Resumen Las interfaces cerebro-computadora (ICCs) son tecnologías que proveen herramientas para la comunicación entre el ser humano y las computadoras. Dado que las nuevas técnicas asociadas a ICCs podrían influir en la autorregulación emocional, la memoria autobiográfica, el sentido del yo, la identidad, la autonomía, la autenticidad y las atribuciones de responsabilidad presentan importantes objeciones éticas. Entender las consecuencias a largo plazo de estas nuevas tecnologías puede ser difícil. Por lo tanto, los aspectos éticos vinculados a las ICCs necesitan ser (...) continuamente revisados a la par de los avances técnicos en el área. El personalismo ontológicamente fundado se ha formalizado como un camino de reflexión que tiene como referencia una antropología que defiende el valor de la vida física corpórea, la relación libertad-responsabilidad y la adecuada interacción individuo y sociedad y brinda pautas éticas que permitan formular normas de conducta acordes con la dignidad de la persona humana. Por lo tanto, en este artículo se aplican los principios de la bioética personalista al ámbito de las ICCs, de modo tal de dar directrices generales para la acción que puedan contribuir a elaborar un juicio ético acerca del desarrollo y uso de estas neurotecnologías. Abstract Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are technologies that provide tools for communication between humans and computers. Since the new techniques associated with BCIs could influence emotional self-regulation, autobiographical memory, sense of self, identity, autonomy, authenticity, and attributions of responsibility present important ethical objections. Understanding the long-term consequences of these innovative technologies can be difficult. Therefore, the ethical aspects linked to BCIs need to be continuously reviewed in line with technical advances in the area. Ontologically grounded personalism has been formalized as a path of reflection that has as its reference an anthropology that defends the value of corporeal physical life, the relationship between freedom and responsibility, and the appropriate interaction between the individual and society. This approach provides ethical guidelines for the formulation of norms of conduct in accordance with the dignity of the human person. Therefore, in this article, the principles of personalist bioethics are applied to the field of BCIs, in order to provide general guidelines for action that can contribute to the elaboration of an ethical judgment about the development and use of these neurotechnologies. (shrink)

In the present paper we study systematically several consequence relations on the usual language of propositional intuitionistic logic that can be defined semantically by using Kripke frames and the same defining truth conditions for the connectives as in intuitionistic logic but without imposing some of the conditions on the Kripke frames that are required in the intuitionistic case. The logics so obtained are called subintuitionistic logics in the literature. We depart from the perspective of considering a logic just as a (...) set of theorems and also depart from the perspective taken by Restall in that we consider standard Kripke models instead of models with a base point. We study the relations between subintuitionistic logics and modal logics given by the translation considered by Došen. Moreover, we classify the logics obtained according to the hierarchy considered inAlgebraic Logic. (shrink)

This paper compares pair and Mob programming in university courses from students' perceptions of technical and human aspects. Wilcoxon signed rank tests were performed. Results indicated that students preferred pair programming in technical aspects and in a global evaluation they completed.

The present paper introduces and studies the variety WH of weakly Heyting algebras. It corresponds to the strict implication fragment of the normal modal logic K which is also known as the subintuitionistic local consequence of the class of all Kripke models. The tools developed in the paper can be applied to the study of the subvarieties of WH; among them are the varieties determined by the strict implication fragments of normal modal logics as well as varieties that do not (...) arise in this way as the variety of Basic algebras or the variety of Heyting algebras. Apart from WH itself the paper studies the subvarieties of WH that naturally correspond to subintuitionistic logics, namely the variety of R-weakly Heyting algebras, the variety of T-weakly Heyting algebras and the varieties of Basic algebras and subresiduated lattices. (shrink)

Hilbert algebras provide the equivalent algebraic semantics in the sense of Blok and Pigozzi to the implication fragment of intuitionistic logic. They are closely related to implicative semilattices. Porta proved that every Hilbert algebra has a free implicative semilattice extension. In this paper we introduce the notion of an optimal deductive filter of a Hilbert algebra and use it to provide a different proof of the existence of the free implicative semilattice extension of a Hilbert algebra as well as a (...) simplified characterization of it. The optimal deductive filters turn out to be the traces in the Hilbert algebra of the prime filters of the distributive lattice free extension of the free implicative semilattice extension of the Hilbert algebra. To define the concept of optimal deductive filter we need to introduce the concept of a strong Frink ideal for Hilbert algebras which generalizes the concept of a Frink ideal for posets. (shrink)

We introduce a variety of algebras in the language of Boolean algebras with an extra implication, namely the variety of pseudo-subordination algebras, which is closely related to subordination algebras. We believe it provides a minimal general algebraic framework where to place and systematise the research on classes of algebras related to several kinds of subordination algebras. We also consider the subvariety of pseudo-contact algebras, related to contact algebras, and the subvariety of the strict implication algebras introduced in Bezhanishvili et al. (...) [(2019). A strict implication calculus for compact Hausdorff spaces. Annals of Pure and Applied Logic, 170, 102714]. The variety of pseudo-subordination algebras is term equivalent to the variety of Boolean algebras with a binary modal operator. We exploit this fact in our study. In particular, to obtain a topological duality from which we derive the known topological dualities for subordination algebras and contact algebras. (shrink)

En este trabajo sostengo que la concepción mecanicista no captura la relevancia explicativa de la ley de polarización dinámica de Cajal. La relevancia explicativa de la ley se fundamenta en su rol como principio de diseño neuronal. Como tal, la ley nos brinda acceso epistémico a intervenciones ideales, conceptualmente posibles, sobre la localización de los diversos componentes de los centros nerviosos, y nos permiten evaluar el impacto de esas intervenciones sobre las condiciones de viabilidad del organismo.

In his work, Michael Ruse underscores the significance of metaphors in science, with a particular focus on the “abyss” between mechanistic and organicist metaphors in the history and practice of biology. Ruse posits that the Darwinian revolution involved a radical “metaphor shift” in biology, transitioning from organicism to mechanism. In this article, I set out several objectives (i) to assess whether the neuronist revolution, pivotal in the inception of neuroscience, involved a shift from an organicist metaphor to a mechanistic one; (...) (ii) to highlight the indispensable influences of organicist metaphors in Cajal’s neuron doctrine; and, consequently, (iii) to challenge the idea of an abyss between mechanistic and organicist metaphors, at least, in neuroscience. (shrink)

Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the primary architect of the neuron doctrine and the law of dynamic polarization, is considered to be the founder of modern neuroscience. At the same time, many philosophers, historians, and neuroscientists agree that modern neuroscience embodies a mechanistic perspective on the explanation of the nervous system. In this paper, I review the extant mechanistic interpretation of Cajal’s contribution to modern neuroscience. Then, I argue that the extant mechanistic interpretation fails to capture the explanatory import of Cajal’s (...) law of dynamic polarization. My claim is that the definitive formulation of Cajal’s law of dynamic polarization, despite its mechanistic inaccuracies, embodies a non-mechanistic pattern of reasoning (i.e., design explanation) that is an integral component of modern neuroscience. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Artificial Intelligence and the many data science methods associated with it, such as machine learning and large language models, are first and foremost epistemic technologies. In order to establish this claim, I first argue that epistemic technologies can be conceptually and practically distinguished from other technologies in virtue of what they are designed for, what they do and how they do it. I then proceed to show that unlike other kinds of technology (_including_ other (...) epistemic technologies) AI can be uniquely positioned as an epistemic technology in that it is primarily designed, developed and deployed to be used in _epistemic contexts_ such as inquiry, it is specifically designed, developed and deployed to manipulate _epistemic content_ such as data, _and_ it is designed, developed and deployed to do so particularly through _epistemic operations_ such as prediction and analysis. As has been shown in recent work in the philosophy and ethics of AI (Alvarado, AI and Ethics, 2022a), understanding AI as an epistemic technology will also have significant implications for important debates regarding our relationship to AI technologies. This paper includes a brief overview of such implications, particularly those pertaining to explainability, opacity, trust and even epistemic harms related to AI technologies. (shrink)

Anecdotes have shown that some articles on profitable drugs are constructed by and shepherded through publication by pharmaceutical companies and their agents, whose influence is largely invisible to readers. This is ghost-management, the substantial but unrecognized research, analysis, writing, editing and/or facilitation behind publication. Publicly available documents suggest that these practices extremely widespread affecting up to 40% of clinical trial reports in key periods but it has been unclear how representative these documents are. This article presents the results of an (...) investigative sampling of the self-presentation of publication planning services, and presents this and other evidence of a sizable publication planning industry. Thus different lines of evidence indicate that ghost-management is a common and important phenomenon, strongly affecting the published medical literature in the service of marketing. (shrink)

It is widely supposed that evolutionary debunking arguments against morality constitute a type of epistemological objection to our moral beliefs. In particular, the debunking force of such arguments is not supposed to depend on the metaphysical claim that moral facts do not exist. In this paper I argue that this standard epistemological construal of EDAs is highly misleading, if not mistaken. Specifically, I argue that the most widely discussed EDAs all make key and controversial metaphysical claims about the nature of (...) morality or the possibility of moral truth that belie their apparently epistemological character. I show that the debunking force of these EDAs derives largely from metaphysical claims about morality and their implications for the possibility of moral reduction, rather than from epistemological worries associated with the existence of an causal/non-moral explanation of our moral judgments. The paper briefly concludes with a dilemma that I believe confronts all EDAs such as those discussed in this paper: either such arguments are unsound, or else they prove too much, debunking our knowledge of science and the external world, as well as morality. (shrink)

In 2003, the pharmaceutical company Biovail received a spate of negative publicity around a program for its heart medication Cardizem LA. For a three-month period Biovail paid US doctors US$1000 (and their office managers US$150) for patient data when at least 11 of their patients renewed a prescription to Cardizem. Doctors who signed up for the trial but who did not keep 11 patients on the drug received US$250 for participation. According to Biovail, this was a research trial, meeting US (...) federal regulations for research trials – the consulting firm that had designed the trial had guaranteed that it would meet US criteria. The trial was expected to provide data that would help ‘in designing future clinical trial programs’, according to Biovail’s vice-president of finance. In addition, the results would eventually be published. However, the program was originally presented as a marketing campaign, and was being handled by Biovail’s sales department and sales force. According to ethicists who commented on the case, a US$1000 payment to doctors was unusually high for a post-marketing research trial, and a US$150 payment to office managers was thought to raise novel ethical conflicts. Cardizem is a drug intended for long-term use, so paying doctors to get patients started on a course of treatment could lead to substantial profits from these prescriptions. In line with this, immediate comments from professional ethicists and representatives of medical associations focused on questions about whether the Biovail campaign amounted to paying doctors to prescribe specific drugs. And that is a concern for the obvious reason that it has the potential to compromise doctors’ decisions about best care. Payments for prescriptions place doctors in ethically difficult situations: Peter Singer, a medical ethicist, says ‘There is clearly the potential for [physicians’] conflict of interest’ (Toronto Globe and Mail, 2003). Physicians’ decision-making is the most common locus of discussion in medical ethics.. (shrink)

This paper reports the framework, method and main findings of an analysis of cultural milieus in 4 European countries. The analysis is based on a questionnaire applied to a sample built through a two-step procedure of post-hoc random selection from a broader dataset based on an online survey. Responses to the questionnaire were subjected to multidimensional analysis-a combination of Multiple Correspondence Analysis and Cluster Analysis. We identified 5 symbolic universes, that correspond to basic, embodied, affect-laden, generalized worldviews. People in this (...) study see the world as either a) an ordered universe;b) a matter of interpersonal bond;c) a caring society;d) consisting of a niche of belongingness;e) a hostile place. These symbolic universes were also interpreted as semiotic capital: they reflect the capacity of a place to foster social and civic development. Moreover, the distribution of the symbolic universes, and therefore social and civic engagement, is demonstrated to be variable across the 4 countries in the analysis. Finally, we develop a retrospective reconstruction of the distribution of symbolic universes as well as the interplay between their current state and past, present and future socio-institutional scenarios. (shrink)

Microalgae in the wild often form consortia with other species promoting their own health and resource foraging opportunities. The recent application of microalgae cultivation and deployment in commercial photobioreactors (PBR) so far has focussed on single species of algae, resulting in multi-species consortia being largely unexplored. Reviewing the current status of PBR ecological habitat, this article argues in favor of further investigation into algal communication with conspecifics and interspecifics, including other strains of microalgae and bacteria. These mutualistic species form the (...) ‘phycosphere’: the micro-environment surrounding microalgal cells, potentiating the production of certain metabolites through biochemical interaction with cohabitating microorganisms. A better understanding of the phycosphere could lead to novel PBR configurations, capable of incorporating algal-microbial consortia, potentially proving more effective than single-species algal systems. (shrink)

Nota crítica a propósito de: Castro, R. y Chamorro, E. _ Para una crítica del neoliberalismo: Foucault y el Nacimiento de la biopolítica_. Madrid: Lengua de trapo. González Sánchez, I. _Neoliberalismo y castigo_. Barcelona: Bellaterra. Villacañas, J. L. _Neoliberalismo como teología política: Habermas, Foucault, Laval, Dardot y la historia del capitalismo contemporáneo_. Barcelona: NED ediciones.

This chapter discusses some strategies pharmaceutical companies employ to establish influence and even hegemony over domains of medical knowledge: marketing products via medical research and education. The chapter thus contributes to understanding the political economy of knowledge in this industry. As a counterpart to traditional epistemology, studying the political economy of knowledge shifts attention from individual claims and their justifications to some of the forces available to shape terrains on which claims are produced, distributed, and consumed.Of pharmaceutical companies’ clinical research, (...) 70–75% is performed by contract research organizations. CROs conduct trials with one eye to the drug approval process and the other to the marketing of products. On the basis of trial data, analyzed by pharmaceutical company statisticians and scientists, publication planners design suites of scientific manuscripts and hire ghostwriters to write them. These are then given to academic authors, who generally have had little prior connection to the research, analysis, or writing. The manuscripts are published in medical journals appropriate for the audiences the companies wish to reach.The doctors and researchers with whom companies engage most closely are generally termed key opinion leaders. In addition to authoring manuscripts, KOLs serve companies in a number of roles, but most prominently as speakers—at professional meetings, in after-dinner and similar settings arranged by sales representatives, and in continuing medical education courses, which doctors must take to keep their licenses. Research, education, and marketing, then, are often fused. (shrink)

El ensayo expone críticamente la fundamentación ontológica de la ética en Antonio Rosmini. Al mismo tiempo, propone una solución al problema de Hume sobre la deducción de proposiciones normativas a partir de las descriptivas. Rosmini parte del análisis del conocimiento. Desde aquí consigue acreditar el paso del pensamiento al ser, distinguiendo tres modos: ser real, ideal y moral. El filósofo identifica el tercero con una estructura agradable en todo lo naturalmente existente. Catalogar esta dimensión ontológica le permite definir el bien (...) universal como el orden amable del ser, y así conectar modernamente con la filosofía antigua. Mediante la contemplación del bien intrínseco de todo ente natural, del orden particular de su esencia, Rosmini puede validar también el salto del ser al deber ser. En efecto, pues del bien propio de cada realidad se desprende una necesidad objetiva, que a su vez aterriza en la constitución intelectiva y volitiva de la persona como necesidad subjetiva. El bien moral consistirá precisamente en el reconocimiento del sujeto de ese bien necesario. (shrink)

This article explores the transformation of ethics in a globalizing technological society. After describing some basic features of this society, particularly the primacy it gives to a special type of technical rationality, three specific influences on traditional ethics are examined: (1) a change concerning the notion of value, (2) the decreasing relevance of the concept of axiological hierarchy, and (3) the new internal architecture of ethics as a net of values. These three characteristics suggest a new pragmatic understanding of ethics. (...) From a pragmatic perspective, the process of introducing ethical values into contemporary society can be regarded as a beneficial Trojan horse, a metaphor that will be developed further. (shrink)

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo examinar el significado de la neuropublicidad así como introducir los debates éticos que la acompañan. La búsqueda de la eficacia publicitaria y el conocimiento de las “verdaderas” necesidades de los clientes centran la investigación de esta disciplina que fusiona la publicidad con los nuevos conocimientos sobre el cerebro vinculados con el avance de las neurociencias. El presente artículo analiza esta nueva disciplina y sus características, a la vez que analiza algunas de las problemática morales (...) que plantea. (shrink)

A short presentation of Buddhist moral doctrines according to its distinct schools.

Enesidemo ha sido considerado, tradicionalmente, como figura mediadora entre el escepticismo pirroniano y el escepticismo académico. En el Códice 212 de su Bibliotheca, Focio proporciona alguna infonnación fundamental para reconocer a Enesidemo como figura clave del escepticismo entre Timón de Filunte y Sexto Empírico. Así, es corriente hablar de la pertenencia de Enesidemo a la academia platónica, y de su separación, cuando Filón de Larisa y su sucesor Clitx5maco empiezan a renunciar a los principios académicos y adoptan principios estoicos2, A (...) partir de aquí es corriente concluir que trabajaba por restaurar cierta originalidad de la especulación filosófica, basada en Pirrón, frente a todo el trabajo de reflexión y de análisis que él mismo había realizado en la academia en contra de los dogmáticos estoicos. La hipótesis de este artículo rompe esta ortodoxa interpretachin. Enesidemo es el primero en recuperar sistemáticamente los presupuestos del pensamiento pirroniano, generando un movimiento desconocido como tal hasta ese momento, el pirronismo shrink)

This text proposes some lines of reflection and action related to a project that links philosophy and childhood, whose pedagogical and investigative activity has been developed in the province of Córdoba, Argentina, for more than twenty-five years. To do this we recover an experience of workshops with children and adults, in a continuous process of reflection on childhood and how children think about themselves. That experience focuses on imagining a particular space and time – living together on an island where (...) adults cannot be found--and from there question the forms of decision making and participation – of political action – that children perform in the territories they inhabit. Here it is proposed that the circumstance of incompleteness regarding issues such as politics and sexuality encompass all age situations and, therefore, it is more appropriate to let ourselves be traversed by restlessness and doubt than to accept a preconceived world in which problems quickly find answers, and what you do not know or cannot be located in a fixed category is unknown, ignored, or remains hidden. We propose to start by not postulating any pre-conceived notions regarding childhoods--thinking of them as hypotheses with unexplored names, bodies and thoughts to get to know. Likewise, it is assumed that reflection on teaching practice relocates philosophy teachers as intellectuals who keep universal explanations in their “professorial pockets,” and reinvent themselves by dealing with specific problems, the small discoveries one makes through exchanges with others--those others that, as in the case of children, there is much to learn about and from. This is the ethical and political task that emerges from a continuous reflection on shared action. Welcome, then, to the island where everything is to be decided and participated in, the island of Serendipity. (shrink)

En 2011 el señor Mario Posada Ochoa donó a la Universidad EAFIT una extensa y poco conocida colección de arte; acaso unos cuantos amigos habrían visto de cerca las 480 obras que recibió la Universidad, de artistas como Segundo Angelvis, Inés Acevedo Bernal, Sergio Trujillo Magnenat, Luis A. Rengifo y Ramón Vásquez, entre otros. Algunas de ellas carecían de la firma del autor o de un dato que comprobara la autoría, y estaban deterioradas, más que por el tiempo, por (...) el improvisado bodegaje: don Mario las había guardado durante cuarenta años en su hermosa casa de Maracaibo, en el centro de la ciudad. En Extensión Cultural de EAFIT han procurado, desde entonces, conservar este legado. (shrink)

A short discussion of the emergence of the self-interest axiom during the classical phase of political economy, its roots in the previous discussion on self-love in early modern ethics and its development in the following formulation of the notion of 'homo economicus' and the definition of the agent's rationality.

A short discussion of the origin of the notion of mode of subsistence in the eighteenth-century discussion and particularly in the Scottish Enlightenment and its legacy n the Marxist theory of modes of production or social economic formations.

The chapter reconstructs and criticizes one of Anscombe's famous three these, namely the claim that a ‘philosophy of psychology’ is a preliminary task to the construction of any possible ethical theory, or that moral philosophy ‘should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking’. The claim is that Anscombe’s idea of a philosophy of psychology cannot be simply identified with that of moral psychology with which we are familiar (...) now; that her main claim, namely that actions are analogous to language is quite promising; that among the implications there is not only a criticism to consequentialism but also acknowledgement of a central role for judgement, and accordingly not just a blunt refusal, but instead an unaware rediscovery of Kantian ethics; that her rediscovery of the idea of virtue is promising enough, albeit misunderstood by Anscombe herself when she presents it in terms of coming back to Aristotelian and Thomist ethics as contrasted with modern moral philosophy. (shrink)

Social media platforms have not ceased to play a huge role in societal interaction since their arrival. Although it is undeniable that social media opens us up to new and exciting opportunities, we should not forget that it is a catalyst for some new or already existing social problems. This chapter aims to explore some political, ethical and epistemological issues that “Nosedive,” one of the most award‐winning Black Mirror episodes, tackles. Starting from capturing the actuality of Nosedive's narrative, exploring the (...) problems of the majority rule and the influence of the “others” in our way of acting and feeling, and coming up to the problems of the reliability of digital profiles, this chapter touches upon some contemporary fears and anxieties created around Social Media. (shrink)

One of the main tools in the study of nonmonotonic consequence relations is the representation of such relations in terms of preferential models. In this paper we give an unified and simpler framework to obtain such representation theorems.