Juan Gonzalez

La doctrina de Polo sobre la muerte afirma que se debe al límite mental. El objetivo de este trabajo es aclarar esa afirmación exponiendo la noción de cuerpo propio como un hecho enigmático, que late bajo el límite mental; y que por ello mismo puede faltar: su falta es la muerte. La libertad personal no informa suficientemente el cuerpo, sino que lo da por hecho; y como el propio cuerpo escapa así de su completo dominio, le puede ser expropiado a la persona. La falta del propio cuerpo es la muerte; y sin su propio cuerpo, la persona humana sale del mundo y deja la historia.

El olvido kantiano de la inmanencia cognoscitiva es solidario de la existencia empírica que Kant concede a las cosas, y a ello se debe la construcción kantiana del objeto de experiencia para la comprensión de lo dado en el espacio y en el tiempo; así se forja la distinción fenómeno-noúmeno. En cambio, la noción poliana de límite mental justifica mejor la facticidad de lo que hay en el mundo, ante el hombre; y permite tomarse la libertad de abandonarlo para descubrir la inteligibilidad de la existencia.

Expondremos el camino de interiorización a través del cual el hombre persigue su autognosis. Respetando la dualidad entre método y tema que caracteriza a la actividad intelectual, y la distinción entre esencia y acto de ser que caracteriza a las criaturas, ese camino hacia la autognosis se abre finalmente en busca de la réplica de que la persona humana carece. Se dibuja así el acceso antropológico a Dios, tal y como Polo lo ha propuesto. Desde la persona se vislumbra que la identidad originaria del ser tiene también intimidad personal.

In the present paper we address the problem of optical isomerism embodied in the socalled “Hund’s paradox”, which points to the difficulty to account for chirality by means of quantum mechanics. In particular, we explain the answer to the problem proposed by the theory of decoherence. The purpose of this article is to challenge this answer on the basis of a conceptual analysis of the phenomenon of decoherence, that reveals the limitations of the theory of decoherence to solve the difficulties posed by optical isomerism and, in general, by quantum measurement.

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has hit almost all countries around the globe, seriously affecting the welfare of populations. Spain is especially hard-hit. In this context, the purpose of the present study is to analyze social, demographic, and economic correlates of mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in the population residing in Spain.MethodThe sample of this cross-sectional study was comprised of 801 participants aged 18 or older and residing in Spain. Data collection was carried out during March and April 2020. Data of mental health and well-being indicators, and those of a wide number of social, demographic, and economic variables were recorded. Linear regression models were built to value associations between mental health and social, demographic, and economic indicators.ResultsMental health morbidity was higher in women, younger people, individuals with medium studies, people with fewer children, singles, students, and unemployed individuals. Positive affect was higher among women, people with a high level of studies, those not co-living with dependent seniors, the self-employed, the employed, and those working outside home. Negative affect was negatively associated with age and number of children and was higher among women, people with basic studies, singles, individuals co-living with dependent seniors, homemakers, and students.ConclusionThe most vulnerable populations were found to be women, younger people, people with basic or medium studies, students and individuals with no remunerated activities, single populations, and those co-living with dependent seniors as well as those with a reduced number of children.

Perhaps the hottest topic in the philosophy of chemistry is that of the relationship between chemistry and physics. The problem finds one of its main manifestations in the debate about the nature of molecular structure, given by the spatial arrangement of the nuclei in a molecule. The traditional strategy to address the problem is to consider chemical cases that challenge the definition of molecular structure in quantum–mechanical terms. Instead of taking that top-down strategy, in this paper we face the problem of the reduction of molecular structure to quantum mechanics from a bottom-up perspective: our aim is to show how the theoretical peculiarities of quantum mechanics stand against the possibility of molecular structure, defined in terms of the spatial relations of the nuclei conceived as individual localized objects. We will argue that, according to the theory, quantum “particles” are not individuals that can be identified as different from others and that can be reidentified through time; therefore, they do not have the ontological stability necessary to maintain the relations that can lead to a spatially definite system with an identifiable shape. On the other hand, although quantum chemists use the resources supplied by quantum mechanics with successful results, this does no mean reduction: their “approximations” add certain assumptions that are not justified in the context of quantum mechanics or are even inconsistent with the very formal structure of the theory.