Possible etiological factors of congenital malformations as well as of human trisomies are considered in the framework of the repressor hypothesis. In this approach gene expression is envisaged from the point of view of the functional variations of the total activation energy for normal gene expression in homeostatic equilibrium. We restrict our attention to variations of the total activation energy under the effect of temperature gradients. We discuss the evidence that hyperthermia may be an etiological factor for trisomies in humans.

Gilbert Ryle claimed that intelligent actions and activities are not merely the external signs of inner mental workings but rather that such actions and activities are the workings of the mind itself. In this thesis I propose an interpretation and defence of sich claim, against a common an, in my view, mistaken way of understanding Ryle's position. In chapter [1]. I introduce the argumentative thread of this thesis and a more detailed overview of the chapters. In chapter [2], I criticise (...) Stanley and Williamson's understanding of Ryle's argument and position. In chapters [3]-[5] I examine Ryle's position and provide a way of understanding his view against what I take his main opponent, INTELLECTUALISM, to be. Chapter [6] offers an argument against INTELLECTUALISM as a way of motivating a Rylean account intelligent actions and activities. I conclude in chapter [7] with a response to purported counter-examples to the view I propose. (shrink)

Williamson claims that we are cognitive homeless, and for most aspects of our cognitive life it is not the case that if we are in the mental state S we know or are in a position to know that we are in said mental state. In this paper, I critically examine Williamson’s argument, some common misconceptions, and provide a different understanding of the way we relate to our own mental states that shows how we are not always in a condition (...) of cognitive homelessness. (shrink)

Today, societal decisions in areas of complexity are often dominated by one of three alternative ways: (a) by scientists, nowadays often in combination with commercial interest; (b) by politicians alone; and (c) by simply “laissez-faire,” or “the tyranny of small steps.” None of these three ways of decision making is fully democratic because they do not create enough awareness among the politicians and the general public. One reason is that the decision making basis becomes too narrowly framed and fragmented. Biotechnology (...) will continue to feed society with new democratic challenges for many years, perhaps decades, to come. The initially promising ideas of participative and deliberative democracy do not seem to solve the awareness problem. Instead, the authors propose an approach with more structured efforts for awareness building with transparency and participation taking place within the framework of representative democracy. (shrink)

Background:The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic caused a shortage of qualified nurses in Spain. As a result, the government authorized the hiring of senior students.Objectives:To explore the ethical dilemmas and ethical conflicts experienced by final-year nursing students who worked during the first outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain.Research design:A qualitative exploratory study was conducted using purposive sampling. Semi-structured interviews were carried out using a question guide. Interviews took place via a private video chat room platform. A thematic, inductive (...) analysis was performed of the information gathered.Participants and research context:Eighteen nursing students were recruited from two universities of Madrid, aged between 18 and 65 years old, enrolled in the fourth year of nursing studies and who were hired under a relief contract for health professionals during the pandemic.Ethical considerations:The present study was carried out in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the study was approved by the Local Ethics Committee of Universidad Rey Juan Carlos.Results:Three specific themes emerged: (a) coping with patient triage, (b) difficulties in providing end-of-life care, and (c) coping with patient death. Nursing students participated in the process of patient selection for resource allocation and ICU bed occupancy. They were shown how to care for patients who were not admitted to the ICU, in their last moments and were faced with the difficulties of applying end-of-life care. Finally, the nursing students were confronted with the death of their patients, in overwhelming numbers and under adverse conditions.Conclusions:These findings can help shed light on the ethical dilemmas and ethical conflicts faced by novice nursing students, incorporated into the workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, it was described that students may normalize the death due to the exhaustion and overwhelmed routine. (shrink)

Adriana Alfaro Altamirano’s new book examines Henri Bergson’s and Max Scheler’s views on intuition. Both authors believed that this power allows us to apprehend a person’s ‘inner multiplicity’, and...

On Borders asks when are borders legitimate, and it offers a new theory to answer the question. The book challenges critical and normative theories that criticize or justify borders solely in terms of identity, and instead frames borders and border legitimacy from the perspective of place and presence. Instead of thinking of borders as the exclusionary limit of identity groups, the book develops a theory of territorial jurisdictions grounded on place-specific relations, giving central roles to urban settings and the environment. (...) Paulina Ochoa Espejo calls this the "watershed model" of territorial rights and borders. (shrink)

Democracy is usually conceived as based on self-rule or rule by the people, and it is this which is taken to ground the legitimacy of the democratic form of government. But who constitutes the people? Democratic political theory has a potentially fatal weakness at its core unless it can answer this question satisfactorily. In _The Time of Popular Sovereignty_, Paulina Ochoa Espejo examines the problems the concept of the people raises for liberal democratic theory, constitutional theory, and critical theory. (...) She argues that to solve these problems, the people cannot be conceived as simply a collection of individuals. Rather, the people should be seen as a series of events, an ongoing process unfolding in time. She then offers a new theory of democratic peoplehood, laying the foundations for a new theory of democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

De Interpretatione is among Aristotle's most influential and widely read writings; C. W. A. Whitaker presents the first systematic study of this work, and offers a radical new view of its aims, its structure, and its place in Aristotle's system. He shows that De Interpretatione is not a disjointed essay on ill-connected subjects, as traditionally thought, but a highly organized and systematic treatise on logic, argument, and dialectic.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

This contribution offers reflections about Chilean Cybersyn, 50 years ago. In recent years, Cybersyn, has received significant attention. It was the brainchild of Stafford Beer, who conceived it to support the transformation of the Chilean economy from its bureaucratic history to hopefully create a vibrant and modern society, driven by cybernetic tools. These aspects have received much attention in recent times; however, in this contribution, I want to discuss how working in Cybersyn influenced my work after the coup of 1973. (...) Perhaps, for me, its major influence was in the management of complexity, through what I refer here as variety engineering and through the Viable System Model VSM as a paradigm to the management of relationships with implications to enterprises, society and the economy. After the 1973 coup major interest was in technological aspects of Cybersyn such as real-time management and its contribution to decision support and executive information systems. In the late 70s I was personally influenced by information management, but by the early 1980s my work moved towards methodological aspects of how to use the VSM. By 1989 I had created the VIPLAN method. Key questions I attempted to answer were, how to model the complexity of enterprises and their interactions with environmental agents. Later on, in the 1990s and 2000s, the main direction of my work was epistemological, ontological and methodological towards second-order cybernetics and relationships. Only in recent decades the political transformations proposed by Cybersyn have captured the imagination of many commentators. The confluence of social and cultural changes with information technology, data models, artificial intelligence, algorithms and several additional technological developments have challenged the excesses of capitalism, particularly after the banking crisis of 2008–2009. The purpose in this paper is discussing this evolution in the light of those early days in Chile. (shrink)

The thesis of political theology holds that all justificatory theories of the state rely on metaphysical assumptions, rather than just empirical facts and accepted political conventions. For this reason, the thesis challenges liberal theories that justify the state on the basis of individual autonomy and popular will. The thesis is controversial because many theorists believe that metaphysical assumptions introduce decisionism – the view that a state depends on the unrestrained personal decision of a ruler – to the theory of the (...) state. But, does political theology entail decisionism? This article argues that decisionism does not follow necessarily from political theology because an omnipotent deciding sovereign is only one of many possible metaphysical assumptions in theology. It illustrates this claim with examples from the philosophy of Nicholas Cusanus and process philosophy. This conclusion challenges two different entrenched views: first, that the modern state is a continuation of theistic beliefs; and second, that metaphysical discussions have no place in contemporary normative political theory. (shrink)

The analogies between religious and secular juridical arguments interest political theorists because they suggest a hidden link between religion and politics. However, merely describing analogies does not show that the link is significant. Why are there such analogies? The question matters because answering is a prerequisite for determining whether there can be a neutral political background to religion. This paper argues that there are such analogies because arguments in theology and arguments in the juridical theory of the state share a (...) common structure. This structure is such that the meaning of some concepts in the theory of the state, like political order and sovereignty, cannot be fully understood without reference to theological concepts. This thesis – political theology – has become associated with Carl Schmitt, but the argument in this paper differs importantly from his. Unlike Schmitt, this paper claims that in the contemporary state political theology can be superseded. (shrink)

Returning to sport after the sports injury is a difficult decision because it’s multicausal and the fact that a rash decision can result in numerous negative consequences. Given the importance of psychological variables for the correct rehabilitation of the injured athlete and his or her optimal return to sports practice, there seems to be little information on this subject. In this sense, the objective is to determine the relationship between the subjective psychological disposition of the athlete in the process of (...) Return to Play with the type of mood profile and his mental health. This is based on the fact that each athlete evaluates his or her recovery differently and has different levels of anxiety, depression, and stress. For this purpose, four athletes participated in the study. Two males and two females from the sports of indoor soccer and soccer, who had just returned to sports after a moderate or severe injury. The average age was 24.25 years. Various measurements were taken after practices and after matches, to assess mood, psychological readiness, anxiety, stress, and depression. The results confirm Morgan’s iceberg profile and the influence that subjective psychological perceptions and assessed emotional states have on athletes’ incorporation into their sports practice with a guarantee of success. (shrink)

The thesis of political theology holds that all justificatory theories of the state rely on metaphysical assumptions, rather than just empirical facts and accepted political conventions. For this reason, the thesis challenges liberal theories that justify the state on the basis of individual autonomy and popular will. The thesis is controversial because many theorists believe that metaphysical assumptions introduce decisionism – the view that a state depends on the unrestrained personal decision of a ruler – to the theory of the (...) state. But, does political theology entail decisionism? This article argues that decisionism does not follow necessarily from political theology because an omnipotent deciding sovereign is only one of many possible metaphysical assumptions in theology. It illustrates this claim with examples from the philosophy of Nicholas Cusanus and process philosophy. This conclusion challenges two different entrenched views: first, that the modern state is a continuation of theistic beliefs; and second, that metaphysical discussions have no place in contemporary normative political theory. (shrink)

What today divides analytical from Continental philosophy? This paper argues that the present divide is not what it once was. Today, the divide concerns the styles in which philosophers deal with intellectual problems: solving them, pressing them, resolving them, or dissolving them. Using ‘the boundary problem’, or ‘the democratic paradox’, as an example, we argue for two theses. First, the difference between most analytical and most Continental philosophers today is that Continental philosophers find intelligible two styles of dealing with problems (...) that most analytical philosophers find unintelligible: pressing them and resolving them. Second, when it comes to a genuine divide in which not understanding the other side’s basic philosophical purposes combines with disagreement on fundamental questions of doctrine, the only such divide today is that between those analytical philosophers who tend to solve problems and those Continental philosophers who tend to press problems. It is among these subgroups that there is a real philosophical divide today. So the analytical–Continental divide is more a matter of style than of substance; but as we try to show, differences in style shape differences over substance. (shrink)

Traditionally, people, territory, and rights must align to justify state control. However, states have recently shifted their borders so that these three elements are decoupled. How should we understand state legitimacy then? This paper examines three contemporary responses to the phenomenon of shifting borders. First, sovereigntism seeks to stabilize the relation of people and territory, even if that requires limiting the scope of rights. Second, democratic cosmopolitanism tolerates shifts in territory, as long as the people and rights coincide. Finally, the (...) Watershed Model keeps rights within the territory, but it accepts changes in the people, as it separates democratic governance and rights from a particular national identity. The paper argues that the Watershed Model can better respond to the challenges posed by human mobility in times of planetary crises. Tradicionalmente, pueblo, territorio y derechos deben coincidir para justificar el control estatal. Sin embargo, los Estados han desplazado recientemente sus fronteras de modo que estos tres elementos se encuentran desacoplados. ¿Cómo debemos entender entonces la legitimidad del Estado? Este artículo examina tres respuestas contemporáneas al fenómeno del desplazamiento de las fronteras. En primer lugar, el soberanismo trata de estabilizar la relación entre pueblo y territorio, aunque para ello haya que limitar el alcance de los derechos. En segundo lugar, el cosmopolitismo democrático tolera los desplazamientos del territorio, siempre que pueblos y derechos coincidan. Por último, el modelo de la cuenca hidrográfica mantiene los derechos dentro del territorio, pero acepta cambios en el pueblo, ya que separa la gobernanza democrática y los derechos de una identidad nacional concreta. En el artículo se sostiene que el modelo de cuencas hidrográficas puede responder mejor a los retos que plantea la movilidad humana en tiempos de crisis planetaria. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Most critics of the U.S.-Mexico border wall assume that it represents the xenophobic nationalism typical of right populism. However, the populist message of exclusion is directed not at migrants but at the liberal democrats who compose the traditional mainstream of politics. The wall’s populist message is meant to expose a contradiction: liberal democrats do not know how to reconcile borders with their official commitment to universal inclusion. Right populism and left populism, too exploit this contradiction. Liberal democracy could effectively (...) respond to the populist challenge, however, by using the wall’s symbolic connection to geography and the environment. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to discuss Stanley and Williamson’s take on Ryle’s argument against know-how being know-that. For this, I provide an initial consideration of the possibility of isolating Ryle’s argument from his overall philosophical outlook and Stanley and Williamson’s purpose in their discussion of Ryle. I then examine in detail Stanley and Williamson’s reconstruction of Ryle’s argument with the specific aim of showing where they have introduced extraneous elements: I examine what they take to bes additional assumptions (...) needed for the argument to be valid and how they construct the premises in order to attempt to show that Ryle's argument is not sound. I end the paper showing the limits of Stanley and Williamson’s attack, suggesting how the extraneous elements Stanley and Williamson introduce already bias the discussion against Ryle. The main aim is not to defend a form of Ryle’s regress but rather advocate the need for a deeper discussion of Ryle’s views of mind and action when discussing his views on know-how. (shrink)

Drug-trafficking in Colombia has been a widely researched phenomenon, especially now, as the country undergoes a transition process with its older guerrilla. Now more than ever it is fundamental to examine how drug-trafficking organizations violent activities affect the consolidation of peace. This article considers different approaches to study violence derived from drug-trafficking, in order to advance towards the objectives of transitional justice. For that matter, this work is based on the idea that drug-trafficking directly generates and reproduces violence which is (...) fueled by the structural violence present in the Colombian context. My thesis is that this phenomenon deters non-repetition guarantees and weakens democracy, which is why there will be three main arguments presented that will revolve around the lack of consensus and the implications of considering drug wars as civil wars, how decisions related to the conceptual apprehension limit the competence of international humanitarian law, and the need for holistic strategies capable of facing drug-trafficking’s political and violent power. Later, alternatives will be explored around the possibilities that each argument offers, as well as which aspects could contribute to a more appropriate approach to combat drug-trafficking. Lastly, I will defend why implementing bottom-up oriented actions can advance towards transitional justice’s intermediate and final objectives, as it is the only alternative that escapes fatalist, utopian or interventionist scenarios. (shrink)

This essay is part of a special issue celebrating 50 years of Political Theory. The ambition of the editors was to mark this half century not with a retrospective but with a confabulation of futures. Contributors were asked: What will political theory look and sound like in the next century and beyond? What claims might political theorists or their descendants be making in ten, twenty-five, fifty, a hundred years’ time? How might they vindicate those claims in their future contexts? How (...) will the consistent concerns of political theorists evolve into the questions critical for people decades or centuries from now? What new problems will engage the political theorists (or their rough equivalents) of the future? What forms might those take? What follows is one of the many confabulations published in response to these queries. (shrink)

Radical Enactivism rejects representationalism but nonetheless allows the phenomenal character of perceptual experience as supervening on brain bound elements. In this paper, I argue that Radical Enactivism should reject the possibility of wholly brain-bound phenomenal experience. I propose a way of individuating perceptual experiences that does not depend on representationalism and raises a problem to the view defended by Hutto and Myin according to which, with respect to phenomenality, it is possible to adopt a view that partly construes experience in (...) terms of engagement with the environment. I argue that Radical Enactivism should change: either deny that the environment plays any role in an account of the phenomenal character or embrace the view that the phenomenal properties of experiences are at least partly constituted by the environment itself. (shrink)

In Promoting Justice Across Borders, Lucia Rafanelli develops an ethical theory of ‘reform intervention’: a deliberate attempt to promote justice in a foreign society. The theory specifies which types of interventions are justified under what circumstances and who is justified in intervening where. Rafanelli’s theory eschews nation-states and instead makes its main actors societies with capacity for self-determination. This, I argue, can make the theory hard to apply, because different societies can overlap or intersect, and the theory’s implications change depending (...) on how one draws boundaries around groups. So the theory can give contradictory directives for the same event, depending on how one envisions the subject of intervention. The move away from states, however, may be inevitable, because contemporary problems in international relations (such as those related to climate change) cannot be easily contained within the framework of independent sovereign states in the international system. The book opens avenues to think about this problem. (shrink)

Chromatin‐bound proteins underlie several fundamental cellular functions, such as control of gene expression and the faithful transmission of genetic and epigenetic information. Components of the chromatin proteome (the “chromatome”) are essential in human life, and mutations in chromatin‐bound proteins are frequently drivers of human diseases, such as cancer. Proteomic characterization of chromatin and de novo identification of chromatin interactors could, thus, reveal important and perhaps unexpected players implicated in human physiology and disease. Recently, intensive research efforts have focused on developing (...) strategies to characterize the chromatome composition. In this review, we provide an overview of the dynamic composition of the chromatome, highlight the importance of its alterations as a driving force in human disease (and particularly in cancer), and discuss the different approaches to systematically characterize the chromatin‐bound proteome in a global manner. (shrink)

This contribution offers the author’s personal experience with a project that took place 25 years ago in Latin America. This was about Second Order Auditing in Colombia during the second part of the 1990s. This project was carried out at the Country’s National Auditing Office, and was an application of the Viable System Model and the Viplan Methodology to a National Context. It was an innovative project at the CGR, focused on Second Order Auditing, to improve communications within the fabric (...) of the Colombian government. Its emphasis was building responsible trust between public enterprises, ministries and political agencies. Its emphasis was building communications between ministries and public entities, with the aim of increasing their effectiveness. At its core were methodological and epistemological developments. Key questions it attempted to answer were how to model the complexity of the enterprises and how to transform the auditors’ views of their relations with people in public entities, from one focused on requesting information, to one focused on communications. Structural changes were proposed for the National Audit Office and state enterprises, and hundreds of auditors were trained, through epistemological methodological workshops, in second order auditing and the reports of their auditing were debated extensively in government and beyond. This paper finishes with a short discussion of these transformations in the light of organisational cybernetics and in particular of the Viable System Model. (shrink)

Both Carnap and Quine made significant contributions to the philosophy of mathematics despite their diversedviews. Carnap endorsed the dichotomy between analytic and synthetic knowledge and classified certainmathematical questions as internal questions appealing to logic and convention. On the contrary, Quine wasopposed to the analytic-synthetic distinction and promoted a holistic view of scientific inquiry. The purpose of thispaper is to argue that in light of the recent advancement of experimental mathematics such as Monte Carlosimulations, limiting mathematical inquiry to the domain of (...) logic is unjustified. Robustness studies implemented inMonte Carlo Studies demonstrate that mathematics is on par with other experimental-based sciences. (shrink)

Elvira Espejo Ayca (Bolivia 1981) is an indigenous artist and was the director of the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore in La Paz until 2020. "I'm going to address the topic I've prepared so we can travel together. I called him yanak uywaña, or mutual nurturing of the arts. It comes from a reflection of working with textile communities in the department of Oruro, in the Bolivian Andes." --Page 9 (Translation source unknown).

En este artículo exploramos la idea de la complejidad en educación a partir de la crítica de Edgar Morin de la hipersimplificación de un fenómeno. Para esto desarrollamos dos ámbitos que nos llevan más allá de una comprensión didáctica de la complejidad. En un caso consideramos la componente política de la educación, la cual ejemplificamos con el movimiento de la critical pedagogy americana. En otro caso consideramos la inclusión del aspecto afectivo en la enseñanza, a través del paradigma de la (...) confluent education. (shrink)

Recent developments in biomedical research have the potential to radically transform modern medicine. The ethical dilemmas that these advances raise are discussed in the following chapters: Is Human Cloning Ethical? What Ethics Should Guide Organ Donations? Are Reproductive Technologies Ethical? What Ethics Should Guide Genetic Research?

En este artículo intentamos crear un lazo entre el enfoque gestáltico de Paul Goodman y el desarrollo humano a través del concepto de la participación comunitaria. La crítica social de Paul Goodman se conecta con las ideas centrales de la terapia gestáltica como una forma de mostrar la importancia de la participación comunitaria en una definición posible de desarrollo humano. La concepción de John Dewey de las instituciones como herramientas de desarrollo se utiliza como un punto de contacto entre las (...) proposiciones de Goodman y el problema de la organización social. Finalmente, mostramos la importancia de considerar la educación y la responsabilidad social como una forma de evitar un punto de vista individualista del desarrollo humano. (shrink)

En este artículo presentamos una descripción de la crítica de Iván Illich a la sociedad industrial, específicamente en relación al problema de la energía y de la equidad. Especial atención es dada al concepto de convivencialidad y a sus posibles repercusiones para enfrentar los problemas energéticos. Una discusión en torno a la manera de Illich de criticar a la sociedad es presentada, en relación a lo que ha sido llamado un “humanismo crítico” y al problema de las necesidades individuales.

This paper outlines and defends a processual theory of peoplehood. On our theory, a people is, roughly speaking, composed of two things. First, an unfolding series of events coordinated by the practices of constituting, governing, or changing a polity's authoritative institutions. Second, individual persons whose lives and interests are intensely affected by these events and institutions. We call this theory deep processualism. We outline the theory by showing how it would answer five questions: the questions of constituents, individuation, origination, termination, (...) and membership: What are the chief constituents of peoples? What individuates peoples? Under what conditions do peoples originate? Under what conditions do peoples cease to be? Under what conditions is a person a member of the people? We also consider alternative theories of the nature of peoples, theories due to Juergen Habermas, Bruce Ackerman, Philip Pettit, and James Fishkin. We defend our theory on the ground that it is not embarrassed by the difficulties that we pin on these alternative theories. (shrink)