A key aim in biology and psychology is to identify fundamental principles underpinning the behavior of animals, including humans. Analyses of human language and the behavior of a range of non-human animal species have provided evidence for a common pattern underlying diverse behavioral phenomena: Words follow Zipf's law of brevity (the tendency of more frequently used words to be shorter), and conformity to this general pattern has been seen in the behavior of a number of other animals. It has been (...) argued that the presence of this law is a sign of efficient coding in the information theoretic sense. However, no strong direct connection has been demonstrated between the law and compression, the information theoretic principle of minimizing the expected length of a code. Here, we show that minimizing the expected code length implies that the length of a word cannot increase as its frequency increases. Furthermore, we show that the mean code length or duration is significantly small in human language, and also in the behavior of other species in all cases where agreement with the law of brevity has been found. We argue that compression is a general principle of animal behavior that reflects selection for efficiency of coding. (shrink)

Here we study polysemy as a potential learning bias in vocabulary learning in children. Words of low polysemy could be preferred as they reduce the disambiguation effort for the listener. However, such preference could be a side-effect of another bias: the preference of children for nouns in combination with the lower polysemy of nouns with respect to other part-of-speech categories. Our results show that mean polysemy in children increases over time in two phases, i.e. a fast growth till the 31st (...) month followed by a slower tendency towards adult speech. In contrast, this evolution is not found in adults interacting with children. This suggests that children have a preference for non-polysemous words in their early stages of vocabulary acquisition. Interestingly, the evolutionary pattern described above weakens when controlling for syntactic category (noun, verb, adjective or adverb) but it does not disappear completely, suggesting that it could result from a combination of a standalone bias for low polysemy and a preference for nouns. (shrink)

This article deals with happiness and inequality. Section 2 gives an explanation of the neo-classical negative attitude towards happiness as an operational concept, differentiating between ordinal and cardinal happiness. Section 3 introduces the happiness economics literature and the so-called Leyden School, which can be viewed as a forerunner of present-day happiness economics. Section 4 concentrates on the effect of income inequality in a given country on the individual's feelings of happiness. Section 5 considers current attempts to characterize the inequality of (...) the distribution of happiness and how that may be decomposed. Section 6 concludes. (shrink)

Biosemiosis is a process of choice-making between simultaneously alternative options. It is well-known that, when sufficiently young children encounter a new word, they tend to interpret it as pointing to a meaning that does not have a word yet in their lexicon rather than to a meaning that already has a word attached. In previous research, the strategy was shown to be optimal from an information theoretic standpoint. In that framework, interpretation is hypothesized to be driven by the minimization of (...) a cost function: the option of least communication cost is chosen. However, the information theoretic model employed in that research neither explains the weakening of that vocabulary learning bias in older children or polylinguals nor reproduces Zipf’s meaning-frequency law, namely the non-linear relationship between the number of meanings of a word and its frequency. Here we consider a generalization of the model that is channeled to reproduce that law. The analysis of the new model reveals regions of the phase space where the bias disappears consistently with the weakening or loss of the bias in older children or polylinguals. The model is abstract enough to support future research on other levels of life that are relevant to biosemiotics. In the deep learning era, the model is a transparent low-dimensional tool for future experimental research and illustrates the predictive power of a theoretical framework originally designed to shed light on the origins of Zipf’s rank-frequency law. (shrink)

This article argues that bodily awareness is a basic form of self-consciousness through which perceiving agents are directly conscious of the bodily self. It clarifies the nature of bodily awareness, categorises the different types of body-relative information, and rejects the claim that we can have a sense of ownership of our own bodies. It explores how bodily awareness functions as a form of self-consciousness and highlights the importance of certain forms of bodily awareness that share an important epistemological property with (...) canonical forms of self-consciousness such as introspection. (shrink)

How do we measure happiness? Focusing on subjective measures as a proxy for welfare and well-being, this book finds ways to do that. Subjective measures have been used by psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, and, more recently, economists to answer a variety of scientifically and politically relevant questions. Van Praag, a pioneer in this field since 1971, and Ferrer-i-Carbonell present in this book a generally applicable methodology for the analysis of subjective satisfaction. Drawing on a range of surveys on people's (...) satisfaction with their jobs, income, housing, marriages, and government policy, among other areas of life, this book shows how satisfaction with life "as a whole" is an aggregate of these domain satisfactions. Using German, British, Dutch, and Russian data, the authors cover a wide range of topics. This groundbreaking book presents a new and fruitful methodology that constitutes a welcome addition to the social sciences. The paperback edition has been revised to bring the literature review up-to-date and the chapter on poverty has been revised and extended to take account of new research. (shrink)

How do we measure happiness? Focusing on subjective measures as a proxy for welfare and well-being, this book finds ways to do that. Subjective measures have been used by psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, and, more recently, economists to answer a variety of scientifically and politically relevant questions. Van Praag, a pioneer in this field since 1971, and Ferrer-i-Carbonell present in this book a generally applicable methodology for the analysis of subjective satisfaction. Drawing on a range of surveys on people's (...) satisfaction with their jobs, income, housing, marriages, and government policy, among other areas of life, this book shows how satisfaction with life "as a whole" is an aggregate of these domain satisfactions. Using German, British, Dutch, and Russian data, the authors cover a wide range of topics, even some not usually considered part of economic study.The book makes a distinction between actual satisfaction levels and individual norms, and in this way complements Van Praag's earlier work within the Leyden School with his later work in "happiness research". Among the many topics covered, the authors discuss: individuals' memory and anticipation processes and the estimation of adaptation phenomena ; the effect of reference groups on income norms and satisfaction with income; the importance of climate for well-being, including the development of a climate-equivalence index; the trade-offs between chronic diseases and income when well-being is kept constant; the damage of aircraft noise on well-being; the construction of a new talent tax tariff; and inequality from a satisfaction perspective, including the definition of "satisfaction inequalities", a natural extension of income inequality and poverty.This groundbreaking book presents new and fruitful methodology that consitutes a welcome addition to the social sciences. (shrink)

Within the philosophical discussion between Idealism and Romanticism that took place in Germany toward 1800, they were formed the basic directives that will guide all (critical or apologetical) later exposition about the subjectivity. The Idealism, represented by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel (its ..

Cataloguing: -/- Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer / By Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). [Götzen-Dämmerung. English]. Translation of text, afterward, notes, letters, and appendixes by ©Daniel Fidel Ferrer, 2013. 1. Philosophy 2) Metaphysics 3) Philosophy, Germa 4) Philosophy, German -- 19th century 5) Philosophy, German – Greek influences I. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900 II. Ferrer, Daniel Fidel, 1952- .

In addition to the three stages of existence, Kierkegaard presents other existential forms based on the category of consciousness. One of these is that in which the self obstinately prefers to despair instead of accepting an external foundation and therefore keeping a radical hermetism.

El artículo propone una línea de interpretación que articula el pensamiento de Husserl con el de Derrida a partir de la lectura que ambos realizan sobre el tiempo. Siguiendo esta línea, la intención es alcanzar un punto de continuidad entre la obra de estos pensadores, y plantear tal continuidad en términos fenomenológicos. En una primera instancia se pretende mostrar la vitalidad y posibilidad de la fenomenología de Husserl como una respuesta capaz de adaptarse a problemáticas propias de nuestra época, en (...) particular desde su trabajo sobre la temporalidad y en conexión con la interpretación de la misma realizada por Derrida. En un segundo momento, mostrar que la lectura de Derrida es una lectura fenomenológica que se desarrolla en continuidad con la de Husserl y que incluso profundiza sus planteos. En tal sentido, entenderla como una alternativa viable, no relativista y propicia para efectuar esta nueva interpretación de la fenomenología. En síntesis, siguiendo el hilo conductor del análisis del tiempo, la idea central a la que se apunta es plantear la posibilidad de una fenomenología que articule los planteos de Husserl y de Derrida y que podría denominarse «fenomenología de los márgenes». (shrink)

Surgical patient safety remains a concern worldwide as, despite World Health Organization recommendations and implementation of its Surgical Safety Checklist, adverse events continue to occur. The aim of this qualitative study was to explore the views and experiences of perioperative nurses regarding the factors that impact surgical patient safety. Data were collected through five focus groups involving a total of 50 perioperative nurses recruited from four public hospitals in Spain. Content analysis of the focus groups yielded four main themes: personal (...) qualities of the perioperative nurse, the surgical environment, safety culture, and perioperative nursing care plans. One of the main findings concerned barriers to the exercise of leadership by nurses, especially regarding completion of the Surgical Safety Checklist. Some of the key factors that impacted the ability of perioperative nurses to fulfil their duties and ensure patient safety were the stress associated with working in the operating room, time pressures, and ineffective communication in the multidisciplinary team. Targeting these aspects through training initiatives could contribute to the professional development of perioperative nurses and reduce the incidence of adverse events by enhancing the surgical safety culture. (shrink)

BackgroundThe H2020 i-CONSENT project has developed a set of guidelines that offer ethical recommendations and practical tools aimed at making the informed consent process in clinical studies more comprehensive, tailored, and inclusive. An analysis of the appropriateness of some of its novel recommendations was carried out by a group of experts representing different stakeholders.MethodsAn adaptation of the RAND/ucla Appropriateness Method was used to assess the level of agreement on the recommendations among 14 representatives of different stakeholders, including patients, regulators, investigators, (...) ethics experts, and the pharmaceutical industry. The process included two rounds of rating and a virtual meeting.ResultsFifty-three recommendations were evaluated. After the first round, 34 recommendations were judged “appropriate”; 19 were judged “uncertain”; and none was judged “inappropriate”. After the second round, 9 “uncertains” changed to “appropriate”. All recommendations rated medians of 6.5–9 on a 1–9 scale (1 = “extremely inappropriate”, 5 = “uncertain”, 9 = “extremely appropriate”). The sections “General recommendations” and “Gender perspective during the consent process for clinical studies” showed the highest “uncertainty” rating. The four keys to improving the understanding of the ICP in clinical studies are to: (1) consider consent a two-way continuous interaction that begins at the first contact with the potential participant and continues until the end of the study; (2) improve investigators’ communication skills; (3) co-create the information; and (4) use a layered approach, including information to compensate for the potential participant’s possible lack of health literacy and a glossary of terms.ConclusionsThe RAND/ucla method has demonstrated validity for assessing the appropriateness of recommendations in ethical guidelines. The recommendations of the i-CONSENT guidelines were mostly judged “appropriate” by all stakeholders involved in the informed consent process. (shrink)

El objetivo del trabajo es mostrar las funestas repercusiones del bombardeo de informaciones que todos padecemos en nuestro incipiente mundo virtual. Si bien es cierto que trae consigo numerosas ventajas, desde que el capitalismo basa su fuerza y expansión en las nuevas tecnologías de la comunicación, la proliferación acelerada de estímulos concomitante también conlleva una crisis de transmisión de consecuencias fatídicas, en la medida que arruina la estructura normativa firme y estable que vertebraba nuestras vidas en la prehistoria digital. De (...) aquí se sigue, por razón de semejante vacío axiológico, una hiperinversión de lo privado y una desmovilización del espacio público, convertido en un inquietante desierto virtual donde zombis hiperindividualistas interactúan en el simple sentido de la palabra, al ritmo que marcan los nuevos expertos en las artes de la infoesfera.The aim of this work is to show the disastrous effects of the bombardment of information which all of us experience in our emerging virtual world. It is true that capitalism brings a great number of advantages; however, since it bases its strength and expansion on the new communication technologies, the accompanying accelerated proliferation of stimuli also involves a crisis of transmission of fatal consequences, in so far as it ruins the solid and stable regulatory structure that provide the backbone of our lives in digital prehistory. It follows, because of such axiological vacuum, a hyperinversion of the private sphere and a demobilization of public space, turned into a disturbing virtual desert where hyperindividualistic zombies interact in the simple sense of the word, at the pace set by the new experts on the arts of infosphere. (shrink)

Due to the confinement imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic situation, companies adopted remote work more than ever. The rapid rise of remote work also affected local life and many employers introduced or extended their telework activities because of the associated advantages. However, despite the evident positive benefits, some employees were pressured to work remotely while ill. This evidence brought new challenges to the presenteeism literature. This article investigates how individual, economic/societal, and organizational/sectorial/supervisory-related variables can moderate the role of a contagious (...) disease, such as the COVID-19, in explaining presenteeism behavior. Moreover, the current research presents a multi-level conceptual model to describe how a new construct of remote-work presenteeism behavior mediates the relationship between different post pandemic health conditions and future cumulative negative consequences. The authors suggested that the widespread pervasive adoption of remote work because of COVID-19 has important implications for the presenteeism literature and opens avenues for further research. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to reflect on Maine de Biran’s modernity with regard to the subject of a philosophy of anxiety. Biran first notes a connection between anxiety and motility; secondly, Biran invites us to think of intersubjectivity as something that is not foreign to the sensation of anxiety; third, Biran feels “surprised several times”, as if his own anxiety, while interior, were something that seems to originate from outside. These will by the main axes of this paper.

Ferrer, Vicent (2021)De suppositionibusEdició crítica del text llatí, traducció catalana, introducció a cura de Josep Batalla i Elena de la Cruz Vergari, traducció anglesa de Robert D. HughesSanta Coloma de Queralt: Obrador Edèndum, 793 p.ISBN 978-84-120007-4-0.

Skeptical theism, broadly construed, is an attempt to leverage our limited cognitive powers, in some specified sense, against “evidential” and “explanatory” arguments from evil. Since there are different versions of these kinds of arguments, there are correspondingly different versions of skeptical theism. In this paper, I briefly explain three versions of these arguments from evil (two from William Rowe and one from Paul Draper) and the three versions of skeptical theism tailor-made to block them (from Stephen Wykstra, Michael Bergmann, and (...) Peter van Inwagen). (shrink)

Foundational ontologies, central constructs in ontological investigations and engineering alike, are based on ontological categories. Firstly proposed by Aristotle as the very ur- elements from which the whole of reality can be derived, they are not easy to identify, let alone partition and/or hierarchize; in particular, the question of their number poses serious challenges. The late medieval philosopher Dietrich of Freiberg wrote around 1286 a tutorial that can help us today with this exceedingly difficult task. In this paper, I discuss (...) ontological categories and their importance for foundational ontologies from both the contemporary perspective and the original Aristotelian viewpoint, I provide the translation from the Latin into English of Dietrich's De origine II with an introductory elaboration, and I extract a foundational ontology–that is in fact a single-category one–from this text rooted in Dietrich's specification of types of subjecthood and his conception of intentionality as causal operation. (shrink)

The Alperin-Goldschmidt Fusion Theorem [1, 5], when combined with pushing up [7], was a useful tool in the classification of the finite simple groups. Similar theorems are needed in the study of simple groups of finite Morley rank, in the even type case (that is, when the Sylow 2-subgroups are of bounded exponent, as in algebraic groups over fields of characteristic 2). In that context a body of results relating to fusion of 2-elements and the structure of 2-local subgroups is (...) needed: pushing up, and the classification of groups with strongly or weakly embedded subgroups, or have strongly closed abelian subgroups (c.f, [2]). Two theorems of Alperin-Goldschmidt type are proved here. Both are needed in applications.The following is an exact analog of the Alperin-Goldschmidt Fusion Theorem for groups of finite Morley rank, in the case of 2-elements:Theorem 1.1.Let G be a group of finite Morley rank, and P a Sylow2-subgroup of G.If A, B⊆P are conjugate in G, then there are subgroups Hi≤Pand elementsxi∈N(Hi)for1 ≤i≤n,and an elementy∈N(P),such that for all i:1.Hiis a tame intersection of two Sylow2-subgroups;2.CP(Hi) ≤Hi;3.N(Hi)/Hiis2-isolatedand(a)(b). (shrink)