The aim of the present study is to analyze individual differences in academic self-efficacy within a population of Unaccompanied Foreign Minors from the European cities of Ceuta and Melilla. Variables describing educational level and length of stay were considered in a sample of 377 individuals being cared for in different youth centers. Of these, 63.4% belonged to the group who had stayed at the center for less than 9 months and 36.6% reported a length of stay of more than 9 (...) months. The age of participants ranged between 8 and 17 years old. Once the quality parameters of the instrument were elaborated, reliability and validity was confirmed through Confirmatory Factor Analysis using Structural Equation Modeling methodology. Data collection was then initiated. The results overall indicate that 87.6% of those who completed the questionnaire reported a higher level of self-efficacy with regards to working with any classmate, whilst at the same time seeing themselves as capable of achieving good marks. ANOVA results indicated significant differences with respect to educational level and length of stay. In this regard, students who had received professional training and had been at the Center for more than 9 months, were the ones who developed greater academic self-efficacy for spending more time working when tasks were judged to be difficult. The results obtained demonstrate that any intervention will be positive as long as it promotes different institutions to develop strategies that cater to a length of stay of more than 9 months and target education, academic self-efficacy, socialization and strengthening the future workforce. Such interventions can be directed through new European, Spanish or local level policies. It is clear that institutions still have a lot of work left to do. (shrink)

One of the objectives in the field of artificial intelligence for some decades has been the development of artificial agents capable of coexisting in harmony with people and other systems. The computing research community has made efforts to design artificial agents capable of doing tasks the way people do, tasks requiring cognitive mechanisms such as planning, decision-making, and learning. The application domains of such software agents are evident nowadays. Humans are experiencing the inclusion of artificial agents in their environment as (...) unmanned vehicles, intelligent houses, and humanoid robots capable of caring for people. In this context, research in the field of machine ethics has become more than a hot topic. Machine ethics focuses on developing ethical mechanisms for artificial agents to be capable of engaging in moral behavior. However, there are still crucial challenges in the development of truly Artificial Moral Agents. This paper aims to show the current status of Artificial Moral Agents by analyzing models proposed over the past two decades. As a result of this review, a taxonomy to classify Artificial Moral Agents according to the strategies and criteria used to deal with ethical problems is proposed. The presented review aims to illustrate (1) the complexity of designing and developing ethical mechanisms for this type of agent, and (2) that there is a long way to go (from a technological perspective) before this type of artificial agent can replace human judgment in difficult, surprising or ambiguous moral situations. (shrink)

Chaosmosis and Subjectivity: The Aesthetics of Félix Guattari (1930-1992) is the first doctoral thesis monographically devoted to the work of this great contemporary thinker. The aim of this study is the analysis of his aesthetics in the context of French post-structuralist thought, by means of a systematic analysis of the influences, stages and foundations of his work. From a state of the field which allows us to understand the historiographical keys in the reception of his thought, we then present (...) the development of the complete Guattarian works, paying special attention to all the historical correlates, in order to thus picture the post-Lacanian Guattari who writes about machinic production, collective enunciation, micropolitics and ecosophy. Next, we address the groundings of Guattarian aesthetic thought in relation to four problem-authors: Joyce, in relation to Guattari’s overwhelming volonté d’écriture; Proust, peak of Guattari’s analytic ambitions, and an opportunity to talk about the phylum machinique in the context of his theory of a nonindividualized enunciation; Kafka, the minor, and collective enunciation; and finally, Schumann, paradigmatic example of the great importance music had in Guattari’s work and life, and suitable viewpoint for a deep theory of the refrain. Ultimately, what this study tries to point out is the centrality of the aesthetic plane in Félix Guattari’s work, just as the profound richness of Guattarian contribution to Contemporary Aesthetics. (shrink)

Under the intentionality that leads to promoting the liberation of the oppressed in global coloniality, considering planetary decoloniality as the urgency of complexity as transmethod, in the present investigation from rhizomatic deconstruction as a transmethod, the properties of rhizomes are analyzed as the essence of planetary-complex decolonial investigations; That is the complex objective of the investigation. It is framed in the lines of research: education-transcomplex transepistemologies and transepistemologies of knowledge-knowledge and transcomplex transmethodologies. In the reconstruction, the philosophical significances of the (...) properties of the rhizomes are specified: connection and heterogeneity, multiplicity, asignifying rupture and cartography and decal we obtain contributions in complex planetary investigations with an anti-method criticality that is deeply complex and transdisciplinary in the anti-Eurocentrist project. We have reconciled the complex conceptions that were occurring in postcolonialism that perspectives of theoretical articulation between transmodern decolonial criticism with the reflections of Michel Foucault, Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze as possible collaborations in the liberating mission of planetary decoloniality. (shrink)

La ingente obra mediática de Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente en relación con las ciencias naturales nos permite explorar detenidamente los procesos de generación, circulación y gestión de conocimiento científico-tecnológico en un contexto particularmente convulso de la historia reciente de España, el final de la dictadura de Franco. Con un enfoque centrado en las relaciones entre los seres humanos y su entorno, el trabajo multidimensional de Rodríguez de la Fuente, como cetrero, naturalista, activista y comunicador, aportó un (...) excepcional componente científico-técnico a los procesos de transformación social, política y cultural de España en esos años. El objetivo de este trabajo es mostrar cómo este componente científico-técnico estaba frecuentemente ligado, y entre otros aspectos, a la definición y contextualización de España y su patrimonio natural tanto dentro de sus fronteras como en el escenario internacional. (shrink)

In typical statistical learning studies, researchers define sequences in terms of the probability of the next item in the sequence given the current item (or items), and they show that high probability sequences are treated as more familiar than low probability sequences. Existing accounts of these phenomena all assume that participants represent statistical regularities more or less as they are defined by the experimenters—as sequential probabilities of symbols in a string. Here we offer an alternative, or possibly supplementary, hypothesis. Specifically, (...) rather than identifying or labeling individual stimuli discretely in order to predict the next item in a sequence, we need only assume that the participant is able to represent the stimuli as evincing particular similarity relations to one another, with sequences represented as trajectories through this similarity space. We present experiments in which this hypothesis makes sharply different predictions from hypotheses based on the assumption that sequences are learned over discrete, labeled stimuli. We also present a series of simulation models that encode stimuli as positions in a continuous two‐dimensional space, and predict the next location from the current location. Although no model captures all of the data presented here, the results of three critical experiments are more consistent with the view that participants represent trajectories through similarity space rather than sequences of discrete labels under particular conditions. (shrink)

Despite the burgeoning literature on right-wing populism, there is still considerable uncertainty about its causes, its impact on liberal democracies and about promising counter-strategies. Inspired by recent suggestions that (1) the emancipatory left has made a significant contribution to the proliferation of the populist right; and (2) populist movements, rather than challenging the established socio-political order, in fact stabilize and further entrench its logic, this article argues that an adequate understanding of the populist phenomenon necessitates a radical shift of perspective: (...) beyond the democratic and emancipatory norms, which still govern most of the relevant literature. Approaching its subject matter via democratic theory and modernization theory, it undertakes a reassessment of the triangular relationship between modernity, democracy and populism. It finds that the latter is not helpfully conceptualized as anti-modernist or anti-democratic but should, instead, be regarded as a predictable feature of the form of politics distinctive of today’s third modernity. (shrink)

What are the characteristics to be included in a fruitful definition of democracy? More important still, which of the features commonly considered democratic had better be excluded from the dinning characteristics?

This article uses the lens of deliberative democracy to examine the argument of the permanent minority as a possible ground for secession. According to this argument, Catalans are permanent minorities which, under no circumstances, could obtain the parliamentary majorities that would enable them to secede. Historically, this fact has created the conditions for sustained abuse. Nowadays, it prevents the success of secession processes which leaves Catalans with no alternative but to circumvent democratic means. The article concludes that this argument is (...) either incompatible with deliberative democracy or collapses into an argument that justifies secession as reparation. The argument goes like this: if the interests of the minority have been adequately considered in a deliberative process, the decisions of the majority are justified and thus do not generate a right to secede; if those interests have been ignored, the decisions fail to meet the deliberative standards and generate a remedial right to secession. (shrink)

Fur Wittgenstein haben als 'grundlegend' gedachte mathematische Bemuhungen, wie sie sich in den logizistischen Systemen Freges und Russells, der Mengentheorie und der nach Konsistenzbeweisen fur solche Systeme suchenden Beweistheorie Hilberts zeigen, keineswegs einen nennenswerten grundlegenden Charakter, sondern es handelt sich bei ihnen um normale Stucke Mathematik wie andere auch. Im Teil III der Bemerkungen uber die Grundlagen der Mathematik entwickelt er seine Kritik an jenen Grundlegungsanspruchen in vielfaltigster Weise, und dieser Kommentar zeichnet seine Gedankengange in all ihren Verastelungen nach. Dabei (...) wird nicht nur der veroffentlichte Text berucksichtigt, sondern auch samtliche relevanten Nachlasspassagen, aus denen er hervorgegangen ist und ohne die er teilweise gar nicht verstanden werden kann. Der Kommentar ist sowohl kritisch als auch konstruktiv: Mangel werden als solche benannt und Erganzungen und Verbesserungen vorgeschlagen, wenn es moglich erscheint. Das Ergebnis sind Wittgensteinsche Gedankengange, die ungleich uberzeugender und vernunftiger sind, als dies bislang in der Literatur uber Wittgensteins Philosophie der Mathematik sichtbar war. (shrink)

In a previous work we studied, from the perspective ofAlgebraic Logic, the implicationless fragment of a logic introduced by O. Arieli and A. Avron using a class of bilattice-based logical matrices called logical bilattices. Here we complete this study by considering the Arieli-Avron logic in the full language, obtained by adding two implication connectives to the standard bilattice language. We prove that this logic is algebraizable and investigate its algebraic models, which turn out to be distributive bilattices with additional implication (...) operations. We axiomatize and state several results on these new classes of algebras, in particular representation theorems analogue to the well-known one for interlaced bilattices. (shrink)

This article will address the right to intercultural health, based on conceptualizing access to health and the respectful interaction between various cultures in the different areas that constitute a complex society. The objective is focused on defining the concept of interculturality and intercultural dialogue from an epistemic justice approach. The situated analysis of intercultural health care is expected to promote public policies, aimed at building an intercultural perspective, which fosters a horizontal dialogue and a respected interaction in all areas of (...) society. (shrink)

B. Russell, Foundations of logic 1903-05, The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Volume 4, Edited by Urquhart, A. with the assistance of Lewis, A. C. London and New York:Routledge, 1994, Hi+ 743 pp. £100.

There is an increasing interest in the complexity of mainstream communication education, and in the management of today's Global Media Organizations. Real world systems in communication processes cannot be completely designed, controlled, understood, or predicted, even by the sciences of complexity, but they are more effectively understood and explained as complex systems. I explore complexity in this article, analyzing the new paradigm of Agenda-Setting of today's New Media and Communication.

Asumiendo que la decolonialidad planetaria es apodíctica de la complejidad y de la transdisciplinariedad, bajo rupturas asignificantes, en condiciones abiertas para conformar al ser humano a pensar complejamente, sustentamos transepistemes devinientes de las rupturas asignificantes de la decolonialidad planetaria-complejidad como objetivo complejo de indagación; en _las líneas de investigación_: educación-transepistemologías transcomplejas, Decolonialidad planetaria-complejidad en re-ligaje y transepistemologías de los conocimientos-saberes y transmetodologías transcomplejas. Lo realizamos con el transmétodo la hermenéutica comprensiva, ecosófica y diatópica; en los momentos analíticos, empíricos y propositivos. (...) En el momento propositivo los transepistemes decoloniales planetarios – complejos van desmitificando des-ligando los epistemes fi_jos con pretendidas y vendidas aseveraciones hacia el colonizador. _Los transepistemes por su esencia decolonial planetaria ponen en igual grado de importancia todos los saberes ancestrales, y desde el patrimonio histórico de las civilizaciones aportan al conocer desde transmetodologías otras, abiertas, inclusivas; transdisciplinares fuera de los i_mpositores de la destrucción de la naturaleza en una falsa conquista_; por ello salvaguardar los saberes ancestrales como transepistemes ricos en amor por la humanidad es aceptar que somos naturaleza en la Tierra como patria. _Transepistemes transdisciplinares como ejercicios de liberación_, _conocedores y promotores de la complejidad de la vida_; es una esencia característica de los transepistemes que nos incitan a una nueva civilización de hacer ciencia, de conocer rompiendo las fronteras de las ciencias. (shrink)

This study synthesizes research on evolutionary psychology, emotional appeals, and viral advertising in order to develop a novel perspective on how sustainable luxury brands can be effectively promoted on social media. The results of two experiments show that the emotional appeals of pride and gratitude increase consumer intentions to spread electronic word-of-mouth about sustainable luxury brands via two discrete mechanisms. Study 1 establishes that featuring the pride appeal increases eWOM intentions by heightening the luxury dimension of sustainable luxury brands, whereas (...) featuring the gratitude appeal increases eWOM intentions by heightening the sustainability dimension of sustainable luxury brands. Study 2 shows that these discrete effects of emotional appeals influence consumers to adopt different types of eWOM behaviors toward sustainable luxury brands. Specifically, the pride appeal increases consumer intentions to broadcast eWOM via status attainment motives. In contrast, the gratitude appeal increases consumer intentions to narrowcast eWOM via affiliation seeking motives. The findings offer novel theoretical insights and provide managers with tools to promote sustainable luxury brands in a digital environment. (shrink)