Despite its biological importance, the mechanism of formation of cutin, the polymeric matrix of plant cuticles, has not yet been fully clarified. Here, for the first time, we show the participation in the process of lipid vesicles formed by the self‐assembly of endogenous polyhydroxy fatty acids. The accumulation and fusion of these vesicles (cutinsomes) at the outer part of epidermal cell wall is proposed as the mechanism for early cuticle formation. BioEssays 30:273–277, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

El pensamiento de P. F. Strawson ofrece un difícil equilibrio entre una tendencia naturalista no reduccionista y una trascendental post-kantiana. Este escrito reconsidera un argumento de la estrategia strawsoniana que fue utilizado por Barry Stroud en su famosa crítica a los argumentos trascendentales de los años 60. La reflexión sobre el fin y el alcance de este tipo de argumentos no sólo intenta mostrar la compatibilidad de ambos aspectos en el pensamiento de Strawson, sino iluminar el carácter de necesidad de (...) las proposiciones metafísicas. (shrink)

Corruption is a serious problem in Mexico and the available information regarding the levels of academic dishonesty in Mexico is not very encouraging. Academic integrity is essential in any teaching-learning process focussed on achieving the highest standards of excellence and learning. Promoting and experiencing academic integrity within the university context has a twofold purpose: to achieve the necessary learnings and skills to appropriately perform a specific profession and to develop an ethical perspective which leads to correct decision making. The objective (...) of this study is to explore the relationship between academic integrity and ethical behaviour, particularly workplace behaviour. The study adopts a quantitative, hypothetical and deductive approach. A questionnaire was applied to 1203 college students to gather information regarding the frequency in which they undertake acts of dishonesty in different environments and in regards to the severity they assign to each type of infraction. The results reflect that students who report committing acts against academic integrity also report being involved in dishonest activities in other contexts, and that students who consider academic breaches less serious, report being engaged in academic misconduct more frequently in different contexts. In view of these results, it is unavoidable to reflect on the role that educational institutions and businesses can adopt in the development of programmes to promote a culture of academic integrity which: design educational experiences to foster learning, better prepare students to fully meet their academic obligations, highlight the benefits of doing so, prevent the severity and consequences of dishonest actions, discourage cheating and establish clear and efficient processes to sanction those students who are found responsible for academic breaches. (shrink)

This paper straightforwardly addresses one of the strongest, from an ethical perspective, objections presented to the duty to die, the one concerned with the lack of a normative theory to support it, offered by Seay in his paper Can there be a “duty to die” without a normative theory? The aim of the paper is to provide strong metaethical grounds to support the duty to die without the need of a moral normative theory. First, the definition and main argument for (...) the duty to die will be presented. Second, Seay’s objection will be described and clearly explained. Third, our metaphysical assumptions and a preliminary metaethical discussion will be offered to situate and understand the context. Finally, we will show how the duty to die can be integrated within the metaethical approach previously presented, defending that there is no need of a normative theory to provide good justification and strong ethical grounds for the duty to die, because they will have already been provided by our metaethical argument. (shrink)

The use of artificial intelligence in healthcare contexts is highly controversial for the (bio)ethical conundrums it creates. One of the main problems arising from its implementation is the lack of transparency of machine learning algorithms, which is thought to impede the patient’s autonomous choice regarding their medical decisions. If the patient is unable to clearly understand why and how an AI algorithm reached certain medical decision, their autonomy is being hovered. However, there are alternatives to prevent the negative impact of (...) AI opacity in shared (healthcare professional–patient) decision-making processes, and benefit from the high accuracy of such systems. Despite these ethical issues, this paper advocates for its usage and also defends the positive role that it could have in enhancing patients’ autonomy. I advocate for a system where the implementation of AI is only partial, and humans will remain in control of oversighting algorithm interpretation of medical images and patients’ data. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es explorar y ofrecer diferentes hipótesis que puedan dar cuenta de una adecuada comprensión del deber de morir y su relación con la biopolítica desde dos enfoques olvidados. En primer lugar, se analizará la muerte desde una perspectiva biopolítica para comprender el papel crucial que tiene para el biopoder. En segundo lugar, la atención se centra en la implicación doble que tiene la muerte para el biopoder, ya que podría ser bien un desafío para él (...) o la sublimación final de su control. De igual forma, la siguiente sección aborda las relaciones entre muerte y neoliberalismo desde una perspectiva biopolítica, explorando la posibilidad de entender el deber de morir como una resistencia a los mandatos económicos o, por el contrario, como el cumplimiento de los intereses neoliberales. Finalmente, como continuación de las relaciones entre el deber de morir y el neoliberalismo, el artículo analiza una doble visión similar a la primera desde una perspectiva psicopolítica. (shrink)

This paper aims to explore and offer different hypotheses that could account for an adequate understanding of the duty to die and its relation to biopolitics from two neglected approaches. First, death will be analysed from a biopolitical perspective to understand the crucial role it has in biopower. Second, the focus lies on the two-folded implication that death has in biopower, for it could be either a defiance of it or the final sublimation of its control. Similarly, the next section (...) addresses the relations between death and neoliberalism from a biopolitical perspective, exploring the possibility of understanding the duty to die as resistance to economic mandates or, on the contrary, as the fulfilment of neoliberal interests. Finally, as a continuation of the relations between the duty to die and neo-liberalism, the paper analyses a similar two-folded view of the former from a psychopolitical perspective. (shrink)

Euthanasia and the duty to die have both been thoroughly discussed in the field of bioethics as morally justifiable practices within medical healthcare contexts. The existence of a narrow connection between both could also be established, for people having a duty to die should be allowed to actively hasten their death by the active means offered by euthanasia. Choosing the right time to end one’s own life is a decisive factor to retain autonomy at the end of our lives. However, (...) there is no definitive consensus on why physicians should be the ones performing the medical procedure to end a person’s life. The moral problems arising from such assertion are not to be taken lightly, for medical tradition has long regarded the duty not to kill, not to actively end a patient’s life, as the core moral obligation that gives meaning to the medical profession. Our concern is to question the moral justifiability of the arguments offered by physicians not to actively help patients die. (shrink)

This book aims to spur critical thought on the various dimensions and impacts of "responsibility" for organizations, including companies, institutions, and governments, while considering international differences and similarities, as well as global challenges. It analyzes to what extent responsibility is becoming a crucial issue for all kinds of organizations, examining both the intensifying pressures of international competition and the growing crisis of confidence towards some management concepts and practices. As more and more socio-economic and political systems are suspected of serving (...) selfish interests instead of the public good, more accountable and integrated processes are appropriate in order to deal with the present and future stakes of our society. Further, with the development of digital technology and the use of data mining, new questions regarding responsibility require examination. This edited collection is a culmination of the international scientific conference "Responsible Organizations in the Global Context", co-organized by the CIED of Georgetown University (United States) and the Larequoi Research Center of the University of Versailles St-Quentin (France) in June 2017 in Washington DC. It will contribute to research and actions in the areas of social responsibility, business ethics, organizational excellence, sustainability, and cross-cultural management. (shrink)

A partir de los “ejemplares” kuhnianos, lo que significa incorporar los instrumentos en los procesos de cambio, y sustituir el concepto de revolución por el de transformación, se describe la construcción y el desarrollo de la química identificando su método particular: análisis y síntesis. Todo ello acompañado por el surgimiento de nuevas subdisciplinas y de nuevas entidades u objetos epistémicos, que acumuladas, se fueron integrando en los robustos ejemplares de sus cambiantes prácticas, al mismo tiempo que se introdujeron importantes modificaciones (...) industriales. (shrink)

Many current problems surrounding science revolve around the complex epistemological framework that shapes a new vision of knowledge about reality. The traditional epistemological positions are characterized by the explanation of nature by means of concatenated facts; that is, as bricks attached to each other giving shape to the edifice of science. A conception of this nature showed that the idea of certainty was nothing more than a mere illusion, opening the way, on the contrary, to the idea of the uncertainty (...) of knowledge based on the descriptions of quantum physics, also a product of the non-reductionist conception of reality, thus criticizing the specular representation. This article addresses the main problems surrounding the critical conceptions that the emerging epistemology reveals about knowledge, pointing towards a much more complex vision of reality. (shrink)

When considering our own death, we normally weigh its impact on the people we love and care about, as well as worrying about the way in which our life might end, hoping that not too much suffering precedes it. However, such view, despite necessary, is a passive understanding of death, interpreted as something that merely happens to us, where we would have some control over timing if physician-assisted dying were legal in our countries. But what if our relation to death (...) would not end there? What if special medical needs, such as the emergency situation resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, could have a direct impact on us creating a moral duty to end our lives? That is the thesis that will be advocated for in this paper: a moral duty to die will arise in some people to save resources that will help others get through Covid-19. It is important to indicate that the duty to die is personally acknowledged and self-imposed, thus nobody can be coerced to carry it out; for autonomy would be lost and such action should be considered an instance of incitement to die, therefore being morally blameworthy. (shrink)

In this paper we criticize the existing contradictions in the context of bone marrow donor records in Spain. On the one hand there is the necessity to register as many patients as possible to maximize the opportunities to access a bone marrow transplant and on the other the always important economic issue of having to perform the relevant histocompatibility tests. In fact, these records are globally coordinated with each other to provide a wide range of potential donors and make better (...) use of existing resources. It should be noted that many patients who should have a transplant but who do not achieve a sufficient donor support must follow a medical treatment with high economic costs with tragic results for many of them. For example, those suffering from certain types of leukemia, when not finding that compatible donor, must follow chemotherapy-based treatments. There are also cord blood units banks which allow performing these transplants, also coordinated at the international level. Therefore, according to the principle of reciprocity, it is not justifiable that some countries are doing an important economic effort to have a large registration while others take advantage without making an equivalent effort according to their economic and population size. (shrink)

Se analizan los desafíos de futuro de la sociedad digital. Desde perspectiva fenomenológico-hermenéutica, la idea de una ética de la tecnología considera la sociedad digital como dispositivo técnico. La literatura pertinente permite, primero, estudiar la tecnología disruptiva como generadora de cambios sociales, los cuales, a su vez, transforman las formas de la facticidad de la vida. De esta manera, la ética de la sociedad material, sirve de argumento para analizar la ética en la sociedad digital. Tomando la bioética filosófica como (...) instrumento, se concluye que la sociedad digital antepone retos para la vida, los cuales debe afrontar para la supervivencia. (shrink)

Con ocasión del 80 aniversario de la Universidad Iberoamericana y de su Departamento de Filosofía hemos querido recuperar y comentar uno de los dos primeros libros que se publicaron en lo que entonces se llamaba Centro Cultural Universitario. El libro que nos ocupa es fiel testimonio de la época en que fue publicado. Las conferencias del padre jesuita Ledit son ejemplo de la manera de entender la historia moderna y contemporánea de muchos pensadores católicos preconciliares. La cristiandad medieval había realizado (...) una síntesis con el pensamiento griego. La modernidad fue la paulatina separación de esta filosofía perenne abierta a la trascendencia, con el resultado de una razón soberbia y orgullosa de su finitud; una de sus consecuencias fueron los sistemas totalitarios de la primera mitad del siglo xx, los cuales en su confrontación llevaron al estallido de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. (shrink)

A lo largo de la historia, el devenir de los acontecimientos ha hecho que determinados autores, que quizá en su época gozaron de fama y popularidad, hayan caído en el olvido o hayan sido forzados al ostracismo. Un caso clásico sería el del poeta y narrador estadounidense William Gilmore Simms quien, antes de la Guerra de Secesión, disfrutó de los laureles de la fama y la admiración de sus contemporáneos. Sin embargo, su apoyo a la causa confederada ha hecho de (...) él un autor prácticamente olvidado hoy en día. El caso de Joseph de Maistre es similar, pues también se enmarca dentro del apoyo a las causas perdidas o, más concretamente, a las causas que, andando el tiempo, no han resultado las vencedoras. Su apoyo a la causa contrarevolucionaria en el momento en que Europa se abría a la contemporaneidad social y política lo ha convertido en una isla en el pensamiento moderno, a pesar de que en su momento fuera un intelectual conocido y un pensador político respetado en los círculos conservadores. Como bien pone de manifiesto la Dra. Guerrero en su introducción, habría que esperar hasta 2007, para que la figura del senador saboyano volviera a los círculos académicos franceses, cuando Philippe Sollers escribió su ya clásico “Elogio de un maldito”. [...]. (shrink)

En décembre 2007, Jacqueline Hamesse a fêté son 65ème anniversaire, puis a accédé à l’éméritat en 2008. Nombreux sont les collègues et amis qui ont souhaité marquer ces dates en rendant hommage à son dévouement aux études médiévales, que ce soit dans l’enseignement et la recherche ou pour la création et le développement d’institutions internationales dans ce domaine, sans oublier les efforts déployés pour l’édition de nombreux ouvrages collectifs et l’organisation de diverses rencontres scientifiques. Nous avons donc décidé de lui (...) dédier ce volume d’études intitulé «Florilegium mediaevale». L’ouvrage comprend des études concernant l’un des quatre thèmes suivants: les textes philosophiques dans leur contexte et leur support matériel, les instruments travail ainsi que le vocabulaire des textes philosophiques. En effet, ce sont des domaines qui ont surtout retenu son attention depuis de nombreuses années et dans lesquels elle a apporté des contributions significatives à la recherche. Contributions de: L-J. Bataillon (†) et O. Weijers (Paris / Den Haag), F. Bertelloni (Buenos Aires), Ch. Burnett (London), J. Casteigt (Toulouse), J. Celeyrette et J-L. Solère (Lille / Boston), W. Courtenay (Wisconsin-Madison), G. Dahan (Paris), G. Dinkova-Bruun (Toronto), K. Emery Jr. (Notre Dame), Ch. Erismann (Cambridge), B. Faes de Mottoni (Milano), G. Federici Vescovini (Firenze), B. Fernández de la Cuesta (Madrid), R. Friedman et Ch. Schabel (Leuven / Nicosia), D. Gottschall (Lecce), S. Harvey (Jerusalem), I. Heullant-Donat (Reims), R. Hissette (Köln), M. Hoenen (Freiburg i.B.), J. Meirinhos (Porto), O. Merisalo (Jyväskylä), M. Mulchahey (Toronto), M. J. Muñoz Jiménez (Madrid), M. C. Pacheco (Porto), G. Piaia (Padova), R. H. Pich (Porto Alegre), J. Puig Montada (Madrid), R. Ramón Guerrero (Madrid), C. Sirat et M. Geoffroy (Paris), G. Spinosa (Roma), I. Ventura (Louvain-la-Neuve). (shrink)

En este artículo convergen dos investigaciones en curso en torno a la poesía chilena de posdictadura. En él, se emplea la categoría crítica de documentalismo para referir el estudio de los procedimientos de reescritura y apropiación que utilizan los poetas Jaime Pinos, María José Ferrada, Óscar Barrientos y Carlos Soto Román, autores que llevan a cabo un peculiar trabajo de montaje e intervención de fuentes documentales, a fin de producir una reflexión histórico-cultural acerca de cómo los medios masivos de (...) comunicación modelan la realidad y el discurso público. (shrink)

Conferencia inaugural impartida en el V Coloquio Nacional "Los valores en el siglo XXI", Universidad Autónoma de Guerrero, Chilpancingo, México, 24 de noviembre de 2010. El texto se refiere a la relación entre vida y valores y desarrolla la tesis sobre los fundamentos vitales de los valores humanos, para lo cual se indaga en las premisas evolutivas del vínculo entre la vida y las relaciones de significación que los seres vivos establecen con su entorno.

A new chronology is introduced to address the history of chemistry, with educational purposes, particularly for the end of the twentieth century and here identified as the fifth chemical revolution. Each revolution are considered in terms of the Kuhnian notion of ‘exemplar,’ rather than ‘paradigm.’ This approach enables the incorporation of instruments, as well as concepts and the rise of new subdisciplines into the revolutionary process and provides a more adequate representation of such periods of development and consolidation. The fifth (...) revolution developed from 1973 to 1999 and is characterized by a deep transformation in the very heart of chemistry. That is to say, the size and type of objects, the way in which they must be done and the time in which they are transformed. In one way or another, chemistry’ limits had been set out. (shrink)

Corporate America is institutionalizing ethics through a variety of structures, systems, and processes. This study sought to identify managerial perceptions regarding the institutionalization of ethics in organizations. Eighty-six corporate level marketing and human resource managers of American multi-national corporations responded to a mail survey regarding the various implicit and explicit ways by which corporations institutionalize ethics. The results revealed that managers found ethics to be good for the bottom line of the organizations, they did not perceive the need for additional (...) formalization of ethics, and that they perceived implicit forms of institutionalizing ethics (e.g., leadership, corporate culture, top management support) to be more effective than the explicit forms of institutionalizing ethics (e.g., ethics ombudspeople, ethics committees, ethics newsletters). Implications of the survey and future research directions conclude the paper. (shrink)

Re-activating the philosophical quest for real definitions, I dare propose that its fulfillment is most convincingly represented, close to home, where one probably least expects it, notably in the first half of Section 36 of Word and Object, in the pages of Quine. Aristotle must inevitably remain our guide even as we insist on respecting Quine's anti-essentialism, and I must then explain how Aristotle, truncated, can be put here to use. Well, we may begin, appropriately, with a definition or with (...) what, nearly enough, smacks of being one, namely the Aristotelian slogan, definitio fit per genus proximum et differentiam specificam. Although that may be itself a real definition (of real definition), I shall not pursue this scholastic point, preferring to concentrate on my principal task which I take to be to vindicate the feasibility of formulating a real definition of some mind-independent reality. Such a vindication can scarcely succeed today unless it is recognized from the outset that we have here at hand one of those cases where the very (logical) possibility of a problematic thing can be established only by having recourse to the modal principle that actuality entails possibility. Nothing less than a concrete instance of a real definition will then suffice, and I thus expect my sceptical reader (I count on her scepticism) to be in doubt whether the scholastic bit of jargon 'real definition' picks out one of the concepts in her repertoire. (shrink)

Fundamentos de filosofía de la ciencia es una obra de carácter general destinada principalmente a servir de guía a alumnos y profesores en la ensañanza universitaria de esta disciplina, en especial para los estudios de Filosofía, pero también para los de Humanidades y Ciencias Humanas y Naturales. La obra está estructurada en diferentes niveles para facilitar su utilización como libro de texto, tanto en cursos introductorios generales como en seminarios específicos. Aunque el público universitario es su principal destinatario, se ha (...) concebido para que cualquier lector interesado en la disciplina y con determinados conocimientos previos pueda acceder, con provecho, a las diversas partes de la misma. Ha diferencia de la mayoría de introducciones a la Filosofía de la Ciencia, la orientación de esta obra no es histórica sino temática, cubriendo los diferentes ámbitos conceptuales de la disciplina. Su contenido, dado que su finalidad es presentar los fundamentos de la materia, se centra en los grandes temas clásicos de la disciplina. El núcleo temático lo conforma la triada "conceptos-leyes-teorías" en torno a cuyos componentes se presentan los restantes temas: contrastación de hipótesis, medición, explicación, relaciones interteóricas, el problema de la inducción y el cambio teórico. En tanto que introducción general de la disciplina, en esta obra no se pretende ninguna tesis metacientífica o metafilosófica sustantiva, sino exponer de forma clara los principales problemas filosóficos que plantea la actividad científica y discutir las diferentes aproximaciones a los mismos.. (shrink)

Within post - Kuhnian, philosophy of science, much effort has been devoted to issues related to conceptual change, such as incommensurability, scientific progress and realism, but mostly in terms of reference, without a fine - grained theory of scientific concepts/senses. Within the philosophy of language and of mind tradition, there is a large body of work on concepts, but the application to scientific concepts has been very tentative. The aim of this paper is to propose a general framework for a (...) theory for the individuation of scientific concepts. The general view about the individuation of concepts favored here is the possession - condition approach: to individuate a concept is to identify its possession conditions. The general metascientific tools for the analysis of scientific theories are model - theoretic, more specifically, structuralist: scientific theories, the entities to which scientifc concepts belong, are model - theoretic theory - nets. The general idea about the content of scientific concepts that inspires this proposal comes from: (i) our grandfathers’ "laws - plus - correspondence rules", (ii) Kuhns "laws applied to exemplars" views and (iii) moderate operationalism. The aim is to show that some clarification can be gained applying the possesion condition appproach to (an expansion of) these three elements using structuralist metascientific tools. First, I briefly present the two main structuralist ideas I shall use: the difference between observability and non - theoreticity, and the notion of theory - net. Second, I informally introduce the five components that come from my reading of the three traditional elements; these components are, or are not, plausible independently of how they will be integrated within a theory of concept - identity. Third, I present the kore of the theory of possession conditions for concept - identity that we shall use for the integration of such components. Finally, I propose the general traits of the possession condition that corresponds to each of these five components, I present some problems and point out some possible ways of dealing with them. (shrink)

This paper describes a one-day workshop format for introducing ethics into the engineering curriculum prepared at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRM). It responds to the ethics criteria newly integrated into the accreditation process by the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET). It also employs an ethics across the curriculum (EAC) approach; engineers identify the ethical issues, write cases that dramatize these issues, and then develop exercises making use of these cases that are specially tailored to mainstream (...) engineering classes. The different activities and strategies employed in this workshop are set forth. Specific references are made to the cases and exercises developed as a result of these workshops. The paper ends by summarizing the different assessments made of the workshop by addressing the following questions: how did it contribute to the overall ABET effort at UPRM; could other universities benefit from a similar activity; and how did the participants evaluate the workshop? (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas, in his commentary on the Metaphysics, offers a faithful rendering of the argument in the course of his almost literal paraphrase; but in the Summa Contra Gentiles, when he undertakes to give "the arguments by which Aristotle sets out to prove the existence of God," the argument from time is strangely omitted. Thomas is not peculiar in this omission. Maimonides before him evinces no recognition of the argument from time, and I am aware of no modern discussion of (...) it. The one directly relevant passage in Book Lambda is certainly exiguous enough, and it might perhaps be suggested that Aristotle himself failed to grasp the argument as independent of the argument from motion. The argument from time is indeed absent from the Physics in anything like its full force, though an abbreviated version of it is peripherally anticipated in chapter 1 of Bk. 8. There being such a meagreness of supporting documentation in the Aristotelian corpus itself, it is not altogether surprising that the key passage--Met. 1071b3-10--should be passed over as merely a highly condensed synopsis of the argument from motion. I am confident, however, that, elliptical as the passage is, it actually uncovers an argument for the prime mover quite distinct from the main argument of the Physics. (shrink)

Metaphysical inquiry is indebted to the sceptical dialectic for the earlier moments in its investigation. Through that dialectic the field is cleared of the dubitable. We shall here install Descartes' first Meditation as the initial moment in our program. What if all is a dream? Hume supplies our second moment. Immediate experience, such as sensations of color, is undeniable, and that alone. Our third moment is the familiar retrenchment of Hume to a solipsism of the present instant. The past, like (...) the external world, being removed from our direct perception cannot be verified. (shrink)

En esta contribución ensayaremos una reflexión, desde las coordenadas de los estudios sobre ciencia, tecnología y sociedad (CTS), sobre el impacto de la pandemia del coronavirus en España. Estudiaremos la evolución de la percepción social en España sobre la vacunación contra la COVID-19 a la luz de los avances científicos e industriales en el desarrollo de las vacunas, las decisiones y debates políticos que acompañaron a la gestión de la crisis sanitaria y la cobertura mediática del proceso por parte de (...) los medios de comunicación. Para ello utilizaremos fundamentalmente los datos proporcionados por el Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS) complementados, puntualmente, con datos ofrecidos por otras encuestas nacionales e internacionales, así como una amplia selección de noticias aparecidas en medios de comunicación que contribuyeron a configurar el imaginario público sobre la pandemia durante los meses previos y posteriores al inicio de la vacunación en España, que comenzó en nuestro país a finales de diciembre de 2020. Aunque este estudio exploratorio se basa en datos de encuestas y de medios, no pretende ofrecer un análisis descriptivo detallado, sino que su alcance se limita a una reflexión que pueda contribuir a comprender mejor el significado de la pandemia para las cambiantes relaciones C-T-S. (shrink)