One of the sectors for which Artificial Intelligence applications have been considered as exceptionally promising is the healthcare sector. As a public-facing sector, the introduction of AI applications has been subject to extended news coverage. This article conducts a quantitative and qualitative data analysis of English news media articles covering AI systems that allow the automation of tasks that so far needed to be done by a medical expert such as a doctor or a nurse thereby redistributing their agency. We (...) investigated in this article one particular framing of AI systems and their agency: the framing that positions AI systems as replacing and outperforming the human medical expert, and in which AI systems are personified and/or addressed as a person. The analysis of our data set consisting of 365 articles written between the years 1980 and 2019 will show that there is a tendency to present AI systems as outperforming human expertise. These findings are important given the central role of news coverage in explaining AI and given the fact that the popular frame of ‘outperforming’ might place AI systems above critique and concern including the Hippocratic oath. Our data also showed that the addressing of an AI system as a person is a trend that has been advanced only recently and is a new development in the public discourse about AI. (shrink)

This paper challenges the view that contentment leads to personal freedom and autonomy and argues for a relational and exercise concept of de facto freedom in the Zhuangzi 莊子. I first review influential interpretations of freedom in the Zhuangzi that equate freedom with contentment and nonfrustration, starting with Guo Xiang's 郭象 (d. 312 CE). By putting these interpretations in dialog with contemporary social philosophy (Christman, Meyers, Pettit, Elster, and Khader), I reflect on the two seminal problems of the psychologizing causal (...) and procedural approaches that allow the interpretation of freedom as contentment: the “happy slave” problem and the “sour grapes” problem. Proving this account of freedom inadequate, I argue for a different interpretation of freedom in the Zhuangzi that resembles a weakly substantive and constitutive account of freedom and autonomy in modern‐day social philosophy terms, such as Marina Oshana's. The theory of freedom that I analyze in the Zhuangzi, however, helps us correct the risk of material determinism of the constitutive account, offering a description of relational freedom and autonomy as constituted by socio‐material conditions but not determined by them. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that whether or not a world is good can be a contingent fact about the world that is not dependent upon that world's natural facts, or, indeed, upon anyother facts. If so, the property, good, does not supervene upon the facts of nature (or upon any other facts). My argument for this claimis that it is possible to view the very world in which we live (viz. the natural facts that constitute it) as good and (...) to view it as bad. (shrink)

La contribución aborda el fenómeno de la improvisación musical desde la teoría sociológica de la acción y la interacción. Postula que la noción de acción, frecuentemente aceptada en la teoría y definida como conducta planificada o tipificada, no resulta adecuada para explicar fenómenos como los procesos de improvisación. De allí que se postule la noción de “ material musical ” como uno de los elementos centrales, junto con la interacción y el medio de comunicación utilizado, para explicar la improvisación. El (...) artículo propone entender al material musical como conocimiento sedimentado que es generado, transformado y adaptado en el momento y situación de improvisar, generando así la posibilidad de explicar no solo la dimensión rutinaria de la acción e interacción improvisatorias, sino también su aspecto creativo y espontáneo. (shrink)

The Light Subject Constraint in Spoken Spanish The purpose of this study is to explore Chafe's hypothesis that grammatical subjects obey the light subject constraint. The data consists of six half-an-hour semiformal interviews with Caracas native speakers recorded in 1987. Chafe's hypothesis is based on the claim that in any given clause one of the referents receives the unique and special status of grammatical subject. Subjects show two types of restrictions: i) from the information load perspective, they tend to code (...) given or accessible rather than new information; and ii) from a referential viewpoint, they can have three degrees of importance: primary, secondary or trivial. Information load and referential importance combined constitute the LSC: Chafe's findings prove that in English subjects tend, on the one hand, to be given or accessible and, on the other, of primary or secondary importance. Heavy subjects, on the contrary, tend to be of trivial importance. Broderick 1999 confirms the LSC's existence in a conversational English corpus. All subjects in the corpus have been coded according to information load and referential importance. The results of the analysis show that spoken Spanish also conforms to LSC. (shrink)

This study aimed to determine the predictive character of organizational socialization and occupational positive mental health on organizational commitment in higher education teachers. A sample of 279 teachers from higher education institutions who signed an informed consent form was used. Fifty-four point five percent of the participants were women, with a mean age of 44.05 years. The participants completed the Organizational Socialization Inventory, the Positive Occupational Mental Health Questionnaire and the Organizational Commitment Scale, and for data analysis descriptive statistics, correlation (...) analysis and multiple linear regression with stepwise method were applied, entering each dimension of organizational commitment separately as a dependent variable. As a result, moderate to weak correlations were identified between the study variables, and it was found that the final models indicate that the future perspectives and socio-affective dimensions predict affective commitment by 38%; that future perspectives, spirituality and age predict normative commitment by 22.8%; and that the future perspectives dimension predicts commitment of continuity by 9.2%. It is concluded that teachers’ expectations about their development in the institution, as well as their interactions at the socio-affective and spiritual level with the work context, are factors that partially influence their attachment to the educational organization. (shrink)

Spontaneity is an almost inevitable commonplace in discussions of Daoism, especially the Zhuangzi. The idea that spontaneity is one of the most important values in the Zhuangzi was presented by Angus Graham for the Anglo-European audience, and divulged among Chinese readers by Liú Xiàogǎn 劉笑敢 and Chén Gǔyīng 陳鼓應. Hungarian psychologist Csikszentmihalyi popularly combined Daoist spontaneity with the idea of flow. In the state of flow the person carries out an activity for the sake of the activity itself--autotelically--and acts with (...) complete spontaneity given that none of their movements requires thought or mediation. My study consists of three parts: First, I deal with different definitions of “spontaneous” and of the term that is commonly translated as “spontaneous” in Chinese texts, zìrán 自然 (literally, so-of-itself), as well as its use in the Zhuangzi. I conclude that spontaneity is not part of the axiological project of the Zhuangzi. Instead, we find that the idea of adapting is related to normative human values and behaviors, whereas spontaneity is a term merely descriptive of natural objects. Second, I analyze the famous Zhuangzian stories of skills, which are often quoted to argue for the value of spontaneity. I conclude that the goal of these stories is to develop a new type of vital attitude as “second nature” or “background ability” (John Searle). Since this attitude is mediated and achieved through effort, it is not spontaneous. Third, I explain the confusion between this “second nature” with “spontaneity” in recent scholarship has led to the so-called paradoxes of non-action and spontaneity (Edward Slingerland). I argue that these paradoxes disappear when we understand the different layers of meaning of wú-wéi and zìrán in the early Chinese textual context. (shrink)

La creatividad especialmente surge del poder de subjetivación y de trascenderse a sí mismo el ser humano. La capacidad de ser creativo resulta, desde la perspectiva de la antropología filosófica, de la “posicionalidad excéntrica” del ser humano, la cual explica su poder de reflexividad y su compulsión y necesidad de crear cultura. Según la teoría de la creatividad de orientación sociológico-antropológica de Heinrich Popitz, esta capacidad humana de desarrollar lo nuevo está basada en las formas de acción de explorar, crear, (...) generar sentido y jugar. Para explicar el poder de subjetivación del individuo, introducimos la sociología con orientación fenomenológica de Alfred Schütz, quien ofrece una teoría de las relevancias que permite analizar las motivaciones subjetivas que conducen el proceso creativo. (shrink)

El número monográfico que aquí presentamos, titulado “Escritores en la historia de las ideas filóginas” reúne contribuciones de especialistas en filología y filosofía de España, Italia y Grecia. Se centra en el estudio e intertextualidad de una serie de textos y autores filóginos que abarcan un periodo histórico muy amplio, desde el siglo XV hasta el XVIII.

Durante el siglo XIX el progreso se convirtió en un concepto genuinamente histórico, y emergió así la conciencia de que la historia consistía en un proceso que dependía exclusivamente del obrar del género humano y cuyo fin implicaba su perfeccionamiento ilimitado. En esta constelación las reflexiones de Walter Benjamin y de Hannah Arendt alertaron acerca de los peligros políticos a los que conducía tanto la adhesión a la idea de progreso, como esa forma específica de entender la historia. Este trabajo (...) desarrolla esas reflexiones a la vez que se propone mostrar las salidas políticas de ambos pensadores frente a este peligro. La tesis central es que tanto Benjamin como Arendt elaboran una forma particular de comprender la historia y su transmisibilidad, bajo el signo de una pervivencia o Nachleben. (shrink)

The most documented juridical studies about hispanic woman in the late Middle Ages, belong to three specialities: political law, civil or common law (matrimonial), and criminal law. It is in the sphere of matrimonial law where the influence of christian principles has been described as prominent, contributing to the juridical conjugal parity, thus recognizing woman a full civil capability.

An analysis of ms Vat. Lat. 781 reveals ratio and limppiditas as two key notions in Albert the Great's teaching on the possibility of knowing God.

The paper develops a critique of the prevailing essentialist and homogenizing approach to business ethics that dominates the field with regard to Islam and proposes a constructivist perspective to the study of religion. It demonstrates the possibilities of this approach with the study of hizmet, a community business network from Turkey that has established itself in over 130 countries over the last 20 years. The implications for business ethics from the study of this movement is that the notion of corporate (...) social responsibility needs to be adjusted in order to accommodate the hizmet approach but that there are limits to this adjustment due to gender and labor rights considerations. The paper sees itself as a contribution to an alternative approach for Islamic business ethics very much in need of further development and encourages further research along these lines. (shrink)

In my dissertation, I explore how emotions operate under conditions of injustice. Specifically, my interest is in how one should deploy their emotions in order to combat patriarchally informed, affective ways of making sense of and responding to the social world. My dissertation consists of the following three papers. In the first paper, “Vindictive Anger,” I argue for two claims. First, that anger is not necessarily made morally worse whenever and to the extent that it involves a desire for payback. (...) Second, that in certain cases, anger’s retributive component is precisely what moralizes the emotion. Victims of sexual violence, I argue, paradigmatically deploy their anger as a way of getting their transgressor or, in some cases, the broader moral community, to more fully understand, through affect, the wrongness of their action. One can see this occur in the anger expressed by Chanel Miller in her victim’s impact statement, read aloud during the case of People v. Turner. When anger functions in this way, I propose, it serves to moralize the emotion. In the second paper, titled “Feminism and Suspect Femininity,” I ask how feminists should feel towards women who conform to suspect norms of appearance, and of hyper-femininity in particular. I present a novel type of empathy – proleptic empathy – which avoids treating women as either pitiful victims or as accomplices deserving of harsh moral criticism. Proleptic empathy requires switching back and forth between two types of imaginings: on the one hand, simulating what it is like to be in the woman’s shoes on the assumption that her suspect behavior stems from her will. On the other, simulating what it is like to be in the woman’s shoes on the assumption that her suspect behavior stems from external cultural influences. In the third paper, “Transitional Moral Contexts,” I address how one should feel towards the perpetrators who figure in the cases that have gone by the language of ‘grey rape’ or ‘bad sex’. These cases are ones that are rife with disagreement, especially amongst members of the moral community, who even disagree over whether they ought to count as cases of ‘sexual assault’ or ‘rape’. My suggestion is that the reason we have such difficulty adjudicating individuals’ responsibility for cases of bad sex is because these are instances of transitional moral contexts where what it is to act morally is in the process of being actively negotiated by the moral community. With this analysis in place, I present reasons for and against deploying shame against those who falter in these cases. (shrink)

la juventud se ha convertido, desde el inicio de la crisis en 2008, en un tema mediático y objeto de estudio e investigación así como de diseño de políticas públicas que incluyan el objetivo de paliar la situación de dificultad y precariedad en la que se encuentran muchos jóvenes en la actualidad. Jóvenes con una gran formación y que tienen que abandonar el país por no encontrar empleo adecuado en españa; jóvenes que abandonaron el sistema educativo para incorporarse al mercado (...) laboral y que con la crisis se han quedado sin empleo; jóvenes que no pueden emanciparse por carecer de medios y que como consecuencia de ello, alargan la permanencia en casa de sus padres. Jóvenes que en definitiva ven un futuro incierto en sus vidas. el objetivo de esta introducción es ofrecer una breve panorámica y una presentación de los diferentes artículos incluidos en el presente número de la revista.Youth has become since the beginning of the crisis in 2008, a media subject and also an object of study and research as well as an object of design of public policies with the aim of alleviating the difficult and precarious situation in which many young people are today. Young highly educated who have to leave the country because they don’t find suitable employment in Spain; young people who left the education system to enter the labor market and lost their jobs with this crisis; young people who can not emancipate for lack of means and as a result, extend the stay at their parental home. Young ultimately see an uncertain future in their lives. The purpose of this introduction is to provide a brief overview and presentation of the different articles in this issue of the magazine. (shrink)

La oratoria martiana es objeto de estudio en la educación superior cubana con el propósito de destacar los principios éticos que el tribuno enarbola, pero se obvia la valoración de la poesía en la que estos se sustentan. Demostramos en este trabajo cómo ambos aspectos se relacionan a través del análisis de algunos de sus discursos políticos más importantes.

Las enfermedades poco frecuentes suelen ser las grandes olvidadas tanto de los sistemas sanitarios como de la investigación. Esto da lugar a que los pacientes y los familiares encuentren dificultades no solo para recibir una asistencia médica adecuada, sino también para conseguir un verdadero apoyo psicosocial. No obstante, se están produciendo cambios muy positivos, como son la creciente presencia del conjunto de las enfermedades raras en las políticas nacionales e internacionales, la evolución en el papel que adoptan los pacientes, los (...) médicos y los investigadores y en sus relaciones mutuas, la creciente sensibilización e implicación social, las oportunidades crecientes de difusión y de sensibilización y la circunstancia favorable desde el punto de vista tecnológico y de comunicación. La complejidad de estos cambios y la responsabilidad que cada grupo de agentes implicados está asumiendo en este nuevo marco son asuntos controvertidos y están surgiendo cuestiones de índole ética. A veces no es fácil responder a ellas y solo se puede explicar el papel que adoptan los distintos agentes por imperiosa necesidad. (shrink)

This essay presents a phenomenological analysis of the functioning of symbols as elements of the life-world with the purpose of demonstrating the interrelationship of individual and society. On the basis of Alfred Schutz''s theory of the life-world, signs and symbols are viewed as mechanisms by means of which the individual can overcome the transcendences posed by time, space, the world of the Other, and multiple realities which confront him or her. Accordingly, the individual''s life-world divides itself into the dimensions of (...) time, space, the social world and various reality spheres which form the boundaries or transcendences that the I has to understand and integrate. Signs and symbols are described as appresentational modes which stand for experiences originating in the different spheres of the life-world within the world of everyday life, within which they can be communicated, thereby establishing intersubjectivity. Schutz''s theory of the symbol explains how social entities – such as nations, states or religious groups – are symbolically integrated to become components of the individual''s life-world. The following paper reconstructs Schutz''s concept of the symbol as a crucial component of his theory of the life-world, which is seen as an outstanding phenomenological contribution to the theory of the sign and the symbol in general. (shrink)

The statement that an important dualism runs throughout sociological literature belongs to what can be called extended “sociological common sense”. In this context, Alfred Schutz’s phenomenology is often used critically as a paradigmatic example of subjectivism, as it supposedly places exclusive emphasis on actors’ “subjective” interpretations, thereby neglecting “objective” social structures such as power relationships. This article proposes that not only do those characterizations have dualistic grounds, but they also disregard the explicit intention of phenomenology to overcome the dualism between (...) subjectivism and objectivism. The various criticisms directed at the Schutzian paradigm will be confronted with an analysis of the phenomenon of power based on Schutz’s theory of the life-world, in particular his theory of relevance. This theoretical perspective will be replenished by reflections on power as a meaning selection, which specifically allow the hiatus of subjectivism and objectivism to be overcome. (shrink)

The Escuela Feminista de Teología de Andalucía [the Andalusian School of Feminist Theology], held a conference titled ‘Feminine Mysticism and Counterculture: A Rebellious Genre’ October 15-17, 2009 at the University of Seville. This annual seminar is held thanks to an agreement between the University of Seville and EFETA, with the direct support of the research group ‘Escritoras y Escrituras,’ whose principal researcher is Mercedes Arriaga. The guest of honour at this year’s conference was Lisa Isherwood, who kindly presented EFETA (...) with the opportunity to publish some of the seminar’s papers in Feminist Theology, and who we here in Spain thank wholeheartedly for her contributions. Before presenting the texts that were selected for this edition, we would like to take this opportunity to explain a little about the EFETA project. (shrink)

Based on brain state-dependent behavioral changes, consolidation of sensorimotor memories has been posited to evolve in two different functional stages. Only the second of these stages requires sleep and leads to performance benefits. Recent results, however, suggest that sleep is not always crucial for the expression of delayed behavioral gains but might be critical for enhancing automaticity in the absence of attention, another expression of memory consolidation.

The first contribution, by Mercedes Valmisa, begins by repositioning the Zhuangzi 莊子 as a whole within pre-Qin thought under the impact of newly excavated materials. Moving away from the traditional classification of texts according to schools, it focuses instead on varying approaches to life issues. Centering the discussion on life situations and changes we have no control over, including the unpredictable vagaries of fate (ming 命), it outlines several typical responses. One is adaptation, finding ways to go along with (...) what life demands, and even availing oneself of the new opportunities it brings about. Another is a turning inward, a focus on the inner self, holding on to ethical and other standards and making sure on does the right thing regardless of the outcomes of one's actions. While the former appears in several chapters of the Zhuangzi, notably in chapter 6, the latter is central to the Qiongda yishi 窮達以時 (Failure and Success Depend on Opportunity), a manuscript excavated at Guodian. However tempting it may be to characterize one approach as Daoist and the other as Confucian, they both appear within the Zhuangzi together with a third approach to fate, showing the fluidity of philosophical discussion and the futility of thinking along the lines of traditional boundaries. (shrink)

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-021-01218-9.