¿Utilizar literatura centroamericana o literaturas centroamericanas como término de análisis en el campo literario-cultural? La interrogante la sostiene este dossier, que presenta parte de la diversidad literaria que compete a la región desde la mirada académica del Sur, Norte y Centro de América, contribuyendo a la vitalidad de la discusión en los Estudios Transareales. Esta perspectiva se ha nutrido con los aportes del XVI Congreso Internacional de Literatura Centroamericana (CILCA) y el III Taller Centroamericano sobre Repositorios Digitales, así como con (...) el seguimiento dado por Istmo, Revista virtual de estudios literarios y culturales centroamericanos, un esfuerzo al cual se ha sumado igualmente la Revista Ístmica. (shrink)

En la década de 1960, en Nicaragua, la revista Ventana, dirigida por los jóvenes universitarios, Sergio Ramírez y Fernando Gordillo, se constituyó en una caja de resonancia política y literaria. Confluyeron en ella el debate político y el reclamo de libertad y de autonomía, en el contexto de la dictadura con una apuesta literaria amplia y cosmopolita. Se dieron cita allí una multiplicidad de autores y textos literarios procedentes de diversas lenguas y culturas.

BackgroundPeople say it is hard to stay truly positive in Lebanon. Studies showed that 63% of Lebanese young adults are highly dissatisfied with their country. In fact, young adults are the most vulnerable population to stressors in Lebanon since their future is at stake and it is their time to shape their lives in a country that cripples them. This study aimed to assess factors associated with positivity among a sample of Lebanese university students despite the various stressors they are (...) facing on top of the economic collapse and the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsThis cross-sectional study was conducted between November and December 2021. A total of 333 participants was recruited through convenience sampling and snowball technique through several areas in Lebanon’s governorates. A linear regression taking the positivity score as the dependent variable was adopted and all variables that showed a correlation > │0.24│ in absolute value were entered in the final model as independent.ResultsA linear regression taking the positivity score as the dependent variable showed that more positive experiences in life, more flourishing, living in rural area compared to urban, and female gender were significantly associated with more positivity.ConclusionThis study demonstrated that the youth’s positivity is strongly affected by age, gender, residency, and the country they live in that will both directly and indirectly shape their life experiences and their ability to flourish and prosper. Along with all the efforts done to help during this collapse and alleviate the stress that young adults are enduring, follow-up studies are still needed to determine accurate coping techniques that pushes these young adults to think positively in a country where negativity reigns and all else fails. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article1 reports an ongoing experience involving the application of research to teaching that articulates various disciplines and curricular contexts within a Post-graduate Program in Literature and Literary Criticism. Through the use of active teaching-learning methodologies and digital information and communication technologies, we seek to put some core dilemmas of literary studies into dialogue with notions and practices of open science. Throughout this process, we laid the groundwork for a digital platform that would bring together the results of research (...) developed in the context of these various disciplines and make them readily available to their respective audiences and sociocultural territories. By raising awareness concerning the social impact of the program’s research, this report should prompt reflection on how to foster articulation between heterogeneous academic and social contexts, both within the classroom connected to other environments and in open scientific productions, accessible to different audiences. (shrink)

This paper provides an overview of women's engagement with Stoic ethics in early modern England (c. 1600–1700). It builds on recent literature in the field by demonstrating that there is a positive gender‐inclusive narrative to be told about Stoic philosophy in this time—one that incorporates women's specific concerns and responds to women's lived experiences. To support this claim, we take an interdisciplinary approach and examine several different genres of women's writing in the period, including letters, poems, plays, educational texts, and (...) moral essays. In these writings, we argue, a distinctive conception of Stoic therapy emerges. Women embrace well‐known aspects of the Stoic philosophy—such as living in agreement with nature, the importance of self‐government, and the ideal of freedom from the passions—but they also allow room for the cultivation of eupatheiai or life‐affirmative feelings, such as feelings of respect, affection, and good will toward other people. (shrink)

This paper examines expressed hopelessness among environmental activists in Extinction Rebellion. While activists claim that they have lost all hope for a future without global warming and species extinction, through despair emerges a new hope for saving what can still be saved—a hope for what is left. This radical hope, emerging from despair, may make Extinction Rebellion even more effective. Drawing from personal interviews with 25 Extinction Rebellion activists in the United Kingdom and the published work of other Extinction Rebellion (...) activists, this paper identifies signs of radical hope. While activists have cast off false hope and passive hope, a new hope for what is still possible remains. This hope is based on virtue ethics: doing what is right in the moment, rather than being attached to a desired outcome. This drives forward activism despite the results. Through their principle of regenerative culture, Extinction Rebellion activists learn to support each other and be prepared for a more turbulent and challenging future. Through a regenerative culture they can salvage and repair what is left and sustain radical hope. (shrink)

The New York Times receives more citations from academic journals than the American Sociological Review, Research Policy, or the Harvard Law Review. This article explores the reasons why scholars cite the NYT so much. Reasons include studying the newspaper itself or New York City, establishing public interest in a topic by referencing press coverage, introducing specificity, and treating the NYT very much like an academic journal. The phenomenon seems to reflect a mode 2 type of scholarship produced in the context (...) of application, organizationally diverse, socially accountable, and aiming to be socially useful as well as high quality as assessed by peers. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo compare techniques for computing clustering and switching scores in terms of agreement, correlation, and empirical value as predictors of incident cognitive impairment.MethodsWe transcribed animal and letter F fluency recordings on 640 cases of ICI and matched controls from a national epidemiological study, amending each transcription with word timings. We then calculated clustering and switching scores, as well as scores indexing speed of responses, using techniques described in the literature. We evaluated agreement among the techniques with Cohen’s κ and calculated (...) correlations among the scores. After fitting a base model with raw scores, repetitions, and intrusions, we fit a series of Bayesian logistic regression models adding either clustering and switching scores or speed scores, comparing the models in terms of several metrics. We partitioned the ICI cases into acute and progressive cases and repeated the regression analysis for each group.ResultsFor animal fluency, we found that models with speed scores derived using the slope difference algorithm achieved the best values of the Watanabe–Akaike Information Criterion, but with good net reclassification improvement only for the progressive group. For letter fluency, different models excelled for prediction of acute and progressive cases. For acute cases, NRI was best for speed scores derived from a network model, while for progressive cases, the best model used clustering and switching scores derived from the same network model. Combining variables from the best animal and letter F models led to marginal improvements in model fit and NRI only for the all-cases and acute-cases analyses.ConclusionSpeed scores improve a base model for predicting progressive cognitive impairment from animal fluency. Letter fluency scores may provide complementary information. (shrink)

New fetal therapies offer important prospects for improving health. However, having to consider both the fetus and the pregnant woman makes the risk–benefit analysis of fetal therapy trials challenging. Regulatory guidance is limited, and proposed ethical frameworks are overly restrictive or permissive. We propose a new ethical framework for fetal therapy research. First, we argue that considering only biomedical benefits fails to capture all relevant interests. Thus, we endorse expanding the considered benefits to include evidence-based psychosocial effects of fetal therapies. (...) Second, we reject the commonly proposed categorical risk and/or benefit thresholds for assessing fetal therapy research. Instead, we propose that the individual risks for the pregnant woman and the fetus should be justified by the benefits for them and the study’s social value. Studies that meet this overall proportionality criterion but have mildly unfavorable risk–benefit ratios for pregnant women and/or fetuses may be acceptable. (shrink)

Lorsque la science-fiction devient chaque jour davantage réalité, lorsque les métavers collectifs et individuels esquissent de façon de plus en plus nette la place qu'ils auront demain dans nos vies, lorsque la part toujours plus grande de robot en nous semble donner raison aux plus folles idées du transhumanisme, lorsque la littérature elle-même fait la part (trop) belle à l'égo et au moi, sommes-nous entrés déjà, sans le savoir encore, dans l'ère de l'humain augmenté?"--Page 4 of cover.

Through this book, we offer a map for navigating relationships and analytical tools that provide theoretical and practical contexts for getting to the heart or root of positive relationship building in school environments and beyond.

This paper clarifies and reflects on the four values that Serene Khader argues feminism can do without in Decolonizing Universalism: independence individualism, personhood individualism, Enlightenment freedom, and gender‐role eliminativism. Persuaded by her condemnation of the view Khader calls “headship complementarianism” and her defense of a different form of gender complementarianism, the paper leaves the question of gender role eliminativism aside. It starts by presenting some concerns about her treatment of Enlightenment freedom, independence individualism, and personhood individualism. It agrees that Enlightenment (...) freedom and independence individualism have no place in feminism. Contrary to Khader, however, it maintains that personhood individualism is necessarily a feminist value. It then shows why the value of women’s autonomy is more central to non‐imperialist feminism than Khader acknowledges. Ultimately, it agrees with Khader that feminism can be both universalist and non‐imperialist provided that these qualifications are adopted. (shrink)

Given the risks of misinformation, addressees need to calibrate their trust towards communicators effectively. One way to do this is to evaluate the evidence speakers rely on (their evidential warrant) or claim to have (their evidential claims) when providing testimony. We review key findings in experimental psychology and experimental pragmatics to uncover the mechanisms underlying this form of trust calibration. This will ultimately shed light on the psychological foundations of principles that guide the evaluation of testimony in legal contexts, such (...) as the law against hearsay. (shrink)

Using a design-based research approach, we studied ways to advance opportunities for children and families to engage in engineering design practices in an informal educational setting. 213 families with 5–11-year-old children were observed as they visited a tinkering exhibit at a children’s museum during one of three iterations of a program posing an engineering design challenge. Children’s narrative reflections about their experience were recorded immediately after tinkering. Across iterations of the program, changes to the exhibit design and facilitation provided by (...) museum staff corresponded to increased families’ engagement in key engineering practices. In the latter two cycles of the program, families engaged in the most testing, and in turn, redesigning. Further, in the latter cycles, the more children engaged in testing and retesting during tinkering, the more their narratives contained engineering-related content. The results advance understanding and the evidence base for educational practices that can promote engineering learning opportunities for children. (shrink)

Simulation – imagining future events – plays a role in decision-making. In Conviction Narrative Theory, people's emotional responses to their simulations inform their choices. Yet imagining one possible future also increases its plausibility and accessibility relative to other futures. We propose that the act of simulation, in addition to affective evaluation, drives people to choose in accordance with their simulations.

This fascinating study presents a unique history of psychiatry in the twentieth century. It brings together the memories and narratives of over sixty patients and workers who lived, or were employed, in Severalls Psychiatric Hospital, Essex, UK. Personal accounts are contextualised both in relation to wider developments and issues in twentieth-century mental health, and in relation to policies and changes in the hospital itself. Organised around the theme of space and place, and drawing upon both quantitative and qualitative material, chapters (...) deal with key areas such as gender divisions, power relations, patterns of admission and discharge, treatments, and the daily lives and routines of patients and nurses of both sexes. (shrink)

Este artículo tiene el objetivo de reflexionar críticamente sobre la construcción del perfil profesional de los docentes de artes y humanidades en la Educación Superior de Ecuador, con el fin de mejorar su empleabilidad en escuelas, colegios e institutos. Por este motivo, la investigación utiliza una metodología cualitativa, de carácter exploratorio y descriptivo, que promueve una revisión filosófica y antropológica para reconceptualizar los procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje que se dan en la asignatura ‘Educación Cultural y Artística’ (ECA) del currículo de Educación (...) General Básica (EGB). Como resultado, se muestran las estimaciones estadísticas publicadas por el Ministerio de Educación (2021) sobre la cantidad de instituciones educativas que forman estudiantes en asignaturas relacionadas con las artes tanto en Educación Básica y Bachillerato General Unificado, como en instituciones especializadas y que necesitan docentes-investigadores formados. Desde una visión educativa compleja, transdisciplinar, decolonial e intercultural, la investigación propone ocho principios filosóficos y antropológicos derivados de la cosmovisión indígena quechua del Sumak Kawsay, orientados a construir una filosofía educativa de formación docente que mejore sus competencias pedagógicas y artísticas. Para concluir, se debate sobre las políticas públicas y los planes de estudios de educación superior que orientan el perfil profesional de los estudiantes que ejercerán como docentes. (shrink)

Ofrecemos un análisis de los aspectos ontoepistemológicos de los debates actuales sobre el cuerpo sexogenerizado en Argentina. Con herramientas teóricas de la fenomenología feminista, la epistemología feminista y los nuevos materialismos feministas analizamos, por un lado, la manera en que el Estado argentino comprende el cuerpo sexogenerizado y, por el otro, una serie de afirmaciones en los discursos transexcluyentes que conflictúan estas discusiones. Buscamos despejar el terreno conceptual del debate feminista para determinar qué posturas nos permiten avanzar y cuáles nos (...) hacen retroceder. Concluimos que, mientras que las nociones en la ley de identidad de género están amparadas por el conocimiento feminista actual, los discursos transexcluyentes que cuestionan su contenido representan un marco de comprensión ontoepistemológico patriarcal. (shrink)

La obtención de alimentos sanos y seguros requiere de técnicas de conservación inocuas para el consumidor y para el me­dio ambiente, entre las que se destaca la bioconservación. A su ca­tálogo de compuestos naturales o microorganismos, utilizados de forma habitual, la bioconservación ha incorporado recientemente los bacteriófagos y las proteínas fágicas con actividad lítica. La utilización de fagos y endolisinas en el biocontrol ofrece importantes ventajas frente a otros sistemas de conserva­ción tradicionales. Entre dichas ventajas destacan su inocuidad, especificidad y (...) versatilidad. Por otra parte, la acuciante necesidad de reducir el uso de antibióticos en la cadena alimentaria ha impul­sado la investigación basada en estos antimicrobianos con el fin de aplicarlos en producción primaria. Sin embargo, y a pesar de la gran eficacia ya demostrada en múltiples sectores, la falta de legislación de la Unión Europea sobre el uso de bacteriófa­gos junto con la necesidad de ser aceptados por los consumidores, son factores que están afectando negativamente a su implantación como bioconservantes. En este contexto, este artículo recoge los últimos resultados relacionados con este tipo de antimicrobianos en la industria agro-alimentaria, y resume los puntos clave para entender las posibilidades reales de su aplicación ante los nuevos requisitos asociados con una producción sostenible tanto desde una perspectiva económica como ambiental. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza una fotografía de Fidel Castro que es muy lejana a la etapa épica del guerrillero, pero que forma parte de la iconografía en torno a este personaje. Se trata de un retrato de Fidel a los tres años, tomado en Birán, en 1929, estudiado con el objeto de comprender los intereses y las inten ciones alrededor de su producción, así como los usos actuales de esa misma imagen. Partiendo de la consideración de la fotografía como una práctica (...) social y cultural que integra significados, ella debe ser incorporada en el estudio de la historia como un documento que permite aportar información de sus contextos de producción y reproducción. A partir de estas consideraciones, se pudo observar el significado de la representación iconográfica de Fidel a los tres años, quien fue fotografiado utilizando convenciones que resaltaban las favorables condiciones económicas de las que gozaba la familia Castro Ruz, sin embargo, la investigación revela que se le han añadido significados en sus posteriores usos, producto de intereses políticos en torno a la trayectoria guerrillera de Fidel. (shrink)

This chapter explores Claudia Card's views about victims and victimizers, then to her account of surviving evils. It also explores some thoughts about autonomy and agency that extend her thinking. Atrocities are evils marked by exceptional cruelty or degradation. Evils can be deeds, practices, social structures, or environments. Misogyny is an evil that has everyday forms, such as spousal abuse and sex trafficking, and spasmodic forms, such as outbreaks of mass rape during armed conflict. The concepts of autonomy and agency (...) are a bit slippery partly because of their close relationship and partly because they are terms of art. The chapter focuses on the survival agency of the victims of the surviving trafficking and sexual violence against humanity. Survival agency is the weapon of last resort for victims of evils—people who are as disempowered as possible by an evil deed, evil practices, evil social structures, or evil environments. (shrink)

En este texto exploraré la idea de que la práctica de la danza puede ser un método de investigación en filosofía. Propongo que no solo es posible hacer filosofía en movimiento, sino que además esta aproximación cinética al pensamiento permite poner en cuestión y transformar sesgos y paradigmas patriarcales y coloniales que han predominado en la historia de la filosofía. La danza nos permite experimentar nuestros cuerpos a través de, en y por el movimiento, en lugar de meramente hablar y (...) referirnos al cuerpo como un objeto (como cualquier otro objeto) y de conceptualizar sus propiedades generales. Mi tesis es que un cuerpo que piensa es un cuerpo en movimiento, de manera que, si queremos filosofar como una forma de rechazar los dualismos y privilegios arbitrarios, la danza es una forma interesante de hacerlo. Analizaré el concepto de lo viviente de Gilbert Simondon, a partir de una difracción basada en la experiencia de participar en un taller de danza de Marie Bardet, para mostrar que cuando la temporalidad y la topología de lo viviente se aclaran en la experiencia, es posible constatar las potencias de pensamiento de los cuerpos múltiples, ya no está en cuestión un cuerpo abstracto, sino un cuerpo vivido, feminizado, marcado por historias singulares. (shrink)

In this article I look at the methodology of one the most unique figures in Russian philosophy—Merab Mamardašvili—who was known for his focus on consciousness. According to him, the application of the subject–object dualism to the analysis of consciousness leads to a series of complications. Within the phenomenological framework of intentionality there is an interwining of perspective and object to which this perspective is directed. As soon as we try to apply to consciousness subject–object schemes, then we immediately come across (...) paradoxes. It is impossible to determine consciousness by means of subject–object, not only because it is neither an object nor a subject, but also because consciousness inevitably turns out to be “prior” to such distinctions. (shrink)

In emergency contexts, leaders’ ability to develop others’ trust in them is critical to leadership effectiveness. By integrating functional leadership and team process theories, we argue that democratic and autocratic leadership can create trust in the leader depending on the performance phase of the action team. We further argue that action and transition phases produce different task demands for leadership behavior to enhance trust in the leader, and different leader characteristics mediate these effects. The results of a scenario experiment and (...) field survey among firefighters revealed that autocratic rather than democratic leadership elevates trust in the leader during the action phase by increasing leader ability. In contrast, democratic rather than autocratic leadership enhances trust in the leader during the transition phase by elevating leader benevolence. These findings highlight the importance of leader characteristics in emergencies, demonstrating the value of mixing autocratic and democratic leadership behaviors across different team performance phases to build trust in the leader. (shrink)

Humanización de los servicios de salud en Iberoamérica: una revisión sistemática de la literatura Humanização dos serviços de saúde na Ibero-América: uma revisão sistemática da literatura Humanization is an ethical imperative that contributes to safeguarding human dignity in harmony with bioethical principles and deontological regulations that govern health care practices. The present study aims to explore the advances in the humanization of Ibero-American health care in the last ten years through a systematic review. Results show that such advances point to (...) understanding the phenomenon based on theoretical approaches, a growing interest in the subject in recent years, and the creation of policies, programs and strategies that should be strengthened from a comprehensive view of the human being. Para citar este artículo / To reference this article / Para citar este artigo Carlosama DM, Villota NG, Benavides VK, Villalobos-Galvis FH, Hernández EL, Matabanchoy SM. Humanización de los servicios de salud en Iberoamérica: una revisión sistemática de la literatura. Pers Bioet. 2019;23:245-262. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5294/pebi.2019.23.2.6 Recibido: 21/06/2019 Aceptado: 04/09/2019. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that empathy can give us knowledge about others. However, the potential use of empathy as a tool to learn about features of objects in the world more generally, as opposed to learning only about others’ internal states, has not been discussed in the literature. In this paper I make the claim that empathy can help us learn about evaluative features of objects in the world. I further defend this claim by comparing empathy to testimony. Then I (...) present and respond to two possible objections to this analogy. (shrink)

The article explores the private nature of subjectivity in programs of integration the phenomenology with naturalism. It is considered if their tools are relevant for the phenomenological, rather than naturalistic way of subjectivity’s explaining. Justification of the key ideas is provided with the help of such concepts as “body image”, “body scheme”, (Sh. Gallagher), “ontological significance” (L. Baker), “experience”, “cognitive niches” (F. Varela), “transparent body” (T. Fuchs). Based on the traditional phenomenology of E. Husserl, it is shown that a set (...) of approaches that integrate phenomenology and naturalism within the framework of “first-person philosophy” can be characterized as a phenomenology without a phenomenological subject. It is shown that the phenomenological nature of the self-perspective in integrative programs is more likely to be understood as the qualification and privacy of subjectivity, while the transcendental aspect of the unobservable and biased consciousness is practically not taken into account. The article concludes that the logic of some projects of integration of phenomenology and naturalism overlook this transcendental peculiarity of consciousness, its fundamentally unobserved character. The classical phenomenological approach emphasizes on the extra-natural, biased, and non-empirical nature of consciousness. The role and significance of the phenomenological approach is not limited to the idea of “what-is-likeness” and privacy of subjective states. Phenomenology, which preserves the idea of the subject, means a radical break with the ontology of things and, in general, with the ontology of something objective at all. (shrink)

Discussions related to the detection of objective reality, the truth and lie are still a heated topic in the domain of philosophical epistemology. While certain philosophical contexts and theories suggest that the notion "reality as an independent category" should not be engaged, instead, interpretations, including reciprocal, should be used, others hold it that philosophical discussion cannot continue without reference to the said notion. Different philosophers and scolars approach this problem from different angles. When discussing these topics, philosophers often resort to (...) certain thought experiments, engaging an important concept, which can broadly be identified as "the global observer." This concept has something in common with such concepts as the God's Eye, Omniscient Interpreter, Ultimate Observer (quantum physics), Agent of Logical omniscience (game theories), Ideal Observer (ethics and meta-ethics), God (analytic theology). Despite the abundance of works on the topic and scrupulosity of arguments, there still remain many uncertainties in such discussions, mostly related to a great number of logical paradoxes, associated with the problem. Therefore, in view of the current situation, the focus of the research paper is on the deliberation of consistency of the notion "global observer" from the standpoint of logic and philosophy. The results of the analysis of the issue at stake are expected to clarify the notion and to enrich current discussions on the topic. I examine certain difficulties in the philosophical assumptions concerning one of the philosophical concepts, which could be collectively named as the "global observer." The article below explores the notion of the global observer as the guarantor of the determinability and configuration of events in the world. There is explained the meaning of this concept and attempt to show that, despite variations in the wording, it is used in many philosophical contexts related to epistemology. The core issue of the present research paper is the analysis of the consistency of the notion "global observer" from the standpoint of logic and philosophy. The paper discusses why application of this notion in some contexts poses challenges and appears to be paradoxical. (shrink)

The article discusses the peculiarities and specific features of phenomenological approach developed in contemporary analytical philosophy. Despite the fact that the trust in phenomenological approaches continue to grow in analytical philosophy, it is necessary to recognize the presence of noticeable divergence between the classical transcendental phenomenology of E. Husserl and contemporary versions of phenomenology in analytical philosophy. The article examines some of these divergences. It is shown that, unlike the skepticism of transcendental phenomenology in relation to scientific methodology in the (...) research of consciousness, the analytical tradition of phenomenology is oriented toward cooperative dialogue with science. Phenomenology in analytical philosophy places great hopes on the possibility of making consciousness a subject of joint research of neuroscientists and phenomenologists. The article claims that in the course of realization of this task, phenomenology in analytical tradition often starts to be interpreted from realistic and partly from naturalistic positions, and that does not meet the project of transcendental phenomenology. As an illustration of this idea, certain approaches of analytical phenomenology are considered, in particular: phenomena are interpreted from the point of view of logical and linguistic analysis, intentionality is connected with the activity of the brain and is located in the natural world, phenomenal consciousness is interpreted as the awareness of a high order, and the phenomena have a gradual nature and are often identified only with sensual experience, which implies a correlative correspondence of the substrate data of brain physiology. In that regard, there are reasons to interpret phenomenological theories that are funded by analytical tradition as an example of a specific phenomenology of non-transcendental origin. (shrink)

In this article I analyze several of Merab Mamardashvili’s ideas about the «invisible» and «unknowable» nature of consciousness, as conveyed by the term «non-objectifying». The main points at issue here are: the idea of the fundamental non-objective nature of consciousness, and the impossibility of constructing a naturalist ontology that would take the experience of consciousness into account. The term non-objectiveness assumes not only the non-physicality of consciousness, but also the logical impossibility of positively and affirmatively apprehending consciousness in terms of (...) standard subject-object determinations. Consciousness is not an object; moreover, consciousness cannot “appear”, though it allows things and the world to appear. In the article, I show how Mamardashvili dedicated a significant amount of his philosophical work to conveying this intuition. This intuition, in turn, is predicated on the fact that the paradoxical nature of consciousness can be considered in terms of the idea of “transcendentality”. With this in mind, I offer an interpretation of the concept of the transcendental, predicated on a justification in which I apply the concept to consciousness. I also show how Mamardashvili’s philosophical method can be viewed as a special form of transcendentalism, in which Mamardashvili elaborated an authorial stance that was both unique to his philosophical outlook and which he combined with the traditional ideas of this philosophical position. (shrink)

It is with deep sadness that I report the death of Joel Kupperman, University of Connecticut Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Emeritus. He died in Brooklyn, New York on April 8, 2020.Joel received both his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Chicago and his PhD from Cambridge University. He joined the Philosophy Department at the University of Connecticut in 1960. Except for visiting Trinity College, Oxford as a lecturer in 1970, two years supported by NEH fellowships, and fellowships at (...) Clare Hall, Cambridge and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he remained at UConn until his retirement from teaching in 2013. In addition to these major national and international awards, Joel received the Faculty Excellence... (shrink)

BackgroundIn Parkinson's disease, the side of motor symptoms onset may influence disease progression, with a faster motor symptom progression in patients with left side lateralization. Moreover, worse neuropsychological outcomes after subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation have been described in patients with predominantly left-sided motor symptoms. The objective of this study was to evaluate if the body side of motor symptoms onset may predict motor outcome of bilateral STN-DBS.MethodsThis retrospective study included all consecutive PD patients treated with bilateral STN-DBS at Grenoble (...) University Hospital from 1993 to 2015. Demographic, clinical and neuroimaging data were collected before and 1 year after surgery. The predictive factors of motor outcome at one-year follow-up, measured by the percentage change in the MDS-UPDRS-III score, were evaluated through univariate and multivariate linear regression analysis.ResultsA total of 233 patients were included with one-year follow-up after surgery [143 males ; 121 right body onset; 112 left body onset; mean age at surgery, 55.31 ± 8.44 years; mean disease duration, 11.61 ± 3.87]. Multivariate linear regression analysis showed that the left side of motor symptoms onset did not predict motor outcome.ConclusionsIn this retrospective study, the body side of motor symptoms onset did not significantly influence the one-year motor outcome in a large cohort of PD patients treated with bilateral STN-DBS. (shrink)