La pandemia del SARS-CoV-2 ha creado un desafío sin precedentes para la educación. En 2020, como resultado de las medidas para reducir la propagación del SARS-CoV-2, muchas instituciones educativas pasaron del aprendizaje presencial al aprendizaje remoto. Sin embargo, este modelo educativo puede generar estrés y ansiedad adicionales a la ansiedad provocada por la pandemia. Los objetivos del presente estudio fueron: 1) comparar las perspectivas de estudiantes y docentes sobre el número de horas dedicadas a las clases, y 2) determinar las (...) principales dificultades que enfrentan docentes y estudiantes, respectivamente, al pasar al sistema de educación en línea. Para realizar esta investigación se realizó una encuesta online en países de habla hispana, utilizando una muestra de 1.048 participantes anónimos. A través de los datos recopilados. Se analizaron el uso de plataformas, los tipos de equipos, los niveles de angustia y las posibles razones de esta angustia. Esta pandemia es una de las amenazas de salud pública más importantes de la historia reciente y ha afectado nuestras vidas de manera significativa, siendo una de las más importantes la futura adaptación de escuelas, estudiantes y docentes a una nueva forma de aprender. (shrink)

El Foro Global de Bioética en Investigación (GFBR por sus siglas en inglés) se reunió el 3 y 4 de noviembre en Buenos Aires, Argentina, con el objetivo de discutir la ética de la investigación con mujeres embarazadas. El GFBR es una plataforma mundial que congrega a actores clave con el objetivo de promover la investigación realizada de manera ética, fortalecer la ética de la investigación en salud, particularmente en países de ingresos bajos y medios, y promover colaboración entre países (...) del norte y del sur.a Los participantes en el GFBR provenientes de Latinoamérica incluyeron a eticistas, investigadores, miembros de comités de ética y representantes de autoridades sanitarias provenientes de Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panamá, Perú, Nicaragua y la República Dominicana. Una legítima preocupación por la protección de las mujeres embarazadas y sus embriones o fetos ha llevado a la mayoría de los países de la Región de las Américas a limitar la realización de estudios con mujeres embarazadas exclusivamente a aquellos estudios específicos sobre el embarazo, y a requerir la exclusión sistemática de las mujeres embarazadas o de las mujeres que quedan embarazadas en el curso del estudio. Ciertamente, a lo largo de la historia de la ética de la investigación, se ha creído erróneamente que proteger a una población es sinónimo de excluirla de los estudios. Se sabe ahora que proceder así implica exponer a riesgos mucho mayores a la población que se busca proteger. El embarazo implica cambios fisiológicos sustantivos e impacta profundamente la manera como el cuerpo metaboliza los medicamentos. Sin embargo, por evitar hacer investigación con mujeres embarazadas, no se ha producido la evidencia científica necesaria para tomar decisiones sobre tratamientos e intervenciones preventivas con dosis eficaces y seguras para ellas y sus embriones o fetos. A manera de ilustración, en el 2001 había en los Estados Unidos apenas más de una docena de medicamentos aprobados para uso en el embarazo (1) y en el 2011 la Food and Drug Administration (FDA) aprobó por primera vez en 15 años un medicamento para su uso en el embarazo (2). Como consecuencia de no haber producido la evidencia necesaria, se pone en riesgo la salud de las mujeres embarazadas cada vez que se les da atención médica. Las mujeres embarazadas se enferman y las mujeres enfermas se embarazan, y no se sabe si los medicamentos que se les da son eficaces o siquiera seguros para ellas y sus embriones o fetos. (shrink)

This brief review of Mario Bunge’s research on physics begins with an analysis of his masterpiece Foundations of Physics, and then it discusses his other contributions to the philosophy of physics. Following that is a summary of his more recent reactions to scientific discoveries in physics and a discussion of his position about non-locality in quantum mechanics, as well as his changing opinions on the nature of spacetime. The paper ends with a brief assessment of Bunge’s legacy concerning the foundations (...) of physics. (shrink)

Black Feminist Sociology offers new writings by established and emerging scholars working in a Black feminist tradition. The book centers Black feminist sociology within the sociology canon and widens is to feature Black feminist sociologists both outside the U.S. and the academy. Inspired by a BFS lens, the essays are critical, personal, political and oriented toward social justice. Key themes include the origins of Black feminist sociology, expositions of BFS orientations to research that extend disciplinary norms, and contradictions of the (...) pleasures and costs of such an approach both academically and personally. Authors explore their own sociological legacy of intellectual development to raise critical questions of intellectual thought and self-reflexivity. The book highlights the dynamism of BFS so future generations of scholars can expand upon and beyond the book's key themes. (shrink)

In the context of multidimensional measures of well-being, a key question for policy is whether particular groups have differing priorities and are therefore likely to react differently to given economic or social shocks. We explore this issue by presenting the results of two related analyses that suggest positive answers on both counts. First, we apply reference class weights to unique data on adult capabilities in the UK and show that relative weights vary across some groupings. Furthermore, in some cases, deprivation (...) rankings of groups vary depending on which weights are used. Second, we explore possible behavioural consequences of different weights by examining the extent to which groups respond differently to three economic and social shocks (unemployment, widowhood and ill health). In this case, we find that weights and responses vary noticeably with age and region and sometimes with gender. We conclude that whilst equal weighting may be practically unavoidable when constructing indices of welfare in the absence of information on weights, their estimation from survey or experimental data is likely to be justified and may change views about policy needs or efficacy. (shrink)

There are communities in which disadvantaged groups experience severe inequality. For instance, poor and indigent families face many difficulties accessing their social rights. Their condition is largely the consequence of the wrong choices of those in power, either historical or more recent choices. The lack of opportunities of these deprived citizens is due to state omissions. In such communities, it is not unusual for homeless members of these particular groups to occupy abandoned lands and build their shelters there. However, almost (...) everywhere, these actions constitute a crime. The typical response to this situation is prosecution and punishment. In this paper, I will defend the occupation of public places as a consequence of the failure of governments to solve the problem of housing, and I will argue that we must distinguish a social claim from a crime and avoid the use of criminal law in these “occupation cases”. I will also argue that our right—as a community—to blame and punish these “squatters” is eroded by the fact that we perpetrated their situation of injustice. (shrink)

¿Qué entendemos cuando hablamos de eutanasia? Etimológicamente, el término procede de las raíces griegas eu (bueno, buena) y thanatos (muerte). Sin embargo, una definición etimológica parece insuficiente, ya que la noción que se tiene de tal concepto ha variado a través de la historia, así como su misma práctica.Para comprender el por qué no se ha podido establecer un consenso acerca de lo que se entiende por eutanasia, podría ser útil mencionar algunas culturas y sus prácticas del “buen morir”. Ciertas (...) culturas nómadas, por ejemplo, dejaban atrás a enfermos y ancianos. Los espartanos abandonaban en la corriente de un río a los recién nacidos en caso de que éstos tuviesen alguna deformidad o poca probabilidad de seguir viviendo. En el mismo caso, los romanos los dejaban morir en la intemperie. Entre los battaki, es una práctica común que el padre de familia, ya viejo, suba a un árbol, y simbolizando un fruto maduro, se deje caer; posteriormente, sus familiares lo matan y se lo comen.Ahora bien, ¿cuál es la intuición que parecen tener estas culturas acerca de una muerte causada pero no mal intencionada? En principio, podríanse juzgar tales prácticas como inmorales e inhumanas, pero eso sería cometer imprecisiones contextuales acerca del carácter histórico y moral de tales actividades. La correspondencia más clara entre tales culturas y su concepción del final de la vida se muestra en pos de un respeto y aceptación de la muerte, es decir, una conciencia de la inevitabilidad de la muerte y nuestro artículo versa sobre todo ello. (shrink)

Dung’s argumentation frameworks have been applied for over twenty years to the analysis of argument justification. This representation focuses on arguments and the attacks among them, abstracting away from other features like the internal structure of arguments, the nature of utterers, the specifics of the attack relation, etc. The model is highly attractive because it reduces most of the complexities involved in argumentation processes. It can be applied to different settings, like the argument evaluation of an individual agent or the (...) case of dialectic disputes between two agents (pro and con), or even in multi-agent collective argumentation. The latter case involves agents with possibly different arguments and/or opinions on how to evaluate them, leading to the possibility of considering multiple sets of arguments and attack relations. Two basic questions can be asked here, namely ‘what to aggregate’ and ‘how to aggregate’. The former concerns what kinds of entities do the agents intend to choose (arguments, attacks, assessments, etc.), while the second one focuses on which aggregation mechanisms yield rational choices (voting on arguments, merging procedures to obtain a common argumentation framework, deliberation processes, etc.). In particular, the question about the rationality of a collective argument choice relates this topic to Social Choice and Judgment Aggregation theories, while its associated strategic issues relate it to Game Theory. The research efforts on the disparate problems elicited by collective argumentation have generated a considerable corpus of literature that deserves an orderly evaluation. This survey is intended as a contribution to that end. (shrink)

This book investigates the concept of body shame and explores its significance when considering philosophical accounts of embodied subjectivity, providing phenomenological reflections on how the body is shaped by social forces.

The problems that arise from the presence of self-attacking ar- guments and odd-length cycles of attack within argumentation frameworks are widely recognized in the literature on defeasible argumentation. This paper introduces two simple semantics to capture different intuitions about what kinds of arguments should become justified in such scenarios. These semantics are modeled upon two extensions of argumentation frameworks, which we call sustainable and tolerant. Each one is constructed on the common ground of the powerful concept of admissibility introduced by (...) Dung in [10]. The novelty of this approach consists in viewing the admissibility of a subset of arguments as relative to potentially challenging subsets of arguments. Both sustainable and tolerant semantics are more credulous than preferred semantics (i.e. they justify at least the same arguments, and possibly more). Given certain sufficient conditions they coincide among them as well as with other semantics introduced by Dung. (shrink)

O utopianismo científico de Neurath é a proposta para que as ciências sociais se envolvam na elaboração, desenvolvimento e comparação de cenários contrafactuais, as ‘utopias’. Tais cenários podem ser entendidos como peças centrais de experimentos de pensamento científicos, isto é, em exercícios da imaginação que não apenas promovem a revisão conceitual, mas também estimulam a criatividade para lidar com problemas vivenciados, já que utopias são esforços para imaginar como o futuro poderia ser. Ademais, experimentos de pensamento utópicos podem oferecer conhecimento (...) científico para informar debates e decisões políticas, contribuindo para formatar a sociedade. Este ensaio reconstrói um evento histórico como um exemplo da metodologia utopianista de Neurath. No final dos anos 1970 e início dos anos 1980, uma comissão científica e política designada pelo parlamento da Alemanha Ocidental inventou e comparou quatro cenários para políticas energético-econômicas futuras. Conclusões da comissão informaram decisões políticas que puseram a Alemanha Ocidental (e depois reunificada) em um caminho para se tornar uma potência industrial verde. Uma parte fundamental do trabalho da comissão envolveu um apelo à imaginação, permitindo a caracterização sob a metodologia de Neurath. (shrink)

In this paper we provide a compact presentation of the verisimilitudinarian approach to scientific progress (VS, for short) and defend it against the sustained attack recently mounted by Alexander Bird (2007). Advocated by such authors as Ilkka Niiniluoto and Theo Kuipers, VS is the view that progress can be explained in terms of the increasing verisimilitude (or, equivalently, truthlikeness, or approximation to the truth) of scientific theories. According to Bird, VS overlooks the central issue of the appropriate grounding of scientific (...) beliefs in the evidence, and it is therefore unable (a) to reconstruct in a satisfactory way some hypothetical cases of scientific progress, and (b) to provide an explanation of the aversion to falsity that characterizes scientific practice. We rebut both of these criticisms and argue that they reveal a misunderstanding of some key concepts underlying VS. (shrink)

Theory change is a central concern in contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science. In this paper, we investigate the relationships between two ongoing research programs providing formal treatments of theory change: the (post-Popperian) approach to verisimilitude and the AGM theory of belief change. We show that appropriately construed accounts emerging from those two lines of epistemological research do yield convergences relative to a specified kind of theories, here labeled “conjunctive”. In this domain, a set of plausible conditions are identified which (...) demonstrably capture the verisimilitudinarian effectiveness of AGM belief change, i.e., its effectiveness in tracking truth approximation. We conclude by indicating some further developments and open issues arising from our results. (shrink)

The body of Eva in Thomas Aquinas The constitution of the first female body or the body of Eva presents several physical and metaphysical problems, problems that have gone through the centuries and reach the present, generating social and cultural consequences for women. The non-existence of parents demands from Aquino answers that go beyond the anthropological and biological and lead to the search of philosophical answers intertwined with the theological ones. Thomas Aquinas provides rational answers although the background is of (...) faith, and even, with literal interpretations of the Sacred Scriptures now abandoned. The Aquinate makes an intellectual effort to find answers in a rational field because the matter of the body of the first woman brings difficulties for its elucidation and understanding. As in other parts of his extensive work, Thomas Aquinas, follows the biological and physical works of Aristotle. Although the Aristotelian background is in line with Christian thought, Aquinas shows his extraordinary capacity for synthesis between the faith received and reason argued, between revelation and the principles of reason. (shrink)

Micro Credit (MC) programs lend money to poor borrowers using innovative mechanisms such as group lending under joint liability while successfully accounting for the presence of asymmetric information in underdeveloped financial markets. MC programs have achieved what the conventional financial institutions and the government have not been able to: lend to the poor, impressive loan recuperation, and a positive impact in poverty reduction. This article analyzes the performance of ALSOL, an MC program in Chiapas, México, for 2151 participants in urban (...) and rural areas for the time period between July 2000 and July 2001. While loan recuperation is high (95%), administrative costs also remain high. Socially responsible lenders and donors play a key role in providing continuous funding to MC programs and assisting in reducing the level of poverty. (shrink)

This paper questions the notion that states may be justified in denying certain prisoners the right to vote as a means of distancing themselves from particularly grave wrongs. Christopher Bennett has recently defended prisoner disenfranchisement as a fair and deserved retributive punishment for crimes, and Mary Sigler and Andrew Altman have argued in favor of prisoner disenfranchisement as a civil restriction. All three proponents agree that disenfranchisement should be reserved for those guilty of the most serious offenses. I assert that (...) it is inappropriate to treat citizens in this manner and will advocate for the right to vote, whether disenfranchisement is perceived as a form of punishment or as a civil measure. I will present two arguments against disenfranchisement as it impacts both citizens and political community at large. First, it excludes citizens from the democratic arena and restricts the opportunity to reintegrate offenders into the political community. While a criminal sentence is intended to be burdensome, the burden associated with disenfranchisement extends beyond the appropriate penal scope. (shrink)

ARAGÃO, Ivan Rêgo. “ Vinde todas as pessoas, e vede a minha dor ”: A Festa/Procissão ao Nosso Senhor dos Passos como Atrativo Potencial Turístico em São Cristóvão-Sergipe-Brasil. 2012. 198f. Dissertação (Mestrado) Cultura e Turismo – Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz (UESC), Ilhéus-BA. Palavras-chave: Turismo Cultural-Religioso Católico. Religiosidade Popular. Festa do Senhor dos Passos. Keywords: Catholic Religious-Cultural Tourism. Popular Religiosity. Party of Lord of the Steps.

This target article considers the ethical implications of providing prenatal diagnosis (PND) and antenatal screening services to detect fetal abnormalities in jurisdictions that prohibit abortion for these conditions. This unusual health policy context is common in the Latin American region. Congenital conditions are often untreated or under-treated in developing countries due to limited health resources, leading many women/couples to prefer termination of affected pregnancies. Three potential harms derive from the provision of PND in the absence of legal and safe abortion (...) for these conditions: psychological distress, unjust distribution of burdens between socio-economic classes, and financial burdens for families and society. We present Iran as a comparative case study where recognition of these ethical issues has led to the liberalization of abortion laws for fetuses with thalassemia. We argue that physicians, geneticists and policymakers have an ethical and professional duty of care to advocate for change in order to ameliorate these harms. (shrink)

En el presente artículo, el autor analiza la adecuada reinserción social del recluso como finalidad de la ejecución de la pena privativa de la libertad. Con ese propósito, el jurista identifica los diferentes modelos de readaptación social (“readaptación para la moralidad” y “readaptación para la legalidad”), con sus virtudes y críticas. Por último, Arocena examina los condicionamientos que impone un arquetipo de Estado social y democrático de Derecho, a la hora de adherir a uno u otro de esos modelos, y (...) finalmente expone sus razones a favor de un paradigma de readaptación social mínimo. (shrink)

Interweaving personal narrative and theory, this essay frames the valorization of female virginity in Guatemalan ladino society within the context of ethnic conflict between ladinos and Mayan Indians. A consideration of what is at stake in the premarital loss of virginity for ladino women can illuminate interrelationships among nationalism, the engendering of ethnicity, and women’s bodies.

Interweaving personal narrative and theory, this essay frames the valorization of female virginity in Guatemalan ladino society within the context of ethnic conflict between ladinos and Mayan Indians. A consideration of what is at stake in the premarital loss of virginity for ladino women can illuminate interrelationships among nationalism, the engendering of ethnicity, and women’s bodies.

En 1967, Helmuth Plessner publica en Merkur una síntesis de su pensamiento titulado «El ser humano como ser vivo». Este trabajo de investigación ha consistido en realizar una traducción, con un gran número de aparato crítico en forma de notas, y con un estudio introductorio. En el texto, Plesner expone el carácter diferencial del viviente humano en comparación con los demás animales, carácter por el que trasciende el ámbito de lo zoológico, permaneciendo no obstante en él. Por eso, el estudio (...) introductorio, se centra tras las cuestiones historiográficas pertinentes, en las condiciones antropológicas de posibilidad de la posicionalidad diferencial del ser humano ante la realidad, también la propia. Condiciones que se descubren en la reflexividad, la interioridad y la exterioridad. (shrink)

Dung’s argumentation frameworks are formalisms widely used to model interaction among arguments. Although their study has been profusely developed in the field of Artificial Intelligence, it is not common to see its treatment among those less connected to computer science within the logical-philosophical community. In this paper we propose to bring to that audience a proof-theory for argument justification based on tableaux, very similar to those the Logic students are familiar with. The tableaux enable to calculate whether an argument or (...) subset of arguments are accepted or rejected in accordance to Dung’s preferred and grounded extension-based semantics. Soundness and completeness results regarding those semantics are provided. (shrink)

In this paper, we address the problem of truth approximation through theory change, asking whether revising our theories by newly acquired data leads us closer to the truth about a given domain. More particularly, we focus on “nomic conjunctive theories”, i.e., theories expressed as conjunctions of logically independent statements concerning the physical or, more generally, nomic possibilities and impossibilities of the domain under inquiry. We define both a comparative and a quantitative notion of the verisimilitude of such theories, and identify (...) suitable conditions concerning the (partial) correctness of acquired data, under which revising our theories by data leads us closer to “the nomic truth”, construed as the target of scientific inquiry. We conclude by indicating some further developments, generalizations, and open issues arising from our results. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In the 1960s, when Dr. Belding Scribner discovered how to accomplish the process of dialysis in a repeated way, he could not imagine that in solving such a problem others as or more difficult would appear. Given the technological progress and the impossibility of assisting all patients through the most modern methods, the medical doctor often finds himself faced with the moral dilemma of choosing which patient in the waiting list will receive the treatment. This same dilemma is amplified (...) in the case of organ transplants. Professionals, students, professors of the juridical and health fields, and the population in general, were interviewed as a means of documenting the moral concepts and opinions surrounding this problem. In the reality in which we find ourselves, it seems to us that deciding who lives, and the responsibility for all the events that culminate in such decisions, is still a subject left open to discussion. (shrink)

O acontecimento do compreender, enquanto questão-chave do pensamento de Gadamer, também pode ser compreendido como uma fusão de horizontes. Do ponto de vista da hermenêutica filosófica, tal aspecto abre a possibilidade de tematização do âmbito próprio da compreensão como uma experiência filosófica simultaneamente ontológica e prática. Por isso, a descrição do compreender enquanto fusão de horizontes indica o tratamento de traços fundamentais da vida humana que, para Gadamer, encontra afinidades com a retomada da filosofia prática de Aristóteles. Deste modo, pretendemos (...) discutir alguns aspectos da relação entre os conceitos de compreensão e fusão de horizonte a partir da conexão essencial entre hermenêutica filosófica e filosofia prática.: The happening of understanding, as key-issue of Gadamer’s thought, can be also understood like a fusion of horizons. From the point of view of philosophical hermeneutics, this aspect opens the possibility of discussing about the sphere of understanding simultaneously ontological and practice philosophical experience. Therefore, the description of understanding as fusion of horizons indicates the treatment of basic traces of human life that finds affinities with the rehabilitation of practical philosophy of Aristotle. Thus, we intend to discuss some aspects of the relation between the notions of understanding and fusion of horizons from the essential connection between philosophical hermeneutics and practical philosophy. Keywords: Gadamer; understanding; fusion of horizons; practical philosophy; Aristotle. (shrink)

Na abordagem hermenêutica das obras de arte, Gadamer discute a arquitetura como uma das expressões artísticas na qual se pode reconsiderar a relação ontológico-interpretativa com as coisas em geral. Repensando a estrutura representativa própria da experiência hermenêutica das obras de arte, Gadamer introduz a arquitetura como uma expressão artística peculiar, na qual as obras de arte resistem aos posicionamentos estéticos atuais, reinserindo-as na esfera prática da vida. Essa tematização encontra ecos importantes na teoria e prática arquitetônicas, à medida que possibilita (...) uma nova relação com as obras de arquitetura, para além das variáveis estéticas. O presente artigo, portanto, tem como objetivo discutir a experiência hermenêutica da arquitetura como um momento interpretativo decisivo da relação com as obras de arte, explicitando tanto o caráter ontológico-hermenêutico do pensamento de Gadamer quanto o traço hermenêutico das obras de arquitetura. Para isso, partimos de um diálogo estabelecido por Gadamer e dois arquitetos, Jacques Herzog e Pierre de Meuron sobre a essência da arquitetura. A resposta gadameriana indicou-nos o horizonte de tematização das obras arquitetônicas como extensão da experiência da obra de arte, tal como foi discutido em Verdade e Método, notadamente na discussão sobre a representação artística e a retomada das noções de ocasional e decorativo. A tematização hermenêutica encontra, por conseguinte, repercussões na teoria e prática arquitetônicas, indicando um horizonte alternativo de questionamento do sentido da arquitetura e urbanismo, situando-o e remetendo-o para o horizonte da vida em comum. (shrink)

A covid-19 tem gerado grande mobilização por parte das sociedades contemporâneas. Como forma de prevenção e controle da doença, o isolamento social tem sido uma medida eficaz, recomendada por diversos órgãos da saúde. Por isso, pensar o isolamento social como prática solidária tem sido fundamental. Nesta perspectiva, o presente artigo busca problematizar o isolamento social enquanto isolamento solidário. Para isso, partimos da tematização da enfermidade, até agora conhecida, seus modos de prevenção e controle e, por conseguinte, o diálogo entre a (...) Saúde Coletiva e a Hermenêutica Filosófica, na tentativa de repensar o isolamento criticamente, para além de uma questão biomédica. Assim, discutir o isolamento solidário como noção essencial ao enfrentamento da pandemia da COVID-19 significa contribuir para uma visão mais ampla de saúde, ao passo que se encontra em jogo o restabelecimento da vida comunitária para além de sua concepção biomédica. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is commonly characterized as the method for assessing and improving our representational devices. Little has been said, however, on how best to construe these representational devices—in other words, on what conceptual engineering should be all about. This paper tackles this problem with a basic strategy: First, by presenting a taxonomy of the different possible subject matters for conceptual engineering; then, by comparatively assessing them and selecting the most conducive one with a view to making conceptual engineering an actionable (...) method, that is, a method that can be applied effectively and consistently to specific case studies. The outcome is that conceptual engineering should be all about concepts on pain of pragmatic inconsistencies otherwise. (shrink)

En esta discusión abordo la hermenéutica analógica de Mauricio Beuchot comparándola con la hermenéutica filosófica de Hans-Georg Gadamer. Argumento que Beuchot vuelve a la idea clásica de la hermenéutica como método de interpretación y no la juzga, como Gadamer, como una fenomenología de la comprensión. Sin embargo, Beuchot no atiende las razones de Gadamer en contra de concebir la hermenéutica como una metodología. Si se considera como metodología centrada en la analogía, la hermenéutica analógica deja de lado otros recursos interpretativos (...) importantes. Finalmente, Beuchot adopta una teoría correspondentista de la verdad contra la que argumenta Gadamer y que es incompatible con una hermenéutica filosófica. In this paper I analyze Mauricio Beuchot's analogical hermeneutics by contrasting it with Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. I argue that Beuchot goes back to the classical idea of hermeneutics as a method of interpretation, and does not see it, as Gadamer does, as a phenomenology of understanding. However, Beuchot does not address Gadamer's arguments against using hermeneutics as a methodology. Considered as a methodology centered on analogy, analogical hermeneutics overlooks other important interpretation resources. Finally, Beuchot adopts a correspondence theory of truth, which Gadamer objects and is incompatible with philosophical hermeneutics. (shrink)

This article examines the phenomenology of body shame in the context of the clinical encounter, using the television program ‘Embarrassing Bodies’ as illustrative. I will expand on the insights of Aaron Lazare’s 1987 article ‘Shame and Humiliation in the Medical Encounter’ where it is argued that patients often see their diseases and ailments as defects, inadequacies or personal shortcomings and that visits to doctors and medical professionals involve potentially humiliating physical and psychological exposure. I will start by outlining a phenomenology (...) of shame in order to understand more clearly the effect shame about the body can have in terms of one’s personal experience and, furthermore, one’s interpersonal dynamics. I will then examine shame in the clinical encounter, linking body shame to the cultural stigma attached to illness, dysfunction and bodily frailty. I will furthermore explore how shame can be exacerbated or even incited by physicians through judgment and as a result of the power imbalance inherent to the physician-patient dynamic, compounded by the contemporary tendency to moralise about ‘lifestyle’ illnesses. Lastly, I will provide some reflections for how health care workers might approach patient shame in clinical practice. (shrink)

We reported a series of experiments carried out to confront the underlying intuitions of value-based argumentation frameworks (VAFs) with the intuitions of ordinary people. Our goal was twofold. On the one hand, we intended to test VAF as a descriptive theory of human argument evaluations. On the other, we aimed to gain new insights from empirical data that could serve to improve VAF as a normative model. The experiments showed that people’s acceptance of arguments deviates from VAF’s semantics and is (...) rather correlated with the importance given to the promoted values, independently of the perceptions of argument interactions through attacks and defeats. Furthermore, arguments were often perceived as promoting more than one value with different relative strengths. Individuals’ analyses of scenarios were also affected by external factors such as biases and arguments not explicit in the framework. Finally, we confirmed that objective acceptance, that is, the acceptance of arguments under any order of the values, was not a frequent behavior. Instead, participants tended to accept only the arguments that promoted the values they subscribe. (shrink)

In this paper we present an embedding of abstract argumentation systems into the framework of Barwise and Seligmans logic of information flow. We show that, taking P.M. Dungs characterization of argument systems, a local logic over states of a deliberation may be constructed. In this structure, the key feature of non-monotonicity of commonsense reasoning obtains as the transition from one local logic to another, due to a change in certain background conditions. Each of Dungs extensions of argument systems leads to (...) a corresponding ordering of background conditions. The relations among extensions becomes a relation among partial orderings of background conditions. This introduces a conceptual innovation in Barwise and Seligmans representation of commonsense reasoning. (shrink)

Examines the lived experience of social encounters drawing on phenomenological insights.

In this paper, I argue for a pragmatic theory of the motivations behind the practice of defining concepts in philosophy. The “correct” definition in philosophy is not, as is usually supposed, the definition that accurately describes some pre-philosophical meaning, but the definition which is useful for the achievement of certain theoretical goals. I consider different examples of definitional debates from the history of philosophy. The analysis of these examples also evidences why philosophers do not usually grant the incidence of pragmatic (...) reason in their conceptual investigations. At the end of the paper, I provide some reasons that explain why the incidence of pragmatic reasons is inevitable. (shrink)

In this study we replicated the explanatory effect of a label which had been found by Giffin et al.. In their experiments, they used vignettes describing an odd behavior of a person based on culturally specific disorders that were unfamiliar to respondents. It turned out that explanations which explain an odd behavior through a person’s tendency to behave that way seemed more persuasive if the disorder was given a label that was used in the explanation. We replicated these results in (...) Experiment 1, and in a follow-up Experiment 2 we examined the familiarity with category information and the evaluation of that category over time. We realized that the label effect persists even when people make judgments based on their recollections about a category. Furthermore, according to a content analysis of the recollections, participants in the label condition remembered more information from the vignettes but tended to forget an artificial label; however, they used other words from the disorder domain instead. This allowed us to suggest a new interpretation of this effect: we suppose that in the Giffin et al. experiments the label did not bring any new features to a category itself, but pointed to a relevant domain instead, so the effect appeared from the activation of areas of knowledge in semantic memory and the application of relevant schema for learning a new phenomenon. (shrink)

Richard Holton has criticized the common idea that self-deception is deception by the self, and suggested it is rather deception about the self; self-deception must include necessarily erroneous beliefs about the self. In this article I claim that this condition is not necessary, based on two central traits of self-deception: its temporal character and its bound to multiplication. In addition, I suggest an alternative condition in relation to the beliefs system implied in self-deception.

Recently, the idea that all rights are positive and costly has come to prominence in international human rights law. This has been taken to imply that there are no reasons to object to providing economic, social, and cultural rights with the same level of protection than civil and political rights. The present contribution aims to reject this undifferentiated view. It argues that even if it is accepted that all rights are in a sense positive and costly, there are still strong (...) grounds for finding the welfare implications of human rights problematic from the perspective of adjudication. (shrink)