Hospitality can be considered a key institution in the social relationships in the ancient Mediterranean. To identify the people involved in a hospitality agreement, in certain contexts small objects were used in a similar way to a password, which the Greeks called symbolon and the Romans tessera hospitalis. We know how the latter were used thanks to Plautus' Poenulus. At least 64 pieces are currently known which may be identified as tesserae hospitales. All come from the Western Mediterranean. The majority (...) contain brief inscriptions, written in Etruscan, Latin, Greek, or Celtiberian. They share a series of common features, which impart a clear family resemblance beyond geographic, cultural, or linguistic borders. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 2, February 2022.

Two different derivations of the observed vacuum energy density are presented. One is based on a class of proper and novel generalizations of the de Sitter solutions in terms of a family of radial functions R that provides an explicit formula for the cosmological constant along with a natural explanation of the ultraviolet/infrared entanglement required to solve this problem. A nonvanishing value of the vacuum energy density of the order of ${10^{- 123} M_{\rm Planck}^4}$ is derived in agreement with the (...) experimental observations. A correct lower estimate of the mass of the observable universe related to the Dirac–Eddington–Weyl’s large number N = 1080 is also obtained. The presence of the radial function R is instrumental to understand why the cosmological constant is not zero and why it is so tiny. Finally, we rigorously prove why the proper use of Weyl’s Geometry within the context of Friedman–Lemaitre–Robertson–Walker cosmological models can account for both the origins and the value of the observed vacuum energy density. The source of dark energy is just the dilaton-like Jordan–Brans–Dicke scalar field that is required to implement Weyl invariance of the most simple of all possible actions. The full theory involving the dynamics of Weyl’s gauge field Aμ is very rich and may explain also the anomalous Pioneer acceleration and the temporal variations of the fundamental constants resulting from the expansion of the Universe. This is consistent with Dirac’s old idea of the plausible variation of the physical constants but with the advantage that it is not necessary to invoke extra dimensions. (shrink)

The main features of how to build a Born’s Reciprocal Gravitational theory in curved phase-spaces are developed. By recurring to the nonlinear connection formalism of Finsler geometry a generalized gravitational action in the 8D cotangent space (curved phase space) can be constructed involving sums of 5 distinct types of torsion squared terms and 2 distinct curvature scalars ${\mathcal{R}}, {\mathcal{S}}$ which are associated with the curvature in the horizontal and vertical spaces, respectively. A Kaluza-Klein-like approach to the construction of the curvature (...) of the 8D cotangent space and based on the (torsionless) Levi-Civita connection is provided that yields the observed value of the cosmological constant and the Brans-Dicke-Jordan Gravity action in 4D as two special cases. It is found that the geometry of the momentum space can be linked to the observed value of the cosmological constant when the curvature in $\mathit{momentum}$ space is very large, namely the small size of P is of the order of $( 1/R_{\mathit{Hubble}})$ . Finally we develop a Born’s reciprocal complex gravitational theory as a local gauge theory in 8D of the $\mathit{deformed}$ Quaplectic group that is given by the semi-direct product of U(1,3) with the $\mathit{deformed}$ (noncommutative) Weyl-Heisenberg group involving four $\mathit{noncommutative}$ coordinates and momenta. The metric is complex with symmetric real components and antisymmetric imaginary ones. An action in 8D involving 2 curvature scalars and torsion squared terms is presented. (shrink)

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

This article reports the findings of a survey examining if there are gender and career stage differences between male and female practitioners regarding ethical judgment. The results show that, on average, females adopted a more strict ethical stance than their male counterparts on 7 out of 19 vignettes. Males on the other hand, demonstrated a more ethical stance than their female counterparts on 2 out of 19 vignettes. The results furthermore indicate there is a significant difference in ethical judgment across (...) career stages. Overall, it appears that practitioners in later career stages display higher ethical judgment than practitoners in lower career stages. Implications are provided for both practitioners and academicians. (shrink)

This paper explores aspects of GPT-3 that have been discussed as harbingers of artificial general intelligence and, in particular, linguistic intelligence. After introducing key features of GPT-3 and assessing its performance in the light of the conversational standards set by Alan Turing in his seminal paper from 1950, the paper elucidates the difference between clever automation and genuine linguistic intelligence. A central theme of this discussion on genuine conversational intelligence is that members of a linguistic community never merely respond “algorithmically” (...) to queries through a selective kind of pattern recognition, because they must also jointly attend and act with other speakers in order to count as genuinely intelligent and trustworthy. This presents a challenge for systems like GPT-3, because representing the world in a way that makes conversational common ground salient is an essentially collective task that we can only achieve jointly with other speakers. Thus, the main difficulty for any artificially intelligent model of conversation is to account for the communicational intentions and motivations of a speaker through joint attention. These joint motivations and intentions seem to be completely absent from the standard way in which systems like GPT-3 and other artificial intelligent systems work. This is not merely a theoretical issue. Since GPT-3 and future iterations of similar systems will likely be available for commercial use through application programming interfaces, caution is needed regarding the risks created by these systems, which pass for “intelligent” but have no genuine communicational intentions, and can thereby produce fake and unreliable linguistic exchanges. (shrink)

What are the limits of the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the relational aspects of medical and nursing care? There has been a lot of recent work and applications showing the promise and efficiency of AI in clinical medicine, both at the research and treatment levels. Many of the obstacles discussed in the literature are technical in character, regarding how to improve and optimize current practices in clinical medicine and also how to develop better data bases for optimal parameter (...) adjustments and predictive algorithms. This paper argues that there are also in principle obstacles to the application of AI in clinical medicine and care where empathy is important, and that these problems cannot be solved with any of the technical and theoretical approaches that shape the current application of AI in specific areas of clinical medicine in which care for patients is fundamental. This is important, because it generates specific risks that may be overlooked otherwise, and it justifies the necessity of human monitoring and emotional intervention in clinical medicine. Consequently, difficult issues concerning moral and legal responsibility may ensue if these in principle problems are ignored. (shrink)

In his new book, Carlos Alberto Torres, an internationally renowned critical theorist of education, explores the early writings of Paulo Freire whose ideas have had a tremendous and long-lasting impact on the world of pedagogy and politics. Torres analyzes Freire's works, from the 1960s and 1970s, before Freire gained worldwide recognition for his Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Offering an in-depth look into the formative thinking of Freire, Torres identifies how his ideas produced frameworks for educating global citizens, building community (...) and mutual respect, creating social responsibility, instilling an appreciation for diversity, promoting multiple literacies, and social justice education. This volume is the result of more than 3 decades of research with access to Freire's personal library and the archives of the Paulo Freire Institute, as well as the author's extensive conversations with Paulo Freire over two decades--Dr. Torres was Freire's adviser during his tenure as Secretary of Education in the Municipality of São Paulo, Brazil, 1989-1991. (shrink)

Critics of theological accounts of the nature of morality have argued that such accounts must be rejected, even by theists, because such accounts (i) have the unacceptable implication that nothing is morally wrong in possible worlds in which atheism is true, (ii) render the substantive content of morality arbitrary, and (iii) make it impossible or redundant to attribute moral properties to God or God’s actions. I argue that none of these criticisms constitute good reason for theists to abandon theological accounts (...) of the nature of morality. (shrink)

This article presents what I call the Central Normative Proposal of Luis Villoro. This proposal is based on an interpretation of the principle of non-exclusion in ethics and epistemology. The core argument of the paper is based on a linguistic analogy that demonstrates the importance of reasonable communication for non-exclusion in epistemology, which is assumed in various theses of Villoro. A consequence of this analogy for non-exclusion in ethics is that Villoro defends basing what is reasonable on the concrete possibilities (...) of mutual understanding, starting with asymmetries and injustices that are obfuscated or eliminated in a contractualist analysis, or one that begins with strictly egalitarian principles. This criticism is compatible with egalitarian views, but it assumes a radically different point of departure. Although various theses by Villoro are compatible with egalitarian notions, given this point of departure based on asymmetries of power his proposal should be understood based on our cognitive capacities to understand and appreciate such asymmetries. For this reason, the paper concludes with an analysis of the notion of reasonableness, which under my interpretation Villoro defines in terms of our capacities for attention, that are not reducible to beliefs or systems of beliefs. In this way, the Central Normative Proposal of Villoro depends on the convergence between truth and the dignity of the members of communities in which as matter-of-fact asymmetries exist and must be eliminated through concrete communicative efforts. (shrink)

I defend a Husserlian account of self-consciousness against representationalist accounts: higher-order representationalism and self-representationalism. Of these, self-representationalism is the harder to refute since, unlike higher-order representationalism, it does not incur a regress of self-conscious acts. However, it incurs a regress of intentional contents. I consider, and reject, five strategies for avoiding this regress of contents. I conclude that the regress is inherent to self-representationalism. I close by showing how this incoherence obtrudes in what must be the self-representationalist’s account of the (...) phenomenology of experience. (shrink)

The present text surveys and reevaluates the meaning and scope of Ortega y Gasset’s philosophy. The chapters reveal the most important aspects of his history such as the Neokantian training he went thru in Germany as well as his discovery of Husserl’s phenomenology around 1912. The work also covers his original contributions to philosophy namely vital and historical reason - and the cultural and educational mission he proposed to achieve. The Spanish – and to a certain extent the European – (...) circumstance was the milieu from which his work emerged but this does not limit Ortega’s scope. Rather, he believed that universal truths can only emerge from the particulars in which they are embedded. The publication in 2010 of a critical edition of his Complete Works opened worldwide access for many unpublished manuscripts, and some of his lectures. There is renewed interest among students and researchers in Ortega and this book uniquely delivers scholarship on his content in English. (shrink)

Despite an efflorescence of historical scholarship on the theme of monarchy in nineteenth-century Britain, the views of the great Victorian man of letters Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) in this regard have been explored only in fragmentary and incomplete fashion. The present article aims to offer a comprehensive survey of Carlyle's thought regarding monarchy, arguing that on the whole, Carlyle was strongly and consistently opposed to monarchy on the hereditary principle, claiming that this had become an absurd anachronism in the modern (democratic) (...) world. Instead, Carlyle strongly and consistently promoted a merit-based aristocracy of talent, in which the ‘best’ man would rule, regardless of heredity or social origin. Indeed, in his historical writings, he was quite prepared to endorse regicide as a means to replacing inept hereditary monarchs with low-born men of destiny such as Oliver Cromwell. Although Carlyle refrained from publicly demanding the abolition of the monarchy in contemporary Britain, his private correspondence and conversation were replete with sneers and snide asides regarding Queen Victoria and her predecessors. (shrink)

This commentary focuses on the importance of attention skills in the development of universal associative learning, and it explains why the centrality of attention in UAL presents a considerable difficulty for the UAL approach. Attentional abilities are not just developmentally related to UAL but are in fact explanatory of UAL. The main problem is that all the types of attention involved in UAL can be dissociated from consciousness. This means that while attention skills for UAL might be necessary for consciousness, (...) they are not sufficient because they can all occur unconsciously. Thus, the possibility that UAL capacities might not be sufficient for consciousness cannot be eliminated, thereby challenging the key claim of the UAL approach. (shrink)

According to doxastic accounts of self-deception, self-deception that P yields belief that P. For doxastic accounts, the self-deceiver really believes what he, in self-deception, professes to believe. I argue that doxastic accounts are contradicted by a phenomenon that often accompanies self-deception. This phenomenon – which I term ‘secondary deception’ – consists in the self-deceiver's defending his professed (deceit-induced) belief to an audience by lying to that audience. I proceed to sketch an alternative, non-doxastic account of how we should understand self-deception (...) in terms of the self-deceiver's misrepresentation of himself as believing that P. (shrink)

In their 2010 article ‘Research Integrity in China: Problems and Prospects’, Zeng and Resnik challenge others to engage in empirical research on research integrity in China. Here we respond to that call in three ways: first, we provide updates to their analysis of regulations and allegations of scientific misconduct; second, we report on two surveys conducted in Hong Kong that provide empirical backing to describe ways in which problems and prospects that Zeng and Resnik identify are being explored; and third, (...) we continue the discussion started by Zeng and Resnik, pointing to ways in which China's high-profile participation in international academic research presents concerns about research integrity. According to our research, based upon searches of both English and Chinese language literature and policies, and two surveys conducted in Hong Kong, academic faculty and research post-graduate students in Hong Kong are aware of and have a positive attitude towards responsible conduct of research. Although Hong Kong is but one small part of China, we present this research as a response to concerns Zeng and Resnik introduce and as a call for a continued conversation. (shrink)

In the paper it is argued that the conceptual resources of Christianity topple the hiddenness argument. According to the author, the variability of the divine love cast doubt on the soundness of Schellenberg’s reasoning. If we understood a perfect love as a maximal and equal concern and identification with all and for all, then a divine love would entail divine impartiality, but because of conflicts of interest between human beings the perfect, divine love cannot be maximal.

¿Qué tipo de agencia es necesaria para la personalidad jurídica? ¿Cuáles son los requisitos cognitivos y racionales que los sistemas legales asumen acerca de los sujetos de la ley? ¿Cómo es que los seres humanos cumplen con estos requisitos? En trabajo previo (Cáceres y Montemayor, 2016), hemos argumentado que estas preguntas requieren un nuevo acercamiento a la teoría del derecho, basado en hallazgos recientes en ciencia cognitiva, que van más allá de tratamientos teóricos neuro-legales contemporáneos. Aquí construimos sobre esta propuesta, (...) ahora enfocándonos en cuestiones de agencia y normatividad, incluyendo tipos de agencia que son relevantes para la epistemología social. La conclusión principal del artículo es que los muy estrictos requisitos cognitivos que se asumen sobre las capacidades explícitas de racionalidad de los agentes cognitivos, presupuestos por la ley, no sólo son incompatibles con los hallazgos en psicología, sino que un análisis sistemático de la agencia moral y epistémica también es necesario para poder entender la normatividad legal. El argumento principal es que tipos de agencia colectiva, moral y epistémica, difieren de la agencia individual, la cual también debe distinguirse como moral y epistémica. Fundamentalmente, la agencia colectiva difiere de la individual no sólo con base en diferencias con respecto a la racionalidad, sino también con base en los criterios de integración informativa. Varias consecuencias de este análisis son evaluadas, incluyendo aspectos concernientes a integración informativa para juicios y decisiones, comunicación fiable para la agencia epistémica, y la integración de consideraciones morales en el razonamiento jurídico. Una revisión comprensiva de la noción de “autonomía” es justificada por esta propuesta, en parte porque los requisitos comunes para la personalidad y autonomía jurídica son muy demandantes e inadecuados en muchos casos, y en parte porque la agencia colectiva debe tomarse en consideración como un tipo fundamental de agencia legal responsable para procesos de integración informativa. Basándonos en la distinción entre formas epistémicas y morales de razonamiento, explicamos cómo los sistemas legales necesitan de altos niveles de integración cognitiva para la responsabilidad legal a nivel colectivo. (shrink)

Después de enseñar la asignatura de Ética, y de la aplicar unas normas familiares escolares tradicionales, los estudiantes no se apropian de elementos éticos por varias causas: no les ven utilidad, no comprenden el contexto, o simplemente no les afecta, anulando cualquier interés al respecto. Esto impide que su obrar en la cotidianidad no sea tolerante en su ambiente escolar, generando dificultades en el docente para mediar comportamientos opuestos a una cultura de paz. Ante esto, se propone la Filosofía para (...) Niños (FpN) como apuesta ético-política que permita robustecer el pensamiento crítico, creativo y cuidadoso para mirar hacia una cultura de paz. Diego Pineda, el fundador de FpN en Colombia, sostiene que es necesario desarrollar en los estudiantes habilidades de pensamiento que, adicionales a conocimientos éticos-ciudadanos, los lleve a tomar decisiones acertadas en el abordaje pacífico del conflicto. El desarrollo paulatino del pensamiento, la cercanía a las comunidades de indagación, la incursión en habilidades cognitivas y éticas producto de las herramientas pedagógicas propias del programa de FpN, constituyen una preparación para asumir posiciones argumentadas frente a dilemas que acontecen dentro de los conflictos escolares, ello facilitará al estudiante estructurarse y lograr tomar decisiones iluminadas por la razón. (shrink)

Like non-verbal communication, paralinguistic communication is rooted in anatomical and physiological factors. Paralinguistic form-meaning relations arise from the way these affect speech production, with some fine-tuning by the cultural and linguistic context. The effects have been classified as “biological codes,” following the terminological lead of John Ohala's Frequency Code. Intonational morphemes, though arguably non-arbitrary in principle, are in fact heavily biased toward these paralinguistic meanings. Paralinguistic and linguistic meanings for four biological codes are illustrated. In addition to the Frequency Code, (...) the Effort Code, and the Respiratory Code, the Sirenic Code is introduced here, which is based on the use of whispery phonation, widely seen as being responsible for the signaling and perception of feminine attractiveness and sometimes used to express interrogativity in language. In the context of the evolution of language, the relations between physiological conditions and the resulting paralinguistic and linguistic meanings will need to be clarified. (shrink)

Some particularists have argued that even virtue properties can exhibit a form of holism or context variance, e.g. sometimes an act is worse for being kind, say. But, on a common conception of virtuous acts, one derived from Aristotle, claims of virtue holism will be shown to be false. I argue, perhaps surprisingly, that on this conception the virtuousness of an act is not a reason to do it, and hence this conception of virtuous acts presents no challenge to particularist (...) claims about the context variance of reasons. Still, I argue that the virtues nevertheless have important implications for our understanding of the particularism debate. Specifically, we can accept the particularist claim that reasons do not need to be principled in order to have the normative status that they do have, while still maintaining that sound moral thought and judgement has a principled structure understood in terms of the virtues. (shrink)

Contemporary popular culture is riddled with references to Mexican drug cartels, narcos, and drug trafficking. In the United States, documentary filmmakers, journalists, academics, and politicians have taken note of the increasing threats to our security coming from a subculture that appears to feed on murder and brutality while being fed by a romanticism about power and capital. Carlos Alberto Sánchez uses Mexican narco-culture as a point of departure for thinking about the nature and limits of violence, culture, and personhood. (...) A Sense of Brutality argues that violent cultural modalities, of which narco-culture is but one, call into question our understanding of “violence” as a concept. The reality of narco-violence suggests that “violence” itself is insufficient to capture it, that we need to redeploy and reconceptualize “brutality” as a concept that better captures this reality. Brutality is more than violence, other to cruelty, and distinct from horror and terror—all concepts that are normally used interchangeably with brutality, but which, as the analysis suggests, ought not to be. In narco-culture, the normalization of brutality into everyday life is a condition upon which the absolute erasure or derealization of people is made possible. (shrink)

Does responsible conduct of research (RCR) training improve levels of trust between researchers? Using data gathered as part of a survey on the attitudes of master's and doctoral-level students toward RCR, we found that RCR training correlated with a weakened beliefs of students toward their supervisors' ethicality but a stronger belief in the ethicality of their peers. We believe that these findings point to new avenues of research on trust in the academic setting and to needs for curriculum changes in (...) RCR training. (shrink)

Ghost variables are variables in program languages that do not correspond to physical entities. This special issue, based on a panel on “Race as a Ghost Variable” at the 2017 Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science, traces ideas of “race” in particular niches of science, technology, and medicine where it is submerged and disavowed, yet wields power. Each paper is a case study exploring ghosts that emerge through the resonance among things as heterogeneous as hair patterns, hormone (...) levels, food tastes, drug use, clinic locations, proximity to disaster, job classifications, and social belonging and suspicion, all of which vibrate with meanings accumulated over long racial histories. Together, the papers further elaborate methods and analytic models for identifying the operations of race—the relations and processes that make it, the effects that it has. A chief appeal of the metaphor of the ghost is that it brings the importance of history to the fore. Ghosts are simultaneously history and the present, not just an accretion of earlier experiences, but the palimpsest left when one tries to erase them. Sometimes faint and hard to discern, sometimes rambunctious and disruptive, ghosts refuse our attempts to simply move on. (shrink)

Statistical Default Logic (SDL) is an expansion of classical (i.e., Reiter) default logic that allows us to model common inference patterns found in standard inferential statistics, e.g., hypothesis testing and the estimation of a population‘s mean, variance and proportions. This paper presents an embedding of an important subset of SDL theories, called literal statistical default theories, into stable model semantics. The embedding is designed to compute the signature set of literals that uniquely distinguishes each extension on a statistical default theory (...) at a pre-assigned error-bound probability. (shrink)

1. EI dilema de Jørgensen. 2. La salución propuesta. 3. Breve historia de un prejudicio filosófico. 4. Normas sin lógica. 4.1. Imperativos sin lógica. 4.2. Normas y proposicienesnormativas. 4.3. Proposiciones normativas y normas verdaderas. 4.4. Mundos posibles. 4.5. Validez e invalidez. 4.6. La racionalidad del legislador. 5. La noción abstracta, sintáctica y semántica de consecuencia. 5.1. La noción abstracta de consecuencia. 5.2. La noción sintáctica de consecuencia. 5.3. La noción semántica de consecuencia. 5.4. EI sentido dado por las reglas de (...) uso en un contexto. 5.5. Qué operadores para la lógica. 5.6. Solo en un contexto la parte cobra sentido. 6. La lógica deóntica. 7. De donde la solución del dilema interesa a toda la lógica. 8. Consecuendas para la informática. (shrink)

Enseñar historia de la filosofía en los programas de filosofía universitarios es mucho más que transmitir información sobre el pasado de una disciplina académica. En este artículo se indica la triple función de la tradición de referencia en la formación de agentes de la filosofía: histórica, didáctica y metodológica. Ello con el fin de incitar la producción de reflexiones sobre el lugar del pasado filosófico local y sus posibles concreciones como historias de la filosofía en Colombia, o su participación en (...) las historias sobre la tradición de referencia, incluso como insumos para cursos que no sean históricos, sino problemáticos. Así, a lo largo de este documento se encuentran indicaciones sobre cómo enriquecer no solo las historias de la filosofía sino otros posibles cursos dentro de los programas de formación filosófica profesional. (shrink)