Quentin Meillassoux defiende una posición llamada “materialismo especulativo”, la cual asegura haber alcanzado –por un procedimiento estrictamente racional– algo absoluto. Con este gesto afirma ir más allá de la crítica kantiana y del fideísmo. Esta postura es muy diferente de los materialismos tradicionales, pero también de todo tipo de absoluto metafísico, pues niega la validez del principio de razón suficiente y rechaza la existencia necesaria de cualquier entidad. Lo único necesario para Meillassoux es el principio que afirma que todo es (...) contingente, y la concomitante irrazón de todo lo que existe. El autor objeta que se pueda sostener racionalmente que lo real carece de inteligibilidad, a la vez que argumenta que se puede justificar la tesis del surgimiento ex nihilo de la vida, el pensamiento, e incluso de la divinidad, con el razonamiento de que la contingencia radical de todo implica también que todo es posible, excepto lo contradictorio. (shrink)

El amor ha sido uno de los temas preferidos por los artistas de todos los tiempos. Este sentimiento, eminentemente humano, omnipresente en cuantiosos textos literarios, ha servido y continúa siendo una fuente inagotable de inspiración artística para los creadores. Ellos, a través de los siglos, han recurrido a cuentos y narraciones literarias, a leyendas a historias en las que aparece el "amor" como tema fundamental. Del "amor" de sus diversos usos y significados, de sus diferentes sentimientos y formas se han (...) ido nutriendo para imaginar, recrear y dar sentido a sus composiciones. Así, los pintores y escultores, conocedores de esos hechos de amor y desamor descritos en textos y páginas literarias escritas a lo largo de la historia, los han ido interpretando en secuencias y pasajes. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyze Lonergan’s criteria of truth, which is the absence of further pertinent questions. This position is compared with that defended by Habermas in his book Truth and Justification, in which he abandoned the consensual theory of truth, in order to adopt a truth called for him “pragmatic”. In both positions there is a distinction between factual judgments which could be made in the common sense realm of meaning, and in scientific propositions in which (...) it is not possible to reach certainty. (shrink)

El presente artículo busca dilucidar los diversos sentidos en que Sexto Empírico emplea la fórmula “objetos exteriores” (en griego, ta ektos hypokeimena) y otras variantes similares a lo largo de su obra. A partir del análisis de los argumentos esbozados por el escéptico, será posible identificar, cuando menos, cuatro sentidos particulares diferentes para la expresión en cuestión. Además, consideraremos los antecedentes de esta categoría en la filosofía griega precedente y los problemas que plantea en el marco del proyecto pirrónico de (...) suspensión del juicio o epochē, para cuya resolución presentaremos, por último, una interpretación del sentido general del término en la obra sextiana. (shrink)

Se analizan los desafíos de futuro de la sociedad digital. Desde perspectiva fenomenológico-hermenéutica, la idea de una ética de la tecnología considera la sociedad digital como dispositivo técnico. La literatura pertinente permite, primero, estudiar la tecnología disruptiva como generadora de cambios sociales, los cuales, a su vez, transforman las formas de la facticidad de la vida. De esta manera, la ética de la sociedad material, sirve de argumento para analizar la ética en la sociedad digital. Tomando la bioética filosófica como (...) instrumento, se concluye que la sociedad digital antepone retos para la vida, los cuales debe afrontar para la supervivencia. (shrink)

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic, now a global health crisis, has surprised health authorities around the world. Recent studies suggest that the measures taken to curb the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak have generated issues throughout the population. Thus, it is necessary to establish and identify the possible risk factors related to the psychosocial and psychophysiological strain during the COVID-19 outbreak. The present extensive literature review assesses the social, psychological, and physiological consequences of COVID-19, reviewing the impact of quarantine measures, (...) isolation, vast human loss, social and financial consequences in the family’s economies, and its impact on the psychological health of the population. We also discussed the effect of psychophysiological factors, considering the impact of physical inactivity and modifications in nutritional habits, at psychological and physiological levels. The present review includes an actualized to date bibliography, articles for which were methodologically analyzed to verify they met the standards of quality and scientific accuracy. Authors understand the pandemic as a multifactorial event for which only a profound and extensive analysis would lead to better compression and efficient intervention in the near future. (shrink)

Many current problems surrounding science revolve around the complex epistemological framework that shapes a new vision of knowledge about reality. The traditional epistemological positions are characterized by the explanation of nature by means of concatenated facts; that is, as bricks attached to each other giving shape to the edifice of science. A conception of this nature showed that the idea of certainty was nothing more than a mere illusion, opening the way, on the contrary, to the idea of the uncertainty (...) of knowledge based on the descriptions of quantum physics, also a product of the non-reductionist conception of reality, thus criticizing the specular representation. This article addresses the main problems surrounding the critical conceptions that the emerging epistemology reveals about knowledge, pointing towards a much more complex vision of reality. (shrink)

This paper presents a new two-dimensional Multiple-Choice Model accounting for Omissions (MCMO). Based on Thissen and Steinberg multiple-choice models, the MCMO defines omitted responses as the result of the respondent not knowing the correct answer and deciding to omit rather than to guess given a latent propensity to omit. Firstly, using a Monte Carlo simulation, the accuracy of the parameters estimated from data with different sample sizes (500, 1,000, and 2,000 subjects), test lengths (20, 40, and 80 items) and percentages (...) of omissions (5, 10, and 15%) were investigated. Later, the appropriateness of the MCMO to the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) Advanced 2015 mathematics and physics multiple-choice items was analyzed and compared with the Holman and Glas' Between-item Multi-dimensional IRT model (B-MIRT) and with the three-parameter logistic (3PL) model with omissions treated as incorrect responses. The results of the simulation study showed a good recovery of scale and position parameters. Pseudo-guessing parameters ( d ) were less accurate, but this inaccuracy did not seem to have an important effect on the estimation of abilities. The precision of the propensity to omit strongly depended on the ability values (the higher the ability, the worse the estimate of the propensity to omit). In the empirical study, the empirical reliability for ability estimates was high in both physics and mathematics. As in the simulation study, the estimates of the propensity to omit were less reliable and their precision varied with ability. Regarding the absolute item fit, the MCMO fitted the data better than the other models. Also, the MCMO offered significant increments in convergent validity between scores from multiple-choice and constructed-response items, with an increase of around 0.02 to 0.04 in R 2 in comparison with the two other methods. Finally, the high correlation between the country means of the propensity to omit in mathematics and physics suggests that (1) the propensity to omit is somehow affected by the country of residence of the examinees, and (2) the propensity to omit is independent of the test contents. (shrink)

Neonatal mortality during the first week of life, corresponding to the years 19750·023 per year. This decline cannot be explained by an increase in the mean birth weight (MBW=23440·835−10·107 g per year). From the most frequent of the causes of death to the least were: congenital anomalies, preterm born or low birth weight, respiratory problems, pregnancy difficulties, hypoxaemia/asphyxia, delivery difficulties and infectious diseases. This sequence changed when the specific age at death was considered. The NMR descended evenly for both sexes (...) for the causes indicated above, except for preterm born or low birth weight, in which the male mortality decrease was greater since its rate was more elevated at the beginning of the period studied. For all the causes listed, NMR was more elevated both in urban areas and for males. Early neonatal mortality (first 24 hours) was higher for pregnancy difficulties, preterm born or low birth weight, congenital anomalies and hypoxaemia/asphyxia. (shrink)

Recommending the identity of bidders in public procurement auctions has a significant impact in many areas of public procurement, but it has not yet been studied in depth. A bidders recommender would be a very beneficial tool because a supplier can search appropriate tenders and, vice versa, a public procurement agency can discover automatically unknown companies which are suitable for its tender. This paper develops a pioneering algorithm to recommend potential bidders using a machine learning method, particularly a random forest (...) classifier. The bidders recommender is described theoretically, so it can be implemented or adapted to any particular situation. It has been successfully validated with a case study: an actual Spanish tender dataset which has 102,087 tenders from 2014 to 2020 and a company dataset which has 1,353,213 Spanish companies. Quantitative, graphical, and statistical descriptions of both datasets are presented. The results of the case study were satisfactory: the winning bidding company is within the recommended companies group, from 24% to 38% of the tenders, according to different test conditions and scenarios. (shrink)

The SRL vs. ERL theory has shown that the combination of levels of student self-regulation and regulation from the teaching context produces linear effects on achievement emotions and coping strategies. However, a similar effect on stress factors and symptoms of university students has not yet been demonstrated. The aim of this study was to test this prediction. It was hypothesized that the level of student self-regulation (low/medium/high), in interaction with the level of external regulation from teaching (low/medium/high), would also produce (...) a linear effect on stress factors and symptoms of university students. A total of 527 undergraduate students completed validated questionnaires about self-regulation, regulatory teaching, stress factors and symptoms. Using an ex post facto design by selection, ANOVAs and MANOVAs (3 x 3; 5 x 1; 5 x 2) were carried out. The results confirmed that the level of self-regulation and the level of regulatory teaching jointly determined the level of stress factors and symptoms of university students. Once again, a five-level heuristic of possible combinations was configured to jointly determined university students’ level of academic stress. We concluded that the combination of different levels of student regulation levels and regulation from teaching process jointly determines university students’ level of academic stress. The implications for university students’ emotional health, stress prevention and well-being are established. (shrink)