Cognitive Science

RESUMEN - ABSTRACT
Las investigaciones aquí desarrolladas buscan una aproximación interdisciplinaria al fenómeno de la salud y la enfermedad, así como a la naturaleza de la práctica médica en la posmodernidad. La filosofía de la medicina se inspira fundamentalmente en la actual filosofía de la ciencia, que ha abandonado la idea de una realidad objetiva o de un orden natural inmutable, reemplazándola por la representación de nuestro conocimiento, adquiriendo así uno de sus rasgos fundamentales, el carácter holístico e interpretativo.
Enfermedad, Biopolítica y Salud pública
Las investigaciones aquí desarrolladas buscan una aproximación interdisciplinaria al fenómeno de la salud y la enfermedad, así como a la naturaleza de la práctica médica en la posmodernidad. La filosofía de la medicina se inspira fundamentalmente en la actual filosofía de la ciencia, que ha abandonado la idea de una realidad objetiva o de un orden natural inmutable, reemplazándola por la representación de nuestro conocimiento, adquiriendo así uno de sus rasgos fundamentales, el carácter holístico e interpretativo.
Llevado al extremo de la irracionalidad, el esfuerzo de la medicina por preservar y cuidar la salud de las personas ha demostrado que es capaz de volverse en contra de aquellos a quienes pretende proteger. Cuando los médicos se empecinan en extender la vida aún más allá de las posibilidades fisiológicas y del deseo de sus pacientes, aparece lo que se ha dado en llamar el encarnizamiento terapéutico. Pero prolongar la vida innecesariamente no sólo perjudica a quienes se les priva del derecho a una muerte digna. En un mundo donde los recursos públicos que se destinan al cuidado de la salud no sólo son finitos, sino que muchas veces resultan insuficientes, su uso irracional parece cercenar aún más el acceso de la población en general al cuidado de su salud. Hoy se acepta el establecimiento de un límite en la asistencia médica, pero la cuestión es definir cuál es y quién establece, y aun más, cómo se valida este límite. Un punto de partida puede ser la observación de casos y el cambio actitudinal frente al manejo de estos conceptos.
Dr. ADOLFO VÁSQUEZ ROCCA

Continuing the "dark" posthumanism strand from recent blog posts and from my book Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human (Routledge 2014), I argue that we cannot extend our moral thinking to certain portions of "posthuman possibility space" because our folk psychology and parochial norms of practical reasoning might not apply to "hyperplastic" posthumans. I conclude that there are no good ground to reject the possibility that there are non-persons every bit as morally considerable as persons

Using a dual neurocognitive systems framework, Piaget’s ideas are elaborated to allow for executive processes and post formal thinking. Developing imagination, emotional expression, and creativity through the ‘arts’ should not be seen as educational luxuries that are to be argued for in terms of philosophical ideals, rather, they should be seen as important for mental health, and essential aspects of nurturing the psyche in accordance with its evolving biological nature.

RESUMEN
El mundo como voluntad: La esencia del mundo es voluntad. El mundo contemplado desde dentro de sí mismo y nuestra vida es voluntad. La voluntad es lo íntimo del ser, el núcleo de cada individuo e igualmente de todo. Se manifiesta en toda fuerza ciega natural y también en la conducta del hombre. La voluntad obra de manera absolutamente libre, sin motivación, y es por tanto, irracional y ciega. Schopenhauer la identifica con las fuerzas que actúan en la Naturaleza, fuerzas que adoptan aspectos y nombres diversos (gravedad, magnetismo, electricidad, estímulo, motivo) en sus manifestaciones fenoménicas, pero que en sí son una única e idéntica fuerza: La voluntad de vivir. La voluntad es esfuerzo infinito, un impulso ilimitado, por ello no puede alcanzar nunca la satisfacción o un estado de tranquilidad. Su esfuerzo es continuo pero nunca alcanza. Lo que llamamos felicidad o goce no es más que el cese temporal del deseo. El deseo, como expresión de la necesidad y del sentimiento de privación, es una forma de dolor. Por ello la felicidad es la ‘liberación del dolor, la superación de la necesidad’; es real y esencialmente negativa, y en ningún caso positiva. No tarda en transformarse en aburrimiento y, entonces, el deseo de satisfacción resurge de modo natural.
Dr. Adolfo Vásquez Rocca

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ABSTRACT Background
Electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) is a relatively new phenomenon characterized by experiencing neurological symptoms such as headache, dizziness, anxiety, and insomnia after exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) like those generated by mobile phones and visual display units (VDUs). Although some published reports suggest that EHS is unrelated to the presence of electromagnetic fields, the etiology of EHS is not clearly known. Over the past years our lab has been studying the health effects of exposure of laboratory animals and humans to different sources of electromagnetic fields such as mobile phones, mobile base stations, mobile phone jammers, laptop computers, radars, dentistry cavitrons and MRI.

Aim
In this paper we introduce a novel method for effective screening of the patients diagnosed with EHS.

Method
We used a calibrated ICU monitoring system for recording the patient’s biological parameters such as systolic and diastolic blood pressure, mean arterial pressure, oral and peripheral temperature heart beat and respiration. Our method is composed of six consecutive phases; I: patient was exposed to mobile phone microwave radiations for 10 minutes. II: sham exposure for 10 minutes. III: same as phase I but the patient was informed that the mobile phone was on (in the talk mode). Phase IV, the patient was sham exposed and was informed that the mobile phone was switched off. V: same as phase I but the patient was given incorrect information (he/she was told that the mobile phone was switched off). VI: same as phase II but the patient was given incorrect information (he was told that the mobile phone was on). In each phase, patients were asked if they can feel the presence of electromagnetic fields.

Results
Our preliminary results show that EHS patients cannot recognize real and sham exposures in different phases of the experiment. Furthermore, monitoring of the patient’s biological parameters in each phase could not show statistically significant differences between the means of biological parameters in real exposure and sham exposure phases.

Conclusion
Altogether our preliminary findings confirm that under blind conditions, exposure to EMFs cannot trigger any subjective symptoms. It can be hypothesized that neurological symptoms such as headache in EHS patients is not caused by the presence of electromagnetic fields and lead us to this conclusion that psychological factors possibly play an important role in electromagnetic hypersensitivity.

No conflict of interest.

This is the second part of a pre-viva draft of my PhD thesis, "Mediation and Dynamics in the Experience of Narrative Fiction", which draws on "second-generation" cognitive science, phenomenology and semiotics to propose a new theoretical framework for understanding the interaction of reader and narrative text.

I would welcome any observations or connections with other current research projects.

This is the first part of a pre-viva draft of my PhD thesis, "Mediation and Dynamics in the Experience of Narrative Fiction", which draws on "second-generation" cognitive science, phenomenology and semiotics to propose a new theoretical framework for understanding the interaction of reader and narrative text.

I would welcome any observations or connections with other current research projects.

Book chapter on the methodology of empirical moral psychology. By showing examples of relevant applications of moral psychology in the context of research as well as policy-making, shortcomings of traditionally used survey designs are highlighted and alternatives such as dialogical surveys and virtual reality are presented.

Bunge, A. & Skulmowski, A. (2014). Descriptive & Pragmatic Levels of Empirical Ethics: Utilizing the Situated Character of Moral Concepts, Judgment, and Decision-Making. In C. Lütge, H. Rusch & M. Uhl (Eds.), Experimental Ethics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Unexpectedness is a major factor controlling interest in narratives. Emotions, for instance, are felt intensely if they are associated with unexpected events. The problem with generating unexpected situations is that either characters, or the whole story, are at risk of being no longer believable. This issue is one of the main problems that make story design a hard task. Writers face it on a case by case basis. The automatic generation of interesting stories requires formal criteria to decide to what extent a given situation is unexpected and to what extent actions are kept believable. This paper proposes such formal criteria and makes suggestions concerning their use in story generation systems.

The challenge of narrative automatic generation is to produce not only coherent, but interesting stories. This study considers the problem within the Simplicity Theory framework. According to this theory, interesting situations must be unexpectedly simple, either because they should have
required complex circumstances to be produced, or because they are abnormally simple, as in coincidences. Here we consider the special case of narratives in which characters perform actions with emotional consequences. We show, using the simplicity framework, how notions such as intentions, believability, responsibility and moral judgments are linked to narrative interest.

Several studies have highlighted the combined role of emotions
and reasoning in the determination of judgments about morality. Here we explore the influence of Kolmogorov complexity in the determination, not only of moral judgment, but also of the associated narrative interest. We designed an experience to test the predictions of our complexity-based model when applied to moral dilemmas. It confirms that judgments about interest and morality may be explained in part by discrepancies in complexity. This preliminary study suggests that cognitive computations are involved in decision-making about emotional outcomes.

Learning and education is a continued part of our life journey. For kids, parents and teachers strive to make it fun and challenging. Learning games fits into the area of neuroscience and education as game-based-learning grows in popularity not just in education but in health and business. Psychologists and educationalists understand more about learning games in brain cognition and neuroscience to enhance child and adult learning.