Of the many translators who carried the Buddhist doctrine to China, Paramartha, a missionary-monk who arrived in China in AD 546, ranks as the translator par excellence of the sixth century. Introducing philosophical ideas that would subsequently excite the Chinese imagination to develop the great schools of Sui and T'ang Buddhism, Paramartha's translations are almost exclusively of Yogacara Buddhist texts on the nature of the mind and consciousness. This first study of Paramartha in a Western language focuses on the Chuan (...) shih lun (Evolution of Consciousness), a text that reveals the outline of Paramartha's Yogacara thought. The study begins with a discussion of Paramartha's life, the historical and political context of the time in India and south China, and the roles of his main disciples in disseminating his work. It then describes Paramartha's treatment of Yogacarin views on language and the process of cognition, both central to this system of thought. The final chapter analyzes the history and content of the Chuan shih lun, and the book concludes with a new translation of the text, with extensive annotations. (shrink)

The poetic work of Paul Celan provides an opportunity to display how Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneuticsdialogues with texts. The article reconstructs Gadamer’s reading of some of the poems of Celan and contrasts this interpretative approach to that of Jacques Derrida, representative of a trend of hermeneutics known as deconstruction and which is inspired by the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Derrida, who is also reader and admirer of Celan, stresses the open, secret, and unspeakable nature of the poem in contrast to (...) the hermeneuticprinciple of Gadamer that emphasizes the recovery of meaning. Despite the differences of both approaches, thearticle argues that they address some form of negativity within the poem, whose silence questions and motivatesboth readings, though they go in different directions. Being able to listen carefully to the negativity of thepoem, to what is unspeakable within the poetic work of Celan, reveals itself as a common motivation in these contemporaneous philosophers, which turns out to make them look closer than they appear to be at first sight. (shrink)

Este texto se propone la lectura de la novela Pedro Páramo a la luz de algunos de los conceptos que, a fin de caracterizar la hermenéutica literaria, y la teoría de la interpretación, elabora Paul Ricoeur en su texto Teoría de la argumentación. La primera parte consiste en una breve presentación de los mismos y la segunda en la lectura a Epicuro, filósofo perteneciente a la época helenística, presentó en su ética una visión racional acerca de la muerte, criticando (...) por ello el carácter irracional con que es vista por la mayoría de los hombres. De este modo, el filósofo argumenta que es necesario que el hombre se aleje del dolor por medio del placer y así conseguir la felicidad y la plenitud de la vida, y que igualmente debe evitar el temor a la muerte, ya que éste implicaría la pérdida del placer y la inclemente disminución de opciones para obtener la vida feliz. Paralelamente a Epicuro, Schopenhauer da claras muestras de semejanza con el filósofo griego en el tratamiento que le da al tema de la muerte en su filosofía. (shrink)

Having in mind the concept of poiesis, as Paul Valéry uses it, time and movement are presented as concepts produced within the project of understanding the natural world. From the idea of philosophy as a way of constructing through concepts the intelligibility of phenomena, I will show the coherence between the construction of the concept of time and that of the concept of movement.

Este texto se propone la lectura de la novela Pedro Páramo a la luz de algunos de los conceptos que, a fin de caracterizar la hermenéutica literaria, y la teoría de la interpretación, elabora Paul Ricoeur en su texto Teoría de la argumentación. La primera parte consiste en una breve presentación de los mismos y la segunda en la lectura a Epicuro, filósofo perteneciente a la época helenística, presentó en su ética una visión racional acerca de la muerte, criticando (...) por ello el carácter irracional con que es vista por la mayoría de los hombres. De este modo, el filósofo argumenta que es necesario que el hombre se aleje del dolor por medio del placer y así conseguir la felicidad y la plenitud de la vida, y que igualmente debe evitar el temor a la muerte, ya que éste implicaría la pérdida del placer y la inclemente disminución de opciones para obtener la vida feliz. Paralelamente a Epicuro, Schopenhauer da claras muestras de semejanza con el filósofo griego en el tratamiento que le da al tema de la muerte en su filosofía. (shrink)

We are currently seeing a revival of interest in Aquinas's moral thought among Christian ethicists, both Protestant and Catholic. Although recent studies of his moral thought have touched on a number of topics, the majority of these have focused on his account of the virtues and their place in the Christian life. Probing the questions of the relation of virtue and law, the role of reason and will, and the place of the passions in Aquinas's moral theology, I will examine (...) recent studies by Diana Cates, Pamela Hall, Simon Harak, James Keenan, Daniel Nelson, Daniel Westberg, and Paul Waddell. In different ways these studies return us repeatedly to the vexed and unresolved question of the scope of human freedom. (shrink)

Given that there is referential uncertainty (noise) when learning words, to what extent can forgetting filter some of that noise out, and be an aid to learning? Using a Cross Situational Learning model we find a U-shaped function of errors indicative of a “Goldilocks” zone of forgetting: an optimum store-loss ratio that is neither too aggressive or too weak, but just the right amount to produce better learning outcomes. Forgetting acts as a high-pass filter that actively deletes (part of) the (...) referential ambiguity noise, retains intended referents, and effectively amplifies the signal. The model achieves this performance without incorporating any specific cognitive biases of the type proposed in the constraints and principles account, and without any prescribed developmental changes in the underlying learning mechanism. Instead we interpret the model performance as more of a by-product of exposure to input, where the associative strengths in the lexicon grow as a function of linguistic experience in combination with memory limitations. The result adds a mechanistic explanation for the experimental evidence on spaced learning and, more generally, advocates integrating domain-general aspects of cognition, such as memory, in to the language acquisition process. (shrink)

Sumner B. (Barney) Twiss, who died in 2023, was for ten years a General Editor of the Journal of Religious Ethics (JRE). He was a frequent contributor of articles, a member of the JRE Editorial Board, and a member of the journal's Board of Trustees. In this article, colleagues and students reflect on some of his many contributions, not only to the JRE but to the broader discursive fields of comparative religious ethics and human rights.

A major theme of recent debate and policy development in the area of special education is that of inclusion: the placement of all pupils in mainstream schools and the development of curriculum and pedagogy to meet the needs of all. Analysis of national statistical data shows some movement in this direction, but of a slow and very uneven kind. An exploration of the concepts of pragmatism to describe an important aspect of LEA decision making and of ideology to describe an (...) important aspect of pressures for inclusion helps to explain this pattern of development. The paper concludes that both approaches require further systematic empirical data on the outcomes of different patterns of educational provision. (shrink)

High-spin states have been studied in Pr-135(59), populated through the Cd-116(Na-23,4n) reaction at 115 MeV, using the Gammasphere gamma-ray spectrometer. The negative-parity yrast band has been significantly extended to spin similar to 45 (h) over bar and excitation energy 21.5 MeV, showing evidence for several rotational alignments. The positive-parity yrast band of Ce-135(58), populated through the p4n channel of this reaction, was also populated to spin similar to 38 (h) over bar and excitation energy 18 MeV. Cranking calculations indicate that (...) these nuclei are soft with respect to the triaxiality parameter gamma and that several competing nuclear shapes occur at high spin. (shrink)

The human brain does not use more energy than the smaller brains of animals of comparable corporal weight. Uniquely, human functions localized largely in parts of the human brain that show greatest size increase over other animals may be mediated primarily by nonsynaptic neurotransmission, with reduced energy cost per kilogram of brain. This may affect the energetic constraints on evolution.

Radical democratic thinking is becoming intrigued by the material situatedness of its political agents and by the role of nonhuman participants in political interaction. At stake here is the displacement of narrow anthropocentrism that currently guides democratic theory and practice, and its repositioning into what we call ‘the nonhuman condition’. This Critical Exchange explores the nonhuman condition. It asks: What are the implications of decentering the human subject via a new materialist reading of radical democracy? Does this reading dilute political (...) agency? Or should this be seen, on the contrary, as an invitation for new voices and demands to enter into democratic assemblages? How might engagement with the more-than-human disrupt or extend theories of radical democracy? Hans Asenbaum and Amanda Machin discuss the human democratic subject both through radical democratic and new materialist lenses. They suggest that a new materialist decentred subject does not lose agency but further gains political responsibility in radical democracy. Jean-Paul Gagnon highlights the possibility of becoming through loss. In losing our anthropocentric arrogance—our understanding of being other and better than animal—we become more connected and discover our place in human-nonhuman assemblages. Melissa Orlie agrees that something can be gained through renouncing dominant human fantasies and presents a ‘radical democratic naturalism’. By renouncing land violence and acknowledging nature’s subjectivity, we can further nonexploitative radical democratic politics. This is where the notion of ‘tidalectic’ processes introduced by James L. Smith is helpful. Focusing on water and the Indigenous knowledges around rivers, he considers how democracy and community can be reimagined as plural, cyclical and attentive to the nonhuman with which the human is inevitably entangled. Diana Leong offers a different approach. Considering the nonhuman from the perspective of Black Studies demands an awareness to how blackness has long been constituted as non- or partially human. (shrink)

The recent interest of cognitive- and neuro-scientists in the topic of consciousness (and the dissatisfaction with the present state of knowledge) has revealed deep conceptual differences with Humanists, who have dealt with issues of consciousness for centuries. O'Regan & Noë have attempted (unsuccessfully) to bridge those differences.

Behaving ethically depends on the ability to recognize that ethical issues exist, to see from an ethical point of view. This ability to see and respond ethically may be related more to attributes of corporate culture than to attributes of individual employees. Efforts to increase ethical standards and decrease pressure to behave unethically should therefore concentrate on the organization and its culture. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how total quality (TQ) techniques can facilitate the development of a (...) cooperative corporate culture that promotes and encourages ethical behavior throughout an organization. (shrink)

La tarea de la filosofía consiste, para Fichte, en elevar a la conciencia al ámbito de su actuar originario de la mano de la reflexión trascendental. El filósofo sigue al Yo en su génesis, y su sistema se convierte en una "historia pragmática del espíritu humano". Esta "intuición intelec-tual" descu..

McKinley, Diana; Webber, Ruth This paper is an ecclesial study of the baptismal response of twenty-three Catholics between the ages of twenty-one and forty-one, from six Catholic dioceses across Australia. The study was undertaken between 2008 and 2010. The purpose of the study was to investigate how committed Catholics from Generation X (born 1961-1975) and Generation Y (born 1976-1990) came to faith, and why they continued to practise their Catholic faith, despite falling Mass attendance generally. An unexpected result of (...) the study was the strong link made by the participants between their identity as a person and their baptismal call as a Catholic. It became evident that there were four distinct but interacting aspects of how they saw their identity as Catholics. (shrink)

The apolipoprotein E gene plays an important role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease , and amyloid plaque comprised mostly of the amyloid-beta peptide ) is one of the major hallmarks of AD. However, the relationship between these two important molecules is poorly understood. We examined how A treatment affects APOE expression in cultured cells and tested the role of the transcription factor NF-B in APOE gene regulation. To delineate NF-B's role, we have characterized a 1098 nucleotide segment containing the (...) 5'-flanking region of the human APOE gene . Sequence analysis of this region suggests the presence of two potential NF-B elements. To demonstrate promoter activity, the region was cloned upstream of a promoterless luciferase gene. This segment was able to drive expression of luciferase in transient transfections of human fetal glial cells. Promoter activity was stimulated twofold by A treatment. Pretreatment with double-stranded DNA decoy oligonucleotides against NF-B reduced A stimulation. Deletion and mutagenetic analyses demonstrated that the distal NF-B element was functional and showed a strong DNA-protein complex band in gel shift analysis, similar to that from control NF-B consensus element. An anti-inflammatory and anti-NF-B drug, sodium salicylate, significantly blocked A-induced APOE promoter function. Our data provide evidence that upregulation of APOE by A in astroglial cells is mediated by an NF-B-element present in the 5'-flanking region of the APOE gene. (shrink)

En este comentario destaco algunas virtudes de la propuesta de Diana Pérez y Antoni Gomila en Social Cognition and the Second Person in Human Interaction y planteo dos preguntas. La primera es acerca del papel de las emociones básicas en las interacciones uno a uno a nivel grupal e intergrupal. La segunda se refiere a la influencia que tienen las posiciones de poder en las relaciones humanas y la forma en que éstas alteran o modifican la lectura de los (...) estados mentales. (shrink)

A partir de un estudio de la “arqueología de los medios” en la producción de imaginarios artísticos, el interés por recuperar de las páginas de la Revista Moderna de México el cuento “En el lago Pátzcuaro” de Rubén M. Campos es mostrar la forma cómo impactó el ferrocarril en la producción de relatos artísticos en el afán de relatar la experiencia poética del viaje a través del territorio nacional. El ferrocarril, como un artefacto productor de miradas, traería consigo un proceso (...) de transformación estética para la producción de reproducciones visuales en la prensa literaria del entresiglos mexicano. Específicamente interesa mostrar este relato como un ejemplo de cómo las tecnologías de la mirada –fotografía e ilustraciones– posibilitan la aparición de propuestas híbridas de representación de la experiencia del viaje, aspecto que aparece ligado al desarrollo del ferrocarril como medio de comunicación y transporte. (shrink)

Background This paper describes the design, implementation, and process outcomes from three public deliberations held in three tribal communities. Although increasingly used around the globe to address collective challenges, our study is among the first to adapt public deliberation for use with exclusively Indigenous populations. In question was how to design deliberations for tribal communities and whether this adapted model would achieve key deliberative goals and be well received.Methods We adapted democratic deliberation, an approach to stakeholder engagement, for use with (...) three tribal communities to respect tribal values and customs. Public deliberation convenes people from diverse backgrounds in reasoned reflection and dialogue in search of collective solutions. The deliberation planning process and design were informed by frameworks of enclave deliberation and community-based participatory research, which share key egalitarian values. The deliberations were collaboratively designed with tribal leadership and extensive partner input and involvement in the deliberations. Each deliberation posed different, locally relevant questions about genomic research, but used the same deliberation structure and measures to gauge the quality and experience of deliberation.Results A total of 52 individuals participated in the deliberations across all three sites. Deliberants were balanced in gender, spanned decades in age, and were diverse in educational attainment and exposure to health research. Overall, the deliberations were positively evaluated. Participant perceptions and external observer datasets depict three deliberations that offered intensive conversation experiences in which participants learned from one another, reported feeling respected and connected to one another, and endorsed this intensive form of engagement.Conclusion The adapted deliberations achieved key deliberative goals and were generally well received. Limitations of the study are described. (shrink)

La presencia de préstamos léxicos en una lengua es un indicio de la introducción de una palabra foránea y una nueva realidad. Aquí discutiré cómo la presencia de préstamos léxicos en las lenguas es un indicio de la pluralidad del mundo real. Para esto, tomaré la tesis expuesta por Lewis sobre la pluralidad de mundos y presentaré ejemplos del muisca y del español1, como una prueba de que el mundo, como un único lugar donde todo está incluido, conlleva la pluralidad (...) del mundo real, debido a que hay otro que suele ser desconocido y, en consecuencia, no posible dentro de sus mundos posibles. (shrink)

En este trabajo ofrecemos la traducción del latín al español del Liber de convenientia fidei et intellectus in obiecto de Ramón Llull, con introducción y notas. Se trata de una obra en la que el filósofo mallorquín efectúa una síntesis de su pensamiento en torno de las relaciones entre fe y razón, así como de su posición respecto de la defensa de la fe católica y la conversión de los no cristianos. El opúsculo, que se muestra como un trabajo definitivo (...) en cuanto al establecimiento de la relación mencionada, hecha mano de los elementos fundamentales de su sistema, el Ars magna, pero aun así es una rara avis dentro de la opus luliana: está pleno de citas bíblicas y alusiones a las auctoritates eclesiásticas más renombradas, unas y otras ausentes en la mayoría de las obras lulianas. In this paper we offer the translation from Latin to Spanish of Ramón Llull´s Liber de convenientia fidei et intellectus in obiecto with introduction and notes. This is a work where the mallorcan philosopher makes a synthetic framework of his thinking on the relationship between faith and reason, as well as of his position towards the defense of catholic faith and conversion of non-christian people. The text, which is shown as a definitive work in the setting of this relationship, uses the most characteristic principles of his system, Ars magna, but still is a rara avis inside the opus lulliana: is full of biblical quotations and allusions to the most renowned ecclesiastical auctoritates, all these absents in most lullian woks. (shrink)

El núcleo central de este trabajo consiste en presentar a la Crítica de la Facultad de Juzgar de Kant como un recurso significativo en la formación del pensamiento político de Hanna Arendt. Según la interpretación que la autora realiza del juicio reflexivo y su vinculación con la comunidad ampliada presente en la concepción kantiana de sensus communis, es posible considerar una redefinición del juicio ahora más ligada a la contingencia de la acción y a la pluralidad de los espectadores en (...) el ámbito de la esfera política. En síntesis, se trata de señalar los aspectos más problemáticos de la localización del legado de Kant en los últimos trabajos de Arendt a la vez que llamar la atención sobre la cuestión concerniente a la importancia del aporte kantiano a los ejes centrales del debate de la teoría política contemporánea. (shrink)

En la actualidad el número de estudiantes con diversidad funcional que ha ingresado al sistema educativo colombiano es amplio, así pues, el punto neurálgico de esta revolución educativa es transformar paradigmas desde una perspectiva práctica. Aunado a esto, el docente juega un papel fundamental en la inclusión. Esta investigación se orientó a identificar los retos y realidades del docente en contextos escolares colombianos. En este sentido, se planteó partir de una metodología de corte cuantitativo con un diseño no experimental de (...) alcance descriptivo. Destacando que, una escuela para todos no es una utopía, es un espacio de los educandos y para los educandos donde convergen libremente una gama de particularidades y habilidades propias de una escuela humana e igualitaria. (shrink)