This article explores the discursive uses of a self-quotation in adolescent talk. The self-quotation uses the quotative marker be + like to convey or project bold statements as part of a larger narrative. We will demonstrate how the preface leading up to the self-quotation is designed as hard to counter, and instructs the hearer how to understand what comes next. The self-quotation, on the other hand, constitutes the assessment as a `mere characterization' that provides the speaker with a number of (...) opportunities for testing the proposed view. Speakers are thus able to bolster potentially controversial views against refutation while also giving them a preliminary status. These features make for an interesting conversational resource that enables speakers and recipients to engage in a collaborative process of putting potentially bold statements to the test. (shrink)

This article addresses a vital concern in current society by showing what participants themselves may treat as ways to transcend their differences. Actors’ shared understanding has been of longstanding interest across the social sciences. Conversation analysis treats the procedural infrastructure of interaction as the basis for participants to manage intersubjectivity. The field of dialogue studies has made occasions in which people transform their relationship by discussing their differences, central to their research project, and called them “dialogic moments.” This study draws (...) on CA to investigate “dialogic moments,” but now through the eyes of participants themselves. Using single-case analysis, we argue that such moments require participants to go against normative orientations in talk promoting social solidarity and progressivity, by soliciting differences to understand and transcend them. This “going against the interactional tide” may explain both why dialogue is difficult to achieve and why it is appreciated by participants as dialogue. (shrink)

This paper examines public meetings in the Netherlands where experts and officials interact with local residents on the human health effects of livestock farming. Using Conversation Analysis, we reveal a ‘weapon of the weak’: a practice by which the residents resist experts’ head start in information meetings. It is shown how residents draw on the given question-answer format to challenge experts and pursue an admission of, for example, methodological shortcomings. We show how the residents’ first question functions as a ‘foot-in-the-door’, (...) providing them with a strong basis for skepticism. By systematically challenging the expert responses, the residents exploit the interaction’s sequential organization, with the effect that the goal becomes them being convinced rather than being informed. Consequently, the withholding of consent becomes the residents’ ‘weapon’. Finally, we argue that in an age where expertise is increasingly contested, it is crucial to understand how, and to what end, this contestation may occur. (shrink)

This study aims to increase insight into the uses of experts’ references to physically absent technology users in government-funded plant science. A discursive psychological analysis of expert board meetings shows that experts invoke various forms of reported dialogue/thoughts and dispositional statements when problems with technology and with program funding are discussed. Forms of reported dialogue serve to demonstrate that experts engage in dialogue with users, understand and are reasonable about users’ concerns, and that the content of user concerns does not (...) agree with expert views. Dispositional statements allow users’ feelings rather than users’ knowledge to be acknowledged as relevant. By establishing that user concerns contrast with expert concerns in type and content and by not discussing how users’ feelings may be incorporated into technology, experts shelve user concerns. This practice may hinder the development of user-friendly technologies. (shrink)

Previous conversation analytic studies of institutional interaction included analyses of empathy in interaction. These studies revealed that professionals may use empathy displays not only to validate the client’s worry, but also to perform actions oriented to other institutional goals and tasks such as closing off a troubles-telling sequence. In this article, we present an analysis of empathically designed responses in Dutch telephone counseling. The data consist of 36 calls from the Alcohol and Drugs Info Line. In some of the calls, (...) clients’ troubles-telling includes ‘emotion discourse’, that is, descriptions of their feelings/emotions. Counselors may respond to these descriptions using conventional empathy displays like ‘I can imagine that’ and ‘I understand that’ in a range of verbal and prosodic variations. The analysis reveals that these responses open up advice sequences that vary in the extent to which they treat the client’s articulated feelings as valid. Most are affiliating, treating the client’s feelings as the basis for advice, while some are less affiliative, putting the client’s feelings into perspective or implicitly questioning their legitimacy. Hence, empathically designed responses are pivots to advice-giving. (shrink)

Although hailing from cognate analytical schools, the contributors to Hedwig te Molder and Jonathan Potter's edited volume Conversation and Cognition hold a remarkable diversity of views on the nature of "mental states" and their import for the purposes of analyzing naturally occurring interaction. I offer a critical analysis of some of the contributors' discussions of cognition in social interaction in an effort to clarify some obstinate issues with respect to the meanings of words in our cognitive vocabulary and (...) their identification in analyses of conversation. (shrink)

Numerous studies in the fields of Science and Technology Studies and philosophy of technology have repeatedly stressed that scientific practices are collective practices that crucially depend on the presence of scientific technologies. Postphenomenology is one of the movements that aims to draw philosophical conclusions from these observations through an analysis of human–technology interactions in scientific practice. Two other attempts that try to integrate these insights into philosophy of science are Ronald Giere’s Scientific Perspectivism and Davis Baird’s Thing Knowledge. In this (...) paper, these two approaches will be critically discussed from the perspective of postphenomenology. We will argue that Giere and Baird problematically assume that scientific instruments have a determined function, and that all human members of a scientific collective have immediate access to this function. However, these assumptions also allow them to offer a clear answer to the question how scientists can collectively relate to scientific phenomena. Such an answer is not yet formulated within the postphenomenological perspective. By adding a postphenomenological touch to the semiotic approach in Actor-Network Theory, we offer an account of how different individual human–technology relations are integrated into larger scientific collectives. We do so by showing that scientific instruments not only help constitute scientific phenomena, but also the intersubjectivity within such collectives. (shrink)

SummaryIntense, sustained nursing lengthens inter-birth intervals and is causally linked with low natural fertility. However, in traditional settings, the effects of such nursing on fertility are difficult to disentangle from those of nutrition. Results from an prospective, direct observational study of reproductive function in well-nourished Amele women who nurse intensively and persistently but who also have high fertility are here presented. Endocrine measures show that ovarian activity resumes by median 11·0 months postpartum. Median duration of postpartum amenorrhoea is 11·3 months, (...) time to next conception is 19·0 months, and the inter-birth interval is 28·0 months. Average life time fertility is 6·8. High fertility in Amele women is due both to refractoriness of reproductive function to suckling stimuli, and to maintenance of equivalent age-specific fertility rates across the reproductive life span. (shrink)

"Ενας ενεπίγραφος λίθος πού βρέθηκε άπό τόν Θ. Σπυρόπουλο ('Αρχαιολογική Υπηρεσία) φέρει μία συμφωνία συμπολιτείας μεταξύ τών κατοίκων τής Έλισσώνας καί τής Μαντινείας. Τό κείμενο, σέ αρκαδική διάλεκτο, περιέχει γιά πρώτη φορά τό εθνικό τών κατοίκων τής Έλισ- σώνας, ΈλιαΡάσιοι, τον τίτλο των « νομοφυλάκων », θεσμοτόαροι, καί πολλούς ενδιαφέροντες διαλεκτικούς τύπους (π.χ. σφέσιν) * δίνει ενδείξεις γιά τή νομοθεσία καί τίς διαδικασίες καταγραφής. στίς όποιες πρέπει νά υποβληθούν οι Έλισσώνιοι πού έγιναν Μαντίνειοι. Οι υπόλοιποι άρχοντες πού αναφέρονται είναι οι (...) έπιμεληταί (στην Έλισσώνα), οι δαμιοργοί, οι θεαροί. Το κείμενο φαίνεται οτι χρονολογείται στίς αρχές του 4ου αϊ. π.Χ. Σέ δύο παραρτήματα, 6 F. M. J. Waanders δίνει γλωσσολογικές ερμηνείες των μορφών θεσμοτόαροι καί σφέσιν. (shrink)

Bu makale, Osmanlı siyaset düşünce geleneğinde fazilet temelli kendine has ılımlı bir siyasî realizmin var olduğunu savunmaktadır. Günümüz siyasî realizm literatürü ve Osmanlı fazilet ahlâkına dayalı karşılaş- tırmalı metotla, siyasetin mahiyeti ve insanın doğasına dair realist unsurları teşhis etmeden Osmanlı siyaset düşüncesinde ahlâkî argümanların siyaseti, devlet fikrini ve kurumları nasıl inşa ettiğini anlayamayacağı- mızı iddia ediyorum. Osmanlı fazilet ahlâkı geleneğinde ahlâkın her şeyi kapsadığına dair kanının aksine siyasetin mahiyeti itibariyle tekil, değişken, ahlâktan bir ölçüde bağımsız bir gerçeklik olarak anlaşıldığını gösteriyorum. (...) Bununla bağlantılı olarak Osmanlı siyaset düşünce geleneğinde fazilet ahlâkından gelen in- sanın acziyeti anlayışının, siyasî aktörleri ve eylemleri değerlendirmede onu realist yapan unsur olduğunu ifade ediyorum. Son olarak ahlâkın kapsamı ve siyasetin mahiyetini (gerek birbirleriyle olan ilişkileri açı- sından gerekse de birbirlerinden bağımsız olarak varlıklarını) açıklamada tümeller probleminin nasıl bir rol oynadığına işaret ediyorum. Tümeller probleminin siyaset ve ahlâk arasındaki karmaşık ilişkiye dair getirdiği analitik ayrımları ılımlı siyasî realizmin kaynağı olarak sunuyorum. (shrink)

_Denne autoetnografien diskuterer en situasjon som oppsto på et feltarbeid i Norge, der jeg opplevde å være i fare i rollen som forsker. Først i det øyeblikket gikk det opp for meg at jeg ikke hadde tatt noen forholdsregler for å ivareta min egen sikkerhet i felt. Det skjedde selv om de øvrige deltagernes sikkerhet var grundig diskutert og hensyntatt gjennom en rekke tiltak i studien, som brukte en kulturelt responsiv, relasjonell, refleksiv etikk. I artikkelen drøfter jeg mulige konsekvenser av (...) manglende oppmerksomhet i etiske retningslinjer og forskningspraksis rettet mot forskeres sikkerhet i felt. Jeg argumenterer for at veiledere har et etisk ansvar for å støtte uerfarne forskere i en refleksiv prosess om risikoen ved å delta i feltarbeid, slik at de kan ta forholdsregler for å redusere risiko._ _Nøkkelord:_ forskningsetikk, feltarbeid, risiko, veiledning, autoetnografi, CRRRE _English abstract__ _ _This autoethnography discusses a situation that arose during fieldwork in Norway, where I experienced being in danger in my role as a researcher. Only at that moment did it occur to me that I had not taken any precautions to ensure my own safety in the field. This happened even though the safety of the other participants had been thoroughly discussed and taken into account through a number of measures in the study, which used a culturally responsive, relational, reflexive ethic. In the article, I discuss the possible consequences of a lack of attention in ethical guidelines and research practices aimed at researchers' safety in the field. I argue that supervisors have an ethical responsibility to support inexperienced researchers in a reflexive process about the risks of participating in fieldwork, so that they can take precautions to reduce risk._ _Keywords:_ research ethics, fieldwork, risk, supervision, autoethnography, CRRRE. (shrink)

Zelfs in het bepaald somber stemmende werk van Dostojevski is nog een sprankje hoop te ontdekken: het geluk van een nieuwe vader bij de geboorte van zijn eerste kind.

Juan B. Justo en la historia y el pensamiento argentinos, por A. Solari.--Teoría y práctica de la historia, por M. H. Alberti.--La base biológica de la historia, por F. Escardó.--La técnica, por A. Justo.--La economía, por R. Bogliolo.--La guerra, por A. G. Rodríguez.--La política, por A. Ghioldi.--La lucha de ciases, por R. Mondolfo.--El salariado, por M. Palacín.--Las formas típicas del privilegio, por J. L. Pena.--El gremialismo proletario, por E. Frugoni.--La cooperación libre, por N. Repetto.--La democracia obrera, por L. Pan.--La religión, (...) la cilencia, el arte, por R. Rivière. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:706 BOOK REVIEWS struments of redemption for others. Mary is the primary exemplar of receiving her Son's redeeming love in freedom and of wholeheartedly mediating his graces to all he has redeemed. The final essay, "Mary and Modernity," is most timely for American Christians and ecumenists. It is a very worthwhile attempt to compare and contrast the secular triad of virtues, liberty, equality, and fraternity with the Christian triad (...) of theological virtues, faith, hope, and love, especially as they are exemplified in Mary. Although this approach perceives Mary more as a " sign of contradiction " to our secularistic culture, she will help us to avoid the extremes of confusing true freedom with licence, genuine equality with egalitarianism, and authentic fraternity with collectivism by helping inspire in us the really liberating values of her Son's Gospel. Everyone can benefit immensely from the intelligent reading of this book. Mt. St. Mary's Seminary Emmitsburg, Maryland FREDERICK M. JELLY, O.P. Dieu et l'etre d'apres Thomas d'Aquin et Hegel. By EMILIO BRITO. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1991. Pp. 422. 245 francs. Sprung from premature fears of post-modernity or from an ignorant nostalgia for a monoform Catholicism which never existed, universal dismissals of " modernity " still appear occasionally in Catholic j ournals. They recall,the neo-scholastic te:xitbooks prior to Vatican II in whose pages the " moderni " (among whom were numbered not only "Kantiani" but "Hegeliani ") were dismissed by authors who, having read a few pages, were incapable of grasping the basic directions of philosophy from Herder to Heidegger. Emilio Brito, S.J., however, follows in the line of the French and German Jesuits: through this century they have sustained a varied dialogue, in philosophy and theology, between Thomas Aquinas and the important figures of modern philosophy. His two works on Hegel's Christology, and a third large study of God and creation in Schelling are now followed by this comparative work. The theology of Aquinas and the philosophy of Hegel are like two galaxies. Do they move past each other at a distance, or do they move through each other guarding a proper identity with similar forces and shared motifs? Brito has chosen one theme within these two vast realms of thought: his topic (and the book's title can mislead) is God; 'being' BOOK REVIEWS 707 is present as a stimulus to our reflection about God. After an introduction on recent interpretations of Hegel, particularly by Catholics, pages which should be read by all interested in contemporary theology, there are three sections: " the knowledge and naming of God," " the divine substance and the cycle of its attributes," and " the operations of absolute spirit." The chapters in each of the three areas present Aquinas's and then Hegel's thought, and sometimes a section of further comparison. At the end of the work Brito offers a conclusion ("God's Goodness") and a postlude ("God's Beauty"). Finally there is a "Resume." According to Brito, Aquinas's thought is clear (his Aristotelian logic is readily understandable), and his emphasis lies with the divine transcendence. Despite the process-format of the Summa theologiae and the traces of history in the headship of Christ, the diversity of sacraments, and the theologies of faith and natural law, his modest description of movement in God and in God's world of beings stands in contrast to the unleashed and unresolved development penetrating Hegel's Geist. The concluding " Resume " of nine pages is particularly valuable as it brings together the author's synthetic insights into Aquinas and Hegel (one might hope that at least it would appear in translation). The following excerpt displays its balance and clarity. The God of the Summa tends to stay back from mediation, letting itself exist in a certain exteriority, while the Hegelian absolute " raises out" the determinations it posits only by also absorbing them negatively. In the same vein, the Hegelian parousia of the negative abolishes absolutely the distance maintained by the inexpressible in language. In an opposite direction, the originating positivity of the God of Thomas grounds the irreducible presence of a reality represented in discourse. If he is a stranger to this approach and more... (shrink)

A long-standing theme in discussion of perception and thought has been that our primary cognitive contact with individual objects and events in the world derives from our perceptual contact with them. When I look at a duck in front of me, I am not merely presented with the fact that there is at least one duck in the area, rather I seem to be presented withthisthing (as one might put it from my perspective) in front of me, which looks to (...) me to be a duck. Furthermore, such a perception would seem to put me in a position not merely to make the existential judgment that there is some duck or other present, but rather to make a singular, demonstrative judgment, that that is a duck. My grounds for an existential judgment in this case derives from my apprehension of the demonstrative thought and not vice versa. (shrink)

Some of the commentators on Intricate Ethics complain of my method. One finds the main ideas ‘Kammouflaged’ because the relevant causal distinctions are so fine-grained and the cases that illustrate them so numerous. Some say that they do not have the intuitions about many cases that I have, that I concoct dubious and ad hoc distinctions and invest them with moral significance; I am Ptolemaic in that new crystalline spheres and epicycles are constantly being added in an attempt to fix (...) the appearances. (shrink)

We maximally extend the quantum‐mechanical results of Muller and Saunders ( 2008 ) establishing the ‘weak discernibility’ of an arbitrary number of similar fermions in finite‐dimensional Hilbert spaces. This confutes the currently dominant view that ( A ) the quantum‐mechanical description of similar particles conflicts with Leibniz’s Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles (PII); and that ( B ) the only way to save PII is by adopting some heavy metaphysical notion such as Scotusian haecceitas or Adamsian primitive thisness. We (...) take sides with Muller and Saunders ( 2008 ) against this currently dominant view, which has been expounded and defended by many. *Received July 2008; revised May 2009. †To contact the authors, please write to: F. A. Muller, Faculty of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Burg. Oudlaan 50, H5–16, 3062 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands; e‐mail: [email protected] , and Institute for the History and Foundations of Science, Utrecht University, Budapestlaan 6, IGG–3.08, 3584 CD Utrecht, The Netherlands; e‐mail: [email protected] . M. P. Seevinck, Institute for the History and Foundations of Science, Utrecht University, Budapestlaan 6, IGG–3.08, 3584 CD Utrecht, The Netherlands; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Context: The dominant approach to the study of perception is representational/computational, with an emphasis on the achievements of the brain and the nervous system, which are taken to construct internal models of the world. Alternatives include ecological, embedded, embodied, and enactivist approaches, all of which emphasize the centrality of action in understanding perception. Problem: Despite sharing many theoretical commitments that lead to a rejection of the classical approach, the alternatives are characterized by important contrasts and points of divergence. Here we (...) focus on the enactive and ecological approaches, in particular, on how they construe the status of the environment and the content of perception. Method: We begin with a review of James Gibson’s ecological psychology, highlighting it as a psychology for all organisms not just humans. Against this backdrop, we consider enactivist arguments against direct perception - a central assertion of the ecological approach - and in favor of interpreting the activity of perceptual agents as a kind of construction of a perceptually meaningful world. Results: We assess the merits of this interpretation and we conclude that it cannot be grounded on fundamental principles such as thermodynamics and organism-environment mutuality. Implications: As a consequence, enactivism remains close to representationalism and entails a form of dualism. Constructivist content: We advance a criticism of the constructivist foundations of the enactive approach to perception. Perception-action mutuality at the heart of enactivism does not require mental construction; indeed, perception-action mutuality obviates construction. (shrink)

This book is a philosophical discussion of moral, legal, and medical issues related to aging, dying, and death. One of its aims is to decide whether and when it might make sense to not resist or bring about the end of one's life. To answer this question it considers views about meaning in life and what makes life worth living. It also evaluates recent attempts to help the general public plan in advance for the end of life. It also considers (...) whether or not physician-assisted suicide is morally permissible and if it should be legalized. (shrink)

This essay argues that the Putnam-Nussbaum thesis that modern functionalism is Aristotelian is false. It fails as an interpretation of Aristotle since it fails to notice that Aristotle’s conception of the material or physical side of the soul-body relation is one which no modern functionalist could share. The Putnam-Nussbaum thesis is examined within the context of the theory of perception. This involves the need to understand one of the most mysterious Aristotelian doctrines – the doctrine that in perception, the sense-organ (...) assumes the sensible form of the object perceived without its matter. (shrink)

The ability to differentiate between what is just and what is unjust may be considered as the precondition to demand one's own rights. Starting from this point, this research was carried out to describe the level of awareness of patients concerning their rights. The main hypothesis was: the higher the socioeconomic and cultural level of patients, the higher is their awareness of their rights. This research was conducted in one of the state hospitals in Turkey in 1998. It is a (...) descriptive study carried out on 128 inpatients in medical and surgical wards. The data were collected by a questionnaire, which included questions on the rights of patients and gave sample cases. The sample cases were designed by referring to the World Health Organization Declaration on the Promotion of Patients' Rights in Europe. Only 23% of the participants were able to recognize patient rights, while 32% could not; the majority (45%) were undecided in recognizing patient rights. The awareness scores were statistically significantly different for educational level categories (F = 5.84; p<0.001). A continuously declining trend was observed for patient rights awareness scores from the highest educational level to the lowest. This partly proves the hypothesis of the research. However, the awareness scores were not significantly different for the other background variables (p>0.05). Most strikingly, 38% of the patients had no idea about their diagnosis and 63% of those who had undergone surgery did not know why they had had the operation. (shrink)

This study is concerned with processes for discovering new theories in science. It considers a computational approach to scientific discovery, as applied to the discovery of theories in cognitive science. The approach combines two ideas. First, a process-based scientific theory can be represented as a computer program. Second, an evolutionary computational method, genetic programming, allows computer programs to be improved through a process of computational trialand-error. Putting these two ideas together leads to a system that can automatically generate and improve (...) scientific theories. The application of this method to the discovery of theories in cognitive science is examined. Theories are built up from primitive operators. These are contained in a theory language that defines the space of possible theories. An example of a theory generated by this method is described. These results support the idea that scientific discovery can be achieved through a heuristic search process, even for theories involving a sequence of steps. However, this computational approach to scientific discovery does not eliminate the need for human input. Human judgment is needed to make reasonable prior assumptions about the characteristics of operators used in the theory generation process, and to interpret and provide context for the computationally generated theories. (shrink)

In this paper two models for movement of respiratory gases in the insect trachea are presented. One model considers the tracheal system as a single flexible compartment while the other model considers the trachea as a single flexible compartment with gas exchange. This work represents an extension of Ben-Tal’s work on compartmental gas exchange in human lungs and is applied to the insect tracheal system. The purpose of the work is to study nonlinear phenomena seen in the insect respiratory system. (...) It is assumed that the flow inside the trachea is laminar, and that the air inside the chamber behaves as an ideal gas. Further, with the isothermal assumption, the expressions for the tracheal partial pressures of oxygen and carbon dioxide, rate of volume change, and the rates of change of oxygen concentration and carbon dioxide concentration are derived. The effects of some flow parameters such as diffusion capacities, reaction rates and air concentrations on net flow are studied. Numerical simulations of the tracheal flow characteristics are performed. The models developed provide a mathematical framework to further investigate gas exchange in insects. (shrink)

Do we directly perceive physical objects? What is the significance of the qualification ‘directly’ here? Austin famously denied that there was a unique interpretation by which we could make sense of the traditional debate in the philosophy of perception. I look here at Thompson Clarke’s discussion of G. E. Moore and surface perception to answer Austin’s scepticism.

What is colour vision for? In the popular imagination colour vision is for “seeing the colours” — adding hue to the achromatic world of shape, depth and motion. On this view colour vision plays little more than an ornamental role, lending glamour to an otherwise monochrome world. This idea has guided much theorising about colour within vision science and philosophy. However, we argue that a broader approach is needed. Recent research in the psychology of colour demonstrates that colour vision is (...) integral to a variety of visual processes, helping us to perform many types of visual tasks. We discuss some of this research and consider its implications for philosophical theories of colour. (shrink)

This article begins by comparing terror and death and then focuses on whether killing combatants and noncombatants as a mere means to create terror, that is in turn a means to winning a war, is ever permissible. The role of intentions and alternative acts one might have done is examined in this regard. The second part of the article begins by criticizing a standard justification for causing collateral (side effect) deaths in war and offers an alternative justification that makes use (...) of the idea of group liability. (shrink)

Abortion bans have been characterized as cruel especially in not allowing exceptions for rape or incest. The article first examines one approach to morally justifying bans based on the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE) which distinguishes morally between killing or letting die intending death versus doing so only foreseeing death. It then presents some criticisms of the implications of the DDE but also argues that what the doctrine permits helps provide a ground for the permissibility of abortions even if the (...) fetus is a person. Whether there are limits on applying this argument is also considered. In conclusion, the article considers whether and why not permitting exceptions to bans for rape and incest is cruel and whether cruelty is a ground for opposition to bans. (shrink)

Feature selection is a widely studied technique whose goal is to reduce the dimensionality of the problem by removing irrelevant features. It has multiple benefits, such as improved efficacy, efficiency and interpretability of almost any type of machine learning model. Feature selection techniques may be divided into three main categories, depending on the process used to remove the features known as Filter, Wrapper and Embedded. Embedded methods are usually the preferred feature selection method that efficiently obtains a selection of the (...) most relevant features of the model. However, not all models support an embedded feature selection that forces the use of a different method, reducing the efficiency and reliability of the selection. Neural networks are an example of a model that does not support embedded feature selection. As neural networks have shown to provide remarkable results in multiple scenarios such as classification and regression, sometimes in an ensemble with a model that includes an embedded feature selection, we attempt to embed a feature selection process with a general-purpose methodology. In this work, we propose a novel general-purpose layer for neural networks that removes the influence of irrelevant features. The Feature-Aware Drop Layer is included at the top of the neural network and trained during the backpropagation process without any additional parameters. Our methodology is tested with 17 datasets for classification and regression tasks, including data from different fields such as Health, Economic and Environment, among others. The results show remarkable improvements compared to three different feature selection approaches, with reliable, efficient and effective results. (shrink)