Biomedicine in recent decades has been defined by an increasing tendency to turn social problems into biomedical questions. Precision or personalized health initiatives have gained attention due to...

Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby (2024) argues that “[i]t is time for bioethics to end talk about personhood” (11). The author calls on the field to ask different kinds of normative questions about the mo...

En 1976, mientras Milton Friedman recoge el Premio Nobel de Economía por sus logros en los campos del análisis del consumo y la teoría monetaria, el punk expande su mensaje de disonancia empujando los límites de lo decible hacia espacios hasta entonces poco conocidos. En ese mismo momento bandas como Iron Maiden comienzan a generar imaginarios extraños que canalizan algunas tendencias sociales; las pistas de baile exploran nuevas formas de relación cultural, y el espíritu nihilista de Iggy Pop flota en (...) el ambiente. La década de 1970 es la década del extrañamiento, en la que el sueño económico de la posguerra se deshace provocando la aparición en el horizonte de una “nueva” forma de revisar la construcción de la vida cotidiana: el neoliberalismo. En paralelo a este proceso, y en dirección opuesta, existe una búsqueda de respuestas a nivel cultural. Respuestas que no pretenden salvar nada, sino ahondar en la miseria de ese mismo tiempo. Ahí aparecen el punk y otros movimientos que pronto son devorados por el mercado. Pero ¿desde dónde se nos ha contado esta historia de derrotas? ¿Hemos aceptado que la historia de nuestras derrotas culturales sea narrada por la maquinaria neoliberal? Quizá debamos plantarnos y pensar otras formas de narrar una década, la de los setenta, en cuya estela seguimos. Este libro es un intento radical y novedoso de explorar este periodo donde cultura y política se cruzan a través de la música"--Publisher's description. (shrink)

Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus' health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion (...) is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled. (shrink)

Wittgenstein defiende que los problemas filosóficos son ilegítimos. Sin embargo, no resulta del todo claro qué se entiende en general por problema filosófico, cuál es, pues, su naturaleza. El presente artículo intenta elucidar la observación de Wittgenstein que sostiene que la forma de un problema filosófico se puede presentar con la expresión “Yo no sé salir del atolladero” (IF § 123). En el artículo se elige, a manera de ejemplo, el escándalo kantiano, que demanda que demostremos con el uso de (...) la razón que la proposición “hay objetos físicos” es verdadera. Sin renunciar al ejemplo, se explora en qué sentido la expresión de Wittgenstein caracteriza en buena medida la naturaleza misma de la dificultad filosófica. En el ejercicio se atienden recomendaciones formales del Tractatus, terapias desplegadas en Sobre la Certeza y el recurso de distinguir entre sentido primario y sentido secundario de una expresión insinuado en las Investigaciones Filosóficas. (shrink)

Using the optical ether as a case study, this article advances four lines of consideration to show why synchronic versions of the divide et impera strategy of scientific realism are unlikely to work. The considerations draw from the nineteenth-century theories of light, the rise of surprising implication as an epistemic value from the time of Fresnel on, assessments of the ether in end-of-century reports around 1900, and the roots of ether theorizing in now superseded metaphysical assumptions. The typicality of the (...) case and its impact on diachronic versions of the strategy are briefly discussed. (shrink)

This is the first monograph to develop a hermeneutic approach to the digital--as both a technological milieu and a cultural phenomenon. While philosophical in its orientation, the book covers a wide body of literature across science and technology studies, media studies, digital humanities, digital sociology, cognitive science, and the study of artificial intelligence. In the first part of the book, the author formulates an epistemological thesis according to which the "virtual never ended." Although the frontiers between the real and the (...) virtual are certainly more porous today, they still exist and endure. In the book's second part, the author offers an ontological reflection on emerging digital technologies as "imaginative machines." He introduces the concept of emagination, arguing that human schematizations are always externalized into technologies, and that human imagination has its analog in the digital dynamics of articulation between databases and algorithms. The author takes an ethical and political stance in the concluding chapter. He resorts to the notion of "digital habitus" for claiming that within the digital we are repeatedly being reconducted to an oversimplified image and understanding of ourselves. Digital Hermeneutics will be of interest to scholars across a wide range of disciplines, including those working on philosophy of technology, hermeneutics, science and technology studies, media studies, and the digital humanities. (shrink)

In his highly regarded history of the rise of clinical trials in America, HarryMarks describes how their widespread adoption resulted largely fromthe efforts of ‘therapeutic reformers’ who sought to replace the individualexpertise of clinicians with the ‘science of controlled experiment’. Thetransition described by Marks resembles in many respects the transition fromthe ‘truth-to-nature’ objectivity of individual experts to a ‘mechanical’ formof objectivity portrayed by Daston and Galison. In particular,Marks details the passage from a regime of trust in expertise and experts to (...) aregime based on the mechanical generation of data, the elimination ofhuman judgement and the adoption of a ‘view from nowhere’ where individual and group idiosyncrasies are systematically suppressedthrough recourse to quantitative methods.[...]. (shrink)

In philosophy of emerging media, several scholars have insisted on the fact that the “new” of new technologies does not have much to do with communication, but rather with the exponential growth of recording. In this paper, instead, the thesis advanced is that digital technologies do not concern memory, but imagination, and more precisely, what philosophers from Kant onwards have called productive imagination. In this paper, however, the main reference will not be Kant, but Paul Ricoeur, who explicitly refers to (...) the Kantian productive imagination in his works, but also offered an externalized, semioticized, and historicized interpretation of it. The article is developed in three steps. In the first section, it deals with Ricoeur’s theory of narrative, based on the notions of mimesis and mythos. In the second section, it is first argued that human imagination is always-already extended. Second, it will be shown how mimesis and mythos are precisely the way software works. In the third section, the specificity of big data is introduced. Big data is the promise of giving our actions and existences a meaning that we are incapable of perceiving, for lack of sensibility and understanding. Scholars have used the Foucauldian concepts of panopticon and confession for describing the human condition in the digital age. In the conclusion, it is argued that big data makes any form of disclosure unnecessary. Big data is an ensemble of technological artifacts, methods, techniques, practices, institutions, and forms of knowledge aiming at taking over the way someone narratively accounts for himself or herself before the others. Hence, another Foucauldian notion is representative of this age: the parrhesia, to speak candidly, and to take a risk in speaking the truth, insofar as such a possibility is anesthetized. (shrink)

All over Europe, the provision of healthcare services is widely considered a primary duty of the government. Universal access to medical care can be considered a basic ingredient of the so-called “European social model.” But if universal access to medical care is seldom questioned, European governments—faced with expanding costs caused by an increasing demand driven by an aging population and technology-driven improvements—are contemplating the possibility of “rationing”1 treatments, or the possibility of allowing a greater role for private suppliers. If a (...) “multi-tier” healthcare system has long been anathema to the European leadership, guaranteeing a uniform access to state-of-the-art care seems to be well beyond the means of states suffering from persisting debt crisis. Was the failure of state-controlled “adequate” healthcare totally unpredictable? Far-sighted criticisms had been offered by two eminent thinkers in the classical liberal tradition, Herbert Spencer and Friedrich A. von Hayek . Neither author is usually recognized as a forerunner of contemporary critics of the welfare state, and both investigated the issue of the state financing and providing health services well before or right after the establishment of national health services. With the benefit of hindsight, reading Spencer and Hayek helps us to understand how the crisis of state-supplied healthcare is not rooted in the mere progress of clinical technology, but is rather the logical consequence of the theoretical basis of the model itself. Whereas modern theorists of the welfare state tend to offer theories that are impervious to a critical appraisal of their unintended consequences—insofar as they are framed in a language of “rights”—both Hayek and Spencer understood that human systems are complex, and that unwanted effects of public policy should be taken into account. Although Spencer emphasized the moral hazards accruing from the paternalism involved in governmental provision of health services, Hayek explained how modern healthcare systems differ from real, private insurance designed to offer proper coverage against risks. These authors appreciated that the politicization of healthcare was bound to result in both standardization of care and disregard for the responsibility that comes with personal freedom. These two “diagnoses before the illness” can help us in defining the challenges and the potential solutions that healthcare systems face today. Understanding the fatal conceits inherent in the very architecture of national health services can be the first step toward healing our healthcare systems. (shrink)

El propósito de este trabajo es presentar una recons­trucción de cómo se articulan las nociones de finalidad y naturaleza en la física de Aristóteles, así como de la relación que guardan estos principios con la substan­cia eterna e inmóvil que introduce el filósofo griego en _Metaph_. XII. Como es bien sabido, hay un espectro amplio de lecturas acerca de la postura aristotélica sobre el particular, las cuales responden a distintas valoraciones de los argumentos que aparecen en los pasajes que el (...) filósofo griego dedica al estudio de estos temas. La lectura que se defenderá en el presente texto podría describirse como minimalista. (shrink)

RésuméL'emploi inadéquat du terme » primitif « est la conséquence d'une confusion entre la primitivité réelle des formes archaïques et la » primitivité « secondaire des formes spécialisées.Dans toute évolution, la transition du simple au complexe et celle de l'indistinct au distinct suivent des modalités semblables. On y reconnai̊t une phase d'enrichissement lent, une phase de polymorphisme originel, et une phase de ségrégation et de spécialisation. Il est nécessaire de distinguer entre:1. la simplicité archaïque des formes authentiquement primitives et la (...) simplicité secondaire des formes pseudo‐primitives, appauvries et spécialisées;2. le polymorphisme originel et le polymorphisme secondaire, dǔ à l'hybridation.ZusammenfassungDie unangebrachte Anwendung des Ausdruckes » primitiv « ist Folge einer Konfusion zwischen der wirklichen Primitivität der archaischen Formen und der sekundären Primitivität der spezialisierten Formen.In jeder Entwicklung erfolgt der Übergang vom Einfachen zum Komplexen und vom Unbestimmten zum Bestimmten in ähnlicher Art und Weise. Man erkennt eine vorbereitende Phase der langsamen Bereicherung, eine Blütezeit des ursprünglichen Polymorphismus, und eine späte Phase der Absonderung und Spezialisierung.Es ist notwendig zu unterscheiden zwischen:1. Der archaischen Einfachheit der wirklich primitiven Formen und der sekundären Einfachheit der pseudoprimitiven Formen, die verarmt und spezialisiert sind;2. dem ursprünglichen Polymorphismus und dem sekundären Polymorphismus, der durch Vermischung entstanden ist.The inadequate use of the term » primitive « is due to a confusion between archaïc primitivity proper, and secondary » primitivity « or pseudoprimitivity. In any kind of evolution, the transitions from simplicity to complexity and from indistinctness to distinctness follow strictly similar courses. Three phases are recognizable: a pre‐apogean phase of slow enrichment, an apogean phase of original polymorphism, and a post‐apogean phase of segregation and specialization. It is necessary to distinguish between:1. the archaic simplicity of truly primitive forms and secondary simplicity of impoverished and specialized forms;2. original polymorphism and secondary polymorphism due to hybridization. (shrink)

In der Reihe werden herausragende monographische Untersuchungen und Sammelbände zu allen Aspekten der Philosophie Kants veröffentlicht, ebenso zum systematischen Verhältnis seiner Philosophie zu anderen philosophischen Ansätzen in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Veröffentlicht werden Studien, die einen innovativen Charakter haben und ausdrückliche Desiderate der Forschung erfüllen. Die Publikationen repräsentieren den aktuellsten Stand der Forschung.

Change blindness, the surprising inability of people to detect significant changes between consecutively-presented visual displays, has recently been shown to affect tactile perception as well. Visual change blindness has been observed during saccades and eye blinks, conditions under which people’s awareness of visual information is temporarily suppressed. In the present study, we demonstrate change blindness for suprathreshold tactile stimuli resulting from the execution of a secondary task requiring bodily movement. In Experiment 1, the ability of participants to detect changes between (...) two sequentially-presented vibrotactile patterns delivered on their arms and legs was compared while they performed a secondary task consisting of either the execution of a movement with the right arm toward a visual target or the verbal identification of the target side. The results demonstrated that a motor response gave rise to the largest drop in perceptual sensitivity in detecting changes to the tactile display. In Experiment 2, we replicated these results under conditions in which the participants had to detect tactile changes while turning a steering wheel instead. These findings are discussed in terms of the role played by bodily movements, sensory suppression, and higher order information processing in modulating people’s awareness of tactile information across the body surface. (shrink)

This book uses the conceptual tools of philosophy to shed light on digital media and on the way in which they bear upon our existence. At the turn of the century, the rise of digital media significantly changed our world. The digitizing of traditional media has extraordinarily increased the circulation of texts, sound, and images. Digital media have also widened our horizons and altered our relationship with others and with ourselves. Information production and communication are still undoubtedly significant aspects of (...) digital media and life. Recently, however, recording, registration and keeping track have taken the upper hand in both online practices and the imaginaries related to them. The essays in this book therefore focus primarily on the idea that digital media involve a significant overlapping between communication and recording. (shrink)

RESUMO O objetivo deste artigo é analisar a concepção de liberdade encontrada em "Discourses concerning government" de Algernon Sidney. Mantendo a perspectiva republicana, a liberdade é definida pela ausência de dominação, ou seja, pela não submissão, sujeição ou exposição à vontade arbitrária de outra pessoa; e assumindo a perspectiva jusnaturalista, a liberdade é considerada um direito natural, inerente à condição humana, que deve ser preservado e assegurado pela autoridade política. Pretende-se discutir como Sidney articula essas duas perspectivas em sua teoria (...) política, projetando a concepção republicana de liberdade na modernidade.ABSTRACT The objective of this paper is to analyze the concept of freedom found in Algernon Sidney’s "Discourses Concerning government". Keeping the republican thought, freedom is defined by the absence of domination, i.e., the denial of submission, bondage or exposure to the arbitrary will of another person; and taking the jusnaturalist thought, freedom is considered a natural right inherent to the human condition, which must be preserved and guaranteed by the political authority. I intend to discuss how Sidney articulates these two perspectives in his political theory, outlining the republican conception of freedom in modernity. (shrink)

Sociological approaches to inquiry on emotion in educational settings are growing. Despite a long tradition of research and theory in disciplines such as psychology and sociology, the methods and approaches for naturalistic investigation of emotion are in a developmental phase in educational settings. In this article, recent empirical studies on emotion in educational contexts are canvassed. The discussion focuses on the use of multiple methods within research conducted in high school and university classrooms highlighting recent methodological progress. The methods discussed (...) include facial expression analysis, verbal and nonverbal conduct, and self-report methods. Analyses drawn from different studies, informed by perspectives from microsociology, highlight the strengths and limitations of any one method. The power and limitations of multimethod approaches is discussed. (shrink)

The author presents his views on the factors that led the Church to dialogue with Jews, after a history marked by Catholic rule and persecution of the Jewish people. Also exposes some biblical Jewish contribution to the topic such as technic of discussion / study called pilpul and the content of extensive discussions found in the Talmud, that demonstrate the central role that dialogue and philosophical inquiry have in Judaism. It also adds the contemporary Jewish contributions to the universal thought (...) made by the philosophy developed by the Jewish thinker Martin Buber, corroborating the central and uninterrupted place of dialogue in Judaism since its birth. Throughout the presentation connections are made with the Nostra Aetate Declaration, showing the Church key position in the theme of dialogue with the Jews and the 10 points of Seelisberg and the “12 points of Berlin”, result of the interaction between Christians and Jews after the Holocaust. (shrink)

Antonio Rosmini-Serbati was one of the first natural law scholars to bring natural law thinking into a conversation with the market economic order that was beginning to emerge in Europe in the 19th century. His reflections on matters such as the origin, nature, and limits of private property, the role of the state, and the nature of human reason show him to be a unique, innovative thinker who nonetheless was determined to work within the parameters of Catholic doctrine. Many of (...) these ideas are concretized in his seminal work The Constitution Under Social Justice, a text that has profound instights to offer those today seeking to integrate theology, philosophy, and economics into their conceptions of a social order that aspires to be both free and just. (shrink)

Introduzione.--La filosofia dei fisici.--I condannati a morte e le esperienze sull'uomo.--La psicologia e le sue applicazioni.--L'economia e le uniformità storiche.--Scienze della natura e scienze dell'uomo.--Conclusione.

El presente trabajo busca exponer las premisas y la fundamentación teológica que subyace a la moral de Pedro Abelardo, con el fin de mostrar cómo en el sistema filosófico de dicho autor, conocido por su racionalismo, hay una justificación que extralimita dicho sistema. Para ello, se expondrá la terminología clave de su moral, la aplicación práctica de dichos conceptos, y una serie de objeciones tanto teológicas como filosóficas.

Este ensayo recoge la discusión sobre la vigencia o el fracaso de “la gran teoría del desarrollo”, y tras descartar la simplificada última ‘gran teoría’ del neoliberalismo, muestra el paso desde la gran teoría a la multiplicación de teorías, donde muchos de los nuevos aportes planteados superan el economicismo. Tras la reflexión acerca de si será posible y realista intentar un desarrollo diferente a partir de la vigencia de los derechos humanos como base para una sociedad solidaria, dentro del capitalismo (...) propone la construcción de respuestas glocales en la búsqueda de un nuevo régimen social de acumulación y participación. (shrink)

El artículo provee una interpretación de la actual crisis financiera como parte de una crisis económica que tiene una serie de facetas sincronizadas, -amén de lo financiero, en lo ambiental, lo energético, lo alimentario- eventuales antesalas de una profunda y prolongada crisis civilizatoria. Plantea la necesidad de no reducir la atención sólo a los temas coyunturales y de diseñar una estrategia que permita sentar las bases estructurales para el cambio, aprovechando las actuales dificultades coyunturales y las debilidades relativas de los (...) centros de poder mundial. Presenta tres propuestas que apuntan hacia la construcción de un nuevo y mejor sistema económico internacional, pilares sobre los cuales se puede empezar a diseñar un nuevo sistema financiero y monetario mundial: un Código Financiero Internacional; un Banco Central Mundial, y un Tribunal Internacional de Arbitraje de Deuda Soberana. Plantea la necesidad de repensar íntegramente la Organización Mundial de Comercio (OMC), así como la creación de una Organización Mundial de Medio Ambiente y del Cambio Climático y dar paso a la Declaración Universal de los Derechos de la Naturaleza, tal como lo hizo la Asamblea Constituyente del Ecuador. El objeto de esta estrategia que apenas se esboza, es el Buen Vivir de la población. (shrink)

In philosophy of emerging media, several scholars have insisted on the fact that the “new” of new technologies does not have much to do with communication, but rather with the exponential growth of recording. In this paper, instead, the thesis advanced is that digital technologies do not concern memory, but imagination, and more precisely, what philosophers from Kant onwards have called productive imagination. In this paper, however, the main reference will not be Kant, but Paul Ricoeur, who explicitly refers to (...) the Kantian productive imagination in his works, but also offered an externalized, semioticized, and historicized interpretation of it. The article is developed in three steps. In the first section, it deals with Ricoeur’s theory of narrative, based on the notions of mimesis and mythos. In the second section, it is first argued that human imagination is always-already extended. Second, it will be shown how mimesis and mythos are precisely the way software works. In the third section, the specificity of big data is introduced. Big data is the promise of giving our actions and existences a meaning that we are incapable of perceiving, for lack of sensibility (i.e., data) and understanding (i.e., algorithms). Scholars have used the Foucauldian concepts of panopticon and confession for describing the human condition in the digital age. In the conclusion, it is argued that big data makes any form of disclosure unnecessary. Big data is an ensemble of technological artifacts, methods, techniques, practices, institutions, and forms of knowledge aiming at taking over the way someone narratively accounts for himself or herself before the others. Hence, another Foucauldian notion is representative of this age: the parrhesia, to speak candidly, and to take a risk in speaking the truth, insofar as such a possibility is anesthetized. (shrink)