Francisco Rodriguez

This paper explores the reliability of assessment instruments used in the prison population to measure the Dark Triad, a constellation of personality traits including machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. A systematic literature review was conducted using six databases, and 12 articles were selected according to the eligibility criteria. A Cronbach’s alpha reliability generalization meta-analysis was carried out, which reported acceptable internal consistencies (≥.70) for all three subscales, with machiavellianism achieving the best estimated alpha, and good internal consistency (≥.80) for the Dirty Dozen, the most commonly used scale in this context. However, the paucity of studies, publication bias, and high heterogeneity reflected in Cochran’s Q statistic and I2 index (≥ 75%) compromise the generalizability of the estimates and underline the need to examine the which moderating variables that influence this variability.

Mobile robots are becoming increasingly common in spaces shared with humans, raising concerns about safety and security. However, the lack of capabilities to justify the actions behind a particular behavior to non-expert users poses a significant challenge in building trustworthy interactions. Explaining why a robot performs an unexpected action is crucial to understanding the cause of a failure. Furthermore, these explanations need to be clear and accessible to non-technical users. This work depicts a Proof of Concept of an accountability and explainability engine for Robot Operating System (ROS)-based mobile robots. Our solution comprises two components. The first consists of a black box-like module to provide accountability, capturing the actions performed by the robot while guaranteeing faithful replay, data privacy, and authenticity. The second component generates natural language explanations by using data within the black box. The explainability component is based on the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Vision Language Models (VLMs), enabling the system to analyse textual logs with the added context of visual input. Initial results show that it is possible to obtain understandable, accurate, and precise explanations by using accountable data as context. This fact enhances the deployment of responsible, transparent, interpretable, and trustworthy agents, easing interaction between humans and robots.

La «démythologisation» est une herméneutique philosophique forgée par Hans Jonas au début de son itinéraire intellectuel, afin d'interpréter existentiellement les récits mythologiques ainsi que les textes théologiques et philosophiques de l’Antiquité tardive. Il s’agissait d’abord d’une méthodologie d’objectivation et subjectivation pour comprendre l’expérience existentielle de l’homme gnostique face à la divinité et l’être dans le monde. Dans la suite, Jonas a développé l’herméneutique de la démythologisation par l’objectivation et la subjectivation par rapport aux textes néotestamentaires. Le mot démythologisation (Entmythologisierung) est utilisé par lui pour la première fois en 1930 dans une étude philosophique, «Sur la structure herméneutique du dogme», pour comprendre le problème existentiel de la liberté chrétienne. Quelques années plus tard, il a développé une phénoménologie herméneutique, également par l’objectivation et la subjectivation, afin de comprendre l’être vivant et la particularité de l’homme dans la nature. Entre-temps, Hans Jonas a aussi utilisé l’herméneutique de la démythologisation par l’objectivation et la subjectivation pour critiquer la philosophie de Martin Heidegger et la théologie de Rudolf Bultmann dans plusieurs articles philosophiques par rapport au gnosticisme, à la théologie et à la démythologisation bultmannienne, ainsi que pour rédiger Le Concept de Dieu après Auschwitz.

I was in touch with John Corcoran for the first time in 1989, through a phone call from him, while I was in Hamilton, Canada. A little later I met him, which happened again in 1991 in Barcelona and also in Buffalo in 1993. We corresponded for many years and continued to be in touch through the email until 2020, when I received his last message. The following is a short description of our relationship, from a strict personal way, during those 30 years of friendship. Professional subjects, either logical, philosophical, or historical, are very briefly mentioned here, just when needed for context; they will be developed in full by other participants in this volume.

Resumen: Este artículo desarrolla la implementación de estrategias filosóficas, políticas y éticas para la constitución de una democracia medioambiental en un Estado moderno ecológico capaz de organizar nuevas formas de vida humana que contribuyan a la reducción y mitigación de los impactos y los riesgos de la crisis medioambiental y del cambio climático, promoviendo la participación y la deliberación ciudadanas en ámbitos institucionales que garanticen el cuidado integral de la salud humana y de los ecosistemas, según el modelo deliberativo de los comités de bioética. Abstract: This article develops the implementation of philosophical, political and ethical strategies for the constitution of an environmental democracy in a modern ecological State capable of organizing new forms of human life that contribute to the reduction and mitigation of the impacts and risks of the environmental crisis and of climate change, promoting citizen participation and deliberation in institutional settings that guarantee comprehensive care of human health and ecosystems, according to the deliberative model of bioethics committees.

The paper presents a teaching experience implemented in two Sociology of Work courses at two Spanish universities. The teaching practice consists of the leisurely, reflective and critical reading of a classic text of the Sociology of Work, after which the students must prepare a mind map, that is, a graphic representation in which ideas are schematically organized and associated. The analysis of the students’ responses to a questionnaire allows us to affirm that the practice of mind maps is a creative, visual and useful method of synthesizing and memorizing a classic sociological text.

Este artículo pretende, en primer lugar, bosquejar la crítica de la imagen dogmática del pensamiento planteada por Deleuze en relación con la búsqueda del pensar sin presupuestos típicamente cartesiana, con miras a mostrar que detrás está la renuncia al fundamento o a los principios trascendentes en filosofía y, por ende, al sistema de la representación. Consecuentemente, en la segunda parte del artículo se trata de dilucidar la naturaleza de los principios en que, según el autor, ha de arraigar el pensamiento filosófico y el tipo de necesidad que puede reivindicarse para el mismo en lo sucesivo, a la vista del requisito de una pura inmanencia que se sigue de la renuncia al fundamento.

El presente trabajo pretende explorar la actualidad del pensamiento de Baltasar Gracián a propósito del sujeto y la cultura a partir de las filosofías de Michel Foucault y José Ortega y Gasset. En primer lugar, se analizará la caracterización del sujeto graciano desde el prisma de La hermenéutica del sujeto como representante de una modernidad alternativa en que la separación entre la filosofía y la espiritualidad no llega a consumarse. En segundo lugar, se elucidará la ambivalencia de Gracián a propósito del artificio en relación con la crítica de la cultura y la técnica, tomando como referencia la crisis de la capacidad de desear planteada en Meditación de la técnica como causa de la crisis cultural de la época. Ambas incursiones tratarán de poner de manifiesto la relevancia del pensamiento de Gracián en la época contemporánea, caracterizada frecuentemente como un Neobarroco.

The process of democratic consolidation in Mexico has not resolved the issues of trust in public institutions due to the lack of mechanisms to implement public policies related to transparency and accountability. Municipal governments have struggled to meet transparency and accountability obligations due to the heterogeneity in their demographic, economic, cultural, and institutional composition. In the case of Sonora, most municipalities have faced difficulties in fulfilling these basic information obligations on their portals and assuming responsibility for the management of resources. The aim of this study is to explain the main factors that have hindered the fulfillment of these transparency and accountability obligations in the municipalities of the state of Sonora and to analyze the institutional instruments involved. This research reveals findings on the relationship between transparency and accountability policies and the municipal institutional design, and how the latter has represented an obstacle for the efficient implementation of these policies in Sonora’s municipalities.

La llamada crisis de la democracia revela una parte del malestar que nuestras sociedades experimentan frente a sus representantes políticos y a sus gobernantes. Esta situación se ha tratado de abordar, con mayor o menor profundidad e intensidad, proponiendo diferentes formas de participación de la ciudadanía en la toma de decisiones políticas. La experiencia de la Convention citoyenne pour le climat celebrada en Francia es un ejemplo de los dispositivos con los que la democracia intenta reducir la distancia entre los ciudadanos y sus representantes políticos. En este artículo se presenta un análisis de dicha experiencia, a partir de la cual trataremos de aclarar cuáles son las oportunidades y también los límites que proporciona este modelo para un proyecto más ambicioso de ampliación de la democracia.

This is an essay-review of C. Wade Savage and C. Anthony Anderson (editors), Rereading Russell: Essays in Bertrand Russell's Metaphysics and Epistemology, Volume XII of Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1989. The book is devoted to studying Russell's later philosophy, although the actual content concerns also Russell's early logical and epistemological writings. Here I study and criticize a group of contributions (mainly those by Hylton, Goldfarb, Cocchiarella, Pears and Demopoulos/Friedman) from a global and methodological approach to Russell's whole philosophy I have developed in other publications

Unfortunately, there are still cases of domestic violence or situations where it is necessary to call for help without arousing the suspicion of the aggressor. In these situations, the help signal devised by the Canadian Women’s Foundation has proven to be effective in reporting a risky situation. By displaying a sequence of hand signals, it is possible to report that help is needed. This work presents a vision-based system that detects this sequence and implements it in a social robot, so that it can automatically identify unwanted situations and alert the authorities. The gesture recognition pipeline presented in this work is integrated into a cognitive architecture used to generate behaviours in robots. In this way, the robot interacts with humans and is able to detect if a person is calling for help. In that case, the robot will act accordingly without alerting the aggressor. The proposed vision system uses the MediaPipe library to detect people in an image and locate the hands, from which it extracts a set of hand landmarks that identify which gesture is being made. By analysing the sequence of detected gestures, it can identify whether a person is performing the distress hand signal with an accuracy of 96.43%.

An essential requirement for increasing human confidence in computer systems is knowing an event’s origin. Therefore, it is necessary to have an efficient method to record such information. It is especially challenging in robotics, where unexpected behaviours can have unpredictable consequences, endangering the interests of people or even their safety. Furthermore, to analyse an incident’s cause or anticipate future behaviours, we must identify the events that cause a specific action. Although it is common to use logging systems for such purposes, issues such as partial recording of events, unhelpful data or the impact on robot performance suggest conceiving new accountability solutions that assist when determining the responsible entities or the provenance of specific information. This paper presents a general-purpose approach to developing an accountability system for autonomous robots. It consists of four main components: a system event logger, a message producer, a distributed event streaming platform and a database. Our proposal is completely decoupled from the monitored system and allows real-time analysis, improving flexibility, besides system protection and transparency. Finally, the need to reduce the impact of the audit process and logging tasks on robot performance has promoted the development of different assessment scenarios to determine the best strategy for providing accounting services.