Children usually use the external and physical features of characters in movies or stories as a means of categorizing them quickly as being either good or bad/evil. This categorization is probably done by means of heuristics and previous experience. However, the study of this fast processing is difficult in children. In this paper, we propose a new experimental paradigm to determine how these decisions are made. We used illustrations of characters in folk tales, whose visual representations contained features that were (...) compatible or incompatible with the moral identity of the characters. Sixteen children between 8 and 10 years old participated in the experiment. We measured their electrodermal activity when they were listening to the story and looking at pictures of the characters. Results revealed a higher increase in skin conductance when the illustrations showed a moral condition that was incompatible with the actions of a character than when they showed one that was compatible. These results suggest that children make fast decisions about the moral identity of characters based on their physical features. They open up new possibilities in the study of the processing of moral decisions in children. (shrink)

Ernest Mas-Herrero , Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells , Robert Zatorre y Josep Marco-Pallarés Grupo de Cognición y Plasticidad Cerebral … Read More →.

The rapid dynamics of COVID-19 calls for quick and effective tracking of virus transmission chains and early detection of outbreaks, especially in the “phase 2” of the pandemic, when lockdown and other restriction measures are progressively withdrawn, in order to avoid or minimize contagion resurgence. For this purpose, contact-tracing apps are being proposed for large scale adoption by many countries. A centralized approach, where data sensed by the app are all sent to a nation-wide server, raises concerns about citizens’ privacy (...) and needlessly strong digital surveillance, thus alerting us to the need to minimize personal data collection and avoiding location tracking. We advocate the conceptual advantage of a decentralized approach, where both contact and location data are collected exclusively in individual citizens’ “personal data stores”, to be shared separately and selectively, voluntarily, only when the citizen has tested positive for COVID-19, and with a privacy preserving level of granularity. This approach better protects the personal sphere of citizens and affords multiple benefits: it allows for detailed information gathering for infected people in a privacy-preserving fashion; and, in turn this enables both contact tracing, and, the early detection of outbreak hotspots on more finely-granulated geographic scale. The decentralized approach is also scalable to large populations, in that only the data of positive patients need be handled at a central level. Our recommendation is two-fold. First to extend existing decentralized architectures with a light touch, in order to manage the collection of location data locally on the device, and allow the user to share spatio-temporal aggregates—if and when they want and for specific aims—with health authorities, for instance. Second, we favour a longer-term pursuit of realizing a Personal Data Store vision, giving users the opportunity to contribute to collective good in the measure they want, enhancing self-awareness, and cultivating collective efforts for rebuilding society. (shrink)

Los centros penitenciarios poseen módulos educativos donde se procura dotar de enseñanza reglada a los internos para favorecer su reinserción, como se recoge en la Constitución Española de 1978 así como en los decretos de Enseñanza Secundaria para personas adultas. En este marco, se ofrece aquí una propuesta educativa para desarrollar un tema controvertido, como es el del Holocausto, en un ámbito educativo especialmente sensible a procesos educativos en situaciones de confinamiento, un aula de 4º de ESPA en un (...) centro penitenciario, a través del conocimiento de las responsabilidades criminales consideradas en los Juicios de Núremberg. Utilizando la representación dramática como recurso didáctico, ya que los internos tendrían que reproducir los distintos roles de los participantes en los juicios, se pretende, en las diferentes sesiones en las que está estructurada esta propuesta, tratar de las responsabilidades morales, entender la necesaria existencia de unas instituciones fuertes con códigos de convivencia adecuados y desarrollar la empatía con las víctimas del régimen nazi, con el objetivo de que sean desarrollados valores cívicos entre los internos. (shrink)

En este trabajo se analiza el recurso a la escatología y al universo profético-apocalíptico de orientación antiliberal durante la consumación de la independencia de México, en 1821. Las diversas fuentes impresas utilizadas revelan la importancia que adquirieron los discursos sibilinos en la transición del virreinato al Imperio, así como su potencial movilizador. Se argumenta que estos sirvieron para denunciar el liberalismo revolucionario, fomentar la alternativa emancipadora y proponer lecturas mesiánicas renovadas. A través de esos tres aspectos se exploran las posibilidades (...) del pensamiento escatológico y del marco profético a la hora de comprender los cambios político-religiosos del periodo de las independencias iberoamericanas. (shrink)

En este artículo se aborda la evolución de la exploración del espacio, discutiendo que el institucionalismo haya sido el motor de su régimen jurídico, pese a lo que en primera instancia se podrí inducir del OST de 1967. Asimismo, se analizan los flecos de dicho Tratado, tanto en lo referente a la militarización del espacio, como en lo relativo a la hipotética explotación económica de sus recursos. Para enfatizar más esos aspectos, se emplea una doble estrategia. Por un lado, la (...) analogía con la escuela marítima de la geopolítica y, por otro lado, el marco conceptual de la zona gris, al entender que la primera contribuye a la comprensión de la interrelación entre geoeconomía y geopolítica, y que el segundo es de muy probable aplicación a lo largo de los próximos años, por los motivos que se esgrimen en el artículo. (shrink)

En este libro, el autor aborda el debate sobre lo opaco y lo transparente en relación con lo sagrado, especialmente desde la perspectiva de la interacción entre lo trascendente y lo inmanente. La "transparencia" es un valor en alza que responde a la aspiración del ciudadano moderno de controlar los gestores públicos. Sin embargo, al aplicarlo al ámbito religioso, surgen dificultades como la impenetrabilidad de un Misterio que, por definición, en incognoscible. La opinión de pensadores como Walter Benjamin, María Zambrano, (...) Friedrich Nietzsche, Simone Weil, Ludwig Wittgenstein y Byung-Chul Han, contrastada con las aportaciones del mundo del arte, con las fuentes bíblicas y con textos de tradición cristina, contribuye a clarificar los términos "trasparencia" y "opacidad" y a evitar explicaciones simplistas que obvian sus matices, sus polisemias y sus paradojas. A su vez, el debate sobre la transparencia nos ayuda a redefinir el marco conceptual que articula la relación entre inmanencia y trascendencia. El análisis de la peculiar opacidad de los trascendente permite atribuir un significado más profundo a lo transparente. Entonces, el Misterio abandona el dominio de lo opaco para darse a conocer transparentándose, de manera sutil, a través de lo inmanente. (shrink)

Exposición correspondiente al acto de defensa de la Tesis Doctoral del Dr. Bordas Prószynski, intitulada El pensamiento político de Josep Torras i Bages, en la que se recorre el marco histórico-cultural de la Cataluña de finales del siglo xix y de comienzos del xx, para apreciar la aportación de la persona y de la obra de Josep Torras i Bages, obispo de Vic durante los años 1899 a 1916. El resultado de la investigación ofrece una síntesis de (...) su pensamiento político, especialmente por lo que se refiere a su doctrina regionalista, vindicando la tradición cristiana de Cataluña. (shrink)

We investigate the major mathematical theories of space from a modal standpoint: topology, affine geometry, metric geometry, and vector algebra. This allows us to see new fine-structure in spatial patterns which suggests analogies across these mathematical theories in terms of modal, temporal, and conditional logics. Throughout the modal walk through space, expressive power is analyzed in terms of language design, bisimulations, and correspondence phenomena. The result is both unification across the areas visited, and the uncovering of interesting new questions.

This book fills a major gap in the ever-increasing secondary literature on Hannah Arendt's political thought by providing a dedicated and coherent treatment of the many, various and interesting things which Arendt had to say about law. Often obscured by more pressing or more controversial aspects of her work, Arendt nonetheless had interesting insights into Greek and Roman concepts of law, human rights, constitutional design, legislation, sovereignty, international tribunals, judicial review and much more. This book retrieves these aspects of her (...) legal philosophy for the attention of both Arendt scholars and lawyers alike. The book brings together lawyers as well as Arendt scholars drawn from a range of disciplines (philosophy, political science, international relations), who have engaged in an internal debate the dynamism of which is captured in print. Following the editors' introduction, the book is split into four Parts: Part I explores the concept of law in Arendt's thought; Part II explores legal aspects of Arendt's constitutional thought: first locating Arendt in the wider tradition of republican constitutionalism, before turning attention to the role of courts and the role of parliament in her constitutional design. In Part III Arendt's thought on international law is explored from a variety of perspectives, covering international institutions and international criminal law, as well as the theoretical foundations of international law. Part IV debates the foundations, content and meaning of Arendt's famous and influential claim that the 'right to have rights' is the one true human right. (shrink)

One crucial part of the Aristotle´s discussion of the principle of non-contradiction in Metaphysics IV 4 is his notion of semainein hen, which must be carefully distinguished from the closely connected notion of semainein kath´ henos. The Aristotelian proof is located at 1006b28-34 and it is argued that it does not suppose any bit of essentialism nor does it contain any petitio principii; some improvements are further proposed to the current translations.

Human adults incline toward moral objectivism but may approach things more relativistically if different cultures are involved. In this study, 4-, 6-, and 9-year-old children (N = 136) witnessed two parties who disagreed about moral matters: a normative judge (e.g., judging that it is wrong to do X) and an antinormative judge (e.g., judging that it is okay to do X). We assessed children’s metaethical judgment, that is, whether they judged that only one party (objectivism) or both parties (relativism) could (...) be right. We found that 9-year-olds, but not younger children, were more likely to judge that both parties could be right when a normative ingroup judge disagreed with an antinormative extraterrestrial judge (with different preferences and background) than when the antinormative judge was another ingroup individual. This effect was not found in a comparison case where parties disagreed about the possibility of different physical laws. These findings suggest that although young children often exhibit moral objectivism, by early school age they begin to temper their objectivism with culturally relative metaethical judgments. (shrink)

La réflexion cosmologique de Bernardin de Saint-Pierre est un outil précieux pour mieux comprendre sa philosophie – généralement négligée par la critique – et, surtout, le providentialisme anthropocentrique qui est au centre de son épistémologie. Les croyances astronomiques de Saint-Pierre sont exprimées dans deux grands ouvrages théoriques : les Études de la nature de 1784 et, particulièrement, les Harmonies de la nature, écrites dans les vingt dernières années de sa vie et publiées à titre posthume en 1814. Le neuvième et (...) dernier livre de cet ouvrage est consacré spécifiquement à la cosmologie, comme l’indique son titre : Harmonies du Ciel, ou les mondes. Bernardin y rejette fermement les explications du cosmos qui, comme celle de Laplace, déclarent l’inutilité du recours à Dieu dans la description de la mécanique céleste, pour analyser la seule loi qu’il reconnaisse comme universelle et intemporelle : la providence divine. À partir de prémisses méthodologiques spécifiques (rejet de la synthèse, primauté du sentiment, méthode intuitive, etc.), Saint-Pierre construit une cosmologie téléologique qui combine un « ciel médité », inspiré de Huygens et Herschel, et un « ciel rêvé », caractérisé par des idées mystiques et par un élément évident de normativité morale. Cette synergie de différentes inspirations, originale et parfois féconde, est particulièrement évidente dans les questions relatives à la pluralité des mondes et l’habitabilité du Soleil. (shrink)

This monograph offers a comprehensive study of contingent a priori truths. Building onto a theoretical framework developed by the philosopher and logician Saul Kripke, the author also presents a new approach to these truths. The first part of the book details the many theories on contingent a priori truths. The coverage examines the cases of Kripke and David Kaplan, Donnellan and the de re requirement, Evans and weak contingency, as well as Plantinga, Salmon, Soames, and the pseudo a priori. Overall, (...) it provides a systematic discussion and critical review of all these many positions. Next, the author develops an alternative approach. His working hypothesis is that performative verbs must play a central role in Kripke's examples, even if they do not show up at the surface structure of the corresponding sentences. This opens up an entirely new way of looking at Kripke's cases and of treating them by exploring some aspects of the theory of illocutionary acts. His discussion also examines brute facts and institutional facts, indexicals and performatives, as well as Frege's theory of definitions. Providing an authoritative exploration into contingent a priori truths, this book will be of interest to students, academics, and researchers in philosophy and logic. (shrink)

The second essay of Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals introduces the ‘sovereign individual’ as ‘responsible’, ‘autonomous’ and ‘free’. Does this affirmative use of moral terminology reveal an unexpected affinity between Nietzsche’s thought and philosophical modernity? In the last decades, this issue has been at the heart of a vast and controversial debate. My analysis shows that, rather than throwing light on Nietzsche’s general position, the specific use of Kantian terms in this passage of GM is due to a polemical intention. Implicitly, (...) Nietzsche rejects Eduard von Hartmann’s criticism of the ‘absolute sovereignty of the individual’. The author of the Phänomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins (1879) sees the most radical herald of this ‘sovereignty’ in Max Stirner. From Nietzsche’s point of view, Hartmann’s rejection and Stirner’s affirmation share a reductive conception of ‘sovereignty’. Reinterpreting and ‘revaluing’ Kant’s moral terminology, Nietzsche aims to give an interpretation of individual sovereignty that is at the same time antithetical to Stirner’s and wholly at odds with Hartmann’s ethical views. In showing this, the paper gives a new answer to an old question; for already in the 1890s, Hartmann himself, accusing Nietzsche of plagiarizing Stirner, raised the issue of the historical relationship between the two philosophers. More generally, the paper shows that Nietzsche employs a specific textual strategy, which consists in taking Kantian terms in an ‘anti-Kantian’ sense and systematically cultivating the art of using ‘a moral formula in a supramoral sense’. (shrink)

The book contains eight papers previously published in English—three of which also appeared in Mancosu's papers collection —and now translated into French (two of them are co-authored with J....

Questo numero di “Doctor Virtualis” si interroga sul concetto di ordine e sulla sua valenza all’interno della riflessione medievale: siamo di fronte a uno strumento conoscitivo con cui intellettuali di varia formazione e operanti in ambiti diversi cercano di affrontare la complessità del proprio mondo, oppure, come forse è lecito a prima vista attendersi da un’epoca come quella medievale, a una struttura metafisica già data, di tipo _oggettivo_, che rappresenta una garanzia rispetto alla disarmonia del mondo e delle relazioni fra (...) gli uomini? L’ipotesi di ricerca da cui trae origine questo numero è che an­che in epoca medievale l’ordine si presenti come esigenza e dunque come risultato di una costruzione che, attraverso i più svariati stru­menti conoscitivi, punti a rendere conto del disordine, cercando di sciogliere e dipanare l’intreccio di cause ed effetti che caratterizza i vari spazi del mondo abitati dagli uomini. Per questa ragione abbiamo deciso di intitolare il fascicolo _Frammenti di ordine e disordine nel Medioevo_. This issue of "Doctor Virtualis" questions the concept of order and its value within medieval reflection: are we dealing with a cognitive instrument with which intellectuals of various training and operating in different fields try to deal with the complexity of their world, or, as one might at first sight expect from an era such as the Middle Ages, with a metaphysical structure already given, of an _objective_ type, which represents a guarantee against the disharmony of the world and relations between men? The research hypothesis from which this issue originates is that even in the Middle Ages order presents itself as a need and therefore as the result of a construction that, through the most varied cognitive instruments, aims to account for disorder, attempting to unravel and disentangle the interweaving of causes and effects that characterises the various spaces of the world inhabited by men. For this reason, we have decided to title the issue _Fragments of Order and Disorder in the Middle Ages_. (shrink)

The growing cultural complexity in the face of new immigration waves influences the public understanding of religious diversity. The two central questions of this article are as follows: first, ‘how much religious difference and of what kind is compatible within Europe?’ and second, ‘to what extent can Muslim diversity be integrated into Europe?’. This article undertakes an investigation of these questions and explores the extent to which discourses on religious diversity imply boundary making and aim at limiting the religious freedom (...) of Muslims. Empirically, I scrutinize press coverage between 2009 and 2010, the years in which the minarets ban entered the sociopolitical arena of European public debate. The methodology adopts a social network analysis to uncover semantic macro-structures and elicit common discourses in the press of France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. Subsequently, discourse analysis of relevant samples is applied to examine textual strategies used to legitimate inclusion or exclusion of religious difference. (shrink)

L’objectif de ce numéro spécial est d’ouvrir la réflexion sur la notion de vague à partir du prisme de la philosophie des sciences, afin d’interroger le sens de cette notion dans différents domaines de la recherche scientifique.

En marco de una aproximación crítica al tema de los derechos humanos, relacionada con los fundamentos que constituyen su existencia en tanto posibilidad, el presente trabajo analiza tres perspectivas filosóficas relacionadas con dicha temática: el liberalismo, el conservadurismo y el neoliberalismo. El trabajo examina así los orígenes históricos de cada una de estas corrientes, sus principales representantes, y las posibles coincidencias y diferencias entre estas. Se espera demostrar que, en su análisis de los derechos humanos, ninguna de las tres (...) tradiciones escogidas ha conseguido superar la dimensión jurídica, ignorando casi del todo las dimensiones ético-normativa y utópica. (shrink)