El Ser y la Esencia

En lugar de explicar la potencia por el acto (la esencia por la existencia), nos sentimos inclinados a explicar el acto por la potencia. Habría que hacer filosofía basándonos en lo que vemos, no en lo que suponemos. Pero no sólo la mente humana es causa de este reduccionismo. El ente mismo podría ser responsable, porque si bien el ente es concebible sin la existencia actual, el ser no lo es sino unido a un ente. De ahí la fatal tendencia a establecer el ente, separado de la existencia actual, como primer principio de la metafísica. Por último, está la neutralidad existencial de nuestros conceptos, descrita admirablemente por Kant. Si la existencia actual no puede ser representada por, ni en, un concepto, la tentación de olvidarse de ella es irresistible, y se concluirá que la especulación filosófica es existencialmente neutra. Así las cosas, parecería lógico que los filósofos se hayan concentrado en el ente, dando por supuesto el ser. Pero el riesgo es enorme, porque pudiera ser que el ser fuera una fuerza viva y una causa eficiente de efectos observables en las cosas que decimos que son. En este caso, las filosofías basadas en la noción de ser inexistencial estarían abocadas al desastre, y sus defensores podrían concluir -erróneamente- que no vale la pena ponerlo como primer principio del conocimiento metafísico, reemplazando la noción de ser por una de sus partes o aspectos -a modo de sucedáneo- . La metafísica se convierte así en otra ciencia: Lógica con Ockam, Matemáticas con Descartes, Física con Kant, Sociología con Comte, etc. Pero estos intentos a la postre fracasan. Se culpa entonces a la metafísica de ser una pseudociencia y sobreviene el escepticismo metafísico. En este libro se hace un recorrido histórico para mostrar esta tesis: que cualquier intento por romper la unidad del ente, separando la esencia de la existencia, para luego olvidarse de esta última, está condenado al fracaso: acabará desligándose de la realidad, que no se deja atrapar en el puro esencialismo, ni en la fenomenología existencialista

Access to paediatric palliative care in children and adolescents with complex chronic conditions: a retrospective hospital-based study in Brussels, Belgium

Background: Paediatric complex chronic conditions (CCCs) are life-limiting conditions requiring paediatric palliative care, which, in Belgium, is provided through paediatric liaison teams (PLTs). Like the number of children and adolescents with these conditions in Belgium, their referral to PLTs is unknown. Objectives: The aim of the study was to identify, over a 5-year period (2010-2014), the number of children and adolescents (0-19 years) living with a CCC, and also their referral to PLTs. Methods: International Classification of Disease codes (ICD-9) corresponding to a CCC, as described by Feudtner et al, and national registration numbers were extracted from the databases of all hospitals (n=8) and PLTs (n=2) based in the Brussels region. Aggregated data and pseudonymised national registration number were transmitted to the research team by a Trusted Third Party (eHealth). Ages and diagnostic categories were calculated using descriptive statistics. Results: Over 5 years (2010-2014) in the Brussels region, a total of 22 721 children/adolescents aged 0-19 years were diagnosed with a CCC. Of this number, 22 533 were identified through hospital registries and 572 through PLT registries. By comparing the registries, we found that of the 22 533 children/adolescents admitted to hospital, only 384 (1.7%) were also referred to a PLT. Conclusion: In Belgium, there may be too few referrals of children and adolescents with CCC to PLTs that ensure continuity of care

STDP Allows Fast Rate-Modulated Coding with Poisson-Like Spike Trains

Spike timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) has been shown to enable single neurons to detect repeatedly presented spatiotemporal spike patterns. This holds even when such patterns are embedded in equally dense random spiking activity, that is, in the absence of external reference times such as a stimulus onset. Here we demonstrate, both analytically and numerically, that STDP can also learn repeating rate-modulated patterns, which have received more experimental evidence, for example, through post-stimulus time histograms (PSTHs). Each input spike train is generated from a rate function using a stochastic sampling mechanism, chosen to be an inhomogeneous Poisson process here. Learning is feasible provided significant covarying rate modulations occur within the typical timescale of STDP (∼10–20 ms) for sufficiently many inputs (∼100 among 1000 in our simulations), a condition that is met by many experimental PSTHs. Repeated pattern presentations induce spike-time correlations that are captured by STDP. Despite imprecise input spike times and even variable spike counts, a single trained neuron robustly detects the pattern just a few milliseconds after its presentation. Therefore, temporal imprecision and Poisson-like firing variability are not an obstacle to fast temporal coding. STDP provides an appealing mechanism to learn such rate patterns, which, beyond sensory processing, may also be involved in many cognitive tasks

Modelling human choices: MADeM and decision‑making

Research supported by FAPESP 2015/50122-0 and DFG-GRTK 1740/2. RP and AR are also part of the Research, Innovation and Dissemination Center for Neuromathematics FAPESP grant (2013/07699-0). RP is supported by a FAPESP scholarship (2013/25667-8). ACR is partially supported by a CNPq fellowship (grant 306251/2014-0)