El texto es una reflexión dividida en 28 secciones que, a través de diversas resonancias y evocaciones entrelazadas que parten del texto “Duelo y Melancolía” de Sigmund Freud, propone concebir la razón pura como la sede de una melancolía auto-infligida, de un “yo pienso” estructuralmente “pobre y vacío”, haciendo por el camino escala en las ramificaciones y el potencial de la melancolía frente al duelo.

Research on moral cleansing and moral self-licensing has introduced dynamic considerations in the theory of moral behaviour. Past bad actions trigger negative feelings that make people more likely to engage in future moral behaviour to offset them. Symmetrically, past good deeds favour a positive self-perception that creates licensing effects, leading people to engage in behaviour that is less likely to be moral. In short, a deviation from a is balanced with a subsequent action that compensates the prior behaviour. We model (...) the decision of an individual trying to reach the optimal level of moral self-worth over time and show that under certain conditions the optimal sequence of actions follows a regular pattern which combines good and bad actions. To explore this phenomenon we conduct an economic experiment where subjects play a sequence of giving decisions (dictator games). We find that donations in the previous period affect present decisions and the sign is negative: participants' behaviour in every round is negatively correlated to what they did in the past. Hence donations over time seem to be the result of a regular pattern of self-regulation: moral licensing (being selfish after altruistic) and cleansing (altruistic after selfish). (shrink)

Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 has resulted in an increase in known risk factors for mental health problems. Mexico adopted lockdown and physical distancing as a containment strategy with potential consequences on day to day life, such as social isolation, loss of income and loneliness that can have important consequences in terms of mental health.Objective: We aimed to examine the effect of the initial phases of the COVID-19 pandemic on psychological distress, well-being and perceived physical health among Mexican-base respondents and to (...) examine whether coping strategies would play a potential intermediating role in relation to these variables. Under the Existential Positive Psychology perspective, an emphasis was made on meaning-centered coping.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted between April 30 and June 16th 2020 among 604 Mexicans-base respondents of which 471 were women and 132 men. Data was collected by using online questionnaires. Psychological distress was measured using the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale. The Brief COPE Inventory was used to assess problem-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies. We also used the Meaning-Centered Coping Scale. PERMA-Profiler was used to assess well-being, perceived physical health, and loneliness. Profiler and Descriptive analyses and bivariate linear regression were performed to examine the association of variables.Results: 45.9% of the participants reported moderate to extremely severe psychological distress. Our results demonstrate that problem-focused and emotion-focused coping were positively related to psychological distress, whereas meaning-centered coping was negatively associated with distress. Furthermore, psychological distress played a potential negative role in the perceived physical health, while meaning-centered coping and well-being buffered the negative influence of psychological distress on perceived physical health (completely standardized indirect effect = –0.01, SE: 0.012, 95% CI [−0.065; −0.017].Conclusion: Meaning-centered coping was found to suppress the negative influence of psychological distress on sensation of decreased physical health corroborating the critical role of meaning in life in promoting well-being. Future studies can further examine the value of the critical role of meaning in life in promoting well-being as a protective factor against severe distress during traumatic events. Findings of this study can be used to orient policies and interventions aimed to alleviate suffering in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Two stages of the creative writing process were characterized through mobile scalp electroencephalography in a 16-week creative writing workshop. Portable dry EEG systems with synchronized head acceleration, video recordings, and journal entries, recorded mobile brain-body activity of Spanish heritage students. Each student's brain-body activity was recorded as they experienced spaces in Houston, Texas, and while they worked on their creative texts. We used Generalized Partial Directed Coherence to compare the functional connectivity among both stages. There was a trend of higher (...) gPDC in the Preparation stage from right temporo-parietal to left anterior-frontal brain scalp areas within 1–50 Hz, not reaching statistical significance. The opposite directionality was found for the Generation stage, with statistical significant differences restricted to the delta band. There was statistically higher gPDC observed for the inter-hemispheric connections AF07–AF08 in the delta and theta bands, and AF08 to TP09 in the alpha and beta bands. The left anterior-frontal recordings showed higher power localized to the gamma band for the Generation stage. An ancillary analysis of Sample Entropy did not show significant difference. The information transfer from anterior-frontal to temporal-parietal areas of the scalp may reflect multisensory interpretation during the Preparation stage, while brain signals originating at temporal-parietal toward frontal locations during the Generation stage may reflect the final decision making process to translate the multisensory experience into a creative text. (shrink)

There are possible artificially intelligent beings who do not differ in any morally relevant respect from human beings. Such possible beings would deserve moral consideration similar to that of human beings. Our duties to them would not be appreciably reduced by the fact that they are non-human, nor by the fact that they owe their existence to us. Indeed, if they owe their existence to us, we would likely have additional moral obligations to them that we don’t ordinarily owe to (...) human strangers – obligations similar to those of parent to child or god to creature. Given our moral obligations to such AIs, two principles for ethical AI design recommend themselves: (1) design AIs that tend to provoke reactions from users that accurately reflect the AIs’ real moral status, and (2) avoid designing AIs whose moral status is unclear. Since human moral intuition and moral theory evolved and developed in contexts without AI, those intuitions and theories might break down or become destabilized when confronted with the wide range of weird minds that AI design might make possible. (shrink)

La presente investigación tiene como objetivo conocer y describir la opinión de tres investigadores destacados del campo del currículo, con respecto a la evolución conceptual del término currículo. El enfoque metodológico fue cualitativo, se entrevistó a autoridades del campo curricular mexicano. Los resultados muestran diferentes puntos de vista que se complementan y ofrecen una visión integral.

We propose four policies of ethical design of human-grade Artificial Intelligence. Two of our policies are precautionary. Given substantial uncertainty both about ethical theory and about the conditions under which AI would have conscious experiences, we should be cautious in our handling of cases where different moral theories or different theories of consciousness would produce very different ethical recommendations. Two of our policies concern respect and freedom. If we design AI that deserves moral consideration equivalent to that of human beings, (...) that AI should be designed with self-respect and with the freedom to explore values other than those we might impose. We are especially concerned about the temptation to create human-grade AI pre-installed with the desire to cheerfully sacrifice itself for its creators’ benefit. (shrink)

El ensayo estudia dos fuentes de tensión en la idea kantiana de sociedad: por un lado, la tensión configurada por las conexiones y diferencias entre la moral y la política; y, por otro, las tensiones entre dos relatos o líneas argumentales que dominan los textos kantianos, los relatos trascendental y teleológico. La propuesta del ensayo es que tales tensiones pueden atenuarse con un sesgo particular, esto es, enfatizando el relato trascendental y la tesis de la primacía de la moral, frente (...) al relato teleológico y la tesis de la independencia de la política respecto de la moral. (shrink)

This article is an exercise in theory-building about the stories that justify, feed upon, and reproduce systems of oppression. I argue that emotional narratives contribute to the constitution and reproduction of systems of oppression, and that different emotional narratives constitute different forms of oppression. I examine two of these emotional narratives: a narrative articulated around pity and a narrative that draws on fear. I propose that the former prevails when those in power do not perceive the members of the oppressed (...) group as posing a threat to their power structure, in turn inducing low-intensity charitable state action. Conversely, narratives that deploy fear prevail when the group in power believes that the oppressed group presents a threat to their power structure, in turn eliciting high-intensity repressive state action. While narratives of pity recur to the infantilization of the members of the disadvantaged group, narratives of fear animalize them. (shrink)

Este trabajo discute la teoría del espacio de Leibniz en el contexto de suconcepción metafísica según la cual las propiedades extrínsecas de unasubstancia se fundamentan, en últimas, en sus propiedades intrínsecas. Enparticular, el artículo sostiene que la teoría leibnizeana de las relacionesespaciales se compagina difícilmente con su principio de identidad, segúnel cual no hay diferencia cuantitativa que no sea a las vez una diferenciacualitativa. La propuesta es que la teoría de Leibniz cae presa del siguientedilema: o bien el espacio no (...) tiene partes, en cuyo caso la teoría no puedeexplicar cómo nos hacemos de la representación de espacio; o bien elespacio tiene partes, lo cual significa que puede haber diferencias que sonmeramente cuantitativas. (shrink)

We perform an experimental investigation using a dictator game in which individuals must make a moral decision —to give or not to give an amount of money to poor people in the Third World. A questionnaire in which the subjects are asked about the reasons for their decision shows that, at least in this case, moral motivations carry a heavy weight in the decision: the majority of dictators give the money for reasons of a consequentialist nature. Based on the results (...) presented here and of other analogous experiments, we conclude that dicator behavior can be understood in terms of moral distance rather than social distance and that it systematically deviates from the egoism assumption in economic models and game theory. (shrink)

Datos completos del libro reseñado:Bartolomé de Medina. El tratado “De dominio” en la Escuela de Salamanca, vol. III: Bartolomé de Medina, De dominio/Sobre el dominio, ed. Augusto Sarmiento, Colección de Pensamiento Medieval y Renacentista n. 173, Pamplona, Eunsa, 2017, 251 pp., ISBN: 9788431331795.

Construcción, esquematismo e imaginación, de J. Michael Young.

Este trabajo discute el concepto de “heterogeneidad” y el problema de la aplicación en el “Esquematismo de los conceptos puros”, el primer capítulo de la Analítica de los principios en la Crítica de la razón pura de Kant. Propone, primero, una distinción entre la tesis de la heterogeneidad como independencia metafísica entre conceptos e intuiciones, por un lado, y la heterogeneidad como falta de homogeneidad en los componentes del juicio, por otro. El trabajo afirma que esta última, y no la (...) primera, genera el problema de la aplicación de las categorías a los fenómenos. Sostiene asimismo que, aunque el concepto de “aplicación” está presente en el problema de la validez objetiva de las categorías en la Deducción trascendental, la aplicación solo aparece como problema en el capítulo del Esquematismo. Sobre esta base, y en contraste con las lecturas “continuistas” predominantes que toman al Esquematismo como una parte de la problemática de la Deducción, este trabajo propone además que el Esquematismo representa un nuevo problema en el programa de Kant. Aunque afín a la lectura “discontinuista” de Mario Caimi (2015 y 2017), esta propuesta difiere de ella en un punto vital: cómo entender la distinción entre los esquemas trascendentales y los esquemas de los conceptos empíricos y de los matemáticos. Según nuestra propuesta, la heterogeneidad como falta de homogeneidad surge solo para la aplicacion de las categorías a los fenómenos, pero no para los conceptos empíricos y los matemáticos, así que los esquemas de los dos últimos no tienen un papel mediador. Finalmente, el trabajo sostiene que los esquemas matemáticos juegan un rol ejemplar en la solución al problema de la aplicación: Kant toma la idea de “esquema” como proceso reglado de su concepción del conocimiento matemático, y en este papel contribuyen a resolver el problema de la aplicación. (shrink)

Este ensayo discute los vínculos entre dos tesis provenientes de la Doctrina trascendental de los elementos, en la Crítica de la razon pura, de Immanuel Kant. La primera es que las intuiciones y los conceptos son representaciones de naturaleza distinta, y se conoce como la tesis de la heterogeneidad. La segunda, llamada tesis de la dependencia sintética, es que las intuiciones dependen de la actividad sintética del entendimiento. La propuesta principal del ensayo es que ambas tesis solo son conciliables si (...) se abandona el conceptualismo, posición sostenida, entre otros, por Pedro Stepanenko (2016), y según la cual las intuiciones solo tienen contenido representacional si están subordinadas al entendimiento. (shrink)

El campo de la comunicación es un área de estudio de transcendencia global y con el desarrollo y auge de importantes tecnologías, han devenido en nuevos paradigmas sociales causales de los procesos de cambio impulsados por la mayor circulación de información y comunicación en un entorno global en el que la alfabetización mediática vista como un dominio progresivo promoviendo la comunicación, ha sido un desafío en su práctica y la investigación. El artículo ofrece una propuesta para incorporar en aulas universitarias (...) procesos de alfabetización mediática e informacional, revirtiendo así en prácticas atractivas y reales adaptadas a los nuevos retos educativos. (shrink)

El extrañamiento de la universidad como centro de conocimiento ahora se encuentra vacío por culpa del confinamiento, lo que me ha llevado ha llevado a asumir algunos retos de vida. Pero ante todo lo digo con franqueza: “este encierro me ha enseñado a descubrirme en el tipo de personas que soy”. Prometo que seré mejor ser humano en cada faceta de lo que queda de mi precaria vida, si una vez superada esta pandemia no quede en el inventario de los (...) que se fueron. (shrink)

The process of urban landmark-based navigation has proven to be difficult to study in a rigorous fashion, primarily due to confounding variables and the problem of obtaining reliable data in real-world contexts. The development of high-resolution, immersive virtual reality technologies has opened exciting new possibilities for gathering data on human wayfinding that could not otherwise be readily obtained. We developed a research platform using a virtual environment and electroencephalography to better understand the neural processes associated with landmark usage and recognition (...) during urban navigation tasks. By adjusting the architectural parameters of different buildings in this virtual environment, we isolated and tested specific design features to determine whether or not they served as a target for landmarking. EEG theta band event-related synchronization/desynchronization over posterior scalp areas was evaluated at the time when participants observed each target building along a predetermined self-paced route. A multi-level linear model was used to investigate the effects of salient architectural features on posterior scalp areas. Our results support the conclusion that highly salient architectural features—those that contrast sharply with the surrounding environment—are more likely to attract visual attention, remain in short-term memory, and activate brain regions associated with wayfinding compared with non-salient buildings. After establishing this main aggregate effect, we evaluated specific salient architectural features and neural correlates of navigation processing. The buildings that most strongly associated extended gaze time, location recall accuracy, and changes in theta-band neural patterns with landmarking in our study were those that incorporated rotational twist designs and natural elements such as trees and gardens. Other building features, such as unusual façade patterns or building heights, were to a lesser extent also associated with landmarking. (shrink)