This paper attempts to delineate a kind of realism, which incorporates some anti-realistic insights regarding the perspective, situated, and historical character of our forms of knowing and being in the world, and which resonates with the basic tenets of Christian theism. The first part of the paper analyzes the challenges anti-realism poses to Christian theism, particularly regarding the role, which the doctrine of creation played in securing the correspondence theory of truth as well as the fundamental experience of God as (...) the foundation of order and meaning. Using Heidegger’s hermeneutics in the second part, it is shown that epistemic pluralism can be made compatible with realism. Given that this form of hermeneutic realism still has problems with integrating the transcendence of God, as well as his/ her presence and action in the “world,” the notion of continuous co-creation as the basis for a pluralist realism that is amenable to Christian theism is explored in the final part. (shrink)

We leverage insights and theories from the extensive inter-firm alliance literature to explore the effect of the sector of the partners on Firm–NGO alliance governance. Our analysis suggests that the sector of the partners has an important impact on alliance governance, not only because it constrains the availability of some governance mechanisms but also because it makes alternative mechanisms available or relevant to the partners. Specifically, we predict that B2N alliances will rely on contracts, a restricted scope, and non-equity hostages, (...) such as reputational hostages and stakeholder involvement, rather than equity, leading to limited protection against opportunism. As a consequence, B2N alliance partners will need to rely on trust-based governance mechanisms to a greater extent than B2B alliance partners, although trust will be harder to build in B2N alliances. (shrink)

Resumen: La problematización de la relación entre individuo y sociedad ha atravesado la historia de las ciencias sociales. El objetivo de este escrito es mostrar la originalidad de los planteamientos de Freud sobre el tópico, a través de un análisis comparativo con las aproximaciones propias de las corrientes socioantropológicas de la escuela de Cultura y Personalidad y de la Sociología Francesa. Nuestra investigación se basó en un análisis bibliográfico tanto de algunos textos socioantropológicos claves sobre dicho debate, como de la (...) producción freudiana pertinente. La interpretación del material freudiano se organizó según tres tópicos: a) la afirmación de la determinación simbólica del síntoma, b) la borradura metodológica de la distinción individuo sociedad, y c) la teorización de una eficacia mítica, transindividual y transhistórica. Concluimos subrayando los aportes del pensamiento de Freud a la discusión: la afirmación de la determinación simbólica ofrece las condiciones para la superación de la relación de externalidad entre el polo del individuo y el de la sociedad, y el consecuente rechazo a una relación especular entre ambos. (shrink)

Resumen: La problematización de la relación entre individuo y sociedad ha atravesado la historia de las ciencias sociales. El objetivo de este escrito es mostrar la originalidad de los planteamientos de Freud sobre el tópico, a través de un análisis comparativo con las aproximaciones propias de las corrientes socioantropológicas de la escuela de Cultura y Personalidad y de la Sociología Francesa. Nuestra investigación se basó en un análisis bibliográfico tanto de algunos textos socioantropológicos claves sobre dicho debate, como de la (...) producción freudiana pertinente. La interpretación del material freudiano se organizó según tres tópicos: a) la afirmación de la determinación simbólica del síntoma, b) la borradura metodológica de la distinción individuo sociedad, y c) la teorización de una eficacia mítica, transindividual y transhistórica. Concluimos subrayando los aportes del pensamiento de Freud a la discusión: la afirmación de la determinación simbólica ofrece las condiciones para la superación de la relación de externalidad entre el polo del individuo y el de la sociedad, y el consecuente rechazo a una relación especular entre ambos.: The relation between individual and society has been a main topic across the history of social sciences. The aim of this paper is to show the originality of Sigmund Freud's ideas about the topic, through a comparative analysis with the approaches of the socio-anthropological currents of the school of Culture and Personality and of French Sociology. Our research was based on a bibliographical analysis of some key socio-anthropological texts on this debate, as well as the relevant Freudian production. The interpretation of the Freudian material was organized according to three topics: a) the affirmation of the symbolic determination of symptoms, b) the methodological erasure of the individual society distinction, and c) the theorization of a mythical, transindividual and transhistorical efficacy. We conclude by emphasizing the contributions of Freud's thought to the discussion: the affirmation of symbolic determination offers the conditions for overcoming the externality relation between the pole of the individual and that of society, and the consequent rejection of a specular relationship between the two. (shrink)

Aproximaciones a la escuela francesa de epistemología Los problemas que dominan a la epistemología pueden contextualizarse históricamente como una forma de racionalidad filosófica. La filosofía se ha presentado a lo largo de la historia como un discurso en el que sus diversos componentes (metafísica, ontología, gnoseología, ética, lógica, etc.) se mostraron unidos en el molde de la ?unidad del saber?. En este marco unitario alguna de las formas del saber filosófico detenta usualmente una posición dominante. El énfasis colocado en la (...) unidad del saber filosófico, o en ?la unidad del pensamiento humano?, es una herencia que el pensamiento filosófico recibe de sus raíces mítico-teológicas. Dicha visión se vio sometida, en la historia de la filosofía, a un proceso de secularización por el cual la instancia dominante pasó de la teología a la metafísica y de ésta a la teoría del conocimiento. Entre los siglos XIX y XX, este proceso atestiguó un cambio ulterior, colocando a la epistemología como instancia dominante de la racionalidad filosófica. La sucesión debe verse como una consecuencia de la funcionalización social de los dispositivos de creencias (ideología), lo que provoca que los mismos se conviertan, en determinado momento, en un obstáculo para la producción de nuevos conocimientos. De esta manera, los nuevos conocimientos, para desarrollarse, se ven forzados a provocar reestructuraciones en el campo filosófico, ya sea mediante el reemplazo de la instancia dominante, la incorporación o creación de nuevas formas de saber filosófico -tal el caso de la epistemología-, o de la marginalización relativa de otras. Se trata de en un proceso complejo (que no es ni lineal, ni biunívoco), en el que cabe no obstante discernir un esquema de la sucesión temporal de las formas filosóficas que dominan la pretendida ?unidad del pensamiento humano? (filosofía). El que acabamos de describir es un proceso lento de sustitución y reemplazo en el tipo de garantías que se le exige elaborar a la filosofía. Algunos momentos, como el ocaso de las garantías de la fe, acaecido con el surgimiento de la filosofía moderna, podrían parecer a primera vista contrajemplos para esta concepción de la evolución del saber filosófico. Podría creerse, en efecto, que con la constitución de esferas autónomas de discurso (teología, ciencia, filosofía), del discurso filosófico se desgajó en un discurso de una naturaleza diferente: la ciencia. Sin embargo, una mirada más atenta revela un paisaje diferente, puesto que esta transformación estuvo acompañada, primero, por la aparición de una nueva instancia dominante de la unificación del conocimiento filosófico. Se trata de la búsqueda de una nueva clase de garantías, las del origen y el fundamento del conocimiento, es decir, las de la gnoseología o teoría del conocimiento, en el interior de la cual se verificó finalmente un nuevo desplazamiento, con la constitución, a fines del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX, de la ?filosofía de la ciencia? o epistemología. Este modelo para la conceptualización del desarrollo del discurso filosófico tiene la ventaja de permitirnos pensar la relación que la epistemología guarda con la instancia de saber filosófico dominante en el seno de la cual se desarrolla: la de la gnoseología. A partir de las relaciones que la epistemología guarda con la temática de las garantías del conocimiento podemos apresar, en un esquema heurístico que será complejizado de diversos modos en este libro, la diferencia entre las tesis características de la epistemología anglosajona y de la epistemología francesa. De acuerdo con en este esquema heurístico, el rasgo más característico de la epistemología anglosajona es su sujeción, en la mayor parte de su desarrollo, a la teoría del conocimiento, lo que se revela en la persistencia de algunos aspectos de la filosofía de la representación y en la reproducción de la oposición idealista entre sujeto y objeto como dos polos cuya armonía debería establecerse, filosóficamente, en términos de la verdad. En su lugar, la epistemología francesa se propuso el estudio de los mecanismos de producción de los conocimientos. La epistemología, desde esta perspectiva, ya no fue vista primordialmente como el estudio de los fundamentos del conocimiento científico, sino como la teoría de las condiciones y las formas de la práctica científica y la historia de esta práctica, tal como aparece en las distintas ciencias concretas. Expresado de otra manera, el contraste se podría establecer mediante la observación de que mientras los anglosajones hacen filosofía de la ciencia como una extensión de la lógica, los franceses la hacen como una extensión de la historia de la ciencia, es decir, encontrando en la historia el laboratorio del epistemólogo. Ahora bien, según veremos, el campo de la epistemología francesa ha cobijado una buena cantidad de debates que tienen que ver primordialmente con dos tendencias en tensión: la que enfatiza la autonomía de lo epistemológico y aquella que destaca la determinación social del pensamiento. Los trabajos de este libro esperan problematizar este y otros ejes, explorando las perspectivas de los ?clásicos? de la escuela francesa en epistemología (Bachelard, Canguilhem, Althusser, Foucault, etc.), las relaciones entre los mismos y los diálogos que cabe establecer entre estos y otras corrientes de pensamiento. ÍNDICE: La ruptura epistemológica, de Bachelard a Balibar y Pêcheux, Pedro Karczmarczyk La ruptura epistemológica según Bachelard, Althusser y Badiou, Carlos Gassmann Visitaciones Derrideanas, Jazmín Anahí Acosta Epistemología sin sujeto cognoscente. Superación, disolución o sujeción de la subjetividad en Popper, Wittgenstein y Foucault, Silvia Rivera; La torsión política del concepto de verdad en Michel Foucault, Manuel Cuervo Sola Canguilhem y Foucault. De la norma biológica a la norma política, Andrea Torrano Psicología e ideología: Foucault, Canguilhem y Althusser, Matías Abeijón . (shrink)

The area of smart power grids needs to constantly improve its efficiency and resilience, to provide high quality electrical power in a resilient grid, while managing faults and avoiding failures. Achieving this requires high component reliability, adequate maintenance, and a studied failure occurrence. Correct system operation involves those activities and novel methodologies to detect, classify, and isolate faults and failures and model and simulate processes with predictive algorithms and analytics. In this paper, we showcase the application of a complex-adaptive, self-organizing (...) modeling method, and Probabilistic Boolean Networks, as a way towards the understanding of the dynamics of smart grid devices, and to model and characterize their behavior. This work demonstrates that PBNs are equivalent to the standard Reinforcement Learning Cycle, in which the agent/model has an interaction with its environment and receives feedback from it in the form of a reward signal. Different reward structures were created to characterize preferred behavior. This information can be used to guide the PBN to avoid fault conditions and failures. (shrink)

We leverage insights and theories from the extensive inter-firm alliance literature to explore the effect of the sector of the partners on Firm-NGO (B2N) alliance governance. Our analysis suggests that the sector of the partners has an important impact on alliance governance, not only because it constrains the availability of some governance mechanisms but also because it makes alternative mechanisms available or relevant to the partners. Specifically, we predict that B2N alliances will rely on contracts, a restricted scope, and non-equity (...) hostages, such as reputational hostages and stakeholder involvement, rather than equity, leading to limited protection against opportunism. As a consequence, B2N alliance partners will need to rely on trust-based governance mechanisms to a greater extent than B2B alliance partners, although trust will be harder to build in B2N alliances. (shrink)

Background Biomedical and ethnographic studies among indigenous people are common practice in health and geographical research. Prior health research misconduct has been documented, particularly when obtaining genetic material. The objective of this study was to crossmatch previously published data with the perceptions of the Waorani peoples about the trading of their genetic material and other biological samples. Methods We conducted a mixed methods study design using a tailored 15-item questionnaire in 72 participants and in-depth interviews in 55 participants belonging to (...) 20 Waorani communities about their experiences and perceptions of participating in biomedical research projects. Additionally, we conducted a systematic review of the literature in order to crossmatch the published results of studies stating the approval of an ethics committee and individual consent within their work. Results A total of 40 men and 32 women, with a mean age of 57 ± 15 years agreed to be interviewed for inclusion. Five main categories around the violation of good clinical practices were identified, concerning the obtention of blood samples from a recently contacted Waorani native community within the Amazonian region of Ecuador. These themes are related to the lack of adequate communication between community members and researchers as well as the voluntariness to participate in health research. Additionally, over 40 years, a total of 38 manuscripts related to the use of biological samples in Waorani indigenous people were published. The majority of the studies did not state within their article obtaining research ethics board approval, and 71% did not report obtaining the informed consent of the participants prior to the execution of the project. Conclusion Clinical Research on the Waorani community in the Ecuadorian Amazon basin has been performed on several occasions. Unfortunately, the majority of these projects did not follow the appropriate ethical and professional standards in either reporting the results or fulfilling them. The results of our investigation suggest that biological material, including genetic material, has been used by researchers globally, with some omitting the minimum information required to guarantee transparency and good clinical practices. We highlight the importance of stating ethics within research to avoid breaches in research transparency. (shrink)

Se exponen las prácticas docentes de las educadoras de párvulos, que cumplen una función reproductora del nacionalismo que es internalizado en las niñas y niños como la ciudadanía chilena. Para ello, configuran un escenario lúdico que ritualiza la conducta cívica y patriótica, por medio de conmemoraciones cívicas fundadas en el belicismo de la guerra del Pacífico, sin considerar la realidad cosmopolita y de diversidad cultural presente en las aulas nortinas. A partir de esto, proponemos una nueva perspectiva respecto de la (...) realización de actos cívicos en la educación parvularia, para hacerlos más inclusivos y acordes a la realidad cultural de la región de Tarapacá, la más multicultural de Chile. This paper describes the teaching practices of pre-school teachers who play a reproductive role of nationalism internalized in children as Chilean citizenships. This happens as the result of a ludic scenario that ritualizes civic and patriotic conduct, through civic commemorations based on the Pacific war, regardless both the cosmopolitan reality and cultural diversity present in classrooms in the Northern part of Chile. Considering this, we propose a new perspective on conducting civic events in early childhood education, to make them more inclusive and consistent with the cultural reality of the region of Tarapacá, Chile's most multicultural region. (shrink)

"La filosofía en Puerto Rico: los transterrados reúne varios estudios sobre filófofos extranjeros que en algún momento decidieron compartir su vida, su enseñanza y sus trabajos académicos con los habitantes de esta bella y hospitalaria Isla de Puerto Rico. La presente es una obra en la cual han colaborado varios autores: Manfre Kerkhoff, Antonio Mansilla Triviño, Juan José Sánchez, Luis Ramírez, José Rivera y Carlos Rojas Osorio, quien estuvo a cargo la iniciativa, el plan de la obra y (...) la edición."--Cubierta. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyse the semantics that has acquired the fear’s symbolism in the culture of Chilean Pentecostalism. By means of the revision and analysis of bibliographic information, we will show how the figure of fear is revealed in the images of hell, the Devil and God. Then we will provide an interpretation of the symbolic peculiarity of fear, which seems to operate as a kind of master symbol of Pentecostalism, not only because it is one (...) of the most important symbols of this culture, but because its polysemy helps to attract the attention of the believers. This would allow it to gather a wide range of paradoxical meanings and to thematize the distinction between transcendence and immanence, and also to facilitate the transmission of one image of fear with a clear deontological and exemplary function for its believers. In order to achieve this, the symbol of fear uses resources from the historical, social and cultural context. (shrink)

Interest in ethical aspects associated to product acquisition and consumption is a growing trend among consumers. In this context, the concept of “product with ethical attributes” has arisen to refer to products with explicit social and environmental characteristics. However, one of the factors that most hinders the purchasing of these products is certainly price. Given the difficulty of reducing price, the question that arises is the extent to which other product attributes can attenuate the negative impact of price on perceived (...) value. We assume that the special benefits associated to this type of products are, at a different level, attenuators of the relationship between price and perceived value. Focusing on Fair Trade organic coffee, hypotheses are tested regarding survey data from 407 customers. They were interviewed in an actual purchasing scenario. The models are tested using conventional Structural Equation Models and the Latent Moderated Structural Equation method. The results obtained shed some light on a highly generalised belief that the marketing of these products can only be improved by reducing their price. However, although a price reduction could be desirable, albeit complicated in this product category, its effects could be reduced by acting on other variables such as the ethical aspects, quality and healthiness of this product category. (shrink)

Informed by Gloria Anzaldúa's and José Carlos Mariátegui's work, as well as by Andean cosmology, Omar Rivera turns to Inka stonework and architecture as an example of a "Cosmological Aesthetics." He articulates ways of sensing, feeling and remembering that are attuned to an aesthetic of water, earth and light. On this basis, Rivera brings forth a corporeal orientation that can be inhabited by the oppressed, one that withdraws from predominant modern/Western conceptions of the human. By providing an (...) aesthetic analysis of cosmological sensing, Rivera sets the stage for exploring physical dimensions of anti-colonial resistance, and furthers the Latinx and Latin American tradition of anti-colonial and liberatory philosophy. Seeingaesthetic involvements with the cosmos as a source for embodied modes of resistance, Rivera turns to the work of María Lugones and Enrique Dussel in order to make explicit the aesthetic dimensions of their work. Andean Aesthetics and Anticolonial Resistance creates a new dialogue between art historians, artists, and philosophers working on Latin American thought, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. It weaves together a Latin American philosophy that connects pre-Columbian cosmologies with contemporary thinkers. Rivera's original approach introduces us to the living, evolving and aesthetic alternatives to coloniality of power and of knowledge, overhauling current understandings of decolonial theory and opening the tradition in transformative ways. (shrink)

A distinctive focus of 19th- and 20th-century Latin American philosophy is the convergence of identity formation and political liberation in ethnically and racially diverse postcolonial contexts. From this perspective, Omar Rivera interprets how a "we" is articulated and deployed in central political texts of this robust philosophical tradition. In particular, by turning to the work of Peruvian political theorist José Carlos Mariátegui among others, Rivera critiques philosophies of liberation that are invested in the redemption of oppressed identities (...) as conditions for bringing about radical social and political change, foregrounding Latin America's complex histories and socialities to illustrate the power and shortcomings of these projects. Building on this critical approach, Rivera studies interrelated epistemological, transcultural, and aesthetic delimitations of Latin American philosophy in order to explore the possibility of social and political liberation "beyond redemption.". (shrink)

La pregunta que exploro en este trabajo es si la injusticia social puede socavar la autoridad moral de la sociedad para castigar al que delinque. La respuesta a esta pregunta depende esencialmente de cuál sea la teoría justificatoria del castigo penal de la que se parte. Analizo diversas teorías de la pena, entre ellas la teoría consensual de Carlos Nino. Mi objetivo es explorar de qué modo las diferentes teorías de la pena enfrentan el desafío que plantea la pregunta (...) y extraer algunas conclusiones tentativas de ese recorrido. The question I address in this paper is whether social injustice can undermine the moral authority of society to punish criminals. The answer to this question crucially depends on the underlying justificatory theory of punishment. I consider several theories, among them the consensual theory proposed by Carlos Nino. My aim is to explore how different theories of punishment address the challenge and to draw some tentative conclusions. (shrink)

Libro reseñado: Lo Uno y la Diada indefinida en Plotino. El kairós como el momentum de la procesión plotiniana. Autor: Rubén Soto Rivera.

Omar Rivera’s Delimitations of Latin American Philosophy: Beyond Redemption is an important contribution to the interpretation of central figures and questions of the Latin American philosophical tradition, particularly Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui and questions of identity and liberation. Rivera establishes productive dialogues between foundational figures such as Simón Bolívar, José Martí, and Mariátegui and decolonial thinkers like María Lugones, Aníbal Quijano, and Gloria Anzaldúa to posit delimitations of Latin American philosophy that might allow it to move (...) beyond redemptive logics that essentialize identities and reinscribe oppressions in narratives of liberation. This review explores the central arguments of the book and proposes a philosophical and a political issue that emerges from them. (shrink)

The received view of dynamical explanation is that dynamical cognitive science seeks to provide covering law explanations of cognitive phenomena. By analyzing three prominent examples of dynamicist research, I show that the received view is misleading: some dynamical explanations are mechanistic explanations, and in this way resemble computational and connectionist explanations. Interestingly, these dynamical explanations invoke the mathematical framework of dynamical systems theory to describe mechanisms far more complex and distributed than the ones typically considered by philosophers. Therefore, contemporary dynamicist (...) research reveals the need for a more sophisticated account of mechanistic explanation. (shrink)

Models developed using machine learning are increasingly prevalent in scientific research. At the same time, these models are notoriously opaque. Explainable AI aims to mitigate the impact of opacity by rendering opaque models transparent. More than being just the solution to a problem, however, Explainable AI can also play an invaluable role in scientific exploration. This paper describes how post-hoc analytic techniques from Explainable AI can be used to refine target phenomena in medical science, to identify starting points for future (...) investigations of causal relationships, and to generate possible explanations of target phenomena in cognitive science. In this way, this paper describes how Explainable AI—over and above machine learning itself—contributes to the efficiency and scope of data-driven scientific research. (shrink)

Although cognitive science was multidisciplinary from the start, an under-emphasis on anthropology has left the field with limited research in small scale, indigenous societies. Neglecting the anthropological perspective is risky, given that once-canonical cognitive science findings have often been shown to be artifacts of enculturation rather than cognitive universals. This imbalance has become more problematic as the increased use of Western theory-driven approaches, many of which assume human uniformity (“universality”), confronts the absence of a robust descriptive base that might provide (...) clarifying or even contrary evidence. We highlight the need for remedies to such shortcomings by suggesting a two-fold methodological shift. First, studies conducted in indigenous societies can benefit by relying on multidisciplinary research groups to diminish ethnocentrism and enhance the quality of the data. Second, studies devised for Western societies can readily be adapted to the changing settings encountered in the field. Here, we provide examples, drawn from the areas of emotion and facial expressions, to illustrate potential solutions to recurrent problems in enhancing the quality of data collection, hypothesis testing, and the interpretation of results. (shrink)

Cet article se propose d'analyser les relations entre l'anthropologie et l'indigénisme au Brésil. Pour cela, il retrace le processus de migration des savoirs indigénistes depuis leur contexte d'origine au Mexique jusqu'au Brésil, et les transformations qu'ils connaissent au cours de leur trajectoire jusqu'à aujourd'hui, en s'appuyant sur la notion de « traditions de savoirs » pour la gestion des populations qui se sont développées à partir de l'époque coloniale. Cette approche participe d'une anthropologie du colonialisme, en ce qu'elle étudie les (...) conceptions de la diversité culturelle des populations dans les administrations publiques brésiliennes et les façons de gouverner celles-ci. (shrink)

Bayesian reverse-engineering is a research strategy for developing three-level explanations of behavior and cognition. Starting from a computational-level analysis of behavior and cognition as optimal probabilistic inference, Bayesian reverse-engineers apply numerous tweaks and heuristics to formulate testable hypotheses at the algorithmic and implementational levels. In so doing, they exploit recent technological advances in Bayesian artificial intelligence, machine learning, and statistics, but also consider established principles from cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Although these tweaks and heuristics are highly pragmatic in character and (...) are often deployed unsystematically, Bayesian reverse-engineering avoids several important worries that have been raised about the explanatory credentials of Bayesian cognitive science: the worry that the lower levels of analysis are being ignored altogether; the challenge that the mathematical models being developed are unfalsifiable; and the charge that the terms ‘optimal’ and ‘rational’ have lost their customary normative force. But while Bayesian reverse-engineering is therefore a viable and productive research strategy, it is also no fool-proof recipe for explanatory success. (shrink)

This chapter subsumes David Marr’s levels of analysis account of explanation in cognitive science under the framework of mechanistic explanation: Answering the questions that define each one of Marr’s three levels is tantamount to describing the component parts and operations of mechanisms, as well as their organization, behavior, and environmental context. By explicating these questions and showing how they are answered in several different cognitive science research programs, this chapter resolves some of the ambiguities that remain in Marr’s account, and (...) shows that many different areas and traditions of cognitive scientific research can be unified under the mechanistic framework. (shrink)

To date, no definition of life has been unequivocally accepted by the scientific community. In frustration, some authors advocate alternatives to standard definitions. These include using a list of characteristic features, focusing on life’s effects, or categorizing biospheres rather than life itself; treating life as a fuzzy category, a process or a cluster of contingent properties; or advocating a ‘wait-and-see’ approach until other examples of life are created or discovered. But these skeptical, operational, and pluralistic approaches have intensified the debate, (...) rather than settled it. Given the failure of even these approaches, we advocate a new strategy. In this paper, we reverse the usual line of reasoning and argue that the “life problem” arises from thinking incorrectly about the nature of life. Scientists most often conceptualize life as a class or kind, with earthly life as a single instance of it. Instead, we advocate thinking about Earth’s Life as an individual, in the way that species are now thought to be. In this view, Life is a monophyletic clade that originated with a last universal common ancestor, and includes all its descendants. We can continue to use the category ‘life’ pragmatically to refer to similarities between various phenomena and Life. But the relevant similarities are a matter of interest and preference, not a matter of fact. The search for other life in the Universe, then, is merely a search for entities that resemble parts of Life in whatever sense astrobiologists find most appealing. This does not mean that the search for evolved complexity elsewhere in the universe or its creation in the lab are futile endeavors, but that debates over whether they count as ‘life’ are. Ironically, finally abandoning the concept ‘life’ may make our searches for evolved complexity more fruitful. We explain why. (shrink)

This paper considers the way mathematical and computational models are used in network neuroscience to deliver mechanistic explanations. Two case studies are considered: Recent work on klinotaxis by Caenorhabditis elegans, and a longstanding research effort on the network basis of schizophrenia in humans. These case studies illustrate the various ways in which network, simulation and dynamical models contribute to the aim of representing and understanding network mechanisms in the brain, and thus, of delivering mechanistic explanations. After outlining this mechanistic construal (...) of network neuroscience, two concerns are addressed. In response to the concern that functional network models are non-explanatory, it is argued that functional network models are in fact explanatory mechanism sketches. In response to the concern that models which emphasize a network’s organization over its composition do not explain mechanistically, it is argued that this emphasis is both appropriate and consistent with the principles of mechanistic explanation. What emerges is an improved understanding of the ways in which mathematical and computational models are deployed in network neuroscience, as well as an improved conception of mechanistic explanation in general. (shrink)

Whereas most branches of neuroscience are thought to provide mechanistic explanations, systems neuroscience is not. Two reasons are traditionally cited in support of this conclusion. First, systems neuroscientists rarely, if ever, rely on the dual strategies of decomposition and localization. Second, they typically emphasize organizational properties over the properties of individual components. In this paper, I argue that neither reason is conclusive: researchers might rely on alternative strategies for mechanism discovery, and focusing on organization is often appropriate and consistent with (...) the norms of mechanistic explanation. Thus, many explanations in systems neuroscience can also be viewed as mechanistic explanations. (shrink)

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)

Benchmarking automated theorem proving (ATP) systems using standardized problem sets is a well-established method for measuring their performance. However, the availability of such libraries for non-classical logics is very limited. In this work we propose a library for benchmarking Girard's (propositional) intuitionistic linear logic. For a quick bootstrapping of the collection of problems, and for discussing the selection of relevant problems and understanding their meaning as linear logic theorems, we use translations of the collection of Kleene's intuitionistic theorems in the (...) traditional monograph "Introduction to Metamathematics". We analyze four different translations of intuitionistic logic into linear logic and compare their proofs using a linear logic based prover with focusing. In order to enhance the set of problems in our library, we apply the three provability-preserving translations to the propositional benchmarks in the ILTP Library. Finally, we generate a comprehensive set of reachability problems for Petri nets and encode such problems as linear logic sequents, thus enlarging our collection of problems. (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)

En uno de los experimentos fundacionales de la filosofía experimental, Nichols y Knobe sostuvieron que la gente tiende a considerar que un universo no determinista es condición de la responsabilidad moral. Pero que esta intuición varía dramáticamente si se plantea la pregunta a partir de un caso concreto que movilice una respuesta emocional de rechazo, en cuyo caso la mayoría se decanta por apreciar responsabilidad moral incluso en un universo determinista. Aplicado el caso a estudiantes de bioética en ingeniería biomédica, (...) los resultados son completamente distintos, de forma consistente en varias cohortes. Este artículo explora diferentes hipótesis (metodología, contexto cultural, lengua materna y trasfondo educativo y vocacional) que podrían explicar la divergencia. (shrink)

This chapter provides an overview of the basic research strategies and analytic techniques deployed in computational cognitive neuroscience. On the one hand, “top-down” strategies are used to infer, from formal characterizations of behavior and cognition, the computational properties of underlying neural mechanisms. On the other hand, “bottom-up” research strategies are used to identify neural mechanisms and to reconstruct their computational capacities. Both of these strategies rely on experimental techniques familiar from other branches of neuroscience, including functional magnetic resonance imaging, single-cell (...) recording, and electroencephalography. What sets computational cognitive neuroscience apart, however, is the explanatory role of analytic techniques from disciplines as varied as computer science, statistics, machine learning, and mathematical physics. These techniques serve to describe neural mechanisms computationally, but also to drive the process of scientific discovery by influencing which kinds of mechanisms are most likely to be identified. For this reason, understanding the nature and unique appeal of computational cognitive neuroscience requires not just an understanding of the basic research strategies that are involved, but also of the formal methods and tools that are being deployed, including those of probability theory, dynamical systems theory, and graph theory. (shrink)

The primary objective of this paper is to review the notions of Umwelt and Functional Cycle from semiophilosophical and cybersemiotic perspectives and to propose new ways of reading these concepts. We consider that Umwelt theory is framed within “cryptosemiotics” as a field of knowledge, since it establishes an explanatory field capable of putting new paths for research on the table while allowing the elaboration of theoretical foundations for the understanding of semiosis. In addition, it is possible to establish a cybernetic (...) view on the idea of the functional cycle as a pre-requisite for meaning and communication, which entails a cybersemiotics point of view of meaning emergence. Then, in this paper, we propose a philosophical, cybernetic, and cybersemiotics reading of von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory. (shrink)