Resumen: La noción semántica de significado procedimental se propuso originalmente como una manera de explicar la contribución del léxico no conceptual a la interpretación. Los elementos procedimentales se consideraron en una primera etapa portadores de instrucciones para realizar inferencias pragmáticas. Entre otros factores, su rigidez frente a la maleabilidad del significado conceptual hizo pensar en dos tipos de semántica léxica para las lenguas naturales, una conceptual y otra procedimental. Recientemente, el estudio de las conductas naturales ostensivas y la visión de (...) la modularidad masiva de la mente han conducido a una perspectiva diferente sobre el papel de los elementos procedimentales según la cual estas unidades tienen una función más amplia, y operan como disparadores de procesos y esquemas cognitivos diversos que son externos al lenguaje pero intervienen en la comunicación. Su papel como orientadores de la inferencia pragmática es sólo uno de ellos. Aquí apoyo este planteamiento. Por otra parte, cada vez se ha vuelto más difícil sostener una visión del significado conceptual según la cual las palabras de contenido codificarían un concepto o un esquema léxico conceptual. Para resolver los problemas que genera esta postura, propongo que el significado conceptual tiene en común con el procedimental justo esta función disparadora. Defiendo que la codificación semántica no es constitutiva, y sostengo que, desde esta nueva perspectiva, la semántica conceptual comparte con la procedimental mucho más de lo que se pensaba hasta hace poco, ya que tanto la semántica de las palabras de contenido como la de las procedimentales consisten en activar estructuras informativas y procesos mentales asociados convencionalmente y de manera relacional a las unidades léxicas de una lengua natural.: The semantic notion of procedural meaning was originally proposed as a way to explain the contribution of non-conceptual vocabulary to interpretation. Procedural elements were seen as encoding instructions to perform pragmatic inferences. Their rigidity, as opposed to the malleability of conceptual meaning, led to the idea of two types of lexical semantics for natural languages, one conceptual and another procedural. Recently, however, the study of natural and spontaneous behaviours ostensively used, in combination with the influence of the massive modularity view of the mind, have brought a different perspective about the role of procedural elements in language. According to this stance, procedural elements would have a wider role, operating more generally as triggers of cognitive processes which are in principle external to language, but that are crucially involved in communication. Their role as orientators of pragmatic inference is only one of such processes. Here I support this view. On the other hand, it has become increasingly difficult to maintain a view of conceptual meaning that assumes that words encode concepts, or concept schemas. To tackle the problems this view faces, I suggest that conceptual items share with procedural ones precisely such a triggering function. I argue that semantic encoding is never constitutive, and I suggest that both types of semantics consist in activating informative structures and mental processes conventionally associated to the lexical items of natural languages. (shrink)

The book delves into mathematical mindsets, a current approach to understanding mathematical identities, as well as success and failure in mathematics.

Empathy is an integral aspect of human existence. Without at least a basic ability to access others’ affective life, social interactions would be well-nigh impossible. Yet, recent studies seem to show that the means we have acquired to access others’ emotional life no longer function well in what has become our everyday business – technologically mediated interactions in digital spaces. If this is correct, there are two important questions: (1) What makes empathy for frequent internet users so difficult? and (2) (...) What can we do to alleviate the negative consequences? Correspondingly, the aim of this paper is twofold. First, we identify structural differences between offline and technologically mediated interactions that can explain why digital empathy is harder to achieve. Second, drawing on the literature on ‘situated affectivity,’ we consider the idea of modifying digital spaces in ways specifically designed to ‘scaffold’ empathy where our evolved mechanisms fail. Section 2 argues that empathy is requires interpreting the behavior of embodied subjects. Section 3 identifies three factors that are crucial for this interpretative endeavor: the empathizer’s affective repertoire, their perceptual input, and their background knowledge. Section 4 argues that technologically mediated interactions differ from face-to-face interactions with regard to these factors in ways which render our evolved empathy mechanisms less effective in the digital world. Section 5 introduces the idea that situational factors can serve as ‘empathic scaffolds,’ i.e., as ‘tools’ that can ‘shape’ people’s empathic reactions. Section 6 wraps up the main line of reasoning, responds to objections and invites further scholarship. (shrink)

The use of private security companies by national governments is met with widespread skepticism. Less understood is the role these companies can play in international humanitarian interventions in the service of international organizations. I argue here that despite valid concerns about the use of such private entities, we should nonetheless see them as legitimate participants in efforts to secure human rights protection around the globe. In order to assess their legitimacy, we need to ensure, among other things, that they can (...) adhere to ethical standards when serving in humanitarian missions, that they can be held accountable when they fail to uphold the standard of justice enshrined in international law, and that their for-profit status does not have implications detrimental to humanitarian concerns. (shrink)

Data are lacking with regard to participants' perspectives on return of genetic research results to relatives, including after the participant's death. This paper reports descriptive results from 3,630 survey respondents: 464 participants in a pancreatic cancer biobank, 1,439 family registry participants, and 1,727 healthy individuals. Our findings indicate that most participants would feel obligated to share their results with blood relatives while alive and would want results to be shared with relatives after their death.

The aim of this paper is to describe and analyse the presence of Pascal’s thought in the work of the Spanish writer José Jiménez Lozano (1930-2020). In fact, it could be considered that this writer is almost a kind of Pascal come alive, especially in terms of understanding and experiencing Christianity, since, for both Pascal and Jiménez Lozano, the orientation of the human soul towards God is not only a part of the essence of man but also is his most (...) definitory anthropological constituent. (shrink)

The perception of sensory effects generated by one’s own actions is typically attenuated compared to the same effects generated externally. However, it is unclear whether this specifically relates to self-generation. Recent studies showed that sensory attenuation mainly relies on action preparation, not actual action execution. Hence, an attenuation of sensory effects generated by another person might occur if these actions can be anticipated and thus be prepared for.Here, we compared the perceived loudness of sounds generated by one’s own actions and (...) actions of another person that either could or could not be anticipated. We found an attenuation of the perceived loudness for self- as compared to other-generated sounds. This difference was independent of whether the sound-eliciting actions of the other person could be anticipated or not. Thus, sensory attenuation seems to be specifically tied to self-generation instead of being a secondary effect of agent-independent preparation for an upcoming action. (shrink)

This book takes on current perspectives on transnationalism and children's relationships to media, childhood, and markets in converging global worlds. It introduces the idea of multi-sited imaginaries to explain how children's media and literacy performances shape and are shaped by shared visions of communities that we collectively imagine, including play, media, gender, family, school, or cultural worlds. It draws upon elements of ethnographies of globalization to examine the convergences of such imaginaries across multiple sites: early childhood and elementary classrooms and (...) communities in Puerto Rico and the Midwest United States. The analysis situates children's literacy and play practices in the intersections of local/global, rural/urban, Spanish/English/multilingual, and Latino multinational media/US multinational media, revealing how children use drama and pretense to relocate, take up, contest, and consume global media and consumer identities. (shrink)

Natural selection is an important force that shapes the evolution of all living things by determining which individuals contribute the most descendents to future generations. The biological unit upon which selection acts has been the subject of serious debate, with reasonable arguments made on behalf of populations, individuals, individual phenotypic characters and, finally, individual genes themselves. In this essay, I argue that the usual unit of selection is the gene. There are powerful logical arguments in favor of this conclusion, as (...) well as many real-world examples. I also explore the possibility that epigenetic differences between individuals may be heritable between generations. Although few such examples exist, epigenetic differences provide an exciting source of potentially heritable variation that may allow rapid evolutionary change to occur, perhaps in response to environmental influences. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Natural Selection Operates within Genomes without Regard for Phenotypic Effect Selective Forces, Heritable Variation, and the Definition of Function Natural Selection Can, and Does, Act on the Products of Individual Genes Natural Selection Can Act Directly on Genes Themselves What Are the Limitations on the Unit of Selection Being “the Gene”? The “Complexity” Argument: Do Complex Phenotypes Require Complex Explanations? Do “Epigenes/Epialleles” Provide a “Non‐genetic” Source of Heritable Variation Upon Which Natural Selection May Act? (...) Summary Points: The Usual Unit of Selection Is the Gene Postscript: Counterpoint Note References. (shrink)

Hunting ducks with a firearm has become increasingly contested in industrialized and urbanized contemporary societies. In southern New Zealand, an area that maintains strong connections to rural life ways, duck shooting is still a very popular activity. However, even duck shooters living in this region are increasingly finding that they must justify an activity their grandparents practiced without compunction. This paper considers ethical discourses associated with the killing of ducks, particularly the ways in which people who shoot ducks construct the (...) act of killing as an activity that can be ethically justified. As this paper will show, duck hunters assert that they have a more realistic and appropriate view of nature and animal life cycles than the average antihunter who might criticize them. New Zealand duck hunters also embed their hunting activities within a discourse of wetland conservation, arguing that they do far more to preserve and develop wetlands than do non-hunters. This paper concludes that duck hunters' understandings of nature are intrinsic to the ethical discourses that underpin duck hunting activities in New Zealand. (shrink)

Resumen En 1976, Nagel y Williams presentaron -en una reunión de la Aristotelian Society- dos célebres textos dirigidos a exhibir el desafío que el azar y la fortuna representan para la imputación kantiana de responsabilidad moral. Desde entonces han proliferado cientos de artículos centrados en analizar este dilema. Dicho debate, no obstante, rara vez es situado al interior del análisis de las implausibles y falsas premisas que dan lugar a él. En este trabajo reconstruyo las coordenadas centrales en las que (...) esta problemática filosófica se origina. Posteriormente muestro que la imputación de responsabilidad ética a un agente no sólo no excluye, sino incluso presupone, lo que llamaré una capacidad impura de agencia donde la suerte ocupa un lugar central.In 1976, Nagel and Williams presented -at the congress of the Aristotelian Society- two famous texts aimed at exposing the challenge that chance and fortune represent for moral thought. Since then, hundreds of articles have proliferated in the literature focused on analyzing this dilemma. This debate, however, is rarely situated within the analysis of the implausible and false premises that give rise to it. In this paper I reconstruct the central coordinates in which this philosophical problem originates. Later, I show that imputation of ethical responsibility to an agent not only does not exclude, but even presupposes, what I will call an impure capacity for agency where luck occupies a central place. (shrink)

Los procesos democráticos de toma de decisiones pueden ser evaluados por sus resultados, por su valor intrínseco o por una combinación de ambas cosas. Mostraré que analizar a fondo estas alternativas permite sacar a la luz las debilidades más serias en los modos usuales de justificación del constitucionalismo. La fundamentación teórica de la articulación entre democracia y constitucionalismo ha permanecido atrapada en una trampa que busco romper. Concluiré mostrando la necesidad de rebasar los argumentos epistémicos y contra-epistémicos sugiriendo pautas que (...) hasta ahora creo han sido poco ponderadas en la literatura clásica sobre el tema. (shrink)

Me propongo comparar el enfoque sobre la normatividad que hallamos en varias de las obras de un filósofo como Rorty, con el modelo metodológico positivista que hallamos en un jurista como Hart. El objetivo de este trabajo es mostrar cómo ambos casos se alejan de explicaciones simples, basadas, tanto en modelos iusnaturalistas, como en el modelo austiano. Ambas perspectivas se aproximan a un análisis que ubica el origen de las normas en una perspectiva más plausible y compleja donde se parte, (...) o bien de la idea de "reglas de reconocimiento" que permiten identificar como reglas de un sistema normas que no necesariamente son legisladas, o bien del análisis de las proposiciones no polémicas que determinan e informan sobre cuáles cosas cuentan como normas y cuáles no al interior de una determinada práctica social etnocéntrica. (shrink)

Aunque el debate jurídico entre Hans Kelsen y Carl Schmitt ha sido extensamente discutido y analizado, rara vez se lo sitúa en el marco de la disputa entre el mundo político antiguo y el moderno. La pérdida de este punto central de referencia impide focalizar la raíz filosófica de fondo en la polémica entre ambos autores, a saber, una batalla entre dos modelos alternativos de racionalidad política y moral. Uno es el antiguo (reivindicado por Schmitt) y otro el moderno (defendido (...) por Kelsen). Sostengo que no situar dicho debate en semejante contexto nos priva de comprender las implicaciones jurídicas que se desprenden del conflicto entre los supuestos teóricos normativos que hacen surgir a la Modernidad y el horizonte teleológico que da lugar a la Antigüedad. While the legal debate between Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt has been widely discussed and analyzed, it is rarely located within the coordinates of the political dispute between the ancient and modern world. The loss of this central point of reference prevents focusing on the deeply philosophical root wich is in the midst of the controversy between the two authors, namely, a battle between two alternative models of political rationality and morality. One is the ancient (claimed by Schmitt) and the other is the modern (defended by Kelsen). i argue that not placing this debate in such context deprives us from understanding the legal implications arising from the conflict between the normative theoretical assumptions that give rise to Modernity and the teleological horizon which gives rise to the ancient world. (shrink)

El movimiento zapatista revolucionario indígena del sur de Chiapas, en la República Mexicana, representa, por su complejidad, un desafío que a pesar de lo mucho que sobre él se ha escrito, no ha sido lo suficientemente comprendido. El presente artículo explora algunas de las características que hacen de éste un movimiento inédito en la historia, así como de las razones por las que un movimiento cultural y político tan significativo, fue virtualmente descartado como tema de interés en el Fórum.

Hay una expresión recurrente alrededor del tema absurdo. Consiste en hacer de la incertidumbre el lugar de donde suele surgir lo mejor o lo peor que cada ser humano lleva consigo. Y es que la inseguridad nos mueve a falsedad y a cometer actos de cobardía, pero también a la posibilidad de enfrentar lo incierto de forma gallarda y segura. Desde esta perspectiva, pareciera que el mundo emerge siempre desde celajes que oponen al círculo de lo determinado una niebla vacía (...) de oscura indeterminación poblada de intuitivas presunciones o posibilidades. Un nebuloso horizonte que necesaria e incesantemente se extiende ahí, tanto sobre el espacio como por la secuencia del tiempo, en una red de rumbos desconocidos e inciertos. Por ello quisiéramos que el mundo no girara, que a cada paso que diéramos pudiéramos estar seguros de encontrar un piso seguro y firme que nos brindara -al contrario de lo que sucede con los traidores- la seguridad de no escapársenos o de aprovechar el descuido y la indecisión para derribarnos o detenernos. Todos pedimos por la confianza de signos fijos y constantes que -provistos de la seguridad que habitualmente buscamos en nuestros actos y palabras- prometan protegernos de la vida agitada del presente. Padecemos, dice Nietzsche, - unos más, otros menos- de una extrema sensibilidad para el dolor que pueda deparar el futuro, de una recargada irritabilidad que no quiere ser tocada porque siente, a semejanza de esa extraña patología del sentido del tacto que hace retroceder ante el menor roce, cualquier arribo con demasiada viveza. La caoticidad de la existencia levanta frente a los ojos un velo de temor y debilidad que amenaza tambalear nuestro frágil estar de pie . De esta manera, la necesidad de defensa surge por la añoranza de un universo con límites definidos. En tanto que la búsqueda de certidumbre pareciera suponer un esfuerzo por erradicar las irregularidades de un mundo que en primera instancia escapa a nuestra comprensión, el logro de seguridad entraña una lucha, un intento creativo que sólo puede acabar en plenitud o en decadencia, en la muestra de lo mejor o peor que cada quien lleva consigo. En la experiencia trágica la conciencia de la realidad cotidiana se vuelve negra, el asomo a la ¿horrenda verdad¿, como la llama Nietzsche, devela la naturaleza absurda y caótica de la existencia. En la medida en que el dolor y el sufrimiento conducen a un desafío interno entre las fuerzas que nos amenazan y la propia voluntad que busca dominar por sobre esas mismas fuerzas, en estas páginas quisiera detenerme a pensar en la vitalidad inventiva que el propio pensamiento de Nietzsche representa a través de su descripción de los distintos modos interpretativos y de ficciones que surgen como reacción al absurdo. (shrink)

The demonstrations of monks in Tibet and Myanmar in recent times as well as the age-old conflict between a predominantly Buddhist population and a Hindu minority in Sri Lanka raise the question of how the issues of human rights and Buddhism are related. The question applies both to the violation of basic rights in Buddhist countries and to the defence of those rights which are well-grounded in Buddhist teachings. The volume provides academic essays that reflect this up to now rather (...) neglected issue from the point of view of the three main Buddhist traditions, Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana. It provides multi-faceted and surprising insights into a rather unlikely relationship. (shrink)

What paths are taken by post-posi tiv ist so - cial the ory?. Be yond the three ba sic types of contemporarty the o ries stud ied in this pa per, the pre sup po si tions of which com bine struc ture and agent, the study of so ci ety in which ac knowl - edge ment of the prop er ties of dis tinct..

Dienes & Perner argue that the explicit representation of an individual to which a property is attributed requires explicit representation of the attributed property. The reasons for this conclusion are similar to the reasons why another of their conclusions may be considered suspect: A property may be explicit without an explicit representation of an individual or the predication of the property to an individual. We question the latter conclusion and draw connections to neurophysiological and cognitive evidence.

ABSTRACT Doxxing is a form of online abuse where doxxers deliberately seek and publish their targets’ personal information without consent, often with malicious intent such as ruining their reputation. Despite its prevalence, doxxing has received little scholarly attention compared to other forms of online aggression, and almost no study has approached doxxing from a language and discourse perspective. This exploratory study analyzes 464 online forum posts and comments related to doxxing during the on-going pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, addressing the (...) overarching question: In what ways is doxxing a discursive action? More specifically, how is doxxing realized intertextually? What are the discourse strategies that forum participants employ to legitimize doxxing? Informed by Critical Discourse Analysis, the analysis begins by illustrating doxxing as an intertextual and recontextualized social practice, focusing on a forum thread that discloses a police officer’s personal information. The core part of the paper discusses four key legitimation strategies of doxxing identified in the data, rationalization, definition, construction of negative-Other, and victimizing ‘Us’. The paper concludes by considering the role of doxxing in the Hong Kong social movement, and outlining some directions for future research. (shrink)