Evolutionary adaptation has been suggested as the hallmark of life that best accounts for life’s creativity. However, current evolutionary approaches still fail to give an adequate account of it, even if they are able to explain both the origin of novelties and the proliferation of certain traits in a population. Although modern-synthesis Darwinism is today usually appraised as too narrow a position to cope with all the complexities of developmental and structural biology—not to say biosemiotic phenomena—, Darwinism need not be (...) if we separate metaphor from reality in natural selection in order to show the axiological complexity of this concept. This can shed light on the relationship between biosemiotics and biological evolution. (shrink)

This paper proposes a biosemiotic conception of theories, as non-intentional organic theories, which is based on an analysis and comparison of philosopher Norwood Russell Hanson’s account of theories and zoologist Jakob von Uexküll’s theory of organisms. It is argued that Hanson’s proposals about scientific theories and their relation to observation are semiotic in nature and that there exists a correspondence between Hanson’s depiction of the relationship between theories, observation, and reality and von Uexküll’s views on the relationship between organisms and (...) their environments. This correspondence supports an account of theories that depicts them as organic extensions of our perceptual physiology. Among the epistemological consequences of this account are the following: The kind of correspondence that is established through theories between a subject and reality is related rather to a subject’s actions than to a faithful representation of every aspect of the world, it suggests a strong emphasis on the creative aspects of knowledge acquisition, and it urges a reassessment of the evolutionary epistemology of theories. (shrink)

Purpose: This systematic review aimed to analyze the impact that the COVID-19 lockdown had on the amount of physical activity performed by university students.Materials and Methods: A systematic electronic search for studies providing information regarding physical activity levels pre and during COVID-19 pandemic in university students was performed up to 20th October 2020 in the databases Cochrane Library, PubMed, SPORTDiscus, and Web of Science. The risk of bias of external validity quality of included studies was assessed by means of those (...) the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. The quality of the evidence for main outcomes was graded using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation approach.Results and Conclusions: A total of 10 studies were selected. Physical activity levels were assessed by means of questionnaires and accelerometer. Risk of bias was regarded as low and high in six and four investigations, respectively. The quality of evidence was downgraded to low. A significant reduction of physical activity levels were observed in 9 studies. Compared to pre-lockdown values, five studies showed a reduction of light/mild physical activity between 32.5 and 365.5%, while seven studies revealed a reduction of high/vigorous physical activity between 2.9 and 52.8%. Walking, moderate, vigorous, and total physical activity levels have been reduced during the COVID-19 pandemic confinements in university students of different countries. Despite of the reductions, those who met the current minimum PA recommendations before the lockdown generally met the recommendations also during the confinements. (shrink)

“Tell me," Wittgenstein once asked a friend, "why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?” What would it have looked like if we looked at all (...) sciences from the viewpoint of Wittgenstein’s philosophy? Wittgenstein is undoubtedly one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. His complex body of work has been analysed by numerous scholars, from mathematicians and physicists, to philosophers, linguists, and beyond. This volume brings together some of his central perspectives as applied to the modern sciences and studies the influence they may have on the thought processes underlying science and on the world view it engenders. The contributions stem from leading scholars in philosophy, mathematics, physics, economics, psychology and human sciences; all of them have written in an accessible style that demands little specialist knowledge, whilst clearly portraying and discussing the deep issues at hand. (shrink)

Group assortative biases are stronger in regions where pathogen stress has been historically prevalent. Pushing the logic of this approach, extensions should include investigations of how cultural norms related to prosociality and relational striving may also covary with regional pathogen stress. Likewise, the pan-specific observation that diseased animals show decreased motor activity to facilitate recovery suggests that norms relevant to sickness behaviors may also vary as a function of regional parasite stress.

En el presente escrito se hace una lectura filosófica de la ética protestante a partir de un talante predominante en la época que circunscribe al barroco mostrándoles como una forma fundamental y fundacional de la Modernidad europea ejemplificado a través del drama trágico alemán y en contraste con una configuración alternativa y desemejante de un proyecto civilizatorio propiamente barroco y utópico en las colonias americanas. Palabras clave: Barroco - Talante - Protestantismo - Modernidad - Ethos.

BackgroundThe landscape of clinical research has evolved over the past decade. With technological advances, the practice of using electronic informed consent (eIC) has emerged. However, a number of challenges hinder the successful and widespread deployment of eIC in clinical research. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the views of various stakeholders on the potential advantages and challenges of eIC.MethodsSemi-structured interviews were conducted with 39 participants from 5 stakeholder groups from across 11 European countries. The stakeholder groups included physicians, patient organization representatives, (...) regulator representatives, ethics committee members, and pharmaceutical industry representatives, and all were involved in clinical research. Interviews were analyzed using the framework method.ResultsInterviewees identified that a powerful feature of eIC is its personalized approach as it may increase participant empowerment. However, they identified several ethical and practical challenges, such as ensuring research participants are not overloaded with information and offering the same options to research participants who would prefer a paper-based informed consent rather than eIC. According to the interviewees, eIC has the potential to establish efficient long-term interactions between the research participants and the research team in order to keep the participants informed during and after the study. Interviewees emphasized that a personal interaction with the research team is of utmost importance and this cannot be replaced by an electronic platform. In addition, interviewees across the stakeholder groups supported the idea of having a harmonized eIC approach across the European Member States.ConclusionsInterviewees reported a range of design and implementation challenges which needs to be overcome to foster innovation in informing research participants and obtaining their consent electronically. It was considered important that the implementation of eIC runs alongside the face-to-face contact between research participants and the research team. Moreover, interviewees expect that eIC could offer the opportunity to enable a personalized approach and to strengthen continuous communication over time. If successfully implemented, eIC may facilitate the engagement of research participants in clinical research. (shrink)

Comparing food taboos across 78 cultures, this paper demonstrates that meat, though a prized food, is also the principal target of proscriptions. Reviewing existing explanations of taboos, we find that both functionalist and symbolic approaches fail to account for meat's cross-cultural centrality and do not reflect experience-near aspects of food taboos, principal among which is disgust. Adopting an evolutionary approach to the mind, this paper presents an alternative to existing explanations of food taboos. Consistent with the attendant risk of pathogen (...) transmission, meat has special salience as a stimulus for humans, as animal products are stronger elicitors of disgust and aversion than plant products. We identify three psychosocial processes, socially-mediated ingestive conditioning, egocentric empathy, and normative moralization, each of which likely plays a role in transforming individual disgust responses and conditioned food aversions into institutionalized food taboos. (shrink)

Evolutionary psychologists are personally liberal, just as social psychologists are. Yet their research has rarely been perceived as liberally biased – if anything, it has been erroneously perceived as motivated by conservative political agendas. Taking a closer look at evolutionary psychologists might offer the broader social psychology community guidance in neutralizing some of the biases Duarte et al. discuss.

Wittgenstein defiende que los problemas filosóficos son ilegítimos. Sin embargo, no resulta del todo claro qué se entiende en general por problema filosófico, cuál es, pues, su naturaleza. El presente artículo intenta elucidar la observación de Wittgenstein que sostiene que la forma de un problema filosófico se puede presentar con la expresión “Yo no sé salir del atolladero” (IF § 123). En el artículo se elige, a manera de ejemplo, el escándalo kantiano, que demanda que demostremos con el uso de (...) la razón que la proposición “hay objetos físicos” es verdadera. Sin renunciar al ejemplo, se explora en qué sentido la expresión de Wittgenstein caracteriza en buena medida la naturaleza misma de la dificultad filosófica. En el ejercicio se atienden recomendaciones formales del Tractatus, terapias desplegadas en Sobre la Certeza y el recurso de distinguir entre sentido primario y sentido secundario de una expresión insinuado en las Investigaciones Filosóficas. (shrink)

Wittgenstein defiende que los problemas filosóficos son ilegítimos. Sin embargo, no resulta del todo claro qué se entiende en general por problema filosófico, cuál es, pues, su naturaleza. El presente artículo intenta elucidar la observación de Wittgenstein que sostiene que la forma de un problema filosófico se puede presentar con la expresión “Yo no sé salir del atolladero” (IF § 123). En el artículo se elige, a manera de ejemplo, el escándalo kantiano, que demanda que demostremos con el uso de (...) la razón que la proposición “hay objetos físicos” es verdadera. Sin renunciar al ejemplo, se explora en qué sentido la expresión de Wittgenstein caracteriza en buena medida la naturaleza misma de la dificultad filosófica. En el ejercicio se atienden recomendaciones formales del Tractatus, terapias desplegadas en Sobre la Certeza y el recurso de distinguir entre sentido primario y sentido secundario de una expresión insinuado en las Investigaciones Filosóficas. (shrink)

This article discusses the relation between empirical and normative approaches in bioethics. The issue of dwarf tossing, while admittedly unusual, is chosen as a point of departure because it challenges the reader to look with fresh eyes upon several central bioethical themes, including human dignity, autonomy, and the protection of vulnerable people. After an overview of current approaches to the integration of empirical and normative ethics, we consider five ways that the empirical and normative can be brought together to speak (...) to the problem of dwarf tossing: prescriptive applied ethics, theoretical ethics, critical applied ethics, particularist ethics and integrated empirical ethics. We defend a position of critical applied ethics that allows for a two-way relation between empirical and normative theories. Against efforts fully to integrate the normative and the empirical into one synthesis, we propose that the two should stand in tension and relation to one another. The approach we endorse acknowledges that a social practice can and should be judged both by the gathering of empirical data and by normative ethics. Critical applied ethics uses a five stage process that includes: (a) determination of the problem, (b) description of the problem, (c) empirical study of effects and alternatives, (d) normative weighing and (e) evaluation of the effects of a decision. In each stage, we explore the perspective from both the empirical (sociological) and the normative ethical point of view. We conclude by applying our five-stage critical applied ethics to the example of dwarf tossing. (shrink)

Johannes Kepler dedicated much of his work to discover a law for the refraction of light. Unfortunately, he formulated an incorrect law. Nevertheless, it was useful for anticipating the behavior of light in some specific conditions. Some believe that Kepler did not have the elements to formulate the law that was later accepted by the scientific community, that is, the Snell–Descartes law. However, in this paper, we propose a model that agrees with Kepler’s heuristics and that is also successful in (...) anticipating the behavior of light when it passes through a surface that separates two media with different optical densities. This model adopts strategies that were recommended by Kepler in two types of analogies. The obstacles that led to the failure of the two types of analogies are presented in the article, and we argue that the model proposed here could overcome these specific obstacles. Finally, we show how the proposed model could be articulated with Kepler’s metaphysics of light. (shrink)

The actual rise of empirical contributions in bioethics questions – at a fundamental level – the place bioethics will reserve for empirical approaches in its field. This article aims to discuss the relationship between empirical research and normative evaluations and to apply this to the use of the concept of dignity in end-of-life research.It describes five possible ways in which empirical research can be related to normative ethics: prescriptive applied ethics, theorist ethics, critical applied ethics, particularist ethics and integrated empirical (...) ethics. In this article, we elaborate on the critical applied ethics perspective and present it as a five stage process comprising a) the determination of the problem, b) the description of the problem, c) the study of effects and alternatives, d) normative weighing and e) the evaluation of the effects of a decision. At each stage, we explore the perspective from both the empirical and the normative poles and apply it to the case of dignity in end-of-life decisions. (shrink)

This paper extends earlier work by its authors on formal aspects of the processes of contracting a theory to eliminate a proposition and revising a theory to introduce a proposition. In the course of the earlier work, Gardenfors developed general postulates of a more or less equational nature for such processes, whilst Alchourron and Makinson studied the particular case of contraction functions that are maximal, in the sense of yielding a maximal subset of the theory (or alternatively, of one of (...) its axiomatic bases), that fails to imply the proposition being eliminated. In the present paper, the authors study a broader class, including contraction functions that may be less than maximal. Specifically, they investigate "partial meet contraction functions", which are defined to yield the intersection of some nonempty family of maximal subsets of the theory that fail to imply the proposition being eliminated. Basic properties of these functions are established: it is shown in particular that they satisfy the Gardenfors postulates, and moreover that they are sufficiently general to provide a representation theorem for those postulates. Some special classes of partial meet contraction functions, notably those that are "relational" and "transitively relational", are studied in detail, and their connections with certain "supplementary postulates" of Gardenfors investigated, with a further representation theorem established. (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)

Political fact-checkers evaluate the truthfulness of politicians’ claims. This paper contributes to an emerging scholarly debate on whether fact-checkers treat political parties differently in a systematic manner depending on their ideology (bias). We first examine the available approaches to analyze bias and then present a new approach in two steps. First, we propose a logistic regression model to analyze the outcomes of fact-checks and calculate how likely each political party will obtain a truth score. We test our model with a (...) sample of fact-checks from Newtral, a major Spanish fact-checker. Our model would signal bias under two assumptions: a) all political parties are on average equally accurate in their statements; b) the verification method gives precise instructions and is implemented systematically. We investigate this second assumption with a series of interviews with Newtral fact-checkers. We show that standard verification protocols are so loosely implemented that fact-checks reflect a set of journalistic decisions, rather than a bias in the statistical sense. We call for a more rigorous definition of verification methods as a pre-requisite for an unbiased assessment of politician’s claims. (shrink)

People can be taught to manipulate symbols according to formal mathematical and logical rules. Cognitive scientists have traditionally viewed this capacity—the capacity for symbolic reasoning—as grounded in the ability to internally represent numbers, logical relationships, and mathematical rules in an abstract, amodal fashion. We present an alternative view, portraying symbolic reasoning as a special kind of embodied reasoning in which arithmetic and logical formulae, externally represented as notations, serve as targets for powerful perceptual and sensorimotor systems. Although symbolic reasoning often (...) conforms to abstract mathematical principles, it is typically implemented by perceptual and sensorimotor engagement with concrete environmental structures. (shrink)

A sustainable supply chain management strategy reduces risks and meets environmental, economic and social objectives by integrating environmental and financial practices. In an ever-changing environment, supply chains have become vulnerable at many levels. In a global supply chain, carefully tracing a product is of great importance to avoid future problems. This paper describes a self-updating smart contract, which includes data validation, for tracing global supply chains using blockchains. Our proposal uses a machine learning model to detect anomalies on traceable data, (...) which helps supply chain operators detect anomalous behavior at any point in the chain in real time. Hyperledger Caliper has been used to evaluate our proposal, and obtained a combined average throughput of 184 transactions per second and an average latency of 0.41 seconds, ensuring that our proposal does not negatively impact supply chain processes while improving supply chain management through data anomaly detection. (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)

A study in the logic of theory change, examining the properties of maxichoice contraction and revision operations.

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)

The aim of this study was to carry out a psychosocial analysis of child-to-parent violence (CPV) in a sample of school adolescents, considering a set of individual variables (psychological distress, problematic use of social networking sites, and perceived non-conformist social reputation) and family variables (open and problematic communication with parents) according to sex. The sample consisted of 3,731 adolescents (54% boys), aged between 14 and 16 years (M = 14.6 years, SD = 0.567), from the state of Nuevo León, Mexico. (...) The scores of the boys and girls were analyzed to check for differences. Also, correlations between all the study variables were calculated. Finally, a multiple stepwise regression analysis was carried out for the total sample and also for boys and girls separately. Results confirmed the important role of individual variables as predictors of CPV in boys and girls. The main difference between boys and girls was observed in the predictive weight of problematic use of social networking sites, which was higher in girls than in boys. Open communication with the father was a significant factor for predicting the decrease of CPV levels in the case of boys, while open communication with the mother predicted the decrease of CPV in girls. Problematic communication with the mother showed similar values in boys and girls when predicting CPV, however, the predictive weight of problematic communication with the father was higher in girls than in boys. These results are interesting and have important implications for the prevention of CPV. (shrink)

El artículo examina tres propuestas de explicación del fenómeno de refracción de la luz formuladas por los pensadores medievales Roger Bacon, John Pecham y Erazmus Ciolek Witelo. Se muestra, en el caso de Bacon, que la explicación estaba soportada en una metafísica de la propagación de los poderes causales y anidaba un conflicto insalvable. En el caso de Pecham se muestra un mayor compromiso con la necesidad de una ley cuantitativa que, desafortunadamente, conduce a una explicación frustrada. Finalmente, se valora (...) el deseo de Witelo por introducir elementos cosmológicos en su explicación. (shrink)

El artículo critica la naturaleza instantánea impuesta a las experienciaselementales en el sistema construccional propuesto por Carnap en Derlogische Aufbau der Welt. Inspirado en una idea seminal de Peirce, propongoalgunas modificaciones a los primeros niveles del sistema construccionalsin dejar de advertir que una adaptación más cuidadosa exige atender otrascríticas sustanciales.

En el artículo se examina la controversia entre extramisionismo e intramisionismo a propósito de la percepción visual. Se defiende que la evaluación del cierre de la controversia depende del explanandum que rastrea el filósofo/historiador en la reconstrucción que persigue. Si enfatizamos en los mecanismos causales, la controversia se cerró en favor del intramisionismo. Si enfatizamos en aspectos asociados con la intencionalidad o con la forma como ciertas afecciones mentales refieren a objetos externos, la controversia conduce a una conciliación entre intramisionismo (...) causal y extramisionismo mental. Finalmente, si ponemos en duda la necesidad de una distinción entre interno/externo, la controversia se disuelve por carecer de sentido. (shrink)

Every area of knowledge is based on a variety of products of conceptual engineering. This article is programmatic in essence: it aims at introducing a model of how conceptual engineering works and, particularly, how conceptual innovation is achieved in the context of theoretical inquiry. First, it describes the context in which the explicit study of the relevance, scope, mechanisms, and aims of conceptual engineering was born. Secondly, it introduces a distinction between evaluative and instrumental conceptual engineering based on the difference (...) between committed and instrumental conceptual use. According to this, it argues that both evaluative and instrumental conceptual engineering might be formally seen as the result of one function, which, provided a conceptual problem, maps to possible conceptual solutions generating success or failure values. Lastly, it introduces a third kind of conceptual engineering, namely, constructive conceptual engineering. Its core is a function that maps solutions to a representational space of non-considered alternatives, thus generating new conceptual content. In general, the proposed model offers a productive and novel field of inquiry on the conditions and factors that grounds theoretical innovation through conceptual engineering. (shrink)

La conciencia fenoménica es la propiedad que los estados, sucesos y procesos mentales poseen cuando, y sólo cuando, hay algo que es como algo para el sujeto que los posee; para experimentarlos o estar en tales estados. Hay algo que es como oler café recién preparado. Tener la experiencia de oler café recién preparado es un estado fenoménicamente conciente. Comúnmente, qué es algo como tener una experiencia conciente refiere al carácter fenoménico de las experiencias. Las teorías de la conciencia intentan (...) explicar éste carácter fenoménico. (shrink)