M. Lopez

En el siglo XVII, el fundador de la filosofía moderna, René Descartes, se basó en su teoría metafísica del dualismo de sustancias para afirmar que jamás podrían recrearse mediante disposiciones de la sustancia material dos cualidades exclusivas de la sustancia pensante: la capacidad para el lenguaje natural y la flexibilidad para habérselas con problemas de todo tipo. Casi cuatro siglos después, el pronóstico de Descartes todavía se cumple, y las dos cualidades por él señaladas se resisten a los intentos de duplicación de la inteligencia artificial (IA) contemporánea. El presente artículo analiza las causas del acierto del filósofo francés.

Los fenómenos que suelen asociarse con los sistemas complejos, como la emergencia o la autorregulación, parecen estar envueltos en cierta oscuridad. En primer lugar, las definiciones ofrecidas tienden a ser demasiado generales e inclusivas. En segundo lugar, no se suele aclarar el estatuto de este tipo de fenómenos: si son enteramente debidos al sujeto, o si poseen partes esenciales no reducibles a ningún otro fenómeno. El presente artículo analiza, desde el punto de vista de los sistemas complejos, las nociones de emergencia y autorregulación. Se discuten los principales problemas que estas presentan y se perfilan algunas soluciones que podrían usarse de cara a elaborar una ontología de los sistemas complejos. Haciendo uso de estas soluciones, se proponen algunas definiciones de los principales fenómenos que componen un sistema complejo para, finalmente, ofrecer una definición de este tipo de sistema. Estas definiciones y soluciones se elaboran mediante el uso de herramientas filosóficas tales como la mereología o la teoría de la fundamentación.

La propuesta de Emanuele Coccia representa una vuelta a las formas más básicas y a los significados más orgá- nicos. Un golpe al antropocentrismo moderno y a la manera de construir nuestro mundo y las relaciones que tenemos con él. Un nuevo giro epis- temológico que se vuelca contra sí: a lo primero que se enfrenta es al sujeto y a su cognición universalista. No es la otredad vuelta hombre-dios, sino el mundo en y frente a nosotros, como conexiones biológicas que tejen un infinito sentido de la vida orgánica. Parte del cosmos hasta regresar a él, pasa por el vientre biológico, materno, so- cial, político, simbólico y así no somos más contenedores de sentido y cono- cimiento, sino el paso de una energía universal que nunca se detiene, sólo se transforma.

La gamificación o ludificación, entendida como la aplicación de la filosofía del juego en contextos no lúdicos, está experimentando en los últimos años un desarrollo espectacular en áreas de diversa naturaleza. Si bien está más que comúnmente aceptado que las funciones principales de los museos consisten en preservar y dar a conocer sus colecciones, resulta fundamental que logren conectar de manera satisfactoria con los usuarios empleando para ello medios y estrategias innovadoras y accesibles. En las siguientes páginas ponemos de manifiesto cómo la gamificación no es sino un recurso idóneo para motivar, fidelizar e influir en el comportamiento de los usuarios.

Recientes avances en Inteligencia Artificial (IA) como el Project Debater de IBM son indicadores de que la IA lingüística perfecta, es decir, capaz de superar el test de Turing y simular la conducta lingüística humana de manera indiscernible, es una realidad cercana que implicará numerosos efectos sobre nuestras vidas. Como propone la filosofía de la técnica de Langdon Winner, esos efectos deben ser evaluados antes de que la tecnología sea implantada para proporcionar así a la sociedad la posibilidad de decidir si el posible cambio es conforme a su proyecto ético y político. Para contribuir a esa decisión, en este artículo pronosticamos las consecuencias de esa tecnología sobre la autopercepción del ser humano mediante dos argumentos. Por un lado, un argumento principal utilizando como premisas la caracterización de esa IA y varias teorías de la psicología social y de la personalidad. Y, por el otro, una inferencia por analogía con la antropología cartesiana.

Se estudia la percepción que tienen las personas que visitan Andalucía de patrimonio distinguido por Unesco en esta comunidad (grado de conocimiento que tienen las personas visitantes de dicho patrimonio, el medio por el cual lo han conocido, su interés en visitarlo y la valoración que otorgan a dicho patrimonio), descubriendo la imagen que tienen los y las visitantes a la comunidad autónoma andaluza de este patrimonio. La técnica de investigación ha sido la encuesta, con un total de 385. Hay que destacar que todos los bienes superan la nota de 3,44 sobre 5 respecto a valoración.

This paper is intended to address the work “Against logical form”, authored by Johnson-Laird in 2010. In it, based on the theory of mental models, Johnson-Laird claims that the way people interpret sentences in natural language has nothing to do with logic. This is because that action is not related to logical forms. According to him, the mental activity is mainly linked to semantics and pragmatics. However, here, following arguments provided by López-Astorga, I try to show that the theory of mental models can be linked to syntactic structures. My main point is made by dealing with an argument given in the mentioned Johnson-Laird’s paper. In principle, that argument seems to undermine proposals such as that of López-Astorga. However, the present work proposes otherwise.

An important contribution of the so-called ‘Indian logic’ is the set of predications developed by Jain philosophers. However, if assessed based on western classical logic, Jaina logic in general and its predications in particular are clear examples of incorrect or inconsistent frameworks. Against this last idea, in this paper, it is argued that Jaina logic has a great potential to explain the way human beings really make inferences, and that comparing it to modern standard logic can be a mistake. To do that, a current semantic approach about reasoning, the one of the mental models theory, is used.

From March to September 2020, researchers working at a biomedical scientific campus in Spain faced two lockdowns and various mobility restrictions that affected their social and professional lifestyles. The working group “Women in Science,” which acts as an independent observatory of scientific gender inequalities on campus launched an online survey to assess the impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on scientific activity, domestic and caregiving tasks, and psychological status. The survey revealed differences in scientific performance by gender: while male researchers participated in a larger number of scientific activities for career development, female researchers performed more invisible scientific tasks, including peer review or outreach activities. Mental impact was greater in researchers caring for children or dependents, and this was aggravated for women. Results spot a disproportionate impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on female scientific career development, and urges for equity measures to mitigate the consequences of an increase in the gender gap in biomedical sciences for current and future pandemics.

Very important concepts in the theory of mental models are those of ‘possibility’ and ‘necessity’. Based on the definitions this psychology theory gives for those concepts, it has been shown that it complies with the requirement Fitting and Mendelsonh provides in general for modal logic. That requirement consists of being coherent with the modal interpretation of the square of opposition presented by Aristotle. This paper tries to move forward in this direction. It analyzes fourteen modal theorems indicated by Carnap under the approach of the theory of mental models. The results reveal that the theory is also compatible with those theorems.

The present study intended to investigate, first, the impact of semantic clustering on the recall and recognition of incidentally learned words in a new language, and second, how the interaction between semantic clustering and frequency of occurrence may modulate learning. To that end, Spanish university students watched an intentionally created video which contained Spanish target words that were either semantically related to others of the set, or not semantically linked at all. Furthermore, frequency of appearance changed among target words (1|4|8). All these words were paired with pseudowords that appeared as on-screen text during the videos. Participants were completely naive to the phases and the procedure of the experiment. After viewing the video, participants completed a recall test and a recognition test. Results showed that words presented in semantically unrelated categories were better recalled and better recognized than those presented in semantic clusters, especially when the words were presented more often.

Altruism and solidarity are concepts that are closely related to organ donation for transplantation. On the one hand, they are typically used for encouraging people to donate. On the other hand, they also underpin the regulations in force in each country to different extents. They are often used indistinctly and equivocally, despite the different ethical implications of each concept. This paper aims to clarify to what extent we can speak of altruism and solidarity in the predominant models of organ donation. It also raises the ethical question of whether these categories are adequate as a basis for such models, bearing in mind that organs are a scarce resource and that a shortage of them may mean that fewer lives are saved or improved.

Peter Wason provided his four-card selection task over five decades ago. It keeps causing difficulties from both the linguistic, the psychological, and the cognitive point of view. Many psychology theories have been proposed in order to remove its problems. This paper tries to offer one more possible account. That account is based on the method of extension and intension presented by Rudolf Carnap. Hence, it resorts to the concept of state-description. The basic ideas of the argumentation are two: 1) people might tend to consider state-descriptions when processing information, and 2) if conditionals are not expressed with a clear contextual framework, they might be interpreted as biconditionals.

Background: This research explores how public awareness and attitudes toward donation and transplantation policies may contribute to Spain's success in cadaveric organ donation. Materials and Methods: A representative sample of 813 people residing in Andalusia (Southern Spain) were surveyed by telephone or via Internet between October and December 2018. Results: Most participants trust Spain's donation and transplantation system (93%) and wish to donate their organs after death (76%). Among donors, a majority have expressed their consent (59%), and few nondonors have expressed their refusal (14%). Only a minority are aware of the presumed consent system in force (28%) and feel sufficiently informed regarding the requirements needed to be an organ donor (16%). Participants mainly consider that relatives should represent the deceased's preferences and be consulted when the deceased's wishes are unknown, as is the case in Spain. Conclusion: Public trust in the transplant system may contribute to Spain's high performance in organ donation. High levels of societal support toward organ donation and transplantation do not correspond with similar levels of public awareness of donation and transplantation policies in Spain.

This article analyzes the new regulation of the prescription of infractions and administrative sanctions in Law 40/2015 of the Legal Regime of the Public Sector, which introduces a substantial change with respect to Law 30/1992, of November 26. Until the entry into force of Law 40/2015, when the interested parties filed an appeal against the sanction, did not start counting the limitation period while the Administration did not expressly resolve the appeal, according to the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, which had warned of the undesirable consequences derived from the application of Law 30/1992. Law 40/2015 has settled the matter definitively, providing that in the event of rejected by silence the appeal filed against the decision imposing the sanction, the period of limitation of the administrative sanction will begin to count after the end of the period legally provided for the resolution. This work makes special mention to the recent judgement by the Contentious Administrative Court number 1 of Albacete, dated November 14, 2016, which applies retroactively the article 30.2 of Law 40/2015.

AI research is being challenged with ensuring that autonomous agents learn to behave ethically, namely in alignment with moral values. Here, we propose a novel way of tackling the value alignment problem as a two-step process. The first step consists on formalising moral values and value aligned behaviour based on philosophical foundations. Our formalisation is compatible with the framework of (Multi-Objective) Reinforcement Learning, to ease the handling of an agent’s individual and ethical objectives. The second step consists in designing an environment wherein an agent learns to behave ethically while pursuing its individual objective. We leverage on our theoretical results to introduce an algorithm that automates our two-step approach. In the cases where value-aligned behaviour is possible, our algorithm produces a learning environment for the agent wherein it will learn a value-aligned behaviour.

In his search for a better scientific language, Carnap offered a number of definitions, ideas, and arguments. This paper is devoted to one of his definitions in this regard. In particular, it addresses a definition providing rules to add new properties to the descriptions of objects or beings by taking into account other properties of those very objects or beings that are already known. The main point that this paper tries to make is that, if a current cognitive theory such as the theory of mental models is assumed, it can be said that those rules are easy to use by scientists and philosophers of science. This is because, following the essential theses of this last theory, the rules do not demand excessive cognitive effort to be applied. On the contrary, they are simple rules that make researchers’ work harder in no way.