Despite its potential implications for the objectivity of scientific knowledge, the claim that “scientific instruments are perspectival” has received little critical attention. I show that this claim is best understood as highlighting the dependence of instruments on different perspectives. When closely analyzed, instead of constituting a novel epistemic challenge, this dependence can be exploited to mount novel strategies for resolving two old epistemic problems: conceptual relativism and theory-ladeness. The novel content of this article consists in articulating and developing these strategies (...) by introducing two fine-grained notions of perspectives as the key units of analysis: “broad perspectives” and “narrow perspectives.”. (shrink)

Famous Brazilian educational and social theorist Paulo Freire presents his ideas on community solidarity in moving toward social justice in schools and society in a set of talks and interviews shortly before his death, supplemented with ...

A continuing challenge for researchers and practitioners alike is the lack of data on the effectiveness of corporate–community investment programmes. The focus of this article is on the minerals industry, where companies currently face the challenge of matching corporate drivers for strategic partnership with community needs for programmes that contribute to local and regional sustainability. While many global mining companies advocate a strategic approach to partnerships, there is no evidence currently available that suggests companies are monitoring these partnerships to see (...) if they do, in fact, represent ‘strategic’ investments. This article argues that applying the management concept of ‘investment performance’ to corporate–community partnerships requires questioning traditional evaluation methods that focus on the results of programmes or activities. We adopt a case study approach to introduce an evaluation framework that considers performance from both corporate and community perspectives and that conceptualises partnership performance as comprising four aspects: (1) the contribution of the partnership to the overall portfolio of a company’s community investment programmes, (2) the appropriateness of the partnership model, (3) the effectiveness of the partnering relationship and (4) the ability of the partners to achieve programme goals. The application of this evaluation framework to an established corporate–community partnership programme provided some useful insights as to how partnership performance can be improved. (shrink)

La música puede afectar al individuo en todos sus niveles –físico, mental y espiritual–. El presente artículo se centra en el papel que ésta desempeña en el desarrollo de la vida espiritual y trascendental. Para ello, realizaremos un repaso histórico de su evolución estética y social, abordaremos dicho fenómeno a nivel fisiológico y presentaremos sus aplicaciones clínicas y sociales. Seguidamente y a modo de ejemplo de las concepciones de pensamiento occidental y oriental, trataremos la forma en que el cristianismo y (...) el budismo conciben la música dentro de su doctrina. Finalizaremos con algunas reflexiones sobre el tema. (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)

This paper considers the UN efforts to introduce a legally binding Treaty on corporate accountability for human rights impacts in the context of other proposed legislation at country level, on the one hand, and existing voluntary initiatives like the UN Guiding Principles, on the other. What we are interested in is whether the proposed Treaty signals a transition from voluntary initiatives to law, and the extent to which it might stimulate or hinder links between judicial and non-judicial initiatives. The scholars (...) who have explicitly addressed these two divides are – Michael Sandel, on theory v. practice; and Amartya Sen, on law v. morality. We engage with their views, in sections II and III respectively, seeking to build an integrated approach to help us overcome these dualisms. We further consider John Ruggie’s “principled pragmatism”, a strategy that he uses to build the Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework; and we invoke arguments from casuistry as well as a practice-focused deontology in favour of an ethics ‘beyond cognition’, which we consider better suited than either utilitarian or principle-based theories to guide the debate on human rights. This is because it allows us to take non-rational factors into account, when judging the kind of common good we consider worth pursuing. In the last section of the paper, we investigate whether and how might the Treaty illustrate the two divides, trying to distinguish between purely legal elements and those of a wider nature, to do with morality; and understand what might help bridge the gap between theoretical commitments to the universality of human rights and various practical challenges. Our aim is not to evaluate the Treaty, from a legal viewpoint, or suggest improvements to it ; rather, we seek to investigate the way in which the proposed Treaty – which is the first attempt to address the challenge of transnational business and human rights in international law – combines moral and legal aspects, and what this tells us about the world we live in. (shrink)

Classifications are useful and efficient. We group things into kinds to facilitate the acquisition and transmission of important, often tacit, information about a particular entity qua member of some kind. Whilst it is universally acknowledged that classifications are useful, some scientific classifications are held to higher epistemic standards than folk classifications. Scientific classifications in terms of ‘natural kinds’ are considered to be more reliable and successful because they are highly projectible and support law-like and inductive generalisations. What counts as a (...) natural kind is, however, controversial: according to essentialists natural kinds are mind-independent and possess essential characteristics; according to promiscuous realists there are ‘countless legitimate, objectively grounded ways of classifying objects in the world’; and according to scientific realists natural kinds are grounded in the ‘causal structure of the world’. More specifically, realism about kinds can be understood as a commitment to the existence of natural divisions in the world that we come to know as a result of mature scientific investigation into the nature of such kinds. Realism about natural kinds is supported and articulated in terms of three main arguments, metaphysical, semantical, and epistemological. In the first part of my thesis I offer a sustained and systematic investigation of these three main arguments, with their respective promises and prospects for the viability of realism about kinds and I find them wanting, whilst in the second part of the thesis I pursue an unexplored line of inquiry regarding natural kinds and propose a mild realism about natural kinds via the ontology of real patterns. (shrink)

Con Prólogo de José Luis Pinillos, una especialista en Estética, Ana María Leyra, y otra en Filosofía de la Ciencia, Carmen Mataix, han publicado este libro, en el que pretenden aproximar e interrelacionar conceptualmente la ciencia y el arte. Su punto de partida consiste en considerar, citando a Prigogine, que “la ciencia es sobre todo un fenómeno cultural”. Superando la escisión entre ciencia y cultura, las autoras se proponen confrontar el recorrido experimentado por la Estética desde el siglo XIX con (...) las modificaciones habidas en la propia ciencia, sobre todo a partir de la aparición de la mecánica cuántica. Según las autoras, el principio de indeterminación de Heisenberg ha introducido a la ciencia en la vía del fenomenismo, e incluso de un fenomenismo mucho más fuerte que el que en su día propusieron Berkeley o Mach. Las discusiones entre Bohr y Einstein son comparadas, siguiendo de nuevo a Prigogine, con las que mantuvieron Leibniz y Clarke a principios del siglo XVIII. La noción de “realidad” está en el centro del debate entre los científicos, habiéndose introducido nuevas variables, como el tiempo y el sujeto, que hasta el siglo XX habían quedado fuera del contexto científico. Por el contrario, tanto el tiempo como el sujeto “ocupaban con pleno derecho el mundo de la estética, del arte o de la literatura”, temas que ahora tiene que incorporar la reflexión científica. Frente al modelo mecanicista que imperó en la ciencia moderna, las autoras proponen un “modelo estético” para la ciencia contemporánea. (shrink)

Resumen: En este artículo reviso la interpretación de Eduardo Nicol de la teoría de la propiedad de Francisco Suárez. Para ello, presento la posición de Suárez acerca de la propiedad y la propiedad privada atendiendo dos cuestiones fundamentales. La primera es si la propiedad y la propiedad privada son derechos; la segunda es si ambos pertenecen a la naturaleza humana o no. Al final, argumento que la lectura de Nicol es insostenible, pues difícilmente puede admitirse que Suárez defendió algún tipo (...) de comunismo.: In this paper I revisit Eduardo Nicol’s interpretation of Suarez’s theory of property. To this purpose, I present Suárez’s account of property and private property focusing on two main aspects. The first is whether property and private property are rights; the second is whether they belong to the human nature or not. Finally, I argue that Nicol’s reading of Suárez is untenable for it can hardly be accepted that Suárez defended some kind of communism. (shrink)

Education can be seen as an investment that brings higher incomes to individuals. People with higher levels of education collect important earnings premium in the labour market. On the other hand, the expansion of education is a major trend that characterizes evolution of societies, with important positive effects at the level of social and economic development. This paper aims to explore the influence of educational attainment on subjective incomes of individuals, while taking into account other relevant personal factors, as well (...) as the phenomenon of education expansion at national level. We build our analysis on data from the World Values Survey Wave 7 collected from individuals around the world in various national settings. Our results are useful for better understand the influences of increasing participation to education on the earnings structure at both individual and national levels. (shrink)

El presente artículo analiza la asimilación en la obra de Tomás de Aquino de los principios fundamentales del necesitarismo físico aristotélico así como la introducción, desde el punto de vista de la cosmología cristiana, dos tipos de fenómenos ajenos a la filosofía de la naturaleza de Aristóteles: las operaciones ocultas de la naturaleza y los milagros. Se estudia la postura del Aquinate en torno al magnetismo, las mareas, las propiedades terapéuticas de los compuestos y el origen de los poderes de (...) las figuras nigrománticas y reliquias. -/- . (shrink)

This article analyzes the evolution of aesthetic role of the nature in the Middle Ages from the point of view of the philosophical systems influence on the interpretation of the corporal as a legitim way to the knowledge of the truth. it studies the intimate approach of neo-platonism, the shaping of its premises in the rejection of physical beauty and the change that occured after the assimilation of Aristotelianism toward a naturalistic outsourcing of the intellectual and artistic interests.

Como lo señala su título, el artículo de Ana María Ayala ofrece una excelente exposición de la forma en la que Spinoza entiende la virtud y la felicidad en confrontación con la doctrina cartesiana, de modo que no me voy a detener en ello. Serán los lectores quienes podrán aprovechar de su lectura. Lo que llamó mi atención, desde que tuve ocasión de conocer el título, fue la calificación de “comunitario” que se le otorga al pensa- miento del judío holandés; (...) porque mis lecturas me habían llevado a entenderlo como una propuesta muy personal para alcanzar la verdadera felicidad y libertad mediante el uso adecuado del pensamiento. (shrink)

This book presents an exhaustive study of the three 13-century discussions explicitly dealing with the notion of Significatio. The study aims to show that the three discussions emerge because of apparently opposite claims about the signification of words in the authoritative literature of the period. It also shows that the three discussions develop in the same direction - towards a unified use of the notion of signification, which keeps its explanatory role in semiotics, but loses its role in grammar and (...) logic. (shrink)

We can say that Picasso’s images speak to us, and, as writing, speak to us from that space in which any text – far from being reduced to a single sense – “disseminates” its “truths”. Using the figure and the story of the Minotaur, Picasso devoted himself to one of the great themes of his pictorial work. The word “labyrinth” connotes, to the European mind, Greece, Knossos, Dedalus, Ariadne and the Minotaur. However, the Greek formula already represents a mythic and (...) poetic outcome thoroughly developed from an imagery forged in the remotest eras of our evolution. The relationship between the image, the spiral, and the word, labyrinth is also linked to the perception of a drilled earth, excavated, with numberless tortuous tunnels which, in our imagination, provoke concern because they lead to the world of the inferi, the unknown depths of the realms of the dead. Juan Larrea, a little-known essayist in the sphere of philosophical studies, although, from the outset of international renown for Picasso’s work, he gives what is perhaps the best interpretation of Guernica and consequently also sheds much light on the engravings immediately preceding the execution of this painting, the Minotauromachy among them. The artist is not a prophet. He is not foreseeing what the future holds for humanity, but he does possess a heightened sensitivity that drives him to minutely scrutinise the conditions of the time that he has had to live, and he has a transforming eye for the symbols that constitute the deepest threads in the fabric of his culture. (shrink)

Fifty years ago, the Argentinean economist Raúl Prebisch published a paper called Estúdio Económico de América Latina. The Estúdio was one of the first texts that set up what was later termed the ?Prebisch-Singer thesis? or, more widely, the Latin American School of Economics. According to this document, Latin American countries should undergo an industrialization program under the direct supervision of the national state. The rationale for this thesis was the deterioration of the terms of trade for countries exporting primary (...) commodities and importing manufactured goods. The focus here is on the argumentative structure of the document, which targets two different audiences, a lay and a specialized one. Relying on a center-periphery metaphor, Prebisch stresses the shortcomings of conventional economic theory when applied to distinct historical circumstances, i.e., to the peculiar conditions experienced by peripheral countries. A rhetorical approach to the Estúdio also shows that it represents a deliberate effort to assemble a large volume of empirical data about Latin America and its foreign trade. This was not a widespread procedure at the time. As is usually the case in well-built argumentative discourses, both inclusion and omission of certain sets of data look strategically contrived. (shrink)

We introduce the papers in this special issue by providing an overarching perspective on the variety in kinds of commons and the ethical issues stemming from their diversity. Despite a long history of local commons management, recent decades have witnessed a surge of scholarly interest in the concept of “the commons,” including a growing management literature. This swell was impelled especially by Garrett Hardin’s paper of 1968, and the body of work generated by Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues. However, the (...) term itself has come to be used in a variety of ways. To contextualize its ethical dimensions, we map a number of commons-related concepts such as common-pool resources, common property regime, excludability and subtractability, common-pool resource types and commons or “commoning” as a source of production. Following a brief summary of papers in this special issue, the essay concludes with an identification of implications for research, practice and policy. (shrink)

Stress has been being pointed as the evil of the current world and can affect as much adults as children. The disorders associated with stress are varied, and people who suffer from it frequently present physical and psychological problems, influencing their behavior and social environment. The care..