Inspired by Judith Butler’s critique of Zionism, this article explores one artistic practice that may be considered as developing a diasporic thinking that is specifically rooted in the experience...

Ethical banking, microfinance institutions or certain credit cooperatives, among others, grant socially responsible loans. This paper presents a credit score system for them. The model evaluates social and financial aspects of the borrower. The financial aspects are evaluated under the conventional banking framework, by analysing accounting statements and financial projections. The social aspects try to quantify the loan impact on the achievement of Millennium Development Goals such as employment, education, environment, health or community impact. The social credit score model should (...) incorporate the lender’s know-how and should also be coherent with its mission. This is done using Multi-Criteria Decision Making. The paper illustrates a real case: a loan application by a social entrepreneur presented to a socially responsible lender. The decision support system not only produces a score, but also reveals strengths and weaknesses of the application. (shrink)

On Miranda Fricker’s influential account, the central case of testimonial injustice occurs if and only if the speaker receives a credibility deficit owing to identity prejudice of the hearer. Her critics have taken issue with her view, arguing that cases in which speakers are given more credibility than they deserve, may also amount to testimonial injustice. Furthermore, they argue, these cases cannot be captured by Fricker’s account of objectification as the primary epistemic harm of testimonial injustice; rather, it is an (...) account of othering that best captures a wide range of epistemic injustices. In this paper, I join Fricker’s critics in advancing a novel case of testimonial injustice through identity-prejudicial credibility excess – the adultification of black girls in testimony-giving settings. When testifying, black girls are likely to receive a credibility excess with respect to adult topics such as sex and consent because they are perceived as older, more self-reliable, and mature than they actually are by the hearers. Nevertheless, when examining the girls’ intersecting social identities defined by age, race and gender, it becomes clear that this constitutes an unjustly and prejudicially inflated estimation of their credibility. These cases also involve hermeneutical injustice since the identity-prejudicial credibility excess denies the victims a meaningful opportunity to make sense of their traumatic experiences of sexual assault. I conceptualize this compounded injustice as testimonial obfuscation, where an identity-prejudicial credibility evaluation (either in excess or deficit) causes an experience to remain unintelligible to the hermeneutically marginalized speaker. (shrink)

El sistema filosófico de Spinoza no puede ser considerado en rigor como panteísta, sino panenteísta. Este artículo intenta reforzar esta tesis analizando los conceptos de Natura naturans y Natura naturata, a veces confundidos en la obra de Spinoza. Se establece además una comparación de ambos conceptos en Spinoza y en David Nieto, autor de una obra titulada De la divina providencia, o sea naturaleza universal o natura naturante, al tiempo que se señalan las diferencias entre las concepciones inmanentes de (...) la divinidad de ambos autores. (shrink)

La Psicología se presenta desde sus inicios como una ciencia de carácter empírico, desmarcándose de la Filosofía. Esta independencia trae consigo una serie de dificultades de carácter epistemológico, una de las cuales consiste en la falta de consideración de la distinción filosófica entre persona y naturaleza en el campo de la Psicología. El desconocimiento del sentido tradicional de estos conceptos conlleva consecuencias semánticas relevantes para la disciplina. Mediante una breve reseña de su significado en Tomás de Aquino, se desarrollan algunos (...) apuntes acerca de cómo su comprensión afecta a la investigación de la personalidad y al ejercicio de la psicología clínica. (shrink)

The definition and measurement of the impact of laws and courts is a subject of disagreement and uncertainties. In this article, law is understood as a public, general, and binding command enforceable through state coercion. Assessments on the effects of laws on democracy and development focus on changes in specific social indicators. The evaluation of impact relates to the availability and reliability of judicial statistics and the impact of laws depends on political and social conditions. The interaction of laws can (...) be studied in three contextual variables: the structure and competitiveness of political systems, the structure and performance of the judiciary, and the organizational endowments of the social or political actors, such as social and labor movements that use the law. This interaction shows how and why certain conditions affect impact. It also speculates, about some additional developments that might follow from the relationships between law and these three variables. (shrink)

A lo largo de este artículo se va a tratar de analizar la concepción del Romanticismo propuesta por Flaubert. En ella, a raíz del viaje a Oriente entre 1849 y 1851, se produce un cambio que hace constituir a la tarea del literato, artista o filósofo romántico en una tarea en la que la cuestión fundamental de la Estética y del Arte debe mezclarse con la tarea Ética y de pensamiento de la Política para la sociedad del futuro.  .

Different theoretical models have proposed cognitive and affective components in empathy and moral judgments encompassing compassion. Furthermore, gender differences in psychological and neural functions involving empathic and moral processing, as well as compassionate experiences, have been reported. However, the neurobiological function regarding affective and cognitive integration underlying compassion and gender-associated differences has not been investigated. In this study, we aimed to examine the interaction between cognitive and emotional components through functional connectivity analyzes and to explore gender differences for the recruitment (...) and interaction of these components. Thirty-six healthy participants were exposed to social images in an fMRI session to judge whether the stimuli elicited compassion. The results showed a different connectivity pattern for women and men of the insular cortex, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, the orbitofrontal cortex, and the cingulate cortex. The integration of affective and cognitive components follows a complex functional connectivity pattern that is different for both genders. These differences may indicate that men largely make compassionate judgments based on contextual information, while women tend to notably take internal and introspective processes into account. Women and men can use different affective and cognitive routes that could converge in similar learning of moral values, empathic experiences and compassionate acts. (shrink)

Many political theorists argue that immigration restrictions are unjust and defend broadly open borders. In this paper, I examine the implications of this view for individual conduct. In particular, I argue that the citizens of states that enforce unjust immigration restrictions have duties to disobey certain immigration laws. States conscript their citizens to help enforce immigration law by imposing legal duties on these citizens to monitor, report, and refrain from interacting with unauthorized migrants. If an ideal of open borders is (...) true, these laws are unjust. Furthermore, if citizens comply with their legal duties, they contribute to violating the rights of migrants. We are obligated to refrain from contributing to rights-violations. So, citizens are obligated to disobey immigration laws. I defend the moral requirement to disobey immigration laws against the objection that disobedience to the law is excessively risky and the objection that citizens have political obligations to obey the law. (shrink)

The selfish goal metaphor is interesting and intriguing. It accounts for the idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies in peoples' goal pursuits without invoking free will, self-regulatory, or self-control failures. However, people pursue multiple goals, sometimes simultaneously. We argue that the model proposed in the target article may gain significant theoretical and practical value if the principles underlying goal selection and/or balancing on a moment-to-moment basis are clearly specified and integrated with the notion of the selfish goal.

This article presents an approach to the way in which Bolívar Echeverría, based on his reformulation of Marxist criticism, attempts to locate in the truncated configurations of Latin American modernity potentials for resisting the universal expansion of the value form. Drawing on his distinction between modernity and capitalism, as well as his interpretation of the fundamental tension between natural form and value form, the article exposes Exheverría’s historical analysis of the triumph of the realist ethos over the baroque ethos of (...) Latin American modernity. Nevertheless, the remnants of the latter constitute for Echeverría a possible counter-figure of the realistic ethos embodied by Whiteness. This is how his approach attempts to go beyond both Eurocentrism and the postmodern rejection of modernity, aiming to save the hope of a concrete universalism against the purely abstract universalism of capitalist modernity. (shrink)

This paper confronts the medieval Church with Foucault´s conceptualization of Christendom in his writing on governmentality. In order to do so, this paper analyzes the formation of an ecclesiastical dual rule –jurisdiccional and pastoral– from the perspective of a genealogy of western political forms. For this purpose, a critical dialogue is stablished with Foucault’s analytics of pastoral power and of the subjectivation technologies involved in it. While the transformations supported by the pontifical power gave rise to the first western juridical (...) system, the ecclesiastical institution implemented services of c ura animarum throughout Christianity. Further, this salvation economy leaned on an unprecedented legal rule that turned pastoral power into a twofold rule, both sovereign and governmental. This paper argues that such an interpretation expounds the problems of the dichotomy government/sovereignity, on which Foucault founds his analytics of pastoral power and his genealogy of governmentality. (shrink)

The Communicational Theory of Law (CTL) usually differentiates between Legal Sociology and Legal Theory, in the sense that Legal Sociology is concerned with the social validity of the rules and Legal Theory with the formal or legal validity of the rules. It can be argued that both disciplines are two different perspectives of the same empirical reality (legal rules). Also, legal System and social milieu are two closely linked realities; they cannot be separated because they need each other. The Law (...) is the form or order that the social milieu takes, and, at the same time, the social environment provides the ideas, collective representations and other matters that need a legal regulation. For this reason, the epistemological separation between Sociology and Legal Theory must be overcome when the theoretical perspective comes to legal decisions. Thus, the decisional moment becomes the meeting point between the legal System and the social milieu. This is where the concept of the legal System fulfils its main function, as it allows for the dynamism and adaptability of the legal order. The hermeneutic re-elaboration of the normative texts will be the channel through which the social facts and other material elements can inform the meaning or possible interpretations of the rules and institutions of the legal order. This happens primarily by influencing theoretical and doctrinal works of an expository and didactic nature; and secondarily by influencing the decisions of legal operators and courts. This study seeks to explain how the social context influences legal decisions and the formation of the legal System, from a communicational perspective of Law. In order to do so, it will be necessary to set out two epistemological premises of CTL: the semiotic tripartition of the Theory of Law and the legal Order-legal System distinction. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPeople smugglers help transport migrants across international borders without authorization and in return for compensation. Many people object to people smuggling and believe that the smuggling of migrants is an evil trade. In this paper, I offer a qualified defense of people smuggling. In particular, I argue that people smuggling that assists refugees in escaping threats to their rights can be morally justified. I then rebut the objections that people smugglers exploit migrants, have defective motivations, and wrongly violate the law. (...) My conclusion is that people smuggling is sometimes a permissible way of helping refugees to evade unjust immigration restrictions and compelling states to bear their fair share of the global refugee population. (shrink)

Several political theorists argue that states have rights to self-determination and these rights justify immigration restrictions. Call this: the self-determination argument for immigration restrictions. In this article, I develop an objection to the self-determination argument. I argue that if it is morally permissible for states to restrict immigration because they have rights to self-determination, then it can also be morally permissible for states to deport and denationalize their own citizens. We can either accept that it is permissible for states to (...) deport and denationalize their own citizens or reject the self-determination argument. To avoid this implication, we should reject the self-determination argument. That is, we should also reject the conclusion that rights to self-determination can justify any significant immigration restrictions. (shrink)

Many people think that citizenship should not be for sale. On their view, it is morally wrong for states to sell citizenship to foreigners. In this article, I challenge this view. I argue that it is in principle permissible for states to sell citizenship. I contend that, if states can permissibly deny foreigners access to citizenship in some cases, then states can permissibly give foreigners the option of buying citizenship in these cases. Furthermore, I defend the permissibility of selling citizenship (...) against the objections that selling citizenship values citizenship in the wrong way, corrupts civic norms, and unfairly discriminates against poor foreigners. I conclude by noting that, although selling citizenship is not intrinsically wrong, it could still be wrong for states to sell citizenship in practice. If existent immigration restrictions are unjust, then it may be impermissible for states to sell citizenship in the real world. (shrink)

Si bien existen algunos intentos de repensar el tema de la tecnología desde la filosofía de Søren Kierkegaard, no existe todavía un diálogo directo con la postura transhumanista. En este artículo proponemos un acercamiento inédito, entendido como una crítica, desde el pensamiento de Kierkegaard al transhumanismo y su concepto de singularity. Primero, analizamos el modo en el que los transhumanistas entienden el concepto de singularity y sus limitaciones; después, apoyándonos en la filosofía de Kierkegaard, defendemos que la única singularidad posible (...) y real es la persona humana como relación primigenia, fuente de angustia y libertad, pecado y amor, espíritu. Defendemos también que esta relación no puede ser replicada por una creación artificial. (shrink)

States have rights to unilaterally determine their own immigration policies under international law and few international institutions regulate states’ decision-making about immigration. As a result, states have extensive discretion over immigration policy. In this paper, I argue that states should join international migration institutions that would constrain their discretion over immigration. Immigration restrictions are morally risky. When states restrict immigration, they risk unjustly harming foreigners and restricting their freedom. Furthermore, biases and epistemic defects pervasively influence states’ decision-making about immigration policy. (...) States should transfer some of their decision-making authority over immigration to more reliable institutions in order to mitigate the risks that they will unjustly restrict immigration. International institutions that include the interests of potential immigrants would be more reliable with respect to immigration policy than unilateral state decision-making. Thus, states should subject their immigration policies to international control. (shrink)

Se sostiene que los juicios reflexivos suponen un sujeto actuante que se determina por sus funciones discursivas. Para demostrar que hay un sujeto discursivo o narrativo en Arendt es preciso referir a las siguientes cuestiones. En primer lugar, hay una relación directa entre el sujeto político y su espacio de aparición o grado de publicidad. En este sentido, el sujeto no es cualquier sujeto. Es más bien el que tiene la posibilidad u oportunidad de aparecer frente a otros. Esta experiencia (...) conduce a pensar la acción humana en determinada dirección. El juicio reflexivo opera sobre un caso particular que hace posible la aparición del sujeto discursivo orientando la acción. En segundo lugar, el propósito de este análisis consiste en averiguar si es posible o legítimo pensar al discurso como recurso estrictamente narrativo y, en este sentido, indagar sobre la posición de Arendt al respecto: ¿se pueden pensar los juicios reflexivos a partir de lo narrado? Esta pregunta conduce a la conclusión del presente trabajo puesto que la posibilidad de pensar lo narrado a partir de los juicios reflexivos supone un sujeto específico con determinadas características previas que habilitan las categorías de lo visible, invisible, apariencia y realidad. (shrink)

Drawing on the hypothesis that workplace harassment may be considered a genre of negative communication serving malicious purposes, the purposes of this paper are threefold. In the first place, we consider the difficulties involved in proving workplace harassment before administration or in court. In the second place, we analyse the challenges workplace harassment poses to linguistic analysis, with special reference to genre theory, and suggest ways of making the theory compatible with the new linguistic input the language of harassment provides. (...) Finally, we illustrate the knowledge the expert linguist can offer from the perspective of genre theory in cases involving workplace harassment. In order not to build a castle in the sky, our analysis is grounded in an exemplary case study relating to a specific type of harassment in the workplace that Leymann named « workplace mobbing ». (shrink)

The paper is focused on the process that creates prepositional phrases in Spanish, from the perspective of the theory of grammaticalization and cognitivism, tracking semantic transformations through associative processes such as metaphor and metonymy. After reviewing these theoretical bases, the research follows two particular expressions in the Spanish prepositional phrases inventory: en cabeza de and a la cabeza de. The analysis starts by the study of the central noun, cabeza, in historic dictionaries, followed by a study of their use in (...) the main academic corpus. The aim is to observe how these expressions have changed diachronically to establish when and how they have become fixed phrases in the Spanish language. (shrink)

Partimos de unas reflexiones sobre el Racionalismo y el Historicismo como dos enfoques con perfiles epistemológicos claramente diferenciados, que llevan a quien en ellos se sitúe a muy diversos planteamientos respecto a cualquier cuestión de carácter social. Examinamos el alcance y potencial de ambos en su argumentación cuando pretenden dar cuenta del origen de la sociedad política y todo lo que ello representa, instituciones, valores… Esbozada esta cuestión se recala en el análisis jovellanista de la mujer. Jovellanos conoce bien ambos (...) enfoques, sus lecturas de los autores aquí citados están plenamente contrastadas y no son objeto de este trabajo; apuesta por el enfoque historicista inglés para comprender el rol femenino, para situar a las instituciones que le niegan su ingreso en su decurso histórico, y curiosamente convierte el modelo historicista en una vía de análisis y acceso a propuestas de una extraordinaria modernidad. Analizamos desde estos enfoques los planes de estudio en los que estamos inmersos. (shrink)

En este artículo se quiere mostrar cómo el bien la verdad y la belleza, al ser propiedades que se identifican con el ser, es decir, trascendentales, develan algunas características del ser perfecto en los entes imperfectos. Esto es posible desde el pensamiento de Tomás de Aquino, porque dios, que es aquel que crea, al hacerlo transmite algo de su propio ser a su obra; así como el artista se refleja en algún respecto en su creación. En el caso de dios, (...) este reflejo se llama vestigio, y tiene carácter analógico. Sin embargo, permite que una criatura racional encarnada pueda descubrirlo por medio de la contemplación del universo, lo que transforma a la creación en un fenómeno ierofánico. En este trabajo mostraremos cómo cada trascendental revela un aspecto de la divinidad. La verdad la hace inteligible, la bondad deseable y la belleza digna de ser amada. (shrink)

En el presente texto se hace una lectura fenomenológica del relato mítico amazónico del Yurupary. A partir de esta, se defiende la tesis de que en la oralitura que se manifiesta en este relato se ofrece la cosmovisión de una cultura precolombina; en esta, se plasma en su estructura interna una determinada manera de estar-en-el-mundo, es decir, devela rasgos de la dimensión ontológica de la misma. Para exponer la tesis anterior el texto se divide en tres partes: I. “De la (...) fenomenología o presupuestos metodológicos”; II. “Aproximación fenomenológica al relato”, y III. “Perspectivas”. (shrink)

Recent research has shown that the corporate social responsibility system has a positive impact on consumer behavior regarding products or services that promote social responsibility. Thus, it can be stated that customer loyalty to a particular company derives not only from commercial benefits but also from the components of corporate social responsibilities practiced by the company. The vast majority of company managers in Romania do not understand what it means to be a socially responsible company, which is why they do (...) not even agree with most of the definitions given to corporate social responsibility; secondly, when asked to explain what social responsibility means, they are not able to make logical arguments; I argue that the involvement of companies in social responsibility activities has a purely economic motivation and that it is related to the size of the company, rather large companies integrating the implementation of CSR activities in its vision. From a marketing perspective, corporate social responsibility has proven its ability to generate many benefits for companies, implementing and communicating specific policies and actions in this regard with the potential to improve satisfaction and loyalty, both among customers and of employees. The main objective of the article is to analyze the way in which consumers in Romania perceive the corporate social responsibility system of companies. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se centra en el concepto de espectador en Arendt entendido como narrador de la historia acaecida. La hipótesis de la presente investigación sostiene que la acción política se comprende en la conflictividad propia del mundo compartido o en común que encarna el narrador de la historia ; esto es, el sujeto de la acción política y crítica. Para sostener este principio es preciso comprender dos cuestiones. La primera es que en Arendt hay un sujeto que funda un (...) espacio sensible y visible y significa el sentido de la experiencia a través de la narración o relato. En segundo lugar, la experiencia narrada se visibiliza mediante la capacidad más política de todas: la de los juicios reflexivos kantianos entendidos como políticos arendtianos. Así, fundar el espacio de lo sensible como portador legítimo del significado de la acción política no instituye conceptos sedimentados tales como qué es actuar bien o mal o cómo hay que actuar bajo determinado régimen político. Más bien, son las indeterminaciones conceptuales propias del espacio político entendido como conflictividad a partir de los juicios, las que testimonian y definen un quién narrador o un espectador crítico de la acción. Esta última cuestión es la que se aproxima a un pensar político en Arendt dirigido a un planteo estrictamente filosófico y fenomenológico de la acción política. (shrink)

In an increasingly urbanized world, construction industry is called upon to serve the needs of human society, such as environmental protection and safety in terms of infrastructure. In this context, a sustainable and ethical development means a close connection between buildings and environment. This connection can be achieved through, for example, the concept of ecological concrete or green concrete, as it is often called. The conventional process of obtaining cement and mineral aggregates from the concrete composition generates pollution, especially through (...) greenhouse gas emissions. Also, one should not ignore the fact that extraction of the raw materials affects the habitats of the sites and of the neighboring areas. When construction materials are questioned, the ethical issues lay not in the means of expression, but mainly in the means of production. More to the point, the present contribution aimed to find solutions for enhancing the adhesion of vegetal aggregates with the cement matrix, in order to obtain a material with optimal mechanical properties, which is valued as an ethical approach of building industry. Results showed that plant aggregates can be used to obtain a building material which can be improved by using partial substitution of cement by silica fume, fly ash, or by using additives and that green concrete as an environmentally friendly material offers the alternative for lower energy use and fewer CO2 emissions. Marketers must understand not only the advantages of these green materials, but also that they have an ethical commitment to provide consumers with environmentally friendly materials. (shrink)

Adolescents who believe that their parents treat them differently from their siblings have poorer psychosocial well-being than otherwise. This phenomenon, which is known as parental differential treatment or PDT occurs in up to 65% of families. Past studies have examined socio-demographic variables (e.g., child gender, age, and birth order) as predictors of PDT, but these immutable characteristics do little to inform interventions and help these adolescents. Hence, this study extends past research by investigating links among parent empathy, parent perception of (...) PDT, child perception of PDT, child perception of fairness and child well-being (self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and trust in the relationship with parents). Furthermore, this study tests whether adolescent personality (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism), child empathy, and child perception of fairness moderate these links. This study will utilize a two-wave longitudinal design with a one-year lapse. Data will be collected from 760 Chinese adolescents studying from Secondary One to Secondary Three in 18 schools in Hong Kong and from their parents. We test our theoretical model via a multilevel structural equation model. This study both addresses (a) theoretical debates about relations among empathy, PDT, fairness, and psychosocial well-being and (b) focuses on modifiable factors and behaviors, to inform future interventions, such as parent education. (shrink)