El artículo pretende analizar, a través de la historia, la cuestión de la patologización trans*, que ha contado y cuenta con una oposición bastante amplia por parte de diversos colectivos. El debate político de la cuestión (por medio de la petición de normativas y leyes que regulen determinados aspectos de la identidad) hace que una cuestión individual como es la identidad haya pasado a ser un tema colectivo. Que sea asunto colectivo hace que sea imposible desligar la biología de la (...) medicina, el derecho o la política. Es esta interdisciplinariedad lo que dota hoy en día a la cuestión trans* de tanta relevancia, tampoco exenta de polémica con otros movimientos sociales, como las redes sociales han venido mostrando últimamente. No obstante, es la gran visibilidad que ha obtenido por diferentes medios la cuestión trans* lo que la hace susceptible de múltiples análisis, que, como se ha dicho anteriormente, no se limitan a una única disciplina o a un único punto de vista. (shrink)

The interest of assigning homework is frequently discussed due to its alleged low impact on student achievement. One of the current lines of research is to emphasize the quality of student homework engagement rather than the amount of time spent on homework. The aim of this study was to determine (a) the extent to which students’ prior achievement affects their homework engagement (i.e., time spent, time management, and amount of teacher-assigned homework done), and (b) how students’ intrinsic motivation towards homework (...) may mediate or moderate the relationship between prior achievement and the homework engagement variables. A large sample of students from the first four years of Secondary Education (N = 1899) completed questionnaires. The results showed that intrinsic motivation partially mediates, but does not moderate, the effect of prior achievement on the three variables related to homework engagement (time spent, time management, and amount of teacher-assigned homework done). These results highlight the importance of considering both students’ current level of achievement and their motivation towards homework engagement when assigning homework. (shrink)

Este trabajo hace un estudio de la pasión en tanto que la pasión nos ofrece una evaluación cognoscitiva de la realidad. Esta evaluación muestra lo que se puede llamar intencionalidad del cuerpo, que tiene una finalidad evolutiva en el ser humano como ser vivo y que es diferente de la intencionalidad que posee la razón. La pasión nos ofrece un juicio corporal desde una perspectiva subjetiva mientras que el juicio de la razón se refiere a un marco objetivo.

La obra de Harari es una proyección hacia el futuro de la situación actual de la humanidad. Está fundada en tres supuestos básicos: materialismo, cientificismo y ateísmo. Debido al fuerte reduccionismo de sus supuestos, su explicación de lo humano y del futuro de lo humano queda en una especulación interesante de conocer pero que carece de objetividad.

El autor describe y comenta la obra literaria de Abraham Maimónides que ilustra con la traducción de dos escritos de Abraham, uno donde el hijo de Maimónides describe sus afanes literarios y otro donde defiende a su padre contra los ataques de los tradicionalistas. Importante es también el testimonio del historiógrafo Yosef Sambari sobre el hijo de Maimónides. En conjunto la obra de Abraham tiene una tendencia racionalista, heredada de su padre, pero con un sesgo de pietismo, que heredó de (...) la familia materna, y que se inspira en las corrientes sufistas islámicas. (shrink)

La Allgemeine Psychopatologiede Karl Jaspers es una obra clave del pensamiento del siglo XX. Une de forma interdisciplinar la medicina, la psicología y la filosofía existencial. De entre los conceptos que trata, este ensayo verá la función del concepto de símbolo y a través de él la función de la Filosofía como guía de la Psiquiatría y de la Psicopatología en general. En la Psiquiatría contemporánea cada vez se da más importancia a la “simbolización” como concepto clave bajo el que (...) el sujeto humano interpreta su existencia. El símbolo es un esquema de realidad que se construye y reconstruye continuamente a través de las experiencias del ser humano. Puede decirse entonces que, a través del símbolo, el ser humano construye su mundo. En esa construcción, la Filosofía puede suponer una ayuda si se plantea como “ansia de saber” o, en su lugar, como una rémora si se presenta como una totalidad omnicomprehensiva inflexible bajo la que subsumen todas las experiencias de la vida. (shrink)

The fast–slow paradigm of life history focuses on how individuals grow, mate, and reproduce at different paces. This paradigm can contribute substantially to the field of personality and individual differences provided that it is more strictly based on evolutionary biology than it has been so far. Our study tested the existence of a fast–slow continuum underlying indicators of reproductive effort—offspring output, age at first reproduction, number and stability of sexual partners—in 1,043 outpatients with healthy to severely disordered personalities. Two axes (...) emerged reflecting a double-track pathway to fast strategy, based on restricted and unrestricted sociosexual strategies. When rotated, the fast–slow and sociosexuality axes turned out to be independent. Contrary to expectations, neither somatic effort—investment in status, material resources, social capital, and maintenance/survival—was aligned with reproductive effort, nor a clear tradeoff between current and future reproduction was evident. Finally, we examined the association of LH axes with seven high-order personality pathology traits: negative emotionality, impulsivity, antagonism, persistence-compulsivity, subordination, and psychoticism. Persistent and disinhibited subjects appeared as fast-restricted and fast-unrestricted strategists, respectively, whereas asocial subjects were slow strategists. Associations of LH traits with each other and with personality are far more complex than usually assumed in evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

In daily academic life, students are exposed to a wide range of potentially stressful situations which could negatively affect their academic achievement and their health. Among the factors that could be weakened by academic stress, attention has been paid to expectations of self-efficacy, which are considered one of the most important determinants for student engagement, persistence, and academic success. From a proactive perspective, research on academic stress has emphasized the importance of coping strategies in preventing harmful consequences. In recent years, (...) there has been a growing interest in discovering the extent to which individuals are able to combine different coping strategies and the adaptive consequences this flexibility entails. However, studies using this person-centered approach are still scarce in the academic context. On that basis, this current study had two objectives: (a) to examine the existence of different profiles of university students based on how they combined different approach coping strategies (positive reappraisal, support seeking, and planning); and (b) to determine the existence of differences in general expectations of self-efficacy between those coping profiles. 1072 university students participated in the study. The coping profiles were determined by Latent Profile Analysis (LPA). The differences in the self-efficacy variable were determined using ANCOVA, with gender, university year, and degree type as covariates. Four approach coping profiles were identified: (a) low generalized use of approach coping strategies; (b) predominance of social approach coping approaches; (c) predominance of cognitive approach coping approaches; (d) high generalized use of approach coping strategies. The profile that showed that a greater combination of the three strategies was related to higher general self-efficacy expectations, and vice versa. These results suggest that encouraging flexibility in coping strategies would help to improve university students’ self-efficacy. (shrink)

La siguiente es una reseña del estudio realizado por el profesor Francisco Rodríguez Valls de la Universidad de Sevilla respecto a la incertidumbre que supone la naturaleza y la condiciónn de la realidad humana. El análisis se avoca a una visión paranorámica del trabajo del profesor Valls, y de manera introductoria apunta los aspecto claves de su texto a fin de que el lector pueda hacerse una idea clara y concisa de la propia postura del autor.

Ian Rumfitt (2000) developed a bilateralist account of logic in which the meaning of the connectives is given by conditions on asserted and rejected sentences. An additional set of inference rules, the coordination principles, determines the interaction of assertion and rejection. Fernando Ferreira (2008) found this account defective, as Rumfitt must state the coordination principles for arbitrary complex sentences. Rumfitt (2008) has a reply, but we argue that the problem runs deeper than he acknowledges and is in fact related to (...) the challenge of establishing proof-theoretic harmony. We motivate a distinctively bilateral criterion for harmony and show how the bilateralist can meet it. This also resolves Ferreira's complaint. (shrink)

BackgroundHIV prevention research in resource-limited countries is associated with a variety of ethical dilemmas. Key amongst these is the question of what constitutes an appropriate standard of health care (SoC) for participants in HIV prevention trials. This paper describes a community-focused approach to develop a locally-appropriate SoC in the context of a phase III vaginal microbicide trial in Mwanza City, northwest Tanzania.MethodsA mobile community-based sexual and reproductive health service for women working as informal food vendors or in traditional and modern (...) bars, restaurants, hotels and guesthouses has been established in 10 city wards. Wards were divided into geographical clusters and community representatives elected at cluster and ward level. A city-level Community Advisory Committee (CAC) with representatives from each ward has been established. Workshops and community meetings at ward and city-level have explored project-related concerns using tools adapted from participatory learning and action techniques e.g. chapati diagrams, pair-wise ranking. Secondary stakeholders representing local public-sector and non-governmental health and social care providers have formed a trial Stakeholders' Advisory Group (SAG), which includes two CAC representatives.ResultsKey recommendations from participatory community workshops, CAC and SAG meetings conducted in the first year of the trial relate to the quality and range of clinic services provided at study clinics as well as broader standard of care issues. Recommendations have included streamlining clinic services to reduce waiting times, expanding services to include the children and spouses of participants and providing care for common local conditions such as malaria. Participants, community representatives and stakeholders felt there was an ethical obligation to ensure effective access to antiretroviral drugs and to provide supportive community-based care for women identified as HIV positive during the trial. This obligation includes ensuring sustainable, post-trial access to these services. Post-trial access to an effective vaginal microbicide was also felt to be a moral imperative.ConclusionParticipatory methodologies enabled effective partnerships between researchers, participant representatives and community stakeholders to be developed and facilitated local dialogue and consensus on what constitutes a locally-appropriate standard of care in the context of a vaginal microbicide trial in this setting.Trial registrationCurrent Controlled Trials ISRCTN64716212. (shrink)

Recommender Systems (RecSys) have been around since the early days of the Internet, helping users navigate the vast ocean of information and the increasingly available options that have been available for us ever since. The range of tasks for which one could use a RecSys is expanding as the technical capabilities grow, with the disruption of Machine Learning representing a tipping point in this domain, as in many others. However, the increase of the technical capabilities of AI-powered RecSys did not (...) come with a thorough consideration of their ethical implications and, despite being a well-established technical domain, the potential impacts of RecSys on their users are still under-assessed. This paper aims at filling this gap in regards to one of the main impacts of RecSys: personal autonomy. We first describe how technology can affect human values and a suitable methodology to identify these effects and mitigate potential harms: Value Sensitive Design (VSD). We use VSD to carry out a conceptual investigation of personal autonomy in the context of a generic RecSys and draw on a nuanced account of procedural autonomy to focus on two components: competence and authenticity. We provide the results of our inquiry as a value hierarchy and apply it to the design of a speculative RecSys as an example. (shrink)

Starting on Bourdieu’s approach to precariousness, this article analyzes this phenomenon as a new flexible norm that displaces the Fordist social norm. The authors argue, based on Gramsci’s study of Fordism, that precarization creates a mechanism of discipline for the legitimization of the loss of both labour and social rights, destroying the Keynesian social pact. Such disciplining happens coercively, both by the use of new technologies and by the generalization of the function of Marx’s industrial reserve army to all productive (...) strata; and also, by consensus, through a transformation in the work culture, leading to a “new flexible man” with a flagrant loss of its autonomy. (shrink)

In order to develop a collaborative experience of reflexive writing, this article explores the ethnographic process through two communication devices used by the authors in their respective fieldwork: tarot readings and evolutionary astrology. Reflecting on their distinct (if not opposing) backgrounds, the authors explore and interpret how their different backgrounds and conversational devices shape their ethnographic experience as a process of revealing the unknown, following the not-knowing approach (Anderson, 1997). The dialogic exchange also reveals how the not-knowing approach affects the (...) collaborative aspect of the reflexive writing experience. (shrink)

Among the many applications of artificial intelligence (AI), virtual assistants are one of the tools most likely to grow in the future. The development of these systems may play an increasingly important role in many facets of our lives. Therefore, given their potential importance and present and future weight, it is worthwhile to analyze what kind of challenges they entail. In this chapter, we will provide an overview of the ethical aspects of artificial virtual assistants. First, we provide a conceptual (...) clarification of the term ‘virtual assistant’, including different types of interfaces and recommender systems. Second, we address three ethical issues related to the deployment of these systems: their effects on human agency and autonomy and the subsequent cognitive dependence they would generate; the human obsolescence that may cause a generalized extension of the dependence problem; and the invasions of privacy that virtual assistants may cause. Finally, we outline the debates about the use of virtual assistants to improve human moral decisions and some areas in which these systems can be applied. (shrink)

Background and objectives: Definitions of medical futility, offered by healthcare professionals, bioethicists and other experts, have been rigorously debated by many investigators, but the perceptions of patients of futility have been explored only by a few. Patients were allowed to discuss their concerns about end-of-life care, so that their ideas about treatment futility or utility could be extrapolated by us.Methods: In this cross-sectional study, in-depth, semistructured interviews were conducted with 30 elderly people who were receiving outpatient care in a large, (...) urban Veterans Affairs medical centre in the US. Each of their healthcare providers was also interviewed. Participants were asked to consider four terms commonly used in advance directive forms and to discuss what these terms meant to them. Audiotapes of the open-ended interviews were transcribed and responses were coded and categorised by constant comparison, a commonly used qualitative method.Results: The following four factors were taken into account by the participants when discussing end-of-life interventions and outcomes: expected quality of life; emotional and financial costs of treatment; likelihood of treatment success; and expected effect on longevity.Conclusions: Although the terms “utility” or “futility” were not generally used by the participants, segments of speech indicating their perceptions of these terms were identified. Treatment was not always discussed in the same way by patients and providers, but seemed to reflect the same four concerns. Therefore, it may be fruitful for providers to focus on these concerns when discussing end-of-life treatment options with their patients. (shrink)

In this paper, we first investigate a bit of feminist and hermeneutical aesthetics. Building upon these theories, we expand the discussion of art to include the fleshy canvas.We argue that a feminist philosophy of art suggests a sound theoretical framework by which one can maintain that skin art is just that – art. In its contemporary practice, tattooing has become a new form of art, and feminist theory provides context for interpretation. The tattooed body may agitate conventional conceptions of fine (...) art – but art evolves, and history makes this much clear. Definitions of art tend to develop, as does artistic practice. Artistic innovations subvert what is old and stale within the institutional art world, while art theory empowers that subversion and provides a context for the appreciation of art. (shrink)

This article contrasts Saint Augustine’s role in the creation of the Church’s theological dogma to Loyola’s modern gesture of independence vis-à-vis the Church. It then traces Loyola’s method to the core that grounds Descartes’ philosophical works. This core, I claim, is derived from Descartes’ understanding and imitation of the Spiritual Exercises. The Exercises obviate the Church by making it redundant, unnecessary. From this disavowal and distancing, Loyola gives the exercitant the psychological tools to emerge from the Exercises with a strong, (...) new sense of self that with time will transform the institution from within. In Descartes’ case, the moral subject capable of responding to the question of what God wants (the product of the Exercises) is displaced by the epistemological certainty necessary to create a new “Method” to study and understand the world. (shrink)

1. The Bundle Theory I shall discuss is a theory about the nature of substances or concrete particulars, like apples, chairs, atoms, stars and people. The point of the Bundle Theory is to avoid undesirable entities like substrata that allegedly constitute particulars. The version of the Bundle Theory I shall discuss takes particulars to be entirely constituted by the universals they instantiate.' Thus particulars are said to be just bundles of universals. Together with the claim that it is necessary that (...) particulars have constituents, the fundamental claim of the Bundle Theory is: (BT) Necessarily, for every particular x and every entity y, y constitutes x if and only ify is a universal and x instantiates y. 2 The standard and supposedly devastating objection to the Bundle Theory is that it entails or is committed to a false version of the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles (Armstrong 1978: 91, Loux 1998: 107), namely: (Pll) Necessarily, for all particulars x and y and every universal z, if z is instantiated by x if and only if z is instantiated byy, then x is numerically identical with y. The most famous counterexample to the Identity of Indiscernibles is that put forward by Max Black, consisting of a world where there are only two iron spheres two miles apart from each other, having the same diameter, temperature, colour, shape, size, etc (Black 1952: 156). Let us from now on think of the properties of the spheres in this world as universals. The possibility of this world, which I shall hereafter refer to as 'Black's world', makes (Pll) false.' And according to common philosophical opinion this means that the Bundle Theory is false.. (shrink)