Beliefs are essential components of the human mind, as they define personal identity, integration and adaptation to social groups. Most theoretical studies suggest that beliefs are organized as structured networks: the so-called belief system. According to these studies and their empirical implementation using graph-theoretical approaches, a belief is any proposition considered as true by the respondent. In a recent contribution, we introduced a novel operationalization: a proposition is a belief if (1) it is taken to be true; and (2) the subject declares to be willing to hold it even if irrefutable evidence were hypothetically argued against it. Here, we implement this operationalization using a graph theory approach to investigate the network organization of the belief system in a sample of 108 participants, as well as the differences between key ideological (left- vs. right-wingers) and sociodemographic features (younger vs. older, female vs. male). We identified a well-coordinated network of interlocked spiritual, prosocial and nature-related beliefs, which displays a dense core of 10 hub nodes. Moreover, we observed how specific social liberalist beliefs and transcendental or individualistic/prosocial viewpoints are articulated within left- and right-wingers networks or younger and older participants. Interestingly, we observed that females tend to engage in denser belief networks than male respondents. In conclusion, our research expands tangible scientific evidence of the belief system of humans through the network study of belief reports, which in turn opens innovative ways to study belief systems in social and clinical samples.

The most common definition of belief is taken from analytical philosophy, which understands it as a proposition that is considered as true. Such a broad definition is ambiguous for some fields of empirical research, like psychology, which deals with the mental state of the believer when holding the belief. This article aims to reach an operationalization of beliefs to pinpoint their distinctive features with respect to similar concepts (knowledge, opinion, preference, perception or prediction, for instance). We summarize the most influential interpretations of belief in psychology and psychiatry, which are mainly based on Immanuel Kant and analytical philosophy. We also expose the problem that arises from putting the mental states of beliefs, knowledge, opinions and preferences in the same bag. Our proposal is that a belief is: (1) a proposition that is taken to be true; and (2) which the subject is willing to hold even if irrefutable evidence were hypothetically argued against it. We introduce a narrower interpretation to reliably discriminate the mental state of believing, which is intended to be applied to empirical psychology, neuroscience, behavioral economics, sociology and related sciences.

Spain was, together with Italy, the first European country severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. After one month of strict lockdown and eight weeks of partial restrictions, Spanish residents are expected to have revised some of their beliefs. We conducted a survey one year before the pandemic, at its outbreak and during de-escalation (N = 1706). Despite the lockdown, most respondents tolerated being controlled by authorities, and acknowledged the importance of group necessities over individual rights. However, de-escalation resulted in a belief change towards the intrusiveness of authorities and the preeminence of individual rights. Besides, transcendental beliefs-God answering prayers and the existence of an afterlife-declined after the outbreak, but were strengthened in the de-escalation. Results were strongly influenced by political ideology: the proportion of left-sided voters who saw authorities as intrusive greatly decreased, and transcendental beliefs prevailed among right-sided voters. Our results point to a polarization of beliefs based on political ideology as a consequence of the pandemic.

The Catholic perspective rejects assisted human reproduction techniques, but the morality of artificial insemination (AI) is open for discussion. This article aims to analyze the morality of AI from a new angle, namely whether these interventions exclude all possibility of damaging the human embryo and the offspring's health. The scientific evidence about the children's health who are born through AI allows us to affirm that the procedures do not comply with the principle of damage exclusion: AI does not exclude all possibility of damaging the embryo and impacting the health and exposure to disease of the offspring born through these techniques.

We argue that increased risk for a variety of diseases in ART children has been consistently reaffirmed by different methods and in diverse populations, providing a methodological critique of recent sibling studies, which hold great potential for studying the risks of ART. A recent within-family analysis using a national population register holds a distinct size advantage over previous studies, and suggested that apparent risks to offspring may be attributable to birth order. However, limitations of the design may have resulted in an erroneous conclusion. We discuss the advantages of a frequently neglected sibling study design, which compares siblings born of surrogate motherhood. While uncertainty remains, the evidence points to elevated risk for ART offspring. It may therefore be prudent to call for an extension of preventive and precautionary decisions to the entire population, and to change informed consent to incorporate the long-term health consequences of fertility treatments.

For transhumanism, humanity is a stage which, guided by biological evolution, was preceded by other earlier stages and which will be followed by others that are newer. According to transhumanism, we must break the inertia of blind causes that govern evolution and, through biotechnology, attain what is called a ¿better life¿. Those authors who are supportive of this current of thought develop their proposals by negating the existence of a human nature, but without abandoning the conviction that it will be possible to define what a ¿better life¿ consists in. In this article we will analyze the clarity and rigor with which transhumanists present the ultimate goal of their proposal, the relation between the end and the means proposed for attaining it, and, finally, we will bring to light certain inconsistencies that result from their rejection of the position that human nature could have a normative value.

Presentamos, a modo de introducción al número, algunos aspectos que ayuden a enmarcar la aproximación al estudio comparado de las propuestas filosóficas de Xavier Zubiri y Polo. Mostramos la influencia que tuvieron en ambos las corrientes renovadoras del primer tercio del siglo XX y el interés de ambos en continuar y, a la vez, renovar, el pensamiento filosófico anterior, siempre en continuo diálogo con la tradición clásica. Hacemos también mención a las particularidades de la recepción de sus filosofías y a las inquietudes intelectuales comunes ante el problema de Dios, la creación y la persona y su trascendencia.

La ideología de género ha puesto de manifiesto el problema de relación entre la biología y la subjetividad, es decir, el problema de la relación entre lo orgánico de nuestro cuerpo y el modo que tenemos de interpretar y comprendernos a nosotros y al mundo. Si bien la biología es algo recibido, la subjetividad tiene un fuerte componente de construcción personal. En la ideología de género el problema se concreta en el diálogo entre el sexo y la experiencia subjetiva que de este tenemos: ¿Cómo entender y relacionar mi realidad sexual con la experiencia personal que tengo de ella?

Hoy en día se habla mucho pero se piensa poco sobre el sexo. En muchas de las reflexiones donde la sexualidad juega un papel protagonista se da por hecho que la sexualidad es algo inequívoco, pero¿ ¿qué es la sexualidad humana?, ¿y hasta qué punto podemos incidir en la realidad sexual de las personas? Sobre estas dos cuestiones gira este libro, y el interés de su línea argumentativa reside en el esfuerzo por tener presente la antropología y lo que nos dice la ciencia experimental. Desde una aproximación interdisciplinar, la sexualidad humana es presentada como una realidad sistémica donde los aspectos biológicos y los subjetivos tienen cabida. Las claves que se proponen en este libro, para comprender la sexualidad del ser humano, son valorar y acoger lo recibido, emprender un camino de perfeccionamiento humano y respetar las situaciones personales. El objetivo principal de esta exposición de carácter divulgativo no es traer a la luz los serios problemas que subyacen a la ideología de género, sino ofrecer un punto de partida para abordar la difícil relación entre la dimensión biológica y la dimensión subjetiva de la sexualidad. Pero no estamos ante un libro de mínimos, estas páginas pretenden sentar las bases e inspirar a futuros trabajos.

Esta investigación presenta la propuesta filosófica de Xavier Zubiri como nuevo paradigma desde el que definir el desarrollo orgánico y comprender el dinamismo del embrión preimplantatorio. Además, pone de manifiesto las ambigüedades terminológicas que acompañan a las explicaciones sobre el hecho biológico en las descripciones científicas y en las reflexiones de carácter interdisciplinar. En la investigación se expone la teoría de la sustantividad y de la esencia de Xavier Zubiri, y se describe minuciosamente el desarrollo del embrión preimplantatorio a la luz de los datos científicos actuales, prestando especial atención a la epigénesis. La investigación muestra que desde el planteamiento zubiriano se puede, por un lado, describir con precisión la imbricación entre lo genético y lo epigenético y, por otro lado, definir, sin perder la unidad del organismo, la noción de desarrollo. Además, se realiza un análisis crítico de las principales posturas sobre el estatus ontológico del embrión humano y se muestra las ventajas de su abordaje desde el prisma zubiriano.

The attribution of the category of person to a living being is not irrelevant at all, since it indicates who is entitled to rights, dignity, and duties by law. Throughout approximately 15 centuries, since Boethius first defined the term, the most influential philosophers have provided an interpretation on which are the defining features of persons. Current neuroscience, influenced by mainstream utilitarian bioethics, takes John Locke¿s definition of person as starting point: the being with intelligence, self-consciousness, and memory. This notion has been subsequently refined by analytic philosophy and contemporary thinkers such as Daniel Dennett, ending up in a cognitivist conception of person. In this text, we will discuss how current neuroscience has embraced this definition and the subsequent reductionism it leads to. In fact, for some authors, personhood is an illusion held by human beings. We will present other philosophical perspectives on the issue and will concentrate on the phenomenological interpretation to achieve a comprehensive notion of person. From this perspective, the person is understood as an embodied mind where the role of the environment, including interpersonal relationships, is utterly radical. This vision presupposes the inability of neuroscience, or any other individual discipline, to cover by itself what a person is. Thus, the phenomenological approach on the person is presented as a paradigmatic example to promote dialogue between scientific and humanistic disciplines.

In psychiatry, as in any other medical specialty, the clinician collects information from the patient¿s anamnesis, clinical observation, and diagnostic tests; evaluates these data; and makes a diagnosis. The most common manuals used to assess a patient¿s mental disease according to his or her symptoms are the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). This chapter focuses on the dialogue that philosophy and psychiatry have held for decades to achieve a better understanding of dissociative identity disorder (DID). The outcome of this dialogue is the expression of the diagnostic criteria for DID, as well as other dissociative disorders, in the medical manuals. Thus, we first analyze the evolution of DID across the different versions of ICD and DSM. We then show that the characterization of DID and other dissociative disorders is a lively debate that is far from being settled. We demonstrate that the core of this debate is the understanding of person after John Locke¿s philosophy: a person is defined by the apparent expression of consciousness and memories. This leads to what we have termed a primary conceptual dissociation: the mental qualities of the person are dissociated from the body. We propose an alternative account based on the dynamic nature of identity and the understanding of person as a mind¿body unity. We hope that our proposal, which results from the interdisciplinary dialogue between psychiat

Una de las consecuencias casi inmediatas de la crisis de la metafísica y su consecuente liquidez, por usar la expresión de Baumanómetro, radica en la falta de claridad respecto a las notas constitutivas del amor y el papel que éste juega dentro de nuestra existencia. Ante este panorama desolador, la vivencia misma del amor se vuelve inauténtica. No obstante, por más inauténtica que sea nuestra vivencia del amor, éste no deja de tener un papel central en nuestras vidas, en especial si se considera que es lo único que es capaz de dotarla de significación. Atendiendo a esta preocupación, La esencia del amor es una compilación de ensayos que, desde distintos enfoques disciplinares, pretende arrojar un poco de luz al respecto, sin por eso agotar el tema. Los ensayos contenidos en este libro abordan, en concreto, tres aspectos fundamentales para comprender la vivencia del amor: en primer lugar, su naturaleza trascendente; en segundo, su papel formativo; y, por último, algunos mitos que dificultan su inteligibilidad.

The aim of this article is to investigate whether techniques used for artificial reproduction safeguard or promote the future child¿s welfare, and whether they are capable of offering potential future children the best possible chance for the best life, in keeping with guidelines derived from the Principle of Procreative Beneficence. This analysis will be important for discerning the parental responsibility of couples or single reproducers who plan to use or have used any of these techniques, and also for those who defend the Principle of Procreative Beneficence, which implicitly entails the use of techniques of assisted human reproduction. The paper concludes that prospective parents should be informed not only of the specific level of risk and potential damages associated with each IVF technique, but also of the fact that given the available evidence none of the standard IVF techniques can be considered to be risk free, there is reason to believe that none of these techniques can be reconciled with the responsibility of prospective parents to the promote welfare of future children and/or to offer them the best possible life.

En esta comunicación pretendo justificar, desde el planteamiento filosófico de Xavier Zubiri, la posibilidad y necesidad de atender a la realidad en sí y por sí misma sin por ello rechazar que ésta es sugerida por la realidad misma aprehendida y afrontada desde la inteligencia. Nos centraremos en la explicación zubiriana de la teoría de la verdad racional. La verdad racional es una reflexión central e ineludible dentro del planteamiento noológico del filósofo donostiarra. Trataremos de mostrar que la razón es búsqueda de lo que la cosa real es en la realidad, y el canon de si el resultado de la búsqueda es razonable o no con respecto de la cosa no lo confiere la razón sino la cosa real. Esto nos permite afirmar que el estudio noológico que Zubiri lleva a cabo en la Trilogía no solo da cabida al estudio de la realidad ¿allende¿ la aprehensión intelectiva, sino que la requiere para mantenerse en pie y para alejarla del idealismo que Zubiri pretendía superar. ABSTRACT: In this paper I intend to justify the possibility and necessity of attend the reality in and by itself without denying that it is suggested by the reality apprehended in the intelligence. We will focus on explaining the zubiri¿s theory of the rational truth. Rational truth is a central and unavoidable reflection within the general approach of his wider noological project. We will assert that the study noological that Zubiri takes place in the trilogy not only accommodates the study of reality out of intellectual apprehension, but is required to stand up and to zoom out of the idealism.