Viruses and related infectious genetic parasites are the most abundant biological agents on this planet. They invade all cellular organisms, are key agents in the generation of adaptive and innate immune systems, and drive nearly all regulatory processes within living cells.

ABSTRACTIn the process of teaching law, is necessary to address some aspects that are not framed in strictly legal knowledge and require different strategies to be approach by the professor. An exa...

ABSTRACT While interest in philosophy and medicine has burgeoned in the past two decades, there remains a need for an analysis of the intellectual activity embodied in good medical practice. In this setting, ethical and scientific decision‐making are complexly interrelated. The following paper, collaboratively written by physicians and philosophers, presents a view of applied (clinical) science and applied ethics. Making extensive use of illustrations drawn from routine case material, we seek to indicate a variety of philosophic issues to be found (...) in daily practice, elucidate various levels of critical reasoning within the medical setting, and demonstrate a remarkable similarity between medical and ethical decision‐making. (shrink)

_The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere_, co-edited by Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen, represents a rare opportunity to experience a diverse group of preeminent philosophers confronting one pervasive contemporary concern: what role does, or should, religion play in our public lives? Reflecting on her recent work concerning state violence in Israel-Palestine, Judith Butler explores the potential of religious perspectives for renewing cultural and political criticism, while Jürgen Habermas, best known for his seminal conception of the public sphere, (...) thinks through the ambiguous legacy of the concept of "the political" in contemporary theory. Charles Taylor argues for a radical redefinition of secularism, and Cornel West defends civil disobedience and emancipatory theology. Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen detail the immense contribution of these philosophers to contemporary social and political theory, and an afterword by Craig Calhoun places these attempts to reconceive the significance of both religion and the secular in the context of contemporary national and international politics. (shrink)

In modern industrial society the issue of access to healthcare is inseparable from the question of whether there is a right to healthcare and whether government has the correlative duty to assure a minimum level of care to all citizens. While discussion in terms of rights and duties tends to direct our attention to broader, more theoretical ethical issues, discussion in terms of invites consideration of more practical concerns. The news media rarely report in terms of whether a citizen's right (...) to healthcare has been abridged or disregarded, but rather offers tales of people being denied access. Advocacy groups for specific illnesses do not necessarily argue for universal health insurance, but rather press that certain conditions, such as renal failure requiring dialysis, receive unlimited insurance coverage and that people with the condition be given automatic access to care. (shrink)

Resumen. La educación en valores conservacionistas representa una vía para promover cambios permanentesde actitudes, formación de conciencia y sensibilidad hacia los problemas socioambientales, por lo que serequiere la cooperación y participación de las universidades para lograr la internalización de valores en lascomunidades. El presente estudio tiene como objetivo proponer un modelo de gestión ambiental basado envalores conservacionistas que contribuya a la integración de la Universidad Nacional Experimental delTáchira [UNET] con la comunidad Río Chiquito, Parroquia La Petrolea, Municipio Junín, Estado Táchira,Venezuela. (...) Metodológicamente se ubicó en una investigación de campo, descriptiva, bajo la modalidad deproyecto factible, con apoyo en el paradigma cuantitativo, adoptándose el diseño no experimentaltranseccional. La población estuvo conformada por cinco informantes claves encargados del desarrollo deprogramas ambientales y 137 familias del área en estudio; como muestra se seleccionó la totalidad de losinformantes y 102 familias, a quienes se les aplicó un guión de entrevista y un cuestionario, respectivamente,validados mediante la técnica juicios de expertos y obteniéndose un coeficiente Alfa de Cronbach de 0.97indicativo de una confiabilidad muy alta. Los resultados evidencian que en la comunidad poco se practicanvalores conservacionistas, como consecuencia a la no presencia de líderes vecinales que fomenten estosvalores, además, hay una exigua participación comunitaria y universitaria en materia ambiental. Por tanto, serecomienda la elaboración del modelo de gestión ambiental basado en valores conservacionistas paracontribuir en el proceso integración universidad comunidad y así consolidar la formación de un individuo conconciencia conservacionista.Palabras claves. liderazgo vecinal, participación comunitaria, participación universitaria, modelo de gestiónambiental, valores conservacionistas.. Conservation values education represents a way to promote permanent changes in attitudes, raisingawareness and sensitivity to environmental problems, so it requires the cooperation and participation ofuniversities to achieve the internalization of values in communities. This study aims to propose a model ofenvironmental management based on conservation values that contribute to the integration of the UniversidadNacional Experimental del Táchira [UNET] – Río Chiquito, Parroquia La Petrolea, Municipio Junín, EstadoTáchira, Venezuela. Methodologically was located in a field research, descriptive, in the form of feasibleproject, supported in the quantitative paradigm, adopting the experimental design is not transactional. Thepopulation consisted of five key informants responsible for the development of environmental programs and137 families in the study area, as the entire sample was selected informants and 102 families who wereadministered an interview guide and questionnaire, respectively, validated by technical experts and trialsyielding a Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.97 indicating a very high reliability. The results show that inpractice little community conservation values, due to the non presence of neighborhood leaders to promotethese values, in addition, there is a low participation in community and university environment. Therefore, werecommend the development of environmental management model based on conservation values to contributeto the university community integration process and consolidate the formation of a conservation-consciousindividual.Keywords. conservation values, community involvement, university involvement, leadership, neighborhood,environmental management model. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss the extent to which the very existence of substructural logics puts the Tarskian conception of logical systems in jeopardy. In order to do this, we highlight the importance of the presence of different levels of entailment in a given logic, looking not only at inferences between collections of formulae but also at inferences between collections of inferences—and more. We discuss appropriate refinements or modifications of the usual Tarskian identity criterion for logical systems, and propose an (...) alternative of our own. After that, we consider a number of objections to our account and evaluate a substantially different approach to the same problem. (shrink)

Eduardo Arroyo, Armelle Auris, François Boissonnet, Paul HENRY, Pierre-Jean LABARRIERE, MATIEU, Gilles AILLAUD, Gérad THALMANN, Nicole MATHIEU, Jacques VIMARD, Michel QUAREZ, Leonardo CREMONINI, L'atelier d'Eduardo Arryo: Le carré blanc du ring, Rue Descartes, No. 7, Logiques de l'éthique (Juin 1993), pp. 149-168.

When discussing Logical Pluralism several critics argue that such an open-minded position is untenable. The key to this conclusion is that, given a number of widely accepted assumptions, the pluralist view collapses into Logical Monism. In this paper we show that the arguments usually employed to arrive at this conclusion do not work. The main reason for this is the existence of certain substructural logics which have the same set of valid inferences as Classical Logic—although they are, in a clear (...) sense, non-identical to it. We argue that this phenomenon can be generalized, given the existence of logics which coincide with Classical Logic regarding a number of metainferential levels—although they are, again, clearly different systems. We claim this highlights the need to arrive at a more refined version of the Collapse Argument, which we discuss at the end of the paper. (shrink)

Many authors have considered that the notions of paraconsistency and dialetheism are intrinsically connected, in many cases, to the extent of confusing both phenomena. However, paraconsistency is a formal feature of some logics that consists in invalidating the rule of explosion, whereas dialetheism is a semantical/ontological position consisting in accepting true contradictions. In this paper, we argue against this connection and show that it is perfectly possible to adopt a paraconsistent logic and reject dialetheism, and, moreover, that there are examples (...) of non-paraconsistent logics that can be interpreted in a dialetheic way. (shrink)

Anti-exceptionalism about logic states that logical theories have no special epistemological status. Such theories are continuous with scientific theories. Contemporary anti-exceptionalists include the semantic paradoxes as a part of the elements to accept a logical theory. Exploring the Buenos Aires Plan, the recent development of the metainferential hierarchy of ST\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbf {ST}}$$\end{document}-logics shows that there are multiple options to deal with such paradoxes. There is a whole ST\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} (...) \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbf {ST}}$$\end{document}-based hierarchy, of which LP\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbf {LP}}$$\end{document} and ST\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbf {ST}}$$\end{document} themselves are only the first steps. This means that the logics in this hierarchy are also options to analyze the inferential patterns allowed in a language that contains its own truth predicate. This paper explores these responses analyzing some reasons to go beyond the first steps. We show that LP\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbf {LP}}$$\end{document}, ST\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbf {ST}}$$\end{document} and the logics of the ST\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbf {ST}}$$\end{document}-hierarchy offer different diagnoses for the same evidence: the inferences and metainferences the agents endorse in the presence of the truth-predicate. But even if the data are not enough to adopt one of these logics, there are other elements to evaluate the revision of classical logic. Which is the best explanation for the logical principles to deal with semantic paradoxes? How close should we be to classical logic? And mainly, how could a logic obey the validities it contains? From an anti-exceptionalist perspective, we argue that ST\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbf {ST}}$$\end{document}-metainferential logics in general—and STTω\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbf {STT}}_{\omega }$$\end{document} in particular—are the best available options to explain the inferential principles involved with the notion of truth. (shrink)

In this note we shall argue that Milne’s new effort does not refute Truthmaker Maximalism. According to Truthmaker Maximalism, every truth has a truthmaker. Milne has attempted to refute it using the following self-referential sentence M: This sentence has no truthmaker. Essential to his refutation is that M is like the Gödel sentence and unlike the Liar, and one way in which Milne supports this assimilation is through the claim that his proof is essentially object-level and not semantic. In Section (...) 2, we shall argue that Milne is still begging the question against Truthmaker Maximalism. In Section 3, we shall argue that even assimilating M to the Liar does not force the truthmaker maximalist to maintain the ‘dull option’ that M does not express a proposition. There are other options open and, though they imply revising the logic in Milne’s reasoning, this is not one of the possible revisions he considers. In Section 4, we shall suggest that Milne’s proof requires an implicit appeal to semantic principles and notions. In Section 5, we shall point out that there are two important dissimilarities between M and the Gödel sentence. Section 6 is a brief summary and conclusion. (shrink)

Resumen: La tolerancia es un privilegio de los poderosos. Una persona puede tolerar sólo si tiene el poder para interferir con aquello que objeta. En este artículo analizaré las circunstancias en las que alguien tiene el poder para tolerar. Argumentaré que la respuesta debe incorporar consideraciones tanto prácticas como metafísicas. Específicamente, defenderé que alguien tiene el poder para tolerar cuando sus propiedades fundan tal poder en la situación práctica en que ella se encuentra, según es caracterizada por sus intereses prácticos. (...) Al hacerlo criticaré el análisis del mencionado poder realizado por Glen Newey. (shrink)

In this article, we will present a number of technical results concerning Classical Logic, ST and related systems. Our main contribution consists in offering a novel identity criterion for logics in general and, therefore, for Classical Logic. In particular, we will firstly generalize the ST phenomenon, thereby obtaining a recursively defined hierarchy of strict-tolerant systems. Secondly, we will prove that the logics in this hierarchy are progressively more classical, although not entirely classical. We will claim that a logic is to (...) be identified with an infinite sequence of consequence relations holding between increasingly complex relata: formulae, inferences, metainferences, and so on. As a result, the present proposal allows not only to differentiate Classical Logic from ST, but also from other systems sharing with it their valid metainferences. Finally, we show how these results have interesting consequences for some topics in the philosophical logic literature, among them for the debate around Logical Pluralism. The reason being that the discussion concerning this topic is usually carried out employing a rivalry criterion for logics that will need to be modified in light of the present investigation, according to which two logics can be non-identical even if they share the same valid inferences. (shrink)

Marriage patterns of California's eighteenth and nineteenth century Spanish-Mexican families are analysed using data from genealogies and mission records. A shortage of women among the military based colonists led to an unusual marriage pattern with a large age differential between husbands and wives. The average age at marriage was 18·4 years for women and 28·4 years for men. Spatial mobility was high for both sexes, particularly for men. More husbands than wives were born in Mexico. The Monterey presidial district of (...) central California was the birthplace of a disproportionate number of husbands and the southern California districts were a source of wives. The transition between a founding population predominantly composed of Mexican immigrants and a population of native-born Californians occurred at the beginning of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

Recent investigations surprisingly indicate that single RNA "stem-loops" operate solely by chemical laws that act without selective forces, and in contrast, self-ligated consortia of RNA stem-loops operate by biological selection. To understand consortial RNA selection, the concept of single quasi-species and its mutant spectra as drivers of RNA variation and evolution is rethought here. Instead, we evaluate the current RNA world scenario in which consortia of cooperating RNA stem-loops are the basic players. We thus redefine quasispecies as RNA quasispecies consortia (...) and argue that it has essential behavioral motifs that are relevant to the inherent variation, evolution and diversity in biology. We propose that qs-c is an especially innovative force. We apply qs-c thinking to RNA stem-loops and evaluate how it yields altered bulges and loops in the stem-loop regions, not as errors, but as a natural capability to generate diversity. This basic competence-not error-opens a variety of combinatorial possibilities which may alter and create new biological interactions, identities and newly emerged self identity functions. Thus RNA stem-loops typically operate as cooperative modules, like members of social groups. From such qs-c of stem-loop groups we can trace a variety of RNA secondary structures such as ribozymes, viroids, viruses, mobile genetic elements as abundant infection derived agents that provide the stem-loop societies of small and long non-coding RNAs. (shrink)

Transhumanism proposes human enhancement while regarding the human body as unfit for the future. This fulfills age-old aspirations for a perfect and durable body. We use “alienation” as a concept to analyze this mismatch between human aspirations and our current condition. For Hannah Arendt alienation may be accounted for in terms of earth- and world-alienation, as well as alienation from human nature, and especially from the given (“resentment of the given”). In transhumanism, the biological body is an impediment to human (...) accomplishment. At most, this movement accepts “clean” bodies, not bodies with excretions. We argue that real human bodies are valued in the event of giving birth, so a modified concept that Arendt proposed, natality, seems a suitable way to explore the dialectic alienation-reconciliation involving the body (Arendt’s “A child has been born unto us”), when re-read by some feminist scholars. (shrink)

Adding a transparent truth predicate to a language completely governed by classical logic is not possible. The trouble, as is well-known, comes from paradoxes such as the Liar and Curry. Recently, Cobreros, Egré, Ripley and van Rooij have put forward an approach based on a non-transitive notion of consequence which is suitable to deal with semantic paradoxes while having a transparent truth predicate together with classical logic. Nevertheless, there are some interesting issues concerning the set of metainferences validated by this (...) logic. In this paper, we show that this logic, once it is adequately understood, is weaker than classical logic. Moreover, the logic is in a way similar to the paraconsistent logic LP. (shrink)

In some recent articles, Cobreros, Egré, Ripley, & van Rooij have defended the idea that abandoning transitivity may lead to a solution to the trouble caused by semantic paradoxes. For that purpose, they develop the Strict-Tolerant approach, which leads them to entertain a nontransitive theory of truth, where the structural rule of Cut is not generally valid. However, that Cut fails in general in the target theory of truth does not mean that there are not certain safe instances of Cut (...) involving semantic notions. In this article we intend to meet the challenge of answering how to regain all the safe instances of Cut, in the language of the theory, making essential use of a unary recovery operator. To fulfill this goal, we will work within the so-called Goodship Project, which suggests that in order to have nontrivial naïve theories it is sufficient to formulate the corresponding self-referential sentences with suitable biconditionals. Nevertheless, a secondary aim of this article is to propose a novel way to carry this project out, showing that the biconditionals in question can be totally classical. In the context of this article, these biconditionals will be essentially used in expressing the self-referential sentences and, thus, as a collateral result of our work we will prove that none of the recoveries expected of the target theory can be nontrivially achieved if self-reference is expressed through identities. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that a theory of truth for arithmetic should be consistent, but -consistency is a highly desirable feature for such theories. The point has already been made for first-order languages, though the evidence is not entirely conclusive. We show that in the second-order case the consequence of adopting -inconsistent theories of truth are considered: the revision theory of nearly stable truth T # and the classical theory of symmetric truth FS. Briefly, we present some conceptual problems with (...) ω-inconsistent theories, and demonstrate some technical results that support our criticisms of such theories. (shrink)

Considering the case of Juan de Vilanova y Piera, often celebrated as the first scientist to accept the prehistoric antiquity of palaeolithic paintings, we explore some of the problems related to the concept of ‘precursor’ in the field of the history of science. In the first section, we propose a brief history of this notion focusing on those authors who have reflected critically on the meaning of predecessors. In the second section, the example of Vilanova illustrates the ways in which (...) historians of science have created precursors. From the vantage of modern science, precursors have traditionally been defined as those who first indicated or announced ideas or theories later accepted by the scientific community. As a result, they have been represented as ‘heroes’ struggling hard to defeat the ignorance of their time. As the case of Juan de Vilanova illustrates, this traditional view is unsatisfactory in many ways. For this reason we consider in the third section a number of methodological strategies to promote a more adequate approach to pioneers. In particular, we suggest that the best way to surmount hagiographical approaches to past scientists is to put them in their own intellectual and historical contexts. (shrink)

The representation of a quantum system as the spatial configuration of its constituents evolving in time as a trajectory under the action of the wave-function, is the main objective of the de Broglie–Bohm theory. However, its standard formulation is referred to the statistical ensemble of its possible trajectories. The statistical ensemble is introduced in order to establish the exact correspondence between the probability density on the spatial configurations and the quantum distribution, that is the squared modulus of the wave-function. In (...) this work we explore the possibility of using the pilot wave theory at the level of a single Bohm’s trajectory, that is a single realization of the time dependent configuration which should be representative of a single realization of the quantum system. The pilot wave theory allows a formally self-consistent representation of quantum systems as a single Bohm’s trajectory, but in this case there is no room for the Born’s rule at least in its standard form. We will show that a correspondence exists between the statistical distribution of configurations along the single Bohm’s trajectory and the quantum distribution for a subsystem interacting with the environment in a multicomponent system. To this aim, we present the numerical results of the single Bohm’s trajectory description of the model system of six confined planar rotors with random interactions. We find a rather close correspondence between the coordinate distribution of one rotor, the others representing the environment, along its trajectory and the time averaged marginal quantum distribution for the same rotor. This might be considered as the counterpart of the standard Born’s rule when the pilot wave theory is applied at the level of single Bohm’s trajectory. Furthermore a strongly fluctuating behavior with a fast loss of correlation is found for the evolution of each rotor coordinate. This suggests that a Markov process might well approximate the evolution of the Bohm’s coordinate of a single rotor and, under this condition, it is shown that the correspondence between coordinate distribution and quantum distribution of the rotor is exactly verified. (shrink)

Based on a symposium by the International Gesellschaft f'ur dialektische Philosophie, Societas Hegeliana with the theme "Abstrakt/Konkret," Sept. 21-12, 1998 in Braga, Portugal.

La presente investigación aborda el estudio de las transformaciones producidas en el paisaje del poblado de Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo, por la incorporación de la actividad turística en la vida cotidiana de sus pobladores. A medida que los objetos, usos y el lenguaje del turismo se incorporan a las costumbres, tradiciones, relaciones sociales y estilos de vida de la población; los espacios de vida -laboral, vecinal, doméstico y de ocio- adquieren características físicas poco tradicionales y formas excluyentes de aprovechamiento que (...) contribuyen a configurar y fortalecer paisajes funcionales al capital turístico. La propiedad privada y el mercado de tierras, las políticas para la conservación de los recursos naturales, la deslocalización empresarial, la imagen turística y las oleadas migratorias son factores que han permitido la reorganización de los espacios de vida y, por consiguiente, la configuración de diversos paisajes turísticos a lo largo de la costa. (shrink)

The origins and development of the problem of mental causation are outlined. The underlying presuppositions which give rise to the problem are identified. Possible strategies for solving, or dissolving the problem are examined.

In modern zoos, enrichment programs have become a standard part of animal care routines. Although 'higher' primates usually receive complex enrichment programs, encompassing many types of enrichment, these are less common for prosimians. These animals often largely receive food-based enrichment, as was previously the case at Auckland Zoo, where the ring-tailed lemur enrichment schedule contained only three different items, all food-related. Lemurs tend to be considered less curious and quick to learn than other primates, as well as being less manually (...) dextrous, and for these reasons can be overlooked for complex enrichment. However, they have strong sensory abilities, in particular an acute sense of smell (Sauther et al 1999). This paper describes an enrichment program designed for the lemurs at Auckland Zoo with the aim of stimulating all senses. (shrink)

Transhumanist thought on overpopulation usually invokes the welfare of present human beings and the control over future generation, thus minimizing the need and meaning of new births. Here we devise a framework for a more thorough screening of the relevant literature, to have a better appreciation of the issue of natality. We follow the lead of Hannah Arendt and Brent Waters in this respect. With three overlapping categories of words, headed by “natality,” “birth,” and “intergenerations,” a large sample of books (...) on transhumanism is scrutinized, showing the lack of sustained reflection on the issue. After this preliminary scrutiny, a possible defense of natality in face of modern and transhumanist thought is marshaled, evoking a number of desirable human traits. One specific issue, the impact of modern values on natality, is further explored, reiterating that concerns about overpopulation and enhanced humans should keep in sight the natural cycle of birth and death. (shrink)

El artículo busca dilucidar algunas características del epistolario en tanto que fuente historiográfica y encontrar claves de comparación con la autobiografía. Con importantes aspectos en común, sus propósitos, sus sesgos y la posición subjetiva de sus autores evidencian importantes diferencias. A partir de esta problemática, se analizará la correspondencia sostenida por Max Weber desde el servicio militar durante la Gran Guerra. En un período en el que no tiene intervención pública alguna, el análisis se centra en la evolución de su (...) perspectiva sobre el papel de Alemania y sobre su actividad específica en los lazaretos. Cada uno de estos aspectos se relaciona respectivamente con dos piedras angulares de la obra weberiana: el problema nacional y el proceso de burocratización. (shrink)