Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and sixteen languages. Overall, participants tended (...) to ascribe moral responsibility whether the perpetrator lacked sourcehood or alternate possibilities. However, for American, European, and Middle Eastern participants, being the ultimate source of one’s actions promoted perceptions of free will and control as well as ascriptions of blame and punishment. By contrast, being the source of one’s actions was not particularly salient to Asian participants. Finally, across cultures, participants exhibiting greater cognitive reflection were more likely to view free will as incompatible with causal determinism. We discuss these findings in light of documented cultural differences in the tendency toward dispositional versus situational attributions. (shrink)

In the remainder of this article, we will disarm an important motivation for epistemic contextualism and interest-relative invariantism. We will accomplish this by presenting a stringent test of whether there is a stakes effect on ordinary knowledge ascription. Having shown that, even on a stringent way of testing, stakes fail to impact ordinary knowledge ascription, we will conclude that we should take another look at classical invariantism. Here is how we will proceed. Section 1 lays out some limitations of previous (...) research on stakes. Section 2 presents our study and concludes that there is little evidence for a substantial stakes effect. Section 3 responds to objections. The conclusion clears the way for classical invariantism. (shrink)

This article examines whether people share the Gettier intuition (viz. that someone who has a true justified belief that p may nonetheless fail to know that p) in 24 sites, located in 23 countries (counting Hong Kong as a distinct country) and across 17 languages. We also consider the possible influence of gender and personality on this intuition with a very large sample size. Finally, we examine whether the Gettier intuition varies across people as a function of their disposition to (...) engage in “reflective” thinking. (shrink)

Investigadores pertenecientes a la tradición de la psicología del desarrollo cognitivo han llevado a cabo estudios que sugieren que existe un vínculo entre la percepción de daño y el dominio moral. Frente a esta propuesta unificadora del dominio moral han surgido críticas desde la psicología cultural. Haidt publicó en 1993 uno de los estudios más influyentes en esta línea, afirmando haber encontrado evidencia que sugiere la existencia de dominios morales no vinculados a la noción de daño. En este artículo se (...) hará una presentación general del debate en torno al contenido del dominio moral. Luego presentaremos y evaluaremos el estudio de Haidt et al.. Por último, presentamos resultados experimentales que cuestionan las conclusiones de ese estudio y sugieren que el debate sigue abierto. Researchers belonging to the tradition of cognitive-developmental psychology have suggested studies that the perception of harm is central to the Moral Domain. This unifying proposal of the Moral Domain has provoked the criticisms of researchers working in Cultural Psychology. Haidt published in 1993 a very influential study, claiming to have found evidence for the existence of Moral Domains not linked to the notion of harm. In this paper, we briefly present the debate around the content of the moral domain. We then critically examine the study by Haidt et al.. Finally, we present experimental results that question the conclusions of their study and suggest that the debate is still open. (shrink)

BackgroundMoral distress (MD) is the psychological damage caused when people are forced to witness or carry out actions which go against their fundamental moral values. The main objective was to evaluate the prevalence and predictive factors associated with MD among health professionals during the pandemic and to determine its causes.MethodsA regional, observational and cross-sectional study in a sample of 566 professionals from the Public Health Service of Andalusia (68.7% female; 66.9% physicians) who completed the MMD-HP-SPA scale to determine the level (...) of MD (0-432 points). Five dimensions were used: i) Health care; ii) Therapeutic obstinacy-futility, iii) Interpersonal relations of the Healthcare Team, iv) External pressure; v) Covering up of medical malpractice.ResultsThe mean level of MD was 127.3 (SD=66.7; 95% CI 121.8-132.8), being higher in female (135 vs. 110.3; p<0.01), in nursing professionals (137.8 vs. 122; p<0.01) and in the community setting (136.2 vs. 118.3; p<0.001), with these variables showing statistical significance in the multiple linear regression model (p<0.001; r2=0.052). With similar results, the multiple logistic regression model showed being female was a higher risk factor (OR=2.27; 95% CI 1.5-3.4; p<0.001). 70% of the sources of MD belonged to the dimension "Health Care" and the cause "Having to attend to more patients than I can safely attend to" obtained the highest average value (Mean=9.8; SD=4.9).ConclusionsFemale, nursing professionals, and those from the community setting presented a higher risk of MD. The healthcare model needs to implement an ethical approach to public health issues to alleviate MD among its professionals. (shrink)

Las posibilidades educativas que ofrece la realidad virtual inmersiva (RVI) son actualmente incuestionables, si bien aún se cuenta con escasas propuestas que estén diseñadas expresamente por y para el aula. En esta contribución se presentan los primeros pasos de una interesante iniciativa diseñada por la Fundación Integra (Región de Murcia) entre las que se encuentra el desarrollo de un videojuego de RVI de temática histórica ambientado en el Teatro Romano de Cartagena y al que se juega con gafas Oculus Rift (...) o HTC VIVE. El videojuego ha sido diseñado a modo de serious game y se completa con una secuencia didáctica que permite su integración en el aula. A pesar de que aún no se ha realizado la fase de evaluación de los aprendizajes, la observación de los primeros prepilotajes del juego con estudiantes parecen mostrar su valor como elemento para el aprendizaje y favorecer un acercamiento motivador a la historia. (shrink)

Background: COVID-19 has taken many lives worldwide and due to this, millions of persons are in grief. When the grief process lasts longer than 6 months, the person is in risk of developing Complicated Grief Disorder. The CGD is related to serious health consequences. To reduce the probability of developing CGD a preventive intervention could be applied. In developing countries like Mexico, the psychological services are scarce, self-applied interventions could provide support to solve this problem and reduce the health impact (...) even after the pandemic has already finished.Aims: To design and implement a self-applied intervention composed of 12 modules focused on the decrease of the risk of developing CGD, and increasing the life quality, and as a secondary objective to reduce the symptomatology of anxiety, depression, and increase of sleep quality. The Intervention Duelo COVID follows the principles of User Experience and is designed according to the needs and desires of a sample of the objective participants, to increase the adherence to the self-applied intervention, considered one of the main weaknesses of online interventions.Methods: A Randomized Controlled Trial will be conducted from the 22nd of December of 2020 to the first of June 2021. The participants will be assigned to an intervention with elements of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Mindfulness and Positive Psychology. The control group will be a wait-list condition, that will receive the intervention 1.5–2 months after the pre-measurement were taken. The Power Size Calculation conducted through G*Power indicated the need for a total of 42 participants, which will be divided by 21 participants in each group. The platform will be delivered through responsive design assuring with this that the intervention will adapt to the screen size of cellphones, tablets, and computers.Ethics and Dissemination: The study counts with the approval of the Research Ethics Committee of the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez, México, and it is registered in Clinical Trials. The article is sent and registered in clinical trials before the recruitment started. The results will be reported in future conferences, scientific publications, and media. (shrink)

ObjectiveTest anxiety (TA) is a construct that has scarcely been studied based on Lang’s three-dimensional model of anxiety. The objective of this article is to investigate the repercussion of sociodemographic and academic variables on different responses for each component of anxiety and for the type of test in adolescent students.MethodA total of 1181 students from 12 to 18 years old (M= 14.7 and SD = 1.8) participated, of whom 569 were boys (48.2%) and 612 girls (51.8%). A sociodemographic questionnaire and (...) theCuestionario de Ansiedad ante los examenes-Adaptado (CAEX-A)[Test Anxiety Questionnaire-Adapted] an adaptation for Spanish secondary school levels (ESO) and Bachillerato were administered.ResultsGirls scored higher on the cognitive and physiological components of TA than boys, the intensity of the physiological response increasing with age. Bachillerato level students reported more physiological anxiety than those of ESO level. Students with better marks in the previous year presented more anxiety in the cognitive component, while those who obtained the lower mark presented higher anxiety values in the behavioral component. Participants reported that the types of tests that cause them more anxiety were oral tests in front of the class, oral presentation in front of a panel, and mathematics tests.ConclusionAdolescents show a differential response of TA based on the physiological, cognitive and motor components, mediated by the variables of gender, age, grade, academic performance and type of exam. These results serve to design specific intervention programs to manage anxiety in situations of academic assessment. (shrink)

Presentamos 2 casos de docentes de matemáticas activos, mientras estudian una Maestría en Matemática Educativa en línea y asincrónica; y las complicaciones que vivieron con el cierre de las escuelas donde imparten clases debido a la pandemia del COVID-19. El cambio de clases presenciales a clases en línea les exigió aprender nuevas herramientas y desarrollar nuevas habilidades, obligándolos a pasar más tiempo preparando sus clases y menos tiempo en sus estudios de maestría. El resultado fue que, en lugar de graduarse (...) en 4 semestres, los estudiantes tardaron 6 semestres en completar su investigación y escribir su tesis. (shrink)

Some doctors and nurses played a key role in Nazism. They were responsible for the sterilization and murder of people with disabilities. Nazi doctors used concentration camp inmates as guinea pigs in medical experiments that had military or racial objectives. What we have learnt about the behaviour of doctors and nurses during the Nazi period enables us to reflect on several issues in present-day medicine. In some authors' opinions, the teaching of the medical aspects of the Holocaust could be a (...) new model for education relating to professionalism, Human Rights, Bioethics and the respect of diversity. Teaching Medicine and the Holocaust could be a way of informing doctors and nurses of violations of Ethics in the past. Moreover, a Study Trip to Holocaust and Medicine related sites has a strong pedagogical value. Visiting Holocaust related sites, T4 centres and the places where medical experiments were carried out, has a special meaning for medical students. Additionally, tolerance, anti-discrimination, and the value of human life can be both taught and learned through this curriculum. The following article recounts our experiences of organizing and supervising a study trip with a group of medical students to some Holocaust and medicine-related sites in Berlin and Hadamar. The study tour included lectures at universities in Düsseldorf and Berlin. (shrink)

Studies with sacrificial moral dilemmas capture human variation in moral attitudes towards an extreme case of moral conflict between utilitarian and deontological principles. In this moral task, th...

In a recent Mind & Society article, Evans (2005) argues for the social and communicative function of conditional statements. In a related article, we argue for satisficing algorithms for mapping conditional statements onto social domains (Eur J Cogn Psychol 16:807–823,2004). The purpose of the present commentary is to integrate these two arguments by proposing a revised pragmatic cues algorithm for pragmatic conditionals.

In the sacrificial moral dilemma task, participants have to morally judge an action that saves several lives at the cost of killing one person. According to the dual process corrective model of moral judgment suggested by Greene and collaborators (2001; 2004; 2008), cognitive control is necessary to override the intuitive, deontological force of the norm against killing and endorse the utilitarian perspective. However, a conflict model has been proposed more recently to account for part of the evidence in favor of (...) dual process models in moral and social decision making. In this model, conflict, moral responses and reaction times arise from the interplay between individually variable motivational factors and objective parameters intrinsic to the choices offered. To further explore this model in the moral dilemma task, we confronted three different samples with a set of dilemmas representing an objective gradient of utilitarian pull, and collected data on moral judgment and on conflict in a 4-point scale. Collapsing all cases along the gradient, participants in each sample felt less conflicted on average when they gave extreme responses (1 or 4 in the UR scale). They felt less conflicted on average when responding to either the low- or the high-pull cases. The correlation between utilitarian responses and conflict was positive in the low-pull and negative in the high-pull cases. This pattern of data suggests that moral responses to sacrificial dilemmas are driven by decision conflict, which in turn depends on the interplay between an objective gradient of utilitarian pull and the moral motivations which regulate individual responsiveness to this gradient. (shrink)

Altruism is a central concept in evolutionary biology. Evolutionary biologists still disagree about its meaning (E.O. Wilson 2005; Fletcher et al. 2006; D.S. Wilson 2008; Foster et al. 2006a, b; West et al. 2007a, 2008). Semantic disagreement appears to be quite robust and not easily overcome by attempts at clarification, suggesting that substantive conceptual issues lurk in the background. Briefly, group selection theorists define altruism as any trait that makes altruists losers to selfish traits within groups, and makes groups of (...) altruists fitter than groups of non-altruists. Inclusive fitness theorists reject a definition based on within- and between-group fitness. Traits are altruistic only if they cause a direct and absolute fitness loss to the donor. The latter definition is more restrictive and rejects as cases of altruism behaviors that are accepted by the former. Fletcher and Doebeli (2009) recently proposed a simple, direct and individually based fitness approach, which they claim returns to first principles: carriers of the genotype of interest “must, on average, end up with more net direct fitness benefits than average population members.” This seductively simple proposal uses the concept of assortment to explain how diverse kinds of altruists end up on average with more net fitness than their non-altruistic rivals. In this paper I shall argue that their approach implies a new concept of altruism that contrasts with and improves on the concept of the inclusive fitness approach. (shrink)

In line with recent efforts to empirically study the folk concept of weakness of will, we examine two issues in this paper: (1) How is weakness of will attribution [WWA] influenced by an agent’s violations of best judgment and/or resolution, and by the moral valence of the agent’s action? (2) Do any of these influences depend on the cognitive dispositions of the judging individual? We implemented a factorial 2x2x2 between–subjects design with judgment violation, resolution violation, and action valence as independent (...) variables, and measured participants’ cognitive dispositions using Frederick’s Cognitive Reflection Test [CRT]. We conclude that intuitive and reflective individuals have two different concepts of weakness of will. The study supports this claim by showing that: a) the WWA of intuitive subjects is influenced by the action’s (and probably also the commitment’s) moral valence, while the WWA of reflective subjects is not; b) judgment violation plays a small role in the WWA of intuitive subjects, while reflective subjects treat resolution violation as the only relevant trait. Data were collected among students at two different universities. All subjects (N=710) answered the CRT. A three-way ANOVA was first conducted on the whole sample and then on the intuitive and reflective groups separately. This study suggests that differences in cognitive dispositions can significantly impact the folk understanding of philosophical concepts, and thus suggests that analysis of folk concepts should take cognitive dispositions into account. (shrink)

En la actualidad, aún se desconoce el verdadero alcance de la vasta cultura de Lope de Vega, pues, aunque se sabe que fue un gran lector, que legó más de 1500 libros, sus títulos se han perdido a lo largo de la historia. No obstante, en sus obras trasciende una serie de textos que contribuyeron a su formación. En el presente trabajo se analiza La Arcadia, considerada la novela pastoril más erudita del Siglo de Oro, desde la perspectiva de los (...) agentes terapéuticos. En esta obra se mencionan remedios de procedencia herbal, de procedencia mineral y también de procedencia animal. Los resultados confirman que Lope de Vega pudo utilizar una serie de textos científicos en sus citas sobre la materia terapéutica. Entre ellos cabe destacar a Andrés Laguna y su Dioscórides y Plinio el Viejo, cuya Historia Natural pudo haber consultado como fuente primaria, a través de alguna traducción comentada, como la de Gerónimo de Huerta o a través de alguna otra obra basada en ella, como el opúsculo de Constantino Castriota, pues, en este último caso, se encuentran párrafos muy similares y, en algunos casos, casi literales. Nowadays, the true extent of the vast culture of Lope de Vega is still largely unknown. Although it is known that he was a great reader, who bequeathed more than 1500 books, his titles have been lost throughout history. However, a series of texts that contributed to his education become known in his works. In the present paper, La Arcadia, considered the most erudite pastoral romance of Spanish Golden Age, is analyzed from the therapeutic perspective. Remedies of herbal origin, of mineral origin and also of animal origin are mentioned in this novel. The results achieved confirm that Lope de Vega was able to use a series of scientific texts in his quotations on the therapeutic subject. Among them, it is worth mentioning Andres Laguna, and Pliny the Elder, whose Natural History could have been consulted as a primary source, through some commented translation, such as that of Geronimo de Huerta, or through some other work based on it, like Constantino Castriota's opuscule. In the latter case, there are very similar and, in some cases, almost literal paragraphs. (shrink)

We propose two adjustments to the classic view of shared intentionality as based on conceptual-level cognitive skills. The first one takes into account that infants and young children display this capacity, but lack conceptual-level cognitive skills. The second one seeks to integrate cognitive and non-cognitive skills into that capacity. This second adjustment is motivated by two facts. First, there is an enormous difference between human infants and our closest living primate relatives with respect to the range and scale of goal (...) sharing and cooperation. Second, recent evidence suggests that there are hardly any differences in their mental-state attribution capacities. We argue therefore that our distinctively human capacity for shared intentionality is due to the effect on our cognitive skills of a practical attitude. Accordingly, we propose that cognitive and practical skills, working together, produce our capacity for shared intentionality, and review evidence suggesting that the practical skill in question consists in the ability to adopt an attitude of equality. (shrink)

Sober and Wilson have recently claimed that evolutionary theory can do what neither philosophy nor experimental psychology have been able to, namely, "break the deadlock" in the egoism vs. altruism debate with an argument based on the reliability of altruistic motivation. I analyze both their reliability argument and the experimental evidence of social psychology in favor of altruism in terms of the folk-psychological "laws" and inference patterns underlying them, and conclude that they both rely on the same patterns. I expose (...) the confusions that have led Sober and Wilson to defend a reliability argument while rejecting the experimental evidence of social psychology. (shrink)

Recent developments in evolutionary game theory argue the superiority of punishment over reciprocity as accounts of large-scale human cooperation. I introduce a distinction between a behavioral and a psychological perspective on reciprocity and punishment to question this view. I examine a narrow and a wide version of a psychological mechanism for reciprocity and conclude that a narrow version is clearly distinguishable from punishment, but inadequate for humans; whereas a wide version is applicable to humans but indistinguishable from punishment. The mechanism (...) for reciprocity in humans emerges as a meta-norm that governs both retaliation and punishment. I make predictions open to empirical investigation to confirm or disconfirm this view. (shrink)

Outside Western, predominantly secular‐liberal environments, norms restricting bodily and sexual conduct are widespread. Moralization in the so‐called purity domain has been treated as evidence that some putative violations are victimless. However, respondents themselves disagree: They often report that private yet indecent acts incur self‐harm, or harm to one's family and the wider community—a result which we replicate in Study 1. We then distinguish two cognitive processes that could generate a link between harmfulness and immorality, and recreate them in Studies 2 (...) and 3: Colombian and British participants were randomly assigned to either reflect (decide whether acts are harmful and reconsider their initial moral judgments) or rationalize (decide whether acts are immoral and reconsider their initial harmfulness beliefs). In both countries, reflection promoted opposition to unjust, but not impure, behavior. Additionally, in both countries, ruminating on the moral status of impure acts elevated beliefs in the acts' harmfulness. We conclude by suggesting that rationalization aggravates, while reflection mitigates, intergroup disagreement regarding putative violations of purity and decency. (shrink)

En la filosofía kantiana la explicación de los organismos, como ejemplos de diseño complejo, es un problema de difícil solución. Como entidades materiales deberían ser explicables por leyes mecánicas. Por su diseño, exigen una explicación por causas finales. Ambas explicaciones son inaceptables. Per..

Is morality biologically altruistic? Does it imply a disadvantage in the struggle for existence? A positive answer puts morality at odds with natural selection, unless natural selection operates at the level of groups. In this case, a trait that is good for groups though bad for individuals can evolve. Sociobiologists reject group selection and have adopted one of two horns of a dilemma. Either morality is based on an egoistic calculus, compatible with natural selection; or morality continues tied to psychological (...) and biological altruism but not as a product of natural selection. The dilemma denies a third possibility—that psychological altruism evolves as a biologically selfish trait. I discuss the classical treatments of the paradox by Charles Darwin and Robert Trivers, focusing on the role they attribute to social emotions. The upshot is that both Darwin and Trivers sketch a natural-selection process relying on innate emotional mechanisms that render morality adaptive for individuals as well as for groups. I give additional reasons for viewing it as a form of natural, instead of only cultural, selection. (shrink)

Los sociobiólogos han defendido una posición "calvinista" que se resume en la siguiente fórmula: si la selección natural explica las actitudes morales, no hay altruismo genuino en la moral; si la moral es altruista, entonces la selección natural no puede explicarla. En este ensayo desenmascaro los presupuestos erróneos de esta posición y defiendo que el altruismo como equidad no es incompatible con la selección natural. Rechazo una concepción hobbesiana de la moral, pero sugiero su empleo en la interpretación de la (...) psicología de los primates no humanos y en un modelo de progresión evolutiva que habría llevado a la moralidad como adaptación pasando por la razón instrumental. /// Sociobiologists have endorsed a "Calvinist" position captured in the following formula: if natural selection explains moral attitudes, morality is not genuinely altruistic; if morality is altruistic, then natural selection cannot explain it. I expose the false presuppositions behind this claim and argüe that altruism as fairness is not incompatible with natural selection. I reject a Hobbesian view of morality as an instrumental endorsement of fairness norms, but suggest its use to interpret primate psychology and to model an evolutionary progression ending in moral capacities as adaptations. (shrink)

The beginning of university life can be a stressful event for students. The close social relationships that they can experience can have positive effects on their well-being. The objective of this paper is to estimate the effect of perceived social support on the changes of the hedonic and eudaimonic well-being of Chilean university students during the transition from the first to the second academic year. Overall, 205 students participated with an average age of 19.14 years, evaluated during their first academic (...) year and the succeeding one. For the evaluation of perceived social support, the Spanish version of the Perceived Social Support Questionnaire “MSPSS” was used, and PERMA-profiler was used to measure hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Changes through the time of hedonic well-being and social support and the correlations between the variables were analyzed. Changes in the perception of social support were analyzed according to four categories of hedonic well-being. The prediction of social support for eudaimonic well-being was evaluated. Results indicated that the perception of students’ social support did not change over time. Statistically significant differences were found in hedonic well-being scores in the two measurements, being significantly higher in the first measurement than in the second one. More than 50% of the participants presented a positive balance of affections. The perception of social support is associated with the two types of well-being. Students who had a high balance of affections had a greater perception of general social support than the groups of positive evolution of affections and a low balance of affections. In the case of the friends and family support dimensions, the perception in the high-balance group of affections concerning the low-scale group is greater. Improving the perception of social support increases the eudaimonic well-being of university students. The perception of support that students had during the beginning of their university life benefits their general well-being, which contributes to their mental health. (shrink)

Purpose: This systematic review aimed to analyze the impact that the COVID-19 lockdown had on the amount of physical activity performed by university students.Materials and Methods: A systematic electronic search for studies providing information regarding physical activity levels pre and during COVID-19 pandemic in university students was performed up to 20th October 2020 in the databases Cochrane Library, PubMed, SPORTDiscus, and Web of Science. The risk of bias of external validity quality of included studies was assessed by means of those (...) the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. The quality of the evidence for main outcomes was graded using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation approach.Results and Conclusions: A total of 10 studies were selected. Physical activity levels were assessed by means of questionnaires and accelerometer. Risk of bias was regarded as low and high in six and four investigations, respectively. The quality of evidence was downgraded to low. A significant reduction of physical activity levels were observed in 9 studies. Compared to pre-lockdown values, five studies showed a reduction of light/mild physical activity between 32.5 and 365.5%, while seven studies revealed a reduction of high/vigorous physical activity between 2.9 and 52.8%. Walking, moderate, vigorous, and total physical activity levels have been reduced during the COVID-19 pandemic confinements in university students of different countries. Despite of the reductions, those who met the current minimum PA recommendations before the lockdown generally met the recommendations also during the confinements. (shrink)

It is not yet clear which response behavior requires self-regulatory effort in the moral dilemma task. Previous research has proposed that utilitarian responses require cognitive control, but subsequent studies have found inconsistencies with the empirical predictions of that hypothesis. In this paper we treat participants’ sensitivity to utilitarian gradients as a measure of performance. We confronted participants (N = 82) with a set of five dilemmas evoking a gradient of mean utilitarian responses in a 4-point scale and collected data on (...) heart rate variability and on utilitarian responses. We found positive correlations between tonic and phasic HRV and sensitivity to the utilitarian gradient in the high tonic group, but not in the low tonic group. Moreover, the low tonic group misplaced a scenario with a selfish incentive at the high end of the gradient. Results suggest that performance is represented by sensitivity correlated with HRV and accompanied with a reasonable placement of individual scenarios within the gradient. (shrink)

Una literatura creciente en neuropsicología estudia el juicio moral aplicando dilemas morales a personas con daños neuronales o con rasgos de personalidad antisocial; y parece confirmar una tendencia al juicio utilitarista contra-intuitivo, es decir, estas personas aprueban el sacrificio de un inocente para salvar varias vidas. Argumentamos que las evidencias encontradas no respaldan la hipótesis de dos módulos morales (Greene et al. 2004), sino más bien una disfunción en la capacidad empática o en el procesamiento de emociones, que apoyaría una (...) psicología moral de corte Humeano. Abogamos, además, por ampliar el explanandum: del juicio utilitarista contra-intuitivo al juicio moral contra-intuitivo sin más. Esto permitiría investigar experimentalmente un amplio rango de variables afectadas por disfunciones en la capacidad para la empatía. (shrink)

Classical evolutionary explanations of social behavior classify behaviors from their effects, not from their underlying mechanisms. Here lies a potential objection against the view that morality can be explained by such models, e.g. Trivers’reciprocal altruism. However, evolutionary theory reveals a growing interest in the evolution of psychological mechanisms and factors them in as selective forces. This opens up perspectives for evolutionary approaches to problems that have traditionally worried moral philosophers. Once the ability to mind-read is factored-in among the relevant variables (...) in the evolution of moral abilities and counted among the selection pressures that have plausibly shaped our nature as moral agents, an evolutionary approach can contribute, so I will argue, to the solution of a long-standing debate in moral philosophy and psychology concerning the basic motivation for moral behavior. (shrink)

El conocimiento histórico –entendido como un proceso metacognitivo de asimilación constructiva sobre el pasado para explicar fenómenos– comporta un análisis del impacto y la transcendencia de determinados acontecimientos y procesos históricos, en cuya comprensión y valoración influye el concepto de relevancia histórica. Desde esta perspectiva es necesario implementar propuestas de evaluación sólidas, vinculadas al desarrollo competencial. El objetivo de este estudio es diseñar una guía de caracterización de los instrumentos evaluativos –actividades y ejercicios– más utilizados por el profesorado de Historia, (...) con el fin de optimizar los procesos de evaluación de esta competencia mediante una serie de descriptores estructurales, competenciales y transferenciales. Estos indicadores de pertinencia pueden marcar el camino de aquellos docentes que deseen perfeccionar su manera de evaluar lo históricamente determinante. En conclusión, este innovador planteamiento supone un proceso de formación continua del profesorado que contribuye a la mejora de la calidad educativa. (shrink)

Evolutionary ethics debunks moral realism – or value realism in general – but this is not the same as debunking the authority of moral claims, for moral realism is not the only possible explanation of the source of moral authority. However, a few influential evolutionary philosophers do believe that evolution debunks not just moral realism, but morality, period. My main purpose in this paper is to highlight the difference between these two versions of debunking, and to extricate evolutionary theory from (...) being publicly associated with debunking morality, period. Briefly summarized, the latter view is linked to the claim that unless one believes in the objectivity of moral injunctions, the experience of their peculiar authority will not be available. This claim is an unexpected survival of a basic tenet of moral realism, namely, that moral norms derive their authority from objective realities. It is unfortunate to see this claim survive in evolutionary ethicists. They should rather embrace the view that the universal authority of moral norms is vindicated via a set of evolved, socially conditioned, psychological constraints on self-interest, none of which include a belief in the mind-independent objectivity of value. (shrink)

Diversos estudios han concluido que los pacientes con daño en la Corteza Frontal –CF– o Corteza Prefrontal Ventromedial –CPV– muestran una disposición a herir directamente a otra persona con el fin de salvar varias vidas en sus respuestas a los “dilemas morales personales”, revelando una posible carencia de empatía. No obstante, cuando evalúan conductas carentes de empatía sin justificación utilitarista, sus respuestas son normales. Defendemos aquí que los pacientes sufren una deficiencia cognitiva relacionada con la hipótesis de marcador somático de (...) Damasio y con juicios de valor. Criticamos la hipótesis del “paciente utilitarista”, que se ha atrincherado en la neurociencia cognitiva. (shrink)

La filosofía se ha preocupado desde susorígenes por el sentido de la vida humana. Estapreocupación es la que subyace a la "Filosofíade la Historia", disciplina que surge en laépoca moderna con la pregunta por la existencia o inexistencia de un progreso en la historia. Autores como Kant consideran que el progreso,para poder valer como tal, ha de aconteceren el terreno de lo moral, sobre todo en sus manifestaciones sociales externas, es decir, enla realización del derecho natural en las formasconcretas de (...) convivencia humana. En su Filosofíade la historia busca Kant argumentosracionales en favor de la existencia de unprogreso de este tipo. El principal obstáculo asus argumentos es la existencia del mal o delo irracional. Kant intenta superarlo argumentandoen favor de una concepción teleológicade la historia, según la cual la humanidadprogresa del mal hacia el bien. En el presente artículo ensayo una reconstrucción de los principales pasos de su argumentación. (shrink)