El presente trabajo pretende dar cuenta de qué es la subjetividad y la acción en su aspecto individual como social y para ellos es necesario tener en cuenta cómo se conforma el ser humano y la necesidad del otro para dicha conformación personal. Gracias al lenguaje y la presencia del otro se puede establecer una serie de premisas plausibles que permiten explicar cómo se lleva a cabo la acción en el ser humano. El escrito expone los elemento antropológico que permiten (...) llegan a una comprensión de la acción, elemento indispensable para comprender cómo se generan los cambios en la sociedad. (shrink)

Abordamos en este trabajo la imagen de Dios que nos revela el cántico evangélico del Magnificat (Lucas 1, 46-55) y la imagen de María que en él aparece. Partiendo de su contexto en la obra de Lucas y de un breve análisis exegético del cántico, los autores profundizan en sus claves teológicas en relación con dos núcleos: la imagen de Dios y la figura de María introducida por el evangelista. El trabajo concluye con una propuesta de relectura del Magnficat acorde (...) con nuestro tiempo, centrada en su dimensión profética y liberadora. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to contribute to the development of an interdisciplinary political theory across a conceptual link between Aristotle’s political philosophy and complex systems theory. Aristotelian doctrine of the wisdom of the multitude is connected with the concept of emergence belong..

IntroductionThis study aimed to evaluate, in adults with mild cognitive impairment, the brain atrophy that may distinguish between three AT biomarker-based profiles, and to determine its clinical value.MethodsStructural MRI was employed to evaluate the volume and cortical thickness differences in MCI patients with different AT profiles, namely, A−T−−: normal AD biomarkers; A+T−−: AD pathologic change; and A+T++: prodromal AD. Sensitivity and specificity of these changes were also estimated.ResultsAn initial atrophy in medial temporal lobe areas was found in the A+T−− and (...) A+T++ groups, spreading toward the parietal and frontal regions in A+T++ patients. These structural changes allowed distinguishing AT profiles within the AD continuum; however, the profiles and their pattern of neurodegeneration were unsuccessful to determine the current clinical status.ConclusionsMRI is useful in the determination of the specific brain structural changes of AT profiles along the AD continuum, allowing differentiation between MCI adults with or without pathological AD biomarkers. (shrink)

This work was my theses to get the MA in Philosophy. Their focus is the ethics implied in digital culture and networked society. Themes are Ethics, culture, technology, political control, autonomous systems.

La conocida obra Muʿǧam al-buldān (Diccionario de los países), terminada por el geógrafo y erudito Yāqūt al-Rūmī al-Ḥamawī (m. 626/1229) un año antes de su muerte, ofrece una valiosa información sobre los múltiples topónimos recogidos por este autor. Dicha información no se limita solo a los aspectos geográficos, sino también a los literarios y biográficos, y ha sido abordada en trabajos relacionados con al-Andalus. Mi propósito en el presente artículo es realizar una primera aproximación a la imagen que Yāqūt proyecta (...) del Mágreb a través de algunos ejemplos concretos, realizando un breve recorrido de las fuentes que empleó, entre las cuales destacó especialmente el geógrafo andalusí Abū ʿUbayd al-Bakrī (m. 487/1094), muy citado en toda la obra. (shrink)

The search for a systems‐level picture of metabolism as a web of molecular interactions provides a paradigmatic example of how the methods used to characterize a system can bias the interpretation of its functional meaning. Metabolic maps have been analyzed using novel techniques from network theory, revealing some non‐trivial, functionally relevant properties. These include a small‐world structure and hierarchical modularity. However, as discussed here, some of these properties might actually result from an inappropriate way of defining network interactions. Starting from (...) the so‐called bipartite organization of metabolism, where the two meaningful subsets (reactions and metabolites) are considered, most current works use only one of the subsets by means of so‐called graph projections. Unfortunately, projected graphs often ignore relevant biological and chemical constraints, thus leading to statistical artifacts. Some of these drawbacks and alternative approaches need to be properly addressed. (shrink)

Se establece un diálogo hermenéutico entre las concurrencias y bifurcaciones del idealismo simbólico de Cassirer y el racionalismo alado de Bachelard en tres mo mentos. Primero, a partir de indicios bio-bibliográficos se construye el contexto de significación vital donde se anclan sus respectivas ideas; segundo, se establecen entre ellos paralelismos fundamentales, y, tercero, se ofrecen ejemplos de la terminología bachelardiana, cercana a la hermenéutica simbólica contemporánea. Con ello se ex pande la comprensión de los análisis de Cassirer acerca del pensamiento (...) indirecto e interpretativo hacia las relaciones del hombre y la cultura, así como al papel del símbolo en el tránsito de la naturaleza a la cultura. (shrink)

The aim of the present study was to assess the impact of past traumatic war experiences on preadolescents in the Gaza Strip, which could be useful for psychological intervention with current and future child victims. Participants were 521 preadolescents from United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) schools, aged 11 and 13 years old. Sections I to IV from Iraqi Version-Arabic of Harvard Trauma Questionnaire was used to assess trauma experiences and Post-Traumatic Stress (...) Disorder (PTSD). The results show that the preadolescents in the Gaza Strip witnessed the destruction of their homes and the murder of family members and friends. A quarter of the individuals assessed either suffered torture or witnessed others undergoing it, including sexual assaults. Almost half of them experienced a lack of food and clean water. The traumatic and torture experiences seriously affected preadolescents’ mental health as 26.29% met criteria for the diagnosis of PTSD. The data analysis revealed two PTSD modalities, with the severity of impact depending on whether social implications were involved. Further research is required to check whether these two modalities fit to PTSD and complex PTSD. Understanding the effects of past wars on preadolescents in Gaza and distinguishing between different PTSD types could enhance comprehension of the impacts of current attacks on child victims. It can also aid in determining the type of intervention needed to minimize the impact on the mental health of Palestinian youth, enhancing their resilience through psychological and social support. (shrink)

IntroductionRheumatologists are the primary healthcare professionals responsible for patients with rheumatic diseases and should acquire medical ethical competencies, such as the informed consent process (ICP). The objective clinical structured examination is a valuable tool for assessing clinical competencies. We report the performance of 90 rheumatologist trainees participating in a station designed to evaluate the ICP during the 2018 and 2019 national accreditations.MethodsThe station was validated and represented a medical encounter in which the rheumatologist informed a patient with systemic lupus erythematosus (...) with clinically active nephritis about renal biopsy. A trained patient–actor and an evaluator were instructed to assess ICP skills (with a focus on kidney biopsy benefits, how the biopsy is done and potential complications) in obtaining formal informed consent, delivering bad news and overall communication with patients. The evaluator used a tailored checklist and form.ResultsCandidate performance varied with ICP content and was superior for potential benefit information (achieved by 98.9% of the candidates) but significantly reduced for potential complications (37.8%) and biopsy description (42.2%). Only 17.8% of the candidates mentioned the legal perspective of ICP. Death (as a potential complication) was omitted by the majority of the candidates (93.3%); after the patient–actor challenged candidates, only 57.1% of them gave a clear and positive answer. Evaluators frequently rated candidate communications skills as superior (≥80%), but ≥1 negative aspect was identified in 69% of the candidates.ConclusionsEthical competencies are mandatory for professional rheumatologists. It seems necessary to include an ethics competency framework in the curriculum throughout the rheumatology residency. (shrink)

Resumen. El siguiente artículo muestra el estado actual de la Responsabilidad Empresarial enMéxico y su efecto en el Riesgo medido a través del Costo de Capital. Para ello, revisamos lasprincipales teorías que muestran que el uso de prácticas sociales en Estados Unidos provocandisminución del riesgo y por ende del Costo de Capital, Aras y Crowther, Richardson yWelker y Diamond y Verrechia. Con el fin de contrastar que las empresas SocialmenteResponsables tienen costos de capital menores consideramos como variable de desempeño social (...) eldistintivo que otorga el Centro Mexicano de Filantropía y por otra parte para calcular elriesgo consideramos el costo de capital a través de la metodología del Capital Asset Price Modelo. Encontramos que las empresas que son socialmente responsables tienen costos de capitalsuperiores que las que no son responsables y que el rendimiento de acciones es superior en lasempresas no responsables, por lo que el diferencial de riesgo vs rendimiento es superior en lasempresas no socialmente responsables. Lo anterior rechaza la hipótesis y contrasta con la realidadempírica de otros estudios.Palabras claves. Distintivo de ESR, CEMEFI, costo de capital, riesgo, rentabilidad de acciones,Bolsa de Valores. The following article shows the current status of the corporate responsibility inMexico and their effect on risk measured by the cost of capital. To do this, we review the maintheories that show that social practices in the United States leads to decrease risk and hence the costof Capital Aras and Crowther, Richardson and Welker and Diamond y Verrechia. In order to contrast that socially responsible companies have lower capital costs we considersocial performance variable the distinction conferred by the Mexican Center for Philanthropy and the cost of capital it estimate on the methodology of the Capital Asset Price model. We find that companies that are socially responsible have capital costs higher than thosethat are not responsible. It rejects the hypothesis and contrasts with the empirical reality of otherstudies.Keywords. CSR distintive, CEMEFI, cost of capital, risk, return in shares, Capital Market Securities. (shrink)

Con frecuencia el avance y uso del conocimiento han sido relacionados como uno de los indicadores más importantes para el desarrollo económico y bienestar social de países y regiones. Sin embargo, independientemente de los factores teórico metodológicos que impulsan el desarrollo del conocimiento, el acceso a este activo intangible se encuentra limitado a diversas condiciones económicas, sociales, culturales e incluso del mismo conocimiento per se que cada individuo desarrolla dentro de la sociedad. El objetivo principal de este trabajo de investigación (...) consiste en realizar un análisis teórico desde una perspectiva sociológica de la ciencia y la tecnología, sobre el papel que desempeña la universidad pública en la democratización del conocimiento al interior de su comunidad y de la sociedad en general, señalando los principales avances y obstáculos que ésta presenta durante la difusión del mismo. (shrink)

Gender issues are still under debate in Latin American societies, especially in the educational sphere; for this reason, the objective of the research was to know the experiences of high school teachers regarding gender issues in the classroom and during their university education. The research was qualitative, phenomenological and 22 teachers participated voluntarily. Unanimity was not found in the use of terms related to gender; most of the participants have been adapting their didactic strategies to give the same opportunities to (...) all their students; in addition, the role of the family in the formation of adolescents and in the construction of stereotypes is recognized. Finally, a lack in gender issues was evidenced in the educational proposal of teacher training centers. According to the above, there is still a long way to go in terms of gender issues in education and teacher training. (shrink)

Bajo el título «Utopías, distopías y otras nostalgias», la cuarta edición del Congreso de Pensamiento Interdisciplinar, organizado por alumnos del grado de Filosofía, Política y Economía de la Alianza 4 Universidades, abordó el controvertido fenómeno woke, una supuesta mezcla de izquierda identitaria y progresismo políticamente correcto al que se acusa de promover la censura y la llamada «cultura de la cancelación». Sobre esta cuestión conversaron la escritora y filósofa Elizabeth Duval, la investigadora Ayme Román y el director académico y profesor (...) del Instituto Superior de Sociología, Economía y Política (ISSEP), Miguel Ángel Quintana Paz, en un debate moderado por dos de los alumnos organizadores del congreso, Guzmán Díez e Isabel Rodríguez. (shrink)

KRK ediciones publica la traducción al español del ya clásico texto de Andy Clark y David Chalmers 'La Mente Extendida' en su versión aparecida en la antología de textos Philosophy of Mind: classical and contemporary readings, editada por D. Chalmers en 2002 para Oxford University Press. La traducción va precedida de una interesante introducción al debate que surge a partir de la publicación original del texto en Analysis en 1998, a cargo de Ángel García Rodríguez y Francisco Calvo (...) Garzón, quienes son responsables también de la traducción del texto. -/- En La Mente Extendida Clark y Chalmers defienden la tesis de que los procesos cognitivos y mentales van más allá de los límites del cráneo y de la piel: hay elementos constitutivos de los procesos mentales y cognitivos más allá de los límites de nuestro propio cuerpo. Una tesis semejante había sido ya defendida por Putnam (1975) y Burge (1979); sin embargo, Clark y Chalmers distinguen ese tipo de externismo pasivo del externismo activo que ellos propugnan de acuerdo con el cual “las características externas relevantes son activas, desempeñado un papel crucial aquí y ahora. Como se hayan acopladas con el organismo humano, tienen un impacto directo sobre el organismo y su conducta” (La Mente Extendida p.67). -/- Carecería de sentido hablar en esta reseña de la relevancia de la tesis de la mente extendida y del debate que tanto en filosofía como en ciencia cognitiva ha suscitado―baste mencionar la multitud de artículos que se han escrito sobre La Mente Extendida, al punto que, de acuerdo con Google Scholars, es uno de los cien artículos filosóficos más citados.Por esta razón me centraré en la introducción al texto de García Rodríguez y Calvo Garzón. (shrink)

In this work, we present a new approach to solve the location management problem by using the reporting cells strategy. Location management is a very important and complex problem in mobile computing which aims to minimize the costs involved. In the reporting cells location management scheme, some cells in the network are designated as reporting cells . The choice of these cells is not trivial because they affect directly to the cost of the mobile network. This article is focused on (...) the use of high performance computing to execute a parallel heuristic that places optimally the RCs in a mobile network, minimizing its total cost. The main goal of this work is to demonstrate that the collaborative work of different evolutionary algorithms can obtain very good results. For this reason, we have implemented a parallel heuristic and six evolutionary algorithms that works in a parallel way on a cluster to solve the RCs problem. (shrink)

In this article, we analyze the patterns of culture of honor within Spanish families. Each member of 271 Spanish four-member families completed a questionnaire containing scales for the culture of honor and for sociodemographic variables. The results show that intra-family similarities emerge. However, path analyses show that the gender and birth order of the child are relevant in predicting this similarity. In particular, the first-born child converges with their mother to a higher extent than the father regardless of their gender. (...) However, for the second-born child both parents instill their ideas about culture of honor in a gender congruent way. Furthermore, there are higher similarities within younger families, indicating a stronger influence from parents to children. Results are discussed in view of social role and gender social learning theories. (shrink)

The research on the information system and emotional intelligence in the corporate social responsibility of criminal justice modules in Piura 2023 analyses how the information system and emotional intelligence influence corporate social responsibility. The study, of a quantitative and explanatory nature, was carried out with a sample of 100 collaborators of the Criminal Justice Modules of Piura. Using questionnaires and ordinal logistic regression analysis, it was found that both emotional intelligence and an effective information system are essential to improve corporate (...) social responsibility in these modules. The research concludes that the development of emotional and technological capabilities is crucial to foster a more responsible and effective organizational environment. (shrink)

En 1968 Raquel Carson comenzaba una revolución en el pensamiento, quizá una de las de mayor peso en la actualidad. En su libro "La primavera silenciosa" acusaba del deterioro ambiental al poder ilimitado del ser humano. La creencia surgida en la modernidad de que todo lo que el hombre decidía era en sí mismo lo mejor por haber sido fruto de una voluntad libérrima, daba primacía y legitimidad absoluta a su acción sobre la naturaleza. Surgieron con gran fuerza numerosos grupos (...) ecologistas que adoptaron un pensamiento que responde al nombre de "ecología profunda" o "Deep Ecology" descrito por primera vez por Arme Naess en un artículo publicado por la revista Inquiry y titulado "The Shallow and the Deep, Long Range Ecology Movement". Los principios que proponía este movimiento (Naess 1984) pueden ser resumidos en ocho grandes puntos: 1) la vida de los seres no humanos es un valor en sí: 2) la riqueza y la diversidad de estas formas de vida son también valores en sí; 3) los seres humanos no pueden intervenir de manera destructiva en la vida; 4) a este respecto, la intervención humana actual es eminentemente excesiva; 5) por consiguiente, las reglas de juego deben ser radicalmente modificadas; 6) esta modificación radical debe hacerse tanto a nivel de las estructuras económicas como de las estructuras ideológicas y culturales; 7) a nivel ideológico, el cambio principal consiste en apreciar más la calidad de la vida que el goce de los bienes materiales; 8) las personas que acepten estos principios tienen la obligación de contribuir, directa o indirectamente a la realización de los cambios fundamentales que aquellos implican. (shrink)

Background: The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic caused a shortage of qualified nurses in Spain. As a result, the government authorized the hiring of senior students. Objectives: To explore the ethical dilemmas and ethical conflicts experienced by final-year nursing students who worked during the first outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain. Research design: A qualitative exploratory study was conducted using purposive sampling. Semi-structured interviews were carried out using a question guide. Interviews took place via a private video chat (...) room platform. A thematic, inductive analysis was performed of the information gathered. Participants and research context: Eighteen nursing students were recruited from two universities of Madrid, aged between 18 and 65 years old, enrolled in the fourth year of nursing studies and who were hired under a relief contract for health professionals during the pandemic. Ethical considerations: The present study was carried out in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the study was approved by the Local Ethics Committee of Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. Results: Three specific themes emerged: (a) coping with patient triage, (b) difficulties in providing end-of-life care, and (c) coping with patient death. Nursing students participated in the process of patient selection for resource allocation and ICU bed occupancy. They were shown how to care for patients who were not admitted to the ICU, in their last moments and were faced with the difficulties of applying end-of-life care. Finally, the nursing students were confronted with the death of their patients, in overwhelming numbers and under adverse conditions. Conclusions: These findings can help shed light on the ethical dilemmas and ethical conflicts faced by novice nursing students, incorporated into the workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, it was described that students may normalize the death due to the exhaustion and overwhelmed routine. (shrink)

After compulsory secondary education; many teenagers face the process of choosing a university degree. This process involves uncertainties referred to their personal abilities, interests, social expectations and professional future. The present work is aimed at determining whether the reasons behind the selection of a particular university degree differ depending on the chosen degree. Another objective is determining whether these reasons differ significantly according to gender. The sample comprises 983 students belonging to the area of social and legal sciences at the (...) University of Seville. The obtained results reveal the existence of four main reasons behind the selection of university degrees for which significant gender-related differences were observed: easy degree, job opportunities, high wages and provision of social services. Besides, these seven reasons are observed to differ widely in six of the considered degrees. (shrink)

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo comentar algunas prohibiciones del padre Miguel Ángel de Tamburini y del padre Francisco Retz explicando los conceptos fundamentales de dichas prohibiciones a través de un método analítico y relacionándolos posteriormente bajo un método sintético con los argumentos presentados. Esto último permitirá realizar una reconstrucción de las prohibiciones cuyo ensamble se consolidará en argumentos breves. Asimismo, evaluar cuáles pueden ser las causas o los fundamentos que subyacen en las prohibiciones mismas, es decir, evaluar las (...) causas de su veto. Finalmente, determinar las implicaciones filosóficas de las prohibiciones desde Descartes, Leibniz y Spinoza y sus correspondientes visiones de la Creación, la voluntad, el determinismo y el principio de individuación. (shrink)

En el siguiente artículo tengo como finalidad aplicar el concepto de violencia, estudiado desde distintos abordajes de la psicología, como herramienta teórica para analizar la novela La ciudad y los perros (1963) del Premio Nobel de Literatura Mario Vargas Llosa. El tratamiento que tendrá esta investigación se basará en dos líneas temáticas que segmentan la actuación de un agresor o un violento: las causas y las repercusiones generadas. La primera abordará siete conceptos derivados, como el hecho de aprender a ser (...) agresivo por observación hacia los demás, contar con una explicación biológica, justificar la conducta por el entorno social, criticar la participación de la Policía en la sociedad, usar la violencia sin utilidad, emplear actores de riesgo y seguir permitiendo el mal. La segunda explicará las repercusiones de la violencia, en tanto agresor como de la víctima, considerando los aportes de Ángeles Álvarez Álvarez. (shrink)

In having an experience one is aware of having it. Having an experience requires some form of access to one's own state, which distinguishes phenomenally conscious mental states from other kinds of mental states. Until very recently, Higher-Order (HO) theories were the only game in town aiming at offering a full-fledged account of this form of awareness within the analytical tradition. Independently of any objections that HO theories face, First/Same-Order (F/SO) theorists need to offer an account of such access to (...) become a plausible alternative. My aim in this paper is twofold. In the first place, I wish to widen the logical space of the discussion among theories of consciousness by offering a distinction, orthogonal to that between F/SO and HO theories, between what I will call 'Self-Involving' (SI) and 'Mental-State-Involving' (MSI) theories and argue in favor of the former one. In the second place, I will present the basics of a characterization of such a Self-Involving theory in Same-Order terms. (shrink)

It is often claimed that a minimal form of self-awareness is constitutive of our conscious experience. Some have considered that such a claim is plausible for our ordinary experiences but false when considered unrestrictedly on the basis of the empirical evidence from altered states. In this paper I want to reject such a reasoning. This requires, first, a proper understanding of a minimal form of self-awareness – one that makes it plausible that minimal self-awareness is part of our ordinary experiences. (...) I will argue that it should be understood as Perspectival First-Person Awareness : a non-conceptual identification-free self-attribution that defines the first-person perspective for our conscious experience. I will offer a detailed characterization of PFP-Awareness in semantic and epistemological terms. With this tool in hand, I will review the empirical literature on altered states. I will focus on psychedelics, meditation and dreams, as they have been claimed to present the clearest cases in favor of a radical disruption of self-awareness. I will show that the rejection of the idea that minimal self-awareness is constitutive of our experience on the basis of this evidence is unfounded, for two main reasons. First, although there are good grounds to think that some forms of self-awareness that typically accompany our ordinary experiences are compromised, they do not support the claim that PFP-Awareness is absent. Secondly, the reports that could make us think of a radical disruption of self-awareness are most probably due to a confirmation bias – and hence we should mistrust them – derived from the expectations and metaphysical views of their subjects. (shrink)

In developing a theory of consciousness, one of the main problems has to do with determining what distinguishes conscious states from non-conscious ones—the delimitation problem. This paper explores the possibility of solving this problem in terms of self-awareness. That self-awareness is essential to understanding the nature of our conscious experience is perhaps the most widely discussed hypothesis in the study of consciousness throughout the history of philosophy. Its plausibility hinges on how the notion of self-awareness is unpacked. The idea that (...) consciousness involves self-awareness has been understood in two different ways: either as awareness of oneself—the subject of experience—or as awareness of the conscious episode itself. In this paper I argue (i) that every experience concerns the subject in a very specific way, involving what I will call ‘perspectival de se representation’, and (ii) that there is no need to appeal to the experience itself in order to characterize the awareness within that experience. The view I articulate explains the subjective nature of experience without over-intellectualizing it, accommodates the phenomenology of experience, and dispels any doubt about the need to find the self in introspection. (shrink)

Hoy en día, la emigración es percibida como una de las mayores lacras que acechan a las sociedades noroccidentales. El sistema económico y de valores de éstas se ve amenazado por el peligro de una emigración masiva del sur y del oriente. La xenofobia, en su significación más originaria, inunda las calles. El extranjero, el otro, provoca miedo. Esto tal vez sea debido a un fallo en nuestra memoria histórica. No me refiero a los españoles como un pueblo emigrante, que (...) lo somos. En esta ocasión, me quiero remontar a los orígenes de nuestra civilización: a los griegos.A lo largo de la historia de la antigüedad griega, las condiciones materiales de existencia fueron imponiendo a los griegos la apertura de espacios, el movimiento. El mismo nacimiento de la civilización griega vino determinado por el movimiento, por la emigración. Estas migraciones poseen un componente que nos interesa resaltar: la proyección de los ideales en tierras desconocidas. Esto es lo que analizaremos a continuación, prestando especial interés a la Odisea; una de las obras germen del pensamiento occidental. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate which of the main conditions proposed in the moral responsibility literature are the ones that spell trouble for the idea that Artificial Intelligence Systems could ever be full-fledged responsible agents. After arguing that the standard construals of the control and epistemic conditions don’t impose any in-principle barrier to AISs being responsible agents, I identify the requirement that responsible agents must be aware of their own actions as the main locus of resistance to attribute that kind (...) of agency to AISs. This is because this type of awareness is thought to involve first-person or de se representations, which, in turn, are usually assumed to involve some form of consciousness. I clarify what this widespread assumption involves and conclude that the possibility of AISs’ moral responsibility hinges on what the correct theory of de se representations ultimately turns out to be. (shrink)

Cognitive theories claim, whereas non-cognitive theories deny, that cognitive access is constitutive of phenomenology. Evidence in favor of non-cognitive theories has recently been collected by Block and is based on the high capacity of participants in partial-report experiments compared to the capacity of the working memory. In reply, defenders of cognitive theories have searched for alternative interpretations of such results that make visual awareness compatible with the capacity of the working memory; and so the conclusions of such experiments remain controversial. (...) Instead of entering the debate between alternative interpretations of partial-report experiments, this paper offers an alternative line of research that could settle the discussion between cognitive and non-cognitive theories of consciousness. Here I relate the neural correlates of cognitive access to empirical research into the neurophysiology of dreams; cognitive access seems to depend on the activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. However, that area is strongly deactivated during sleep; a period when we entertain conscious experiences: dreams. This approach also avoids the classic objection that consciousness should be inextricably tied to reportability or it would fall outside the realm of science. (shrink)

Higher-order thought theories of consciousness attempt to explain what it takes for a mental state to be conscious, rather than unconscious, by means of a HOT that represents oneself as being in the state in question. Rosenthal Consciousness and the self: new essays, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011) stresses that the way we are aware of our own conscious states requires essentially indexical self-reference. The challenge for defenders of HOT theories is to show that there is a way to explain (...) the required reference-fixing mechanisms that is compatible with the theory. According to Rosenthal, the reference to oneself as such is grounded in the disposition to identify the individual the HOT refers to as the individual who has that HOT. I argue that this leads to a vicious infinite regress on the more than plausible assumption that our cognitive capacities are limited. This leaves such theories without a foundation, since self-reference is thought essential to consciousness. (shrink)

Representations are not only used in our folk-psychological explanations of behaviour, but are also fruitfully postulated, for example, in cognitive science. The mainstream view in cognitive science maintains that our mind is a representational system. This popular view requires an understanding of the nature of the entities they are postulating. Teleosemantic theories face this challenge, unpacking the normativity in the relation of representation by appealing to the teleological function of the representing state. It has been argued that, if intentionality is (...) to be explained in teleological terms, then the function of a state cannot depend on its phylogenetical history, given the metaphysical possibility of a duplicate of an intentional being that lacks an evolutionary history. In this paper, I present a method to produce, according to our current knowledge in genetic engineering, human-like individuals who are not the product of natural selection in the required sense. This variation will be used to shed light on the main replies that have been offered in the literature to the Swampman thought experiment. I argue that these replies are not satisfactory: representations should better not depend on natural selection. I conclude that a non-etiological notion of function is to be preferred for characterizing the relation of representation. (shrink)