En el presente artículo nos proponemos describir la racionalidad subyacente a las estrategias de adaptación al cambio ambiental global de los agentes poderosos de la vitivinicultura en Mendoza, Argentina. En términos estrictamente físicos, el Cambio Ambiental Global se presenta como un aumento de las temperaturas promedio a nivel global, las repercusiones de este cambio serán diferentes según sea la zona geográfica del planeta que se considere. En el oasis norte de la Provincia de Mendoza se espera una reducción en los (...) caudales del Río que lo alimenta. Frente a esta situación, los actores poderosos de la vitivinicultura mendocina han optado por estrategias de adaptación tendientes a profundizar la racionalidad instrumental, característica de estos grupos, para hacer frente al cambio ambiental global: obtener aguas en mayor cantidad y calidad a través del traslado de sus explotaciones a zonas de montaña ubicadas aguas arriba del río y búsqueda de mercados internacionales, entre otras. (shrink)

We study randomizations of definable groups. Whenever the underlying theory is stable or NIP and the group is definably amenable, we show its randomization is definably connected.

Although eye tracking has been used extensively to assess cognitions for static stimuli, recent research suggests that the link between gaze and cognition may be more tenuous for dynamic stimuli such as videos. Part of the difficulty in convincingly linking gaze with cognition is that in dynamic stimuli, gaze position is strongly influenced by exogenous cues such as object motion. However, tests of the gaze‐cognition link in dynamic stimuli have been done on only a limited range of stimuli often characterized (...) by highly organized motion. Also, analyses of cognitive contrasts between participants have been mostly been limited to categorical contrasts among small numbers of participants that may have limited the power to observe more subtle influences. We, therefore, tested for cognitive influences on gaze for screen‐captured instructional videos, the contents of which participants were tested on. Between‐participant scanpath similarity predicted between‐participant similarity in responses on test questions, but with imperfect consistency across videos. We also observed that basic gaze parameters and measures of attention to centers of interest only inconsistently predicted learning, and that correlations between gaze and centers of interest defined by other‐participant gaze and cursor movement did not predict learning. It, therefore, appears that the search for eye movement indices of cognition during dynamic naturalistic stimuli may be fruitful, but we also agree that the tyranny of dynamic stimuli is real, and that links between eye movements and cognition are highly dependent on task and stimulus properties. (shrink)

Does the Ship of Theseus present a genuine puzzle about persistence due to conflicting intuitions based on “continuity of form” and “continuity of matter” pulling in opposite directions? Philosophers are divided. Some claim that it presents a genuine puzzle but disagree over whether there is a solution. Others claim that there is no puzzle at all since the case has an obvious solution. To assess these proposals, we conducted a cross-cultural study involving nearly 3,000 people across twenty-two countries, speaking eighteen (...) different languages. Our results speak against the proposal that there is no puzzle at all and against the proposal that there is a puzzle but one that has no solution. Our results suggest that there are two criteria—“continuity of form” and “continuity of matter”— that constitute our concept of persistence and these two criteria receive different weightings in settling matters concerning persistence. (shrink)

En este trabajo, proporcionamos diversas estrategias para el fomento de la motivación y participación del alumnado en la creación de vídeos educativos sobre resolución de problemas de olimpiadas matemáticas, compartiendo sus propuestas en plataformas virtuales. Asimismo, presentamos metodologías que permiten el desarrollo de habilidades lingüísticas, de resolución de problemas y de iniciativa de los estudiantes mediante la creación de sus propios vídeos, así como un uso práctico de la plataforma Genial.ly para la disposición de múltiples formatos (audiovisual, textual, etc.) que (...) favorezcan la inclusión de personas con necesidades auditivas. (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)

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)

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)

Since at least Hume and Kant, philosophers working on the nature of aesthetic judgment have generally agreed that common sense does not treat aesthetic judgments in the same way as typical expressions of subjective preferences—rather, it endows them with intersubjective validity, the property of being right or wrong regardless of disagreement. Moreover, this apparent intersubjective validity has been taken to constitute one of the main explananda for philosophical accounts of aesthetic judgment. But is it really the case that most people (...) spontaneously treat aesthetic judgments as having intersubjective validity? In this paper, we report the results of a cross‐cultural study with over 2,000 respondents spanning 19 countries. Despite significant geographical variations, these results suggest that most people do not treat their own aesthetic judgments as having intersubjective validity. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for theories of aesthetic judgment and the purpose of aesthetics in general. (shrink)

Is behavioral integration a necessary feature of belief in folk psychology? Our data from over 5,000 people across 26 samples, spanning 22 countries suggests that it is not. Given the surprising cross-cultural robustness of our findings, we argue that the types of evidence for the ascription of a belief are, at least in some circumstances, lexicographically ordered: assertions are first taken into account, and when an agent sincerely asserts that p, nonlinguistic behavioral evidence is disregarded. In light of this, we (...) take ourselves to have discovered a universal principle governing the ascription of beliefs in folk psychology. (shrink)

This work approaches views on the preservation of industrial housing heritage in Malaga, Spain, and the pressure caused by its recent urban renovation. The aims of the research include geographic space analysis and assessing how archaeological recording and archaeometry, specifically archaeometallurgy, can contribute to the preservation of information about structures and materials that continuously disappear from urban contexts. The results constitute an initial beginning to expand a comparative archaeological database for the city. The ideas and procedures presented here are expected (...) to provide some guidance for generating further research from urban, architectural, archaeological, and geographical perspectives. (shrink)

According to a recent philosophical claim, “works of fiction are thought experiments” (Elgin 2007: 47), though there are relevant differences, as the role of spoilers shows—they can ruin a novel but improve the understanding we can gain through a thought experiment. In the present article I will analyze the role of spoilers and argue for a more differentiated perspective on the relation between literature and thought experiments. I will start with a short discussion of different perspectives on thought experiments and (...) argue that the mental-model view and the conception of games of make-believe are most promising for developing the present analogy. Then I will assess the similarities and differences between thought experiments and other works of fiction. I will focus on the role of spoilers and, more generally, on the foretaste context, of which they are part. This context guides readers of literary works of art to draw their attention to the literary and aesthetic quality of the text. In the case of thought experiments, on the other hand, it (i) prompts them to accept the presence of fictional elements in worldly-cognitive works and (ii) draws their attention towards cognitively relevant elements of the story. A discussion of Borges’ Pierre Menard in the last part will show that literary works of art become thought experiments if they are embedded in an appropriate foretaste context. Spoilers, thus, unveil that even works which—due to their length or plenty of detail—usually are not considered thought experiments, can perform similar cognitive functions. (shrink)

This article proposes a periodisation of the narrative work of Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986). Two meta-literary notions guide the first period: that of an absolute text and that of a text governed by chance, in which the former is linked to the Kabbalah and the latter to Gnosticism. The next period, which is the focal topic of this study, is governed by the notion of figure in the biblical sense of the term. Borges introduces this notion in his 1949 (...) essay "The Mirror Of Enigmas" that summons texts by Léon Bloy, Thomas de Quincey and Novalis. Through these influences, Borges sketches a figurative poetics whose apocalyptic character situates the work thus produced in the indecision between the eschatology and the scatology. (shrink)

A central topic in the scholarship of Laʒamon's Brut has been the apparent inconsistency between its verse style, in many ways reminiscent of classical Old English verse, and its content, much of which vilifies the first generations of Anglo-Saxon invaders in Britain and praises their enemies the Britons. Jorge Luis Borges, an admirer of Old English poetry and Laʒamon, sets this opposition in the strongest possible terms: “Layamon sang with fervor about the ancient battles of the Britons against the (...) Saxon invaders, as if he were not a Saxon and as if Britons and Saxons had not been, since Hastings, conquered by the Normans.” He goes on to note how little we know about the author of Brut and the circumstances of its composition, and concludes by calling Laʒamon a “forgotten man, who abhorred his Saxon heritage with Saxon vigor, and who was the last Saxon poet and never knew it.”. (shrink)

Este artículo estudia los manuscritos inéditos de las clases sobre Oscar Wilde que dictó Jorge Luis Borges en el Colegio Libre de Estudios Superiores entre julio y agosto de 1950. La primera sección muestra un esbozo de la labor docente de Borges en este período y muestra cómo una clase centrada en el discurso de Wilde dio lugar al ensayo “Del culto de los libros” (1951). Las secciones segunda y tercera argumentan que la defensa que hace Borges de la (...) obra de Wilde involucra dos líneas de abordaje, la relación del discurso de Wilde con su obra y un estudio de las justificaciones estéticas del mal. Estas dos líneas convergen en la lectura que Borges hace de Schopenhauer y Wilde. La cuarta sección estudia los apuntes de Borges sobre “The critic as artist”, donde Wilde reclama un “retorno a la voz”. Lo que esto podría implicar se discute a la luz del trabajo de Walter Ong (2012) y la lectura del pragmatismo elaborada por Bruno Bosteels (2007). La última sección rastrea los ecos de estas notas en “La muralla y los libros”. (shrink)

"An immensely valuable and detailed analysis of foreign, mainly American, assistance to Latin American higher education, To Export Progress provides an understanding of the 'what' and the 'why' of foreign aid to a key sector. This book will be a classic in its field." —Philip G. Altbach, Monan Professor of Higher Education, Boston College "Professor Daniel C. Levy, a leading authority in the field of higher education and the nonprofit sector in Latin America, once again has opened an otherwise (...) neglected field through his carefully researched and reported study of philanthropic support for university reform in the region. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, documentary evidence, interviews, and first hand experience with the actors and agencies involved, To Export Progress illuminates the vision and ideals inspiring international agencies, as much as the realities they confronted in deciding on grants and loans policy, from the 1960s to the 1980s. The book is strongly recommended for scholars and students of international education, for Latin American experts, and for philanthropic managers and educational administrators in the developing world." —Jorge Balan, Senior Program Officer for Higher Education, The Ford Foundation. In this study of the attempts to export the modern Western university, its ideas, and its form to the Third World, Daniel C. Levy examines the development assistance provided by the Ford Foundation, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Inter-American Development Bank and their relations with local partners in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s. Levy considers the funders, how they selected partners, which countries and institutions were favored, and to what effect. Based on meticulous research and careful analysis, the book provides a detailed look at philanthropic assistance to the region during the era of modernization and development in Latin America. (shrink)

In 1968, Aimé Césaire travelled to Cuba to participate in the Havana Cultural Congress, a mass international meeting where delegates discussed the place of culture in the struggle against imperialism, neo-colonialism, and underdevelopment. Among the likes of C.L.R. James, Nicolás Guillén, René Depestre, Michel Leiris, and Daniel Guérin, it was in Havana that the Martinican politician undertook the until-now untranslated interview with Sonia Aratán for the Casa de las Américas revue and delivered his Cultural Congress conference paper – previously (...) believed by Césaire scholars to be lost. Both texts shed light on Césaire’s little-known views on Fidel Castro, the Cuban Revolution and Marxism in the context of late-1960s tricontinentalism. By reconstructing Césaire’s exchanges with Cuban writers before and during the Congress, we propose a consideration of the role of Cuba in Césaire’s political thought as a tragic possibility, combining the catastrophe of Caribbean history with the uncertain potential of new social forms. (shrink)