Self-control is deemed crucial for reasons-responsive agency and a key contributor to long-term wellbeing. But recent studies suggest that effortfully resisting one’s temptations does not contribute to long-term goal attainment, and can even be harmful. So how does self-control improve our lives? Finding an answer requires revising the role that overcoming temptation plays in self-control. This paper distinguishes two forms of self-control problems: temptation (the presence of a strong wayward motivation) and apathy (the lack of commitment-advancing motivation). This distinction makes (...) it possible to separate negative self-control (aimed at overcoming temptation) from positive self-control (aimed at overcoming lack of motivation). The paper argues that temptation should not play a central role in our conception of self-control, since overcoming temptation is neither necessary nor sufficient for successful self-control. (shrink)

The use of black box algorithms in medicine has raised scholarly concerns due to their opaqueness and lack of trustworthiness. Concerns about potential bias, accountability and responsibility, patient autonomy and compromised trust transpire with black box algorithms. These worries connect epistemic concerns with normative issues. In this paper, we outline that black box algorithms are less problematic for epistemic reasons than many scholars seem to believe. By outlining that more transparency in algorithms is not always necessary, and by explaining that (...) computational processes are indeed methodologically opaque to humans, we argue that the reliability of algorithms provides reasons for trusting the outcomes of medical artificial intelligence. To this end, we explain how computational reliabilism, which does not require transparency and supports the reliability of algorithms, justifies the belief that results of medical AI are to be trusted. We also argue that several ethical concerns remain with black box algorithms, even when the results are trustworthy. Having justified knowledge from reliable indicators is, therefore, necessary but not sufficient for normatively justifying physicians to act. This means that deliberation about the results of reliable algorithms is required to find out what is a desirable action. Thus understood, we argue that such challenges should not dismiss the use of black box algorithms altogether but should inform the way in which these algorithms are designed and implemented. When physicians are trained to acquire the necessary skills and expertise, and collaborate with medical informatics and data scientists, black box algorithms can contribute to improving medical care. (shrink)

Health Wearable Devices enhance the quality of life, promote positive lifestyle changes and save time and money in medical appointments. However, Wearable Devices store large amounts of personal information that is accessed by third parties without user consent. This creates ethical issues regarding privacy, security and informed consent. This paper aims to demonstrate users’ ethical perceptions of the use of Wearable Devices in the health sector. The impact of ethics is determined by an online survey which was conducted from patients (...) and users with random female and male division. Results from this survey demonstrate that Wearable Device users are highly concerned regarding privacy issues and consider informed consent as “very important” when sharing information with third parties. However, users do not appear to relate privacy issues with informed consent. Additionally, users expressed the need for having shorter privacy policies that are easier to read, a more understandable informed consent form that involves regulatory authorities and there should be legal consequences the violation or misuse of health information provided to Wearable Devices. The survey results present an ethical framework that will enhance the ethical development of Wearable Technology. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Berger and Nanay consider, and reject, three ways of addressing the phenomenon of unconscious perception within a naïve realist framework. Since these three approaches seem to exhaust the options open to naïve realists, and since there is said to be excellent evidence that perception of the same fundamental kind can occur, both consciously and unconsciously, this is seen to present a problem for the view. We take this opportunity to show that all three approaches considered remain (...) perfectly plausible ways of addressing unconscious perception within a naïve realist framework. So far from undermining the credibility of naïve realism, Berger and Nanay simply draw our attention to an important question to be considered by naïve realists in future work. Namely, which of the approaches considered is most likely to provide an accurate account of unconscious perception in each of its purported incarnations? (shrink)

It has been claimed that naïve realism predicts phenomenological similarities where there are none and, thereby, mischaracterises the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. If true, this undercuts a key motivation for the view. Here, we defend naïve realism against this charge, proposing that such arguments fail (three times over). In so doing, we highlight a more general problem with critiques of naïve realism that target the purported phenomenological predictions of the view. The problem is: naïve realism, broadly construed, doesn’t make (...) phenomenological predictions of the required sort. So, as a result, opponents must resign themselves to attacking specific incarnations of naïve realism, or approach matters quite differently. (shrink)

This paper articulates and argues for the plausibility of the Presentation View of Perceptual Knowledge, an under-discussed epistemology of perception. On this view, a central epistemological role of perception is that of making subjects aware of their surroundings. By doing so, perception affords subjects with reasons for world-directed judgments. Moreover, the very perceived concrete entities are identified as those reasons. The former claim means that the position is a reasons-based epistemology; the latter means that it endorses a radically anti-psychologist conception (...) of reasons. First, I articulate and motivate the Presentation View. Then, I defend the view from three incarnations of a major objection levelled within the ranks of reasons-based epistemologies: McDowell’s version of the accusation that a view like this falls prey to the Myth of the Given. I argue that all three incarnations fail to show the Presentation View to be inadequate. The first version holds that a general characterization of the Myth clearly shows that it is an incoherent idea. The second version holds that endorsing the Myth makes it impossible to construe non-conceptual items as items that can stand in rational relations to judgements and beliefs. The third version holds that endorsing the Myth leads to a conception where perceptual experiences merely cause, but do not warrant, our perceptual beliefs and judgements. I explain in detail how the Presentation View has the elements to respond to each of these objections. (shrink)

One of the major arenas for debate within generative grammar is the nature of paradigmatic relations among words. Intervening in key debates at the interface between syntax and semantics, this book examines the relation between structure and meaning, and analyses how it affects the internal properties of words and corresponding syntactic manifestations. Adapting notions from the Evo-Devo project in biology (the idea of 'co-linearity' between structural units and behavioural manifestations) Juan Uriagereka addresses a major puzzle: how words can be (...) both decomposable so as to be acquired by children, and atomic, so that they do not manifest themselves as modular to adults. (shrink)

When should we expect compliance with international human rights norms? Previous literature on the causal mechanisms underlying compliance have focused independently on the roles of state willingness, thought of as the preferences of the regime leadership, and on state capacity, in improving human rights practices within a state. We build an argument that neither of these factors are sufficient on their own to improve compliance with human rights norms. Instead, improved human rights practices require both “the will and the way.” (...) Our central hypothesis is that capacities and willingness, acting jointly, are key determinants of improvements in compliance with international human rights norms. The paper confirms this proposition using two-staged and single-stage regression models and a time-series cross-sectional approach at the country-year level. A highly capable bureaucracy and a state that has signaled its willingness through the acceptance of individual complaint and inquiry procedures in the UN treaty regime are jointly necessary for improved human rights practices. (shrink)

Considering the importance of research in the development of nursing, we examine the ethical principles governing nurses' investigative activity, as well as the different codes regulating biomedical investigation with human beings, amongst which are the Nuremberg Code, the Declaration of Human Rights, and the Declaration of Helsinki. From the perspective of the central points of the article reference is made to different codes proposed by international nursing associations, as well as reviewing the Deontological Code of Spanish Nursing. The ethical principles (...) a nurse has to bear in mind in research are analysed, with respect to patients, society and the profession. Finally, we refer to certain ethical aspects to be considered in the elaboration and development of a research project, as well as publication of the results. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that knowledge is incompatible with the presence of non-neutralized defeaters. A common way of addressing this issue is to introduce a condition to the effect that there are no non-neutralized defeaters for the belief that _p_ (i.e. a “no-defeaters condition”). I argue that meeting this condition leaves open a possibility for defeaters to squander our knowledge. The no-defeaters condition can be fortuitously met, and as a result it can be met luckily. I shall argue that this (...) kind of luck is inconsistent with knowledge. In order to prevent this pernicious form of luck I introduce a “defeaters-responsiveness” condition, according to which subjects ought to be disposed to adequately address defeaters if they were to arise (even if they in fact do not arise). (shrink)

Despite the promises made by molecular evolutionists since the early 1960s that phylogenies would be readily reconstructed using molecular data, the construction of molecular phylogenies has both retained many methodological problems of the past and brought up new ones of considerable epistemic relevance. The field is driven not only by changes in knowledge about the processes of molecular evolution, but also by an ever-present methodological anxiety manifested in the constant search for an increased objectivity—or in its converse, the avoidance of (...) subjectivity.This paper offers an exhaustive account of the methodological and conceptual difficulties embedded in each of the steps required to elaborate molecular phytogenies. The authors adopt a historical perspective on the field in order to follow the development of practices that seek to increase the objectivity of their methods and representations. These include the adoption and development of explicit criteria for evaluation of evidence, and of procedures associated with methods of statistical inference, quantification and automation. All these are linked to an increasing use of computers in research since the mid 1960s. We will show that the practices of objectivity described are highly dependent on the problems and tools of molecular phylogenetics. (shrink)

Double‐checking one's reasoning is a perfectly normal way of responding to a disagreement between peers. I argue that conciliationist approaches lack the resources to accommodate this phenomenon adequately. On the one hand, conciliationists cannot claim that double‐checking is a rationally impermissible response to disagreement because a compelling case for its permissibility appeals to arguments analogous to those often used by conciliationist in favour of their own view. On the other, they lack the resources to accommodate double‐checking as a rationally permissible (...) response to disagreement. To show this, I draw a distinction between strong and moderate versions of conciliationism. The strong version accepts, whereas the moderate version rejects, that the conciliatory obligation exhausts the rational requirements engendered by disagreements. Strong conciliationists cannot explain the motivation for someone to double‐check if they have followed the conciliationists advice. Moderate conciliationists who try to make space for double‐checking are forced to concede that disputants can respond rationally to disagreement without lowering their confidence in the disputed belief. (shrink)

This paper calls into question one fundamental claim at the basis of an alleged puzzle for veritistic accounts of the value of idealized models: the claim that idealized models cannot be veridical representations of the world. Catherine Elgin has argued that the value of idealized models can only be explained if we construe them as exemplars, which do not represent the world. I argue that Elgin’s proposal is problematic and cannot accommodate central cases of idealization. Nevertheless, there is value in (...) Elgin’s proposal. I rescue her notion of selectiveness in exemplification and incorporate it within a revised account of representation. I provide independent motivation in favour of a form of veritism, which motivates a revision of Elgin’s case against it. I argue that an account based on selective representation has the resources to rescue veritism from the problems raised by Elgin. In the proposal I advance, idealized models are literally veridical representations of the world. (shrink)

There is a recent surge in interest in agential accounts of perception, i.e. accounts where activity plays a central role in accounting for the nature of perceptions. Within this camp, Lisa Miracch...

ArgumentThis paper analyzes the research strategies of three different cases in the study of human genetics in Mexico – the work of Rubén Lisker in the 1960s, INMEGEN's mapping of Mexican genomic diversity between 2004 and 2009, and the analysis of Native American variation by Andrés Moreno and his colleagues in contemporary research. We make a distinction between an approach that incorporates multiple disciplinary resources into sampling design and interpretation (unpacking), from one that privileges pragmatic considerations over more robust multidisciplinary (...) analysis (flattening). These choices have consequences for social, demographic, and biomedical practices, and also for accounts of genetic variation in human populations. While the former strategyunpacksfine-grained genetic variation – favoring precision and realism, the latter tends toflattenindividual differences and historical depth in lieu of generalization. (shrink)

There is a recent surge in interest in agential accounts of perception, i.e. accounts where activity plays a central role in accounting for the nature of perceptions. Within this camp, Lisa Miracch...

The paper argues that there are resources within theories of corrective justice to make the case against the deportation of immigrants, including those accused of committing criminal actions. More specifically, the argument defended here is that a nation acts impermissibly by deporting criminal immigrants who belong to countries that the nation itself wronged in a manner that contributed to create the migratory flow that led the immigrants in question there. In that case, admission and, equally important, permanent residence in the (...) host nation must be understood as a form of compensation for past wrongs, the interruption of which represents a breach of its duties of rectification, and is therefore unjust. Put in slightly different terms, some migrants have a retributive right-claim against their host state (which they may or may not exercise) to be admitted into the host state and not be deported. (shrink)

El presente documento tiene como propósito central analizar los discursos deotredad en la experiencia migratoria hacia Estados Unidos en personas mayoresretornadas a Durango. En un intento por vincular las metáforas queaparecen en el pensamiento del autor, se discuten las anécdotas de 18 participantes mayores de 60 años que trabajaron o vivieron en Estados Unidos, y quienes fueron seleccionados por medio de una muestra intencional. Dentro de los principales resultados se advierten tramas lingüísticas que aparecen en lascomunicaciones orales, donde se manifiestan (...) tensiones entre el territorio, los nacionalismos, el lenguaje y la producción de mismidad como mecanismos que utilizaron los sujetos para hacer frente a las múltiples violencias, segregaciones y desigualdad del contexto migratorio. (shrink)

From our everyday commuting to the gold medalist’s world-class performance, skillful actions are characterized by fine-grained, online agentive control. What is the proper explanation of such control? There are two traditional candidates: intellectualism explains skillful agentive control by reference to the agent’s propositional mental states; anti-intellectualism holds that propositional mental states or reflective processes are unnecessary since skillful action is fully accounted for by automatic coping processes. I examine the evidence for three psychological phenomena recently held to support anti-intellectualism and (...) argue that it supports neither traditional candidate, but an intermediate attention-control account, according to which the top-down, intention-directed control of attention is a necessary component of skillful action. Only this account recognizes both the role of automatic control in skilled action and the need for higher-order cognition to thread automatic processes together into a unified, skillful performance. This applies to bodily skillful action in general, from the world-class performance of experts to mundane, habitual action. The attention-control account stresses that, for intentions to play their role as top-down modulators of attention, agents must sustain the intention’s activation; hence, the need for reflecting throughout performance. (shrink)

Ao desenvolver a ciência biológica, o ser humano logrou obter novas variedades de animais e de plantas, a partir das silvestres. Quando as técnicas de engenharia genética se aplicaram a êstes organismos, obtiveram-se êxitos que se traduziram em dezenas de animais e de plantas com modificações genéticas agora hereditárias. Segundo o artigo, da análise bioética dos organismos modificados geneticamente e da sua utilizaçéo surgem várias propostas: 1) o direito do consumidor a ser informado em termos que possa entender acerca da (...) natureza das mudanças genéticas realizadas nos alimentos, 2) o direito do consumidor a decidir livremente se os quer consumir ou não e, 3) os deveres morais e científicos dos cientistas e das indústrias agro-alimentares para demonstrar a inocuidade destes animais e plantas transgénicos para o ser humano, o meio ambiente e a biodiversidade. /// Through the development of biological science, humankind was able to obtain new varieties of animals and plants in a process beginning with the wild species. When genetic engineering techniques were applied to these organisms, several dozens of transgenic organisms were obtained including plants and animals with specific inheritable changes, which are now transgenic foods. From the bioethical analysis of genetically modified organisms the article argues in favor of the right of the consumer to be informed in terms he or she can understand on the nature of genetic changes induced in foods, as well as in favor of the right of consumers to choose between standard or modified food. Finally, the article also argues in favor of the moral and scientific duties of scientists and food industries to demonstrate that genetically modified foods are not dangerous to human beings or noxious to the environment or biota. (shrink)

El pensamiento crítico es uno de los objetivos generales de la educación, pero poco se conoce acerca de cómo se puede trasladar al aula. Este estudio explora la conceptualización de pensamiento crítico de los formadores/as de maestros/as y los ambientes de aprendizaje que diseñados para promoverlo. Se analizaron cinco entrevistas semiestructuradas a formadores/as de maestros/as mediante análisis de contenido. Los resultados mostraron que el pensamiento crítico se aborda implícitamente fomentando un aprendizaje activo contextualizado en problemas de la vida real. Este (...) estudio revela algunos desafíos relacionados con el diseño de ambientes de aprendizaje y procedimientos de evaluación. (shrink)

Does self-control require willpower? The question cuts to the heart of a debate about whether self-control is identical with some psychological process internal to the agents or not. Noticeably absent from these debates is systematic evidence about the folk-psychological category of self-control. Here, we present the results of two behavioral studies (N = 296) that indicate the structure of everyday use of the concept. In Study 1, participants rated the degree to which different strategies to respond to motivational conflict exemplify (...) self-control. Participants distinguished between intra-psychic and externally-scaffolded strategies and judged that the former exemplified self-control more than the latter. In Study 2, participants provided various solutions to manage motivational conflict and rated their proposals on effectiveness. Participants produced substantially more intra-psychic strategies, rated them as more effective, and advised them at a higher rate than externally-scaffolded strategies. Taken together, these results suggest that while people recognize a plurality of strategies as genuine instances of self-control, purely internal exercises of self-control are considered more prototypical than their externally-scaffolded counterparts. This implies a hierarchical structure for the folk psychological category of self-control. The concept encompasses a variety of regulatory strategies and organizes these strategies along a hierarchical continuum, with purely intra-psychic strategies at the center and scaffolded strategies in the periphery. (shrink)

Functionalism as a philosophical position has been recently applied to the case of emotion research. However, a number of objections have been raised against applying such a view to scientific theorizing on emotions. In this article, I argue that functionalism is still a viable strategy for emotion research. To do this, I present functionalism in philosophy of mind and offer a sketch of its application to emotions. I then discuss three recent objections raised against it and respond to each of (...) them. These objections claim that functionalism is intractable because (i) it does not support a scientifically interesting taxonomy of emotions for experimental settings, (ii) it is inherently teleological, and (iii) it cannot be falsified. I argue that these objections either rely on a simplified version of functionalism as a philosophical position or they pose challenges that functionalists can readily address. Lastly, I conclude by drawing some lessons these objections suggest for a tractable functionalist account of emotions. (shrink)

Researchers often claim that self-control is a skill. It is also often stated that self-control exertions are intentional actions. However, no account has yet been proposed of the skillful agency that makes self-control exertion possible, so our understanding of self-control remains incomplete. Here I propose the skill model of self-control, which accounts for skillful agency by tackling the guidance problem: how can agents transform their abstract and coarse-grained intentions into the highly context-sensitive, fine-grained control processes required to select, revise and (...) correct strategies during self-control exertion? The skill model borrows conceptual tools from ‘hierarchical models’ recently developed in the context of motor skills, and asserts that self-control crucially involves the ability to manage the implementation and monitoring of regulatory strategies as the self-control exercise unfolds. Skilled agents are able do this by means of flexible practical reasoning: a fast, context-sensitive type of deliberation that incorporates non-propositional representations into the formation and revision of the mixed-format intentions that structure self-control exertion. The literatures on implementation intentions and motivation framing offer corroborating evidence for the theory. As a surprising result, the skill of self-control that allows agents to overcome the contrary motivations they experience is self-effacing: instead of continuously honing this skill, expert agents replace it with a different one, which minimizes or prevents contrary motivations from arising in the first place. Thus, the more expert you are at self-control, the less likely you are to use it. (shrink)

Las guerras centroamericanas de la década de 1980 provocaron giros analíticos en las agendas intelectuales. En este trabajo estudio el caso de Ignacio Martín-Baró, psicólogo social y sacerdote jesuita de la Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) de El Salvador. Postulo que su propuesta de imprimir una perspectiva latinoamericana al pensamiento psicosocial derivó de la necesidad de comprender las crisis sociales surgidas con la guerra. Martín-Baró se interesó por el ‘mundo desgarrado de la vida cotidiana’ como lugar de análisis de los principales conflictos (...) sociales, entre los que destacó la tortura y la alta dosis de crueldad manifestada en el ejercicio de la violencia. Por último, analizo sus reflexiones sobre los impactos de la guerra en la salud mental, especialmente en la niñez, y subrayo su llamado de atención sobre el carácter cultural de la violencia y los desafíos que ello implicaba para la imaginación de un nuevo futuro de convivencia. Si bien fue un pensador en constante alerta sobre la importancia del análisis históricamente sustentado para comprender las crisis sociales, sus intervenciones intelectuales imaginaron un futuro de viabilidad histórica y de sostenibilidad de la vida para las mayorías con las que comprometió su quehacer. (shrink)

Esta bibliograf a compila la extensa obra publicada de Leopoldo Zea: monograf as, cap tulos en libros, art culos period sticos y pr logos e introducciones. Incluye tambi n una bibliograf a sobre Zea.

In this paper I will critically assess a very popular interpretation of Heidegger’s early thought, according to which meaning (Bedeutung) is conceived as ontologically dependent on human existence (Dasein). In order to criticize this subjectivist understanding of meaning, I will offer an interpretation of Heidegger’s analysis of signs in Being and Time (§17). This will reveal two main things: first, that the ubiquity of sign-phenomena is founded on the universality of the structure known as reference (Verweisung); second, that Heidegger’s idea (...) of reference offers a non-substantialist understanding of meaning and its relation to the world. (shrink)

In this paper we prove that the free algebras in a subvariety equation image of the variety equation image of semi-Heyting algebras are directly decomposable if and only if equation image satisfies the Stone identity.