Victor Lopez

The main thesis of this dissertation is set out in its very title, and to prove it will be necessary to eliminate the usual negative or melodramatic meaning of the two concepts that appear there and take them rather as the two extremes of the dialectical process of redefining the sociopersonal consciousness. In accordance with this, any catastrophe implies the violent breakup of the normal conditions of existence due to a natural or human factor whose direct consequences each one must understand and overcome on the triple ontological, social, and psychological determinations of the self. For its part, tragedy stands for the phase of critical and reflective integration that follows the catastrophe, which goes a lot beyond the sheer negativity of sorrow and even death, since even if the person or the people carried away by the catastrophe die, others will be able to make the most of that and the sociopersonal consciousness will be rearticulated. Of course, this implies that the self at issue is not only the individual one, so that other members of the lifeworld must be considered for the phenomenon to reveal a new or critical sense of existence beyond any previous approach to it. Thus, although there is an undeniably negativity throughout, it aims at a deeper level of comprehension of existence, which finally implicates that catastrophe is contextualized in a concrete cultural framework and not only as a sudden unsettlement and that tragedy is accordingly conceived as a philosophical tool more than as a literary genre that deals with the cruelty of fate. To get its aims, the dissertation will be divided into three sections of variable length: in the first one it will be analysed the experience and sense of catastrophe; in the second one, that of tragedy; in the third one, it will briefly be shown why understanding the nexus of both phenomena is axial for the current intellectual dynamics.

La philosophie contemporaine est tiraillée entre deux pôles apparemment inconciliables, que sont la littérature et les sciences dures. Une possibilité de réconciliation et de fusion est pourtant envisageable en remontant à Descartes, qui ne voit pas, dans son traité du Monde, de discontinuité entre philosophie et science et qui utilise la fable et la fiction pour exposer une vérité scientifique universelle. Or, cette vérité est exposée par des moyens (la déréalisation expérimentale du monde, la géométrisation de l’espace, la force d’un esprit qui s’exprime par un « je », l’analogie, qui permet d’expliquer l’homme) qui sont aussi ceux qu’emploient des artistes modernes comme Marcel Proust et Stanley Kubrick. En confrontant le Monde de Descartes à À la recherche du temps perdu de Proust et à 2001 : l’Odyssée de l’espace de Kubrick et de Clarke, il est possible de montrer la fraternité des œuvres malgré leurs différences d’époques, de styles et de buts et de souligner l’unité de leur prétention à la vérité, qu’elle soit scientifique, artistique ou philosophique. Les différences entre les disciplines fusionnent dans les œuvres, qui ont toujours pour finalité de refaire le réel à l’image de l’entendement humain, pour mieux pouvoir l’expliquer.

It is always possible to construct a real function φ, given random quantities X and Y with continuous distribution functions F and G, respectively, in such a way that φ(X) and φ(Y), also random quantities, have both the same distribution function, say H. This result of De Finetti introduces an alternative way to somehow describe the `opinion' of a group of experts about a continuous random quantity by the construction of Fields of coincidence of opinions (FCO). A Field of coincidence of opinions is a finite union of intervals where the opinions of the experts coincide with respect to that quantity of interest. We speculate on (dis)advantages of Fields of Opinion compared to usual `probability' measures of a group and on their relation with a continuous version of the well-known Allais' paradox.

It is always possible to construct a real function f, given random quantities X and Y with continuous distribution functions F and G, respectively, in such a way that f(X) and f(Y), also random quantities, have both the same distribution function, say H. This result of De Finetti introduces an alternative way to somehow describe the `opinion' of a group of experts about a continuous random quantity by the construction of Fields of coincidence of opinions (FCO). A Field of coincidence of opinions is a finite union of intervals where the opinions of the experts coincide with respect to that quantity of interest. We speculate on (dis)advantages of Fields of Opinion compared to usual `probability' measures of a group and on their relation with a continuous version of the well-known Allais' paradox

In this paper we shall consider how the globalization of media has destroyed the metaphysical link between the nation as political entity the nation cultural unit, a link which was postulated by the Romantic philosophical tradition and that at the same time has been deeply engrained in the common sense idea of national identity. The paper has three sections. In the first one we consider the two meanings of the concept "nation" and show that their possible aiffinity is only understandable taking into account the relevance of the spatial and temporal determinations of existence. We deal with such kinds of determination in the second section; finally, m the third one we suggest that the political and cultural dynamics of the current intemational order have subverted those determinations and have fostered a new vision of existence in convergence with the so-called American way of life and, by the same token, weakened the traditional idea of nation.

The thesis that I uphold in this dissertation is double: I start from the idea that there is a special kind of feeling that I call tragic and that belies both what I call “natural” feeling and the current experience thereof, an experience that implicates a return to a selfish or narcissist conception of individuality. To prove this, I shall divide the dissertation in three sections: in the first one, I meditate on the phenomenological framework of feeling, music and history that leads to a tragic experience of time; in the second section, I set out in broad outline how tragedy opposes metaphysics, Christianity and romanticism so as to make comprehensible why man is essentially a weak or rather an insubstantial being that gets his identity beyond the would-be natural or egotistic identity of his; in the third section, I dwell upon some events of the last century that are supposed to symbolise a radical change in the perception of humanity and I choose one of them for the reasons that I give there so as to confirm the precedent approach. This way, the phenomenological exposition provides the indispensable thread to weave the cultural interpretation and vice versa. In a brief colophon, I epitomise the whole conceptual development to emphasise that this is not an exegesis of Nietzsche’s thought (which is moreover obvious in view of the freedom wherewith I move through the initial and the last phases of its development) but an application thereof to the understanding of the present sense of man through the notions of feeling and weakness that I use both in an ontological and a critical sense.

BackgroundThe Patient Health Questionnaire-9 is the most well-known self-report measure to screen for depressive symptomatology, although discerning which is the factor structure that represents the best fit remains a challenge.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to analyze the psychometric properties and factorial structure of the Spanish version of the PHQ-9 in a large sample of Ecuadorian college students.MethodsA total of 5,394 students from three Ecuadorian universities were surveyed using a computerized questionnaire within a 4-week assessment period. The PHQ-9 was tested for factorial structure, reliability, and correlations with other mental health-related measures.ResultsThe hierarchical model that included a general factor and three nested factors had a better fit, and such a hierarchical structure remained invariant across sex and age. Total omega value was 0.90 for the total scale and hierarchical omega values were 0.68 for the general factor, as well as 0.34, 0.38, and 0.44 for the respective nested factors. Moreover, PHQ-9 scores were significantly higher among women, although effect sizes of comparison of those sex differences were very small. Finally, the PHQ-9 scores correlated with multiple mental health indicators.DiscussionThe Spanish version of the PHQ-9 showed good psychometric properties among Ecuadorian college students. The hierarchical structure showed the best fit for the data, including not only a dominant general factor, but also the somatic, cognitive/affective and concentration/motor subcomponents. In conclusion, the PHQ-9 tool seems to represent an easy-to-implement screening questionnaire to design preventive programs for those Ecuadorian college students at risk of developing depressive disorders.

Cooperative learning encourages the development of interpersonal skills and motivates students to participate more actively in the teaching and learning process. This study explores the impact of cooperative learning on the academic goals influencing university students’ behavior and leading to the attainment of a series of academic objectives. To this end, a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design was used, with a sample of 509 university students from Preschool, Primary and Social Education undergraduate degree courses. Using the Academic Goals Questionnaire, pretest and posttest measures were taken via self-reports to evaluate three types of academic goals: learning goals, social reinforcement goals and achievement goals. The results show that cooperative learning is an effective tool for encouraging university students to develop academic goals that motivate them to fully engage with the tasks they are set in order to acquire knowledge and skills. In addition, when students are asked to work as part of a team on an autonomous basis without the structure and supervision necessary to ensure a minimum standard of cooperation, they display a greater tendency toward social reinforcement goals than toward learning and achievement goals. These findings contribute new knowledge to the conceptual framework on cooperative learning. Goals may be considered one of the most important variables influencing students’ learning and the use of cooperative learning techniques in university classrooms creates the necessary conditions for encouraging students to develop goals oriented toward learning.

It is more and more evident in the sociocultural dynamics the tendency to criticize the would-be substantial superiority of man over animal or even to invert the terms and take the latter as a being endowed with a vitality a lot more powerful than the human, which makes up for the undeniable limitations in rationality that have traditionally been the ground of the right to subject the animals to the human wants. Taking as a thread Herzog’s film, I propose to analyse this vindication of an animal vitality and even “superiority” over man because it implicates in my eyes the return to a totemic approach to existence that is completely incompatible with a historical comprehension of humanity. To proceed orderly, I divide this text into three sections: in the first one, I reflect on animality not as a biological or zoological phenomenon but as an existential determination that explains the complex relations that we have with animals and the undeniable interest that they arouse in us ; in the second section, I reflect upon the subjective approach to the lifeworld such as it appears in Herzog’s work, which contradicts the vindication of a community of being where an animal would be preferable to a person; in the third one, I dwell upon the artistic metamorphosis of some fragmentary shots into a picture with a sense of its own that, instead of showing the fusion of man and animal, shows the odd unbalance of the protagonist. In a colophon, I deal briefly with the questionable sense of all this to deepen our comprehension of animals, of nature and, last but not least, of ourselves.

Image has been considered an influential factor in tourists’ perceptions and evaluations of a destination. This paper analyzes the formation of the tourist destination image of Segóbriga Archaeological Park, a cultural destination of great heritage value, located in the province of Cuenca (Spain). The image is analyzed using a multidimensional approach, considering not only its cognitive and affective components, but also the unique-image component. The latter has received less attention in the literature and is a novelty in the context of this type of cultural destination. The results show that this component is essential to the overall image of an archaeological destination and that it is not influenced by information sources. PLS-SEM was used.

The theory of rhetorical figures in cinema is highly problematic, besides it can be considered as outdated as the semiotic theory of cinema, yet it is convenient to reexamine the idea of “cinematographic metaphor” in order to throw some light on the dominant idea of cinema as narrative medium. In this paper we will examine: the supposedly existing metaphor of urban and industrial man as sheep at the beginning of Chaplin’s film Modern Times; and the sequence of the awakening stone lion in Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin as metaphor of the proletarian revolt against czarism. We will arrive to the notion of a purely metaphoric film, which together with Zavattini’s ideal film showing 90 minutes in the life of a man to whom nothing happens, will helps us draw some conclusions about montage and narrativity in cinema. Especially interesting in this connection is the fact that symbolical shots as the mentioned ones are like description in literature, that is, they have nothing to do neither with the time of the story nor with the time of the discourse.

This paper will unfold the theoretical object mentioned in the title thereof without solution of continuity, but it will be convenient to take into account some points before beginning: firstly, we shall throughout uphold the difference existing between visual and narrative cinema, that is to say, on the one hand, a cinema whose utmost aim is to dazzle the spectator and fill his sight with images of the most variegated kind no matter how much the anecdotic content of the picture is feeble or plainly absurd and that can at least in principle dispense utterly with whatever narrative thread and, on the other hand, a cinema that tells a story or shows a situation with a certain dramatic coherence, which can of course be even more absurd than the products of the visual cmema but that at any rate founds its absurdity on a story whether symbolically or not and not on the sole strength of visual images. Secondly, we shall not deal with visual cinema since, according to a slant that will be explicit hereinbelow, it has played a secondary part in the amazing cultural transcendence of cinema as a whole, which in our opinion lies in having shaped all the world over a certain framework of existence beyond the weight of the particular traditions and also in havmg provided the average spectator with a sui generis experience of his own subjectivity, which has above all been the work of the narrative cinema, for the visual one has as such just started to develop together with a digital conception of image and with a cybemetic conception of communication. Thirdly, the difference at issue does not implicate any appraisal of the two species of cinema whereto we have alluded. Fourthly, there is a distmction between "narrative" or "story" and "literature" or "reflective story", whereon we shall briefly dwell at the end of the paper. Finally, what follows is more a personal reflection than the outcome of a comparison with someone's standpoints or theories, for we consider that the best way to show something is to focus it through the own experience, above all when the matter in question is within everyone's reach; in other words, we shall play the part of an average spectator, not of the critic's that focuses the phenomenon theoretically.

This paper will unfold the theoretical object mentioned in the title thereof without solution of continuity, but it will be convenient to take into account some points before beginning: firstly, we shall throughout uphold the difference existing between visual and narrative cinema, that is to say, on the one hand, a cinema whose utmost aim is to dazzle the spectator and fill his sight with images of the most variegated kind no matter how much the anecdotic content of the picture is feeble or plainly absurd and that can at least in principle dispense utterly with whatever narrative thread and, on the other hand, a cinema that tells a story or shows a situation with a certain dramatic coherence, which can of course be even more absurd than the products of the visual cmema but that at any rate founds its absurdity on a story whether symbolically or not and not on the sole strength of visual images. Secondly, we shall not deal with visual cinema since, according to a slant that will be explicit hereinbelow, it has played a secondary part in the amazing cultural transcendence of cinema as a whole, which in our opinion lies in having shaped all the world over a certain framework of existence beyond the weight of the particular traditions and also in havmg provided the average spectator with a sui generis experience of his own subjectivity, which has above all been the work of the narrative cinema, for the visual one has as such just started to develop together with a digital conception of image and with a cybemetic conception of communication. Thirdly, the difference at issue does not implicate any appraisal of the two species of cinema whereto we have alluded. Fourthly, there is a distmction between "narrative" or "story" and "literature" or "reflective story", whereon we shall briefly dwell at the end of the paper. Finally, what follows is more a personal reflection than the outcome of a comparison with someone's standpoints or theories, for we consider that the best way to show something is to focus it through the own experience, above all when the matter in question is within everyone's reach; in other words, we shall play the part of an average spectator, not of the critic's that focuses the phenomenon theoretically.

This paper will unfold the theoretical object mentioned in the title thereof without solution of continuity, but it will be convenient to take into account some points before beginning: firstly, we shall throughout uphold the difference existing between visual and narrative cinema, that is to say, on the one hand, a cinema whose utmost aim is to dazzle the spectator and fill his sight with images of the most variegated kind no matter how much the anecdotic content of the picture is feeble or plainly absurd and that can at least in principle dispense utterly with whatever narrative thread and, on the other hand, a cinema that tells a story or shows a situation with a certain dramatic coherence, which can of course be even more absurd than the products of the visual cmema but that at any rate founds its absurdity on a story whether symbolically or not and not on the sole strength of visual images. Secondly, we shall not deal with visual cinema since, according to a slant that will be explicit hereinbelow, it has played a secondary part in the amazing cultural transcendence of cinema as a whole, which in our opinion lies in having shaped all the world over a certain framework of existence beyond the weight of the particular traditions and also in havmg provided the average spectator with a sui generis experience of his own subjectivity, which has above all been the work of the narrative cinema, for the visual one has as such just started to develop together with a digital conception of image and with a cybemetic conception of communication. Thirdly, the difference at issue does not implicate any appraisal of the two species of cinema whereto we have alluded. Fourthly, there is a distmction between "narrative" or "story" and "literature" or "reflective story", whereon we shall briefly dwell at the end of the paper. Finally, what follows is more a personal reflection than the outcome of a comparison with someone's standpoints or theories, for we consider that the best way to show something is to focus it through the own experience, above all when the matter in question is within everyone's reach; in other words, we shall play the part of an average spectator, not of the critic's that focuses the phenomenon theoretically.