Javier Sanchez

The traditional “realist” conception of physics, according to which human concepts, laws and theories can grasp the essence of a reality in our absence , seems incompatible with quantum formalism and it most fruitful interpretation. The proof rests on the violation by quantum mechanical formalism of some fundamental principles of the classical ontology. We discuss if the conception behind Einstein’s idea of a reality in our absence, could be still maintained and at which price. We conclude that quantum mechanical formalism is not formulated on those terms, leaving for a separated paper the discussion about the terms in which it could be formulated and the onto-epistemological implications it might have

Irruption Theory (IT) offers a novel approach to understanding mind-brain interaction in decision-making. IT suggests that the mind’s influence on brain dynamics can manifest as “irruption” — the emergence of noise or physical fluctuations that alter brain activity. Lately, Irruption-Absorption Theory (IAT) has also incorporated the idea of “absorption,” which refers to the mental stabilization or fixation of chosen content. A crucial tool for exploring the implications of this theory could be the Haken-Kelso-Bunz (HKB) model, which can simulate phase transitions in the brain, such as shifts from randomness to different kinds of stability, through simple parameter adjustments. In this paper, we demonstrate how the HKB model can incorporate IAT’s irruption and absorption after some conceptual refinement, dubbed IAT*, and help to understand the results of recent experiments that require decision-making. In doing so, we aim to present mental influence in decision-making tasks as that which enables phase transitions responsible for perception and choice. Our interpretation is that the mind’s selective focus may guide brain dynamics, aligning with physical causality without disrupting it.

From how a whirlpool is formed behind a rock to how temperature speeds up a chemical reaction, constraints are pervasive in nature. They are also essential for explaining the emergence of dissipative structures, the far-from-equilibrium systems responsible for increasingly complex forms of organization. In this article, we argue that the constraints on change exert a non-derivative causal influence on microphysics by introducing selection rules, and that they are causal not by what they produce, but by what they prevent. However, recent approaches in the philosophy of science, such as the one we call “higher-level causal eliminativism” (HLCE), deem constraints as non-causal explanations or derivative causal explanations. HLCE is a microphysicalist perspective according to which reality is the result of an interplay of microphysical interactions. It denies the causality of constraints; only their explanatory value is recognized. In so doing, HLCE commits itself to superdeterminism, the theory for which some unknown non-local hidden variables and the laws of nature utterly determine the outcomes of all events, including those of quantum physics. Superdeterminism considers all higher-order relationships as nothing but statistically salient effects of global microphysical field interactions. By undermining the dependence of mathematical selection on ontological processes, superdeterminism leads to an arbitrary selection of initial conditions for the universe. Yet we will argue that this arbitrariness undermines itself and the hopes of HLCE.

In contemporary industrial times, the success of a company is largely dependent on having effective leadership. Additionally, a leader's capacity for change management is essential when confronted with novel difficulties and shifts. Effective leadership styles are important, as many studies have shown, but not all companies have been able to implement them successfully and witness increases in employee loyalty and performance. The positivist paradigm is applied in this study through empirical research, wherein hypotheses are tested using an empirical model that demonstrates the causal relationship between the model's components. The study's conclusions show how green leadership, digital leadership, and servant leadership improve and have notable effects on the performance of the industrial sector. This research implies that the industrial sector has benefited greatly from the three types of leadership in terms of increased productivity and creativity. In particular, it has been shown that digital leadership, green leadership, and servant leadership all improve an organization's performance as a whole. The study's findings add to the body of knowledge on leadership, support future research with empirical evidence, and have significant theoretical and practical implications for the administrative science community.

Este trabajo analiza en el contexto actual del consumo de la prensa qué interesa a las audiencias españolas de las revistas de viajes. Los objetivos son identificar la frecuencia y los motivos de lectura, averiguar qué les importa de los contenidos e investigar qué les atrae de las fotografías. La metodología se basa en un cuestionario estructurado a una muestra representativa de la población española (n=1000). Los principales resultados desvelan una escasa frecuencia de lectura; gran interés por la información práctica; preferencia por la fotografía paisajística (mayores de 54) y de ocio nocturno (jóvenes), e indiferencia por la fuente periodística de las imágenes. Datos significativos para adaptar la estrategia de contenidos de las revistas de viajes.

Supplemental zinc in fattening lambs improves their health, performance, and meat quality. However, the Zn effect on grazing animals combined with different levels of concentrate should be known unknown. The objective was to evaluate the Zn-organic effect in the diet of grazing lambs supplemented with two levels of concentrate on growth, dry matter (DM) intake, carcass traits, body composition, meat quality, and fatty acid profile in Longissimus dorsi muscle. Twenty-eight lambs were used in a factorial arrangement of two levels of concentrate (C) feed intake (C-0.75 and C-1.5% of live weight) and two Zn-Met levels (0 and 80 ppm Zn kg−1 DM) on the grazing of Lolium perenne L. Digestibility and dry matter intake, weight gain, and productive performance were measured. At the end of the fattening period (90 d), the lambs were slaughtered and the carcass traits, body composition, instrumental quality, and lipid profile of meat were evaluated. The effect of treatment (T), measurement period (P), and T × P interaction was observed (p < 0.05) for dry matter intake (DMI). For the final live weight (FLW) and daily weight gain (DWG), there was an effect (p < 0.05) of T and P, with Zn-80 ppm + C-1.5% treatment being greater. The live weight at slaughter (LWS) and leg length (LL) showed an effect (p < 0.05) of C × Zn. Zn-80 ppm + C-1.5% treatment was higher in the kidney fat, empty body weight, carcass fat, fat and retained energy but lower in protein content (p < 0.05). The physicochemical characteristics and fatty acid content of meat were not affected (p > 0.05). It can be concluded that the concentrated-organic zinc synergy in grazing lambs improved the performance, weight gain, and body composition, which resulted in heavier carcasses with greater amounts of fat, protein, and energy deposited. Furthermore, the physical and chemical meat traits were not affected, but the n-3 fatty acid content and n-3/n-6 ratio in Longissimus dorsi was affected by the Zn level supplemented.

The philosopher Roberto Unger and the physicist Lee Smolin have recently argued that the current explanatory framework of cosmology, which presumes a timeless background of unchanging physical laws, should be replaced by a thoroughly relational framework in which time is fundamental and all laws are subject to change. Within this alternative framework, however, Unger and Smolin find themselves confronted by a dilemma: either the laws of nature evolve according to some higher set of “meta-laws,” which reinstates a timeless background at a higher level, or the laws of nature evolve randomly and the path of inquiry is blocked. In response to this dilemma, the authors propose a theory of causal events as singular, freely chosen, and self-determined optimalities constrained only by their intrinsic relations to all other events.

The Maximum Entropy Production Principle (MEPP) stands out as an overarching principle that rules life phenomena in Nature. However, its explanatory power beyond heuristics remains controversial. On the one hand, the MEPP has been successfully applied principally to non-living systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. On the other hand, the underlying assumptions to lay the MEPP’s theoretical foundations and range of applicability increase the possibilities of conflicting interpretations. More interestingly, from a metaphysical stance, the MEPP’s philosophical status is hotly debated: does the MEPP passively translate physical information into macroscopic predictions or actively select the physical solution in multistable systems, granting the connection between scientific models and reality? This paper deals directly with this dilemma by discussing natural determination from three angles: (1) Heuristics help natural philosophers to build an ontology. (2) The MEPP’s ontological status may stem from its selection of new forms of causation beyond physicalism. (3) The MEPP’s ontology ultimately depends on the much-discussed question of the ontology of probabilities in an information-theoretic approach and the ontology of macrostates according to the Boltzmannian definition of entropy.

In a recent work (Grasso et al., 2021 ), practitioners of the Integrated Information Theory (IIT) claim to have overcome the weaknesses of causal reductionism in producing a coherent account of causation, as causal reductionism would blatantly conflate causation with prediction and could not answer the question of ‘what caused what.’ In this paper, I reject such a dismissal of causal reductionism since IIT anti-reductionists misunderstand the reductionist stance. The reductionists can still invoke a causal account stemming from the causal power of the universe’s basic units and interactions that, eventually, may lead to structures supporting integrated information. Additionally, I claim that the IIT-inspired misunderstanding of causal reductionism originates from the former’s metaphysical deficit, conflating information with causation. However, as a possible way out, if IIT is complemented with a deeper metaphysical ground, such as nested hylomorphism, an improved argument against causal reductionism can be made to work by invoking formal causality as the ultimate cause of integration in natural systems.

La modernidad se caracteriza por una epistemología que ha conducido a la separación de los saberes. Como consecuencia, tanto la teología protestante como la católica han sufrido la falta de una perspectiva unitaria en su razonar sobre Dios. La cultura postmoderna, aceptando la fragmentariedad, presenta una nueva sensibilidad epistemológica que abre posibilidades prometedoras para el redescubrimiento de la trascendencia. Entre ellas, la dialogicidad intrínseca de la Creación apunta a la vía de la belleza como camino privilegiado que la teología ha de explorar en un sentido descendente y, especialmente, ascendente

Dos hilos impulsan estas líneas: la reflexión sobre uno de los acontecimientos cruciales de este fin de siglo en Europa, la masacre de Srebrenica, y la necesidad de contribuir a la tarea colectiva de reconstruir una tradición filosófica en lengua castellana más allá de las clásicas distinciones de géneros. Ambos propósitos confluirían, metonímica y metafóricamente, en un nombre, Machado, y una obra, el Juan de Mairena. Los textos del apócrifo del poeta, tan próximo en algunos momentos al pensamiento de Lévinas o Heidegger, pueden contribuir a articular un examen crítico, insertado en una tradición, sobre ese símbolo de nuestra época.

El Trabajo por Proyectos es una metodología muy apropiada para utilizarla en la enseñanza superior, por su carácter investigador. El aprendizaje es activo, involucra al alumno y trabaja otras capacidades cognitivas distintas a las que se desarrollan con la clase magistral. Con la implantación, este curso, del llamado Plan Bolonia, algunos profesores pertenecientes al Grupo de Innovación Educativa Didáctica de las Matemáticas de la UPM, nos planteamos introducir en la asignatura de primer curso del Grado de Arquitectura, denominada Geometría Euclídea, Afín y Proyectiva algunos cambios dirigidos a este tipo de aprendizaje.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the neuromuscular response to an agility and repeated sprint ability test according to the level of competition in futsal players. A total of 33 players from two elite teams and one amateur team participated in the study. The participants completed an agility t-test, a 30 m-speed test, and a RSA test. A countermovement jump test and a tensiomyography test of the rectus femoris and biceps femoris of both legs were carried out before and after the tests. RSA test revealed better sprint times in elite players compared to amateurs in the seven bouts, as well as in the 30 m sprint and in the agility test. In conclusion, elite players showed greater performance in the RSA test, in the 30 m tests and in the agility test compared to amateur players. The contractile properties were not a key factor in the RSA performance of the futsal players.

In a previous essay we demonstrated that quantum mechanical formalism is incompatible with some necessary principles of the mechanism conception still dominant in the physicist’s community. In this paper we show, based on recent empirical evidence in quantum physics, the inevitability of abandoning the old mechanism conception and to construct a new one in which physical reality is seen as a representation which refers to relations established through operations made by us in a world that we are determining. This change is profound and radical, with immediate consequences on both Ontology and Epistemology. This work is our contribution to try to make more concrete how this new conception of the world might be

In futsal there are two referees on the playing court and their capacity to respond to physical and physiological demands imposed during the game is essential for the success. The futsal characteristics such as size pitch, referees position and rules of games or type of league could impose specific physical efforts probably. The aim of this study were to analyze the physical demands of eight elite referees from seven matches of Spanish Futsal Cup 2020. The physical activity of each referee during the match was monitored with a Local Positioning System, which was installed on futsal pitch where the matches were played. The data differences were evaluated as Paired-Samples T-Test procedure. The results revealed a similar total distance between halves. The zone 3 distance showed a significative decrease during the match in comparison to the first and second halves. The number of high-intensity acceleration and deceleration decreased in the second half of the match. Therefore, the use of the tracking device to monitoring physical performance provides knowledge of the specific activity profile from futsal referees. This information to can be useful to design more accurate the training programs.