La creciente competencia profesional, la incorporación de la mujer al mundo laboral y la crisis económica actual, son aspectos que han cambiado nuestro estilo de vida y nuestros valores. Estas variables y otras muchas hacen que el día a día el fenómeno del estrés sea objeto de atención en centros de salud, siendo una de las principales causas de las bajas laborales tramitadas. La familia, la pareja, el tiempo de ocio y el entorno social también se ven afectados, creando dinámicas (...) poco saludables y/o conflictivas difíciles de gestionar. Por todo ello, es importante reflexionar sobre qué provoca estrés, qué es lo que nos hace más resistentes a él o si podemos elegir entre estresarnos o no introduciendo ciertos cambio en nuestra filosofía de vida. (shrink)

In the context of the end of life, many authors point out how the experience of identity is crucial for the well-being of patients with advanced disease. They define this identity in terms of autonomy, control, or dependence, associating these concepts with the sense of personal dignity. From the perspective of the phenomenology of embodiment, Kay Toombs and other authors have investigated the ways disease can impact on the subjective world of patients and have stressed that a consideration of this (...) personal world can promote understanding and recognition of their experience. Based on the findings of qualitative studies of the perception of dignity and autonomy in patients at the end of life, this analysis assesses concepts such as being-in-the-world in illness, embodiment, lived body versus objective body or the gaze of the other from a Toombsian phenomenological perspective. (shrink)

En este artículo se parte de la distinción aristotélica de cuatro formas fundamentales de acción: enérgeia-kínesis (de la Metafísica) y praxis—poiesis (de la Ética) y de las aportaciones de L. Polo en sus obras de Teoría del Conocimiento y de Ética, especialmente, de sus conceptos de operación inmanente y movimiento transitivo, para establecer una tipología con las cuatro formas fundamentales de un dinamismo: proceso (kinesis), operación (enérgeia), acción (praxis) y producción (poiesis).

Studies that have explored the wish to hasten death (WTHD) in patients with advanced illness have found that the feeling of being a burden may trigger WTHD. Research suggests that both the feeling and the wish are indicators of multidimensional suffering whose meaning may depend on the patient's biographical background. Therefore, we carried out a systematic review and meta‐ethnography. Fourteen qualitative studies, reported in 16 articles, met the inclusion criteria. The analysis identified two themes: the personal and social dimensions that (...) could help to explain the feeling of being a burden in these patients. These dimensions reveal how this feeling is linked to physical, psychological/emotional, existential and social factors. The feeling of being a burden cannot be understood without considering patients’ personal interpretation of their dependency or care needs, and hence it is also necessary to understand their biographical background. Such an understanding is crucial to inform clinical policies based on the moral duty to provide all patients with humane care. (shrink)

It is not uncommon for patients with advanced disease to express a wish to hasten death. Qualitative studies of the WTHD have found that such a wish may have different meanings, none of which can be understood outside of the patient’s personal and sociocultural background, or which necessarily imply taking concrete steps to ending one’s life. The starting point for the present study was a previous systematic review of qualitative studies of the WTHD in advanced patients. Here we analyse in (...) greater detail the statements made by patients included in that review in order to examine their moral understandings and representations of illness, the dying process and death. We identify and discuss four classes of assumptions: assumptions related to patients’ moral understandings in terms of dignity, autonomy and authenticity; assumptions related to social interactions; assumptions related to the value of life; and assumptions related to medicalisation as an overarching context within which the WTHD is expressed. Our analysis shows how a philosophical perspective can add to an understanding of the WTHD by taking into account cultural and anthropological aspects of the phenomenon. We conclude that the knowledge gained through exploring patients’ experience and moral understandings in the end-of-life context may serve as the basis for care plans and interventions that can help them experience their final days as a meaningful period of life, restoring some sense of personal dignity in those patients who feel this has been lost. (shrink)

Victor Hugo a soutenu : « Dieu, cela n’est pas tant que ce n’est pas en pierre / Il faut une maison pour mettre la prière. » L’histoire de l’incarnation christique suffit-elle à expliquer la place de la pierre dans l’imaginaire des sociétés culturellement issues du christianisme? En quoi l’Église – la communauté et l’institution nées de l’enseignement du Christ – poursuit-elle ce projet d’inscription de la chair dans la pierre? Dans quelle mesure la parole de Jésus à l’un de (...) ses apôtres, Pierre – « tu es Pierre et sur cette pierre je bâtirai mon Église » (Mt. xvi, 18) – est-elle fondatrice non seulement de la « pétrification » de l’Église, mais plus généralement du poids donné à l’architecture et au bâti dans les mille et une façons occidentales de penser la société et de faire communauté? (shrink)

A significant part of perception, especially in visual perception, is characterized by particularity (roughly, the view that in such cases the perceiver is aware of particular objects in the environment). The intuition of particularity, however, can be made precise in at least two ways. One way (proposed by Searle) is consistent with the view that the content of perception is to be thought of as existentially quantified. Another way (the “demonstrative element” view championed by Evans, Campbell and others in diverse (...) ways) is not. This paper reconstructs the argumentative context in which these views are put forward, and, after mentioning some drawbacks of both views, as these have been advanced to date, suggests a new view that may be regarded as a compromise between the contenders. (shrink)

The study of the contrast between fundamental aspects of spatial and temporal awareness offers a good opportunity to bring to light the relation between philosophical and scientific theories of consciousness. In this paper we critically examine important work by Rick Grush on spatial and temporal experience, and we show that while there is a valid claim for the relevant neuroscientific model to be one that supports Gareth Evans's stance on "behavioral space", there is not at present any scientific model that (...) offers comparable support for philosophical theories of temporal experience, despite some claims by Grush that might suggest the contrary. Moreover, we argue that careful attention to the spatial case allows us to locate the point at which even relatively successful cases of neuroscientific modeling and explanation are left wanting when their aim is to show that phenomenal features of experience are a function of the representational structures produced by our neural information-processing machinery: an aim widely shared by the predominant programmatic stance in current neuroscience research. (shrink)

It has been argued that philosophical theories in the philosophy of mind necessarily require empirical theories in cognitive science or cognitive neuroscience to be validated. This is indeed an unexpected relation between philosophy and science, since it is widely assumed nowadays – quite apart from Quinean qualms – that philosophical claims are largely a priori just in that their justification proceeds along paths which are independent of empirical investigations. I will defend that the case of attention provides further confirmation of (...) a position which is similar to Davies’s, but it shows at the same time that we should subscribe to a weaker version that has to do with the possibility of an eliminativist attitude towards the philosophical theory and the entities postulated in it. However, I will try to show that the case studies concerning attention show that this possibility, though it should not be excluded, is rather remote due to the fact that philosophical theories of mental phenomena are typically related to one in a set of different possible empirical theories. I will also try to show that this relation arises in at least one rather interestingly different way, in addition to the one involved in the case studies discussed by Davies. (shrink)

Desde la actual teoría general de la acción se han levantado objeciones contra lavalidez como saber transcendental de la Crítica de la razónpráctica. Se la acusa de haber deducido la libertad del «Faktum» moral en vez de deducir la moralidad de una libertad moralmente neutray íranscendentalmente ya asentada en el desarrollo crítico teórico. Un estudio atento de la obra revela, sin embargo, que en ella no se abandona la «reflexión» crítica y es justamente por ello que la moralidad puede entenderse (...) como la doctrina transcendental de la libertad. (shrink)

Drawing from Goffman’s original observations on stigma and the consequences of interactions between the stigmatized and supportive or stigmatizing audiences, we conduct a 20-year review of the diverse literature on stigma to revisit the collective nature of stigmatization processes. We find that studies on stigma’s origins, responses, processes, and outcomes have diverged from Goffman’s relational view of stigma as they have overlooked important relational mechanisms explaining the processes of (de)stigmatization. We draw from those conclusions to justify the need to study (...) stigma as a collective phenomenon. We develop a relational perspective on stigma based on understanding how attributes are stigmatized (or not) by audiences in their interactions. We argue that to advance stigma research, it is necessary to build on Goffman’s theory to include the stigmatizers (i.e., the normal) and supporters (i.e., the wise); how they create, sustain, or remove stigma; and how they relate to the stigmatized (i.e., the targets). Accordingly, we provide a research agenda on stigma as a collective phenomenon that theorizes a relational perspective, proposes a typology of how audiences relate to stigmatization, and identifies patterns of relations between audiences. We thus offer a missing piece to existing accounts of stigma by focusing on the key role of audiences (i.e., stigmatizers or supporters of the stigmatized) rather than on the targets of stigma (i.e., the own). (shrink)

Vardanyan’s Theorems [36, 37] state that $\mathsf {QPL}(\mathsf {PA})$ —the quantified provability logic of Peano Arithmetic—is $\Pi ^0_2$ complete, and in particular that this already holds when the language is restricted to a single unary predicate. Moreover, Visser and de Jonge [38] generalized this result to conclude that it is impossible to computably axiomatize the quantified provability logic of a wide class of theories. However, the proof of this fact cannot be performed in a strictly positive signature. The system $\mathsf (...) {QRC_1}$ was previously introduced by the authors [1] as a candidate first-order provability logic. Here we generalize the previously available Kripke soundness and completeness proofs, obtaining constant domain completeness. Then we show that $\mathsf {QRC_1}$ is indeed complete with respect to arithmetical semantics. This is achieved via a Solovay-type construction applied to constant domain Kripke models. As corollaries, we see that $\mathsf {QRC_1}$ is the strictly positive fragment of $\mathsf {QGL}$ and a fragment of $\mathsf {QPL}(\mathsf {PA})$. (shrink)

This paper investigates the interpretation of counterfactual conditionals. The main goal of the paper is to provide an account of the semantic role of similarity in the evaluation of counterfactuals. The paper proposes an analysis according to which counterfactuals are treated as predications “ de re ” over past situations in the actual world. The relevant situations enter semantic composition via the interpretation of tense. Counterfactuals are treated as law-like conditionals with de re predication over particular facts. Similarity with respect (...) to particular facts is ensured by the semantics of tense in interaction with the modal, while the modal itself is responsible for invoking laws. In the paper, various arguments are provided to support a local view of similarity over the global approach found in semantics along the line of Lewis’s and Stalnaker’s. Arguments are also provided tying the evaluation of similarity to the interpretation of tense. Finally, arguments are provided to show that in key cases, the approaches make comparable predictions. (shrink)

Fencing for the blind and visually impaired is an emerging sub-discipline of fencing that creates unusual conditions for meaning-making through interaction between embodied endowments and worldly affordances. With the rules of fencing slightly adjusted to the needs of the blindfolded participants – regardless of their sightedness – the discipline requires the fencers to engage in a duel by relying on other than visual cues. This article explores what an autoethnographic account of experiences of participation in fencing for the blind and (...) visually impaired brings to debates on the embodied, and specifically sensory difference. The discussion of these experiences intersects with debates on affect, affordance, and habit, with all three having important roles in related semiotic processes. Presented vignettes draw upon the author’s lived experiences of participation in fencing for the blind and visually impaired and are analyzed as part of a mixed-method autoethnographic study, accompanied by sensory methodologies, with a focus on an inquiry beyond the visual. The vignettes elucidate how we make sense of our surroundings through a complex engagement with the ecology of sensory and affective processes. In addition to exploring the role of affective and pre-conceptual aspects of our experiences, the article seeks to understand how semiosis occurs through both exposure to as well as the active pursuit of specific environmental signs available to us. The article also derives from biosemiotics to examine the complex relationship between meaning-making processes and habits. Finally, the autoethnographic account provides an insight into how we habituate the world and our embodied differences and thus enable meaning-making processes. (shrink)

Mary Livermore'sMy Story of the Waris a valuable piece of travel writing written from the point of view of a nurse who documented her unexpected personal and professional journey to administer the Sanitary Commission of the United States Union Army and provide nursing care during the American Civil War. Although Livermore's pre‐war background had not been solely limited to the domestic sphere, her wartime experience involved a public negotiation between the traditional domestic realm assigned to women and new nursing professional (...) functions that emerged during the war. In a context in which the general access of women to public writing was rather limited and in which nursing was not a formally regulated professional activity, Livermore's triumphal narrative reflects the increasing connection between progressively professional nursing functions that emerged in the context of war and a new women's rights leadership forged during her autobiographical journey. (shrink)

Margaret Archer plays a leading role in the sociological analysis of the relation between structure and agency, and particularly in the study of reflexivity. The main aim of this article is to discuss her approach, focusing on the main contributions and limitations of Archer’s theory of reflexivity. It is argued that even though her research is a pioneering one, proposing an operationalization of the concept of reflexivity in view of its empirical implementation, it also minimizes crucial social factors and the (...) dimensions necessary for a more complex and multi-dimensional study of the concept, such as social origins, family socialization, processes of internalization of exteriority, the role of other structure–agency mediation mechanisms and the persistence of social reproduction. (shrink)

We explore the distinctive characteristics of Mexico's society, politics and history that impacted the establishment of genetics in Mexico, as a new disciplinary field that began in the early 20th century and was consolidated and institutionalized in the second half. We identify about three stages in the institutionalization of genetics in Mexico. The first stage can be characterized by Edmundo Taboada, who was the leader of a research program initiated during the Cárdenas government (1934-1940), which was primarily directed towards improving (...) the condition of small Mexican farmers. Taboada is the first Mexican post-graduate investigator in phytotechnology and phytopathology, trained at Cornell University and the University of Minnesota, in 1932 and 1933, respectively. He was the first investigator to teach plant genetics at the National School of Agriculture and wrote the first textbook of general genetics, Genetics Notes, in 1938. Taboada's most important single genetics contribution was the production of "stabilized" corn varieties. The extensive exile of Spanish intellectuals to Mexico, after the end of Spain's Civil War (1936-1939), had a major influence in Mexican science and characterizes the second stage. The three main personalities contributing to Mexican genetics are Federico Bonet de Marco and Bibiano Fernández Osorio Tafall, at the National School of Biological Sciences, and José Luis de la Loma y Oteyza, at the Chapingo Agriculture School. The main contribution of the Spanish exiles to the introduction of genetics in Mexico concerned teaching. They introduced in several universities genetics as a distinctive discipline within the biology curriculum and wrote genetics text books and manuals. The third stage is identified with Alfonso León de Garay, who founded the Genetics and Radiobiology Program in 1960 within the National Commission of Nuclear Energy, which had been founded in 1956. The Genetics and Radiobiology Program rapidly became a disciplinary program, for it embraced research, teaching, and training of academics and technicians. The Mexican Genetics Society, created by de Garay in 1966, and the development of strains and cultures for genetics research were important activities. One of de Garay's key requirements was the compulsory training of the Program's scientists for at least one or two years in the best universities of the United States and Europe. De Garay's role in the development of Mexican genetics was fundamental. His broad vision encompassed the practice of genetics in all its manifestations. (shrink)

Spin is a fundamental and distinctive property of the electron, having far-reaching implications. Yet its purely formal treatment often blurs the physical content and meaning of the spin operator and associated observables. In this work we propose to advance in disclosing the meaning behind the formalism, by first recalling some basic facts about the one-particle spin operator. Consistently informed by and in line with the quantum formalism, we then proceed to analyse in detail the spin projection operator correlation function \=\left\langle (...) \left \left \right\rangle \) for the bipartite singlet state, and show it to be amenable to an unequivocal probabilistic reading. In particular, the calculation of \\) entails a partitioning of the probability space, which is dependent on the directions \.\) The derivation of the CHSH- or other Bell-type inequalities, on the other hand, does not consider such partitioning. This observation puts into question the applicability of Bell-type inequalities to the bipartite singlet spin state. (shrink)

The somatic mutation theory (SMT) of cancer has been and remains the prevalent theory attempting to explain how neoplasms arise and progress. This theory proposes that cancer is a clonal, cell‐based disease, and implicitly assumes that quiescence is the default state of cells in multicellular organisms. The SMT has not been rigorously tested, and several lines of evidence raise questions that are not addressed by this theory. Herein, we propose experimental strategies that may validate the SMT. We also call attention (...) to an alternative theory of carcinogenesis, the tissue organization field theory (TOFT), which posits that cancer is a tissue‐based disease and that proliferation is the default state of all cells. Based on epistemological and experimental evidence, we argue that the TOFT compellingly explains carcinogenesis, while placing it within an evolutionarily relevant context.magnified imagemagnified imageAna Soto and Carlos Sonnenschein are at Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA. (shrink)

How do we acquire a mental representation of our own face? Recently, synchronous, but not asynchronous, interpersonal multisensory stimulation between one’s own and another person’s face has been used to evoke changes in self-identification . We investigated the conscious experience of these changes with principal component analyses that revealed that while the conscious experience during synchronous IMS focused on resemblance and similarity with the other’s face, during asynchronous IMS it focused on multisensory stimulation. Analyses of the identified common factor structure (...) revealed significant quantitative differences between synchronous and asynchronous IMS on self-identification and perceived similarity with the other’s face. Experiment 2 revealed that participants with lower interoceptive sensitivity experienced stronger enfacement illusion. Overall, self-identification and body-ownership rely on similar basic mechanisms of multisensory integration, but the effects of multisensory input on their experience are qualitatively different, possibly underlying the face’s unique role as a marker of selfhood. (shrink)

La mentoría como programa de formación en el inicio de la vida profesional del docente principiante se presenta como una oportunidad para la mejora de la calidad de las instituciones educativas y de sus agentes. Al mismo tiempo, revierte sobre la comunidad y el territorio donde se ubica. En contextos reconocidos como vulnerables se necesitan agentes educativos vocacionales y con un alto nivel de resiliencia, y con una meta clara: formar a personas plenas que contribuyan con su sentir, ser y (...) hacer al desarrollo de la comunidad en la que habitan. (shrink)

Prominent tuberculosis (TB) actors are invoking solidarity to motivate and justify collective action to address TB, including through intensified development and implementation (D&I) of technologies such as drugs and diagnostics. We characterize the ethical challenges associated with D&I of new TB technologies by drawing on stakeholder perspectives from 23 key informant interviews and we articulate the ethical implications of solidarity for TB technology D&I. The fundamental ethical issue facing TB technological D&I is a failure within and beyond the TB community (...) to stand in solidarity with persons with TB in addressing the complex sociopolitical contexts of technological D&I. The failure in solidarity relates to two further ethical challenges raised by respondents: skewed power dynamics that hinder D&I and uncertainties around weighing risks and benefits associated with new technologies. Respondents identified advocacy and participatory research practices as necessary to address such challenges and to motivate sustained collective action to accelerate toward TB elimination. We present the first empirical examination of bioethical accounts of solidarity in public and global health. Our study suggests that solidarity allows us better to understand and address the ethical challenges that arrest the D&I of new TB technologies. Solidarity lends credence to policies and practices that address the relational nature of illness and health through collective action. (shrink)

Croatia is a transitional society in that it is a country emerging from a socialist command economy toward a market-based economy with ensuing structural changes of a social and political nature—some extending into the healthcare system. A legacy from our past is that, until now, Croatian healthcare institutions have had no real experience with clinical ethics support services. When clinical cases arise presenting complex ethical dilemmas in treatment options, the challenges presented to the medical team are substantial. The case described (...) below recently occurred on a ward in a university hospital in Croatia. An unexpected request from the patient’s parents created a number of issues that needed to be addressed by the medical team, which was made more difficult by the lack of clinical ethics support services. Such cases press the question currently being debated as to what type of ethics support services would be suitable for Croatia and why. (shrink)

Online education has become an essential component of education. Thus, several factors, such as the student’s learning strategy and motivation, generally contribute to their academic success. This study investigates the relationship between learning strategies, motivation, and online learning environment among 150 first-year college students. Employing correlational design, the statistical findings of the study reveal that the r coefficient of 0.59 indicates a moderate positive correlation between the variables. The p-value of 0.00, which is less than 0.05, leads to the decision (...) to reject the null hypothesis. Hence, a significant relationship exists between learning strategies, motivation, and the online learning environment. (shrink)

How can we feel at home in this world without clinging to false certainties? This book offers a humanist re-reading of philosophical pragmatism and explores its potentials for a worldview that relies only on human resources. Thinking along with authors like William James and F.C.S. Schiller, it highlights a fundamentally humanist strand of pragmatism aimed at fostering human creativity and transformative action. It is grounded in everyday experience and underlines our responsibility to strive for the better. Ana Honnacker traces perspectives (...) on science, religion, and ethics in the light of a pragmatic understanding of humanism. Furthermore, she suggests how to address the existential challenges we face today. Thus, pragmatic humanism is explored not only as a philosophy for critical minds, but also as a way of life. (shrink)