cost of limiting God's power: for God is no longer responsible for "most things in human life," since most of them are evil. What, then, may be the cause or causes of evil? Do bad things have a cause? Or do they just happen? Plato's formulation seems to suggest that he favours a dualistic solution to the problem of evil: God is the cause of all good, but for evil we have to find other causes. What could those causes be: matter, cosmic necessity, an evil soul? Various answers of this type were developed in later Platonism and in later mythological philosophies. Without denying that Plato often uses a dualistic discourse and uses elements of it in his cosmology, I do think that Plato had something different in mind. After all, he was not primarily interested in the problem of theodicy. For in this passage of the Republic, he is not concerned with the problem of evil in the universe as a whole, which is really the theodicy question, but with evil in "human life," that is, evil insofar as human beings experience it and suffer from it: the fact that we are not at all living well but are instead miserable and unhappy. (shrink)