La universidad española se enfrenta en estos momentos a un cambio en la oferta de titulaciones, en la estructuración y homologación de los estudios y también en la metodología de la enseñanza. Este proceso es percibido por sus principales protagonistas (gestores de la educación, profesores y estudiantes) de diversas maneras: a veces como una amenaza, otras como una oportunidad e incluso en ocasiones como un mero cambio nominalista. ¿Deben modificarse los procesos de enseñanza y aprendizaje universitarios? ¿Hasta qué punto existe (...) la adecuada disposición y preparación para ello? ¿En qué dirección caminaría un aprendizaje de calidad? (shrink)

The Community FoodBank of NJ was a $100 million charitable organization that distributed over 44 million pounds of food each year through its partner organizations like food pantries, soup kitchens and the like. Its mission was to “fight hunger and poverty in New Jersey [USA] by assisting those in need and seeking long term solutions.” In a time of governmental cutbacks and shrinking private donations, the nonprofit sought new sources of revenue. One idea was to leverage perishable bakery donations and (...) an in-house commercial kitchen, by creating and marketing an up-scale bagel crisp. After product development and market testing, the resulting business plan won a “Break the Gala Addiction” cash prize from the Prudential Foundation to further the social entrepreneurship effort. Now the organization needs to decide if it should use its scarce resources to scale the business internally—to maximize job creation, leverage existing facilities and capture all the revenue, or if it should outsource production and distribution for a percentage of sales so that it can focus on other efforts more tightly aligned to its mission. Students are encouraged to use ethical frameworks to think through the nonprofit’s dilemma. (shrink)

The current assessment of behaviors in the inventories to diagnose autism spectrum disorders (ASD) focus on observation and discrete categorizations. Behaviors require movements, yet measurements of physical movements are seldom included. Their inclusion however, could provide an objective characterization of behavior to help unveil interactions between the peripheral and the central nervous systems. Such interactions are critical for the development and maintenance of spontaneous autonomy, self-regulation and voluntary control. At present, current approaches cannot deal with the heterogeneous, dynamic and stochastic (...) nature of development. Accordingly, they leave no avenues for real-time or longitudinal assessments of change in a coping system continuously adapting and developing compensatory mechanisms. We offer a new unifying statistical framework to reveal re-afferent kinesthetic features of the individual with ASD. The new methodology is based on the non-stationary stochastic patterns of minute fluctuations (micro-movements) inherent to our natural actions. Such patterns of behavioral variability provide re-entrant sensory feedback contributing to the autonomous regulation and coordination of the motor output. From an early age, this feedback supports centrally driven volitional control and fluid, flexible transitions between intentional and spontaneous behaviors. We show that in ASD there is a disruption in the maturation of this form of proprioception. Despite this disturbance, each individual has unique adaptive compensatory capabilities that we can unveil and exploit to evoke faster and more accurate decisions. Measuring the kinesthetic re-afference in tandem with stimuli variations we can detect changes in their micro-movements indicative of a more predictive and reliable kinesthetic percept. Our methods address the heterogeneity of ASD with a personalized approach grounded in the inherent sensory-motor abilities that the individual has already developed. (shrink)

No two individuals with the autism diagnosis are ever the same—yet many practitioners and parents can recognize signs of ASD very rapidly with the naked eye. What, then, is this phenotype of autism that shows itself across such distinct clinical presentations and heterogeneous developments? The “signs” seem notoriously slippery and resistant to the behavioral threshold categories that make up current assessment tools. Part of the problem is that cognitive and behavioral “abilities” typically are theorized as high-level disembodied and modular functions—that (...) are assessed discretely (impaired, normal, enhanced) to define a spectral syndrome. Even as biology reminds us that organic developing bodies are not made up of independent switches, we remain often seduced by the simplicity of mechanistic and cognitive models. Developmental disorders such as autism have accordingly been theorized as due to different modular dysfunctions—typically of cortical origin, i.e., failures of “theory of mind” (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985), of the “mirror neuron system” (Ramachandran and Oberman, 2006), of “weak central coherence” (Happe and Frith, 2006) or of the balance of “empathizing” and “systemizing” (Baron-Cohen, 2009), just to list a few. -/- The broad array of autonomic (Ming et al., 2005; Cheshire, 2012) and sensorimotor (Damasio and Maurer, 1978; Maurer and Damasio, 1982; Donnellan and Leary, 1995; Leary and Hill, 1996; Donnellan and Leary, 2012; Donnellan et al., 2012) differences experienced and reported by people with autism have by such theories typically been sidelined as “co-morbidities,” possibly sharing genetic causes, but rendered as incidental and decisively behaviorally irrelevant symptoms—surely disconnected from cognition. But what if the development of cortically based mental processes and autonomous control relies on the complexities and proper function of the peripheral nervous systems? Through such an “embodied” lens the heterogeneous symptoms of autism invites new interpretations. We propose here that many behavioral-level findings can be re-defined as downstream effects of how developing nervous systems attempt to cope and adapt to the challenges of having various noisy, unpredictable, and unreliable peripheral inputs. (shrink)

Autism has been defined as a disorder of social cognition, interaction and communication where ritualistic, repetitive behaviors are commonly observed. But how should we understand the behavioral and cognitive differences that have been the main focus of so much autism research? Can high-level cognitive processes and behaviors be identified as the core issues people with autism face, or do these characteristics perhaps often rather reflect individual attempts to cope with underlying physiological issues? Much research presented in this volume will point (...) to the latter possibility, i.e. that people on the autism spectrum cope with issues at much lower physiological levels pertaining not only to Central Nervous Systems (CNS) function, but also to peripheral and autonomic systems (PNS, ANS) (Torres, Brincker, et al. 2013). The question that we pursue in this chapter is what might be fruitful ways of gaining objective measures of the large-scale systemic and heterogeneous effects of early atypical neurodevelopment; how to track their evolution over time and how to identify critical changes along the continuum of human development and aging. We suggest that the study of movement variability—very broadly conceived as including all minute fluctuations in bodily rhythms and their rates of change over time (coined micro-movements (Figure 1A-B) (Torres, Brincker, et al. 2013))—offers a uniquely valuable and entirely objectively quantifiable lens to better assess, understand and track not only autism but cognitive development and degeneration in general. This chapter presents the rationale firstly behind this focus on micro-movements and secondly behind the choice of specific kinds of data collection and statistical metrics as tools of analysis (Figure 1C). In brief the proposal is that the micro-movements (defined in Part I – Chapter 1), obtained using various time scales applied to different physiological data-types (Figure 1), contain information about layered influences and temporal adaptations, transformations and integrations across anatomically semi-independent subsystems that crosstalk and interact. Further, the notion of sensorimotor re-afference is used to highlight the fact that these layered micro-motions are sensed and that this sensory feedback plays a crucial role in the generation and control of movements in the first place. In other words, the measurements of various motoric and rhythmic variations provide an access point not only to the “motor systems”, but also access to much broader central and peripheral sensorimotor and regulatory systems. Lastly, we posit that this new lens can also be used to capture influences from systems of multiple entry points or collaborative control and regulation, such as those that emerge during dyadic social interactions. (shrink)

The current rise of neurodevelopmental disorders poses a critical need to detect risk early in order to rapidly intervene. One of the tools pediatricians use to track development is the standard growth chart. The growth charts are somewhat limited in predicting possible neurodevelopmental issues. They rely on linear models and assumptions of normality for physical growth data – obscuring key statistical information about possible neurodevelopmental risk in growth data that actually has accelerated, non-linear rates-of-change and variability encompassing skewed distributions. Here, (...) we use new analytics to profile growth data from 36 newborn babies that were tracked longitudinally for 5 months. By switching to incremental (velocity-based) growth charts and combining these dynamic changes with underlying fluctuations in motor performance – as the transition from spontaneous random noise to a systematic signal – we demonstrate a method to detect very early stunting in the development of voluntary neuromotor control and to flag risk of neurodevelopmental derail. (shrink)

El fenómeno migratorio en Chile ha presentado patrones cambiantes durante los últimos años. Focalizado especialmente en la migración proveniente desde Venezuela, el presente artículo tiene por objetivo comprender el proceso de búsqueda y asentamiento residencial de mujeres venezolanas en Chile. Para ello se realizaron entrevistas cualitativas en Valparaíso y Viña del Mar, a través de las cuales se recabaron las principales dificultades que ellas deben atravesar para acceder a la vivienda, que se transforman en imbricados procesos de racialización y feminización. (...) Sin embargo, también se evidenció la existencia de múltiples estrategias de agenciamiento desplegadas para la obtención de un lugar donde vivir y cuidar de sus familias. Así, y desde un enfoque interseccional que comprende los estudios urbanos, raciales y de género, se concluye que, si bien las mujeres venezolanas migrantes deben enfrentarse a contextos de discriminación y segregación en la búsqueda de vivienda, también establecen mecanismos colaborativos que permiten su acceso, tales como el allegamiento, la cohabitación, la gestión compartida y la creación de redes. (shrink)

In this work it is presented a methodology for the development of a pattern recognition system using classification methods as discriminant analysis and artificial neural networks. In this methodology, the statistical analysis is contemplated, with the purpose of retaining the observations and the important characteristics that can produce an appropriate classification, and allows, as well, to detect outliers’ observations, multicolinearity between variables, among other things. Chlorophyll a fluorescence OJIP signals measured from Pisum sativum leaves belonging to different drought stress resistance (...) groups are correctly classified using the proposed here methodology. (shrink)

El argumento de la subdeterminación establece que las personas de ciencia pueden utilizar valores políticos para orientar la investigación, pero no proporciona criterios para distinguir entre una orientación legítima y una ilegítima. Este artículo provee tales criterios. El análisis de los confusos argumentos contra la ciencia cargada de valores revela el criterio fundamental de la orientación ilegítima: cuando los juicios de valor operan orientando la investigación a una conclusión predeterminada. Un estudio de caso de la investigación feminista sobre el divorcio (...) revela numerosas formas legítimas en que los valores pueden orientar a la ciencia sin vulnerar este criterio. (shrink)

Los metalenguajes —lenguajes que tratan de otros lenguajes— tienen algunas propiedades interesantes. En el esfuerzo de crear lenguajes de segundo orden —tales como lenguajes puente entre dos idiomas o dos disciplinas— se pone de relieve la manera particular que tiene un lenguaje de abordar el mundo, así como su materialidad e historicidad. Esta perspectiva facilita la comprensión de las dificultades que entrañan tanto la colaboración entre disciplinas científicas como la traducción literaria. Un aspecto importante del trabajo en humanidades es la (...) creación de metalenguajes, en el contexto de lo que Heidegger llama el “desocultar”; esto es, el constituir el mundo según cierta ontología —al tener esta constitución un peso ético, o sea, que impacta profundamente la forma de vida de la comunidad que desoculta de esta o esta otra manera—. Si se comprende lo que hacen las humanidades respecto a los lenguajes humanos, se comprende mejor su papel y su importancia en la educación, la forma en que facilitan el diálogo entre disciplinas y entre visiones de mundo, la forma en que empoderan a los individuos y las sociedades para articular nuevas formas de desocultar nuevas respuestas a la antiquísima pregunta filosófica: “¿cómo se debe vivir?”. (shrink)

We live in a society that promotes the universal process of producing knowledge and truth making as fundamental social process. Such promotion of universality seems to subjugate others forms of knowing rendering them invisible, unintelligible, and ineligible and subsequently outside the community of knowing. This has material and symbolic consequences in terms of how research informs policy and subsequent victimization of those who live, and experience subjugation meted by Western truth making universalism. In the words of Foucault, this book is (...) an insurrection of subterranean and clandestine knowledges in ways that provide not just an alternative process of knowledge production but affirms local knowledge as necessary in production of a just society. The book looks at research as a social justice and transformational process that should speak of people's ways of live without necessarily streamlining them into numbers. The book is a critically reflexive project in terms of returning processes of knowledge production to the local space rather than imagining them as entirely centred in the structure. To imagine this book as reflexive exercise is to break boundaries of knowledges in ways that come to imagine how local performs global in very complicated and complex ways. This book is a resurrection of local knowledges steeped in creative and imaginative reflexive methodologies that come to reorient how we come to know what we know, the values and realities that mark what we know and the how of knowledge production. It centres subjugated voices and knowledges as fundamental in production of knowledge. Contributors include: Katie Bannon, Elizabeth Charles, Khulood Agha Khan, Dionisio Nyaga, Fritz Pino, and Rose Ann Torres. (shrink)

Este trabajo investiga las capacidades epistémicas de las instituciones democráticas a través de una evaluación de tres modelos epistémicos de democracia: el Teorema del Jurado de Condorcet, el Teorema ‘Diversidad supera Habilidad’ y el modelo experimentalista de Dewey. El modelo de Dewey es superior a los demás en su capacidad de modelar las funciones epistémicas de tres características constitutivas de la democracia: la diversidad epistémica de los participantes, la interacción de la votación con el debate y los mecanismos de retroalimentación (...) como las elecciones periódicas y las protestas. Considera que la democracia es una institución para reunir información ampliamente distribuida sobre problemas y políticas de interés público mediante la participación de conocedores epistémicamente diversos. Las normas democráticas de libre discurso, disenso, retroalimentación y rendición de cuentas funcionan para garantizar el aprendizaje colectivo y con base experimental a partir de las diversas experiencias de los diferentes conocedores. Ilustro estos puntos con un estudio de caso de grupos forestales comunitarios en el Asia meridional, cuyas capacidades epistémicas se han visto perjudicadas por la supresión de la participación de las mujeres. (shrink)

Este artículo explora las implicaciones para la academia y la política de lo que llamamos apegos a la inocencia. Luego de rastrear las formas en que la inocencia aparece en diferentes corrientes del pensamiento contemporáneo, nos concentramos en cómo ella protege a individuos y grupos de confrontar nuestra profunda participación en la opresión. Esta evasión de la responsabilidad funciona, en nuestra perspectiva, como un obstáculo para comprender el poder e interactuar éticamente. El artículo también examina cómo las dimensiones reduccionistas y (...) autoritarias de la inocencia se fusionan con la apropiación neoliberal de la política progresista en la academia y el activismo. Nos interesan los modos en que académicos y activistas son recompensados por cultivar un yo-inocente a través de intervenciones discursivas y materiales que mantienen intocadas las relaciones de poder. No son las recompensas meramente monetarias o de estatus las que perpetúan esto, sino la crisis que produce nuestra implicación personal y colectiva en la violencia que supuestamente rechazamos. Trabajando con y a través del carácter móvil de la agencia, el poder, el abuso y la justicia, exploramos qué está en juego a la hora de poder, o no, superar los apegos a la inocencia. Hacemos esto con la esperanza de delinear otro tipo de encuentro: uno que procede del reconocimiento de que la inocencia no es una condición para nuestra participación en la vida política. (shrink)

This essay explores the implications of what we call attachments to innocence for critical scholarship and progressive politics. After tracing the appearance of innocence in various strands of contemporary thought, we turn to how it shields individuals and groups from examining the depth of our own participation in oppression and harm. This evasion of responsibility works in our perspective as a hindrance to understanding power and engaging with others ethically. The essay more concretely examines how the reductionist and authoritarian dimensions (...) of innocence dovetail with the neoliberal uptake of ‘progressive’ politics in university and activist settings. We are interested in how academics and activists of different kinds are rewarded for cultivating their innocent-selves through discursive and material interventions that leave power relations untouched. It is not merely monetary or status rewards that perpetuate this, but the crisis produced by our implication in the very violence we reject. Working with and through the mobility of agency, power, abuse, and justice, we explore what is at stake in shedding our attachments to innocence in the hope of a different sort of encounter – one that proceeds from the recognition that innocence is not a precondition for our engagement in political life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Disturbances and Dislocations: Understanding Teaching and Learning Experiences in Indigenous Australian Women’s Music and DanceSarah H. WattsElizabeth Mackinlay. Disturbances and Dislocations: Understanding Teaching and Learning Experiences in Indigenous Australian Women’s Music and Dance (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007).Elizabeth Mackinlay, a lecturer in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland, documents her unique pedagogical approaches and ways of thinking about the teaching (...) and learning of music and dance in her book, Disturbances and Dislocations: Understanding Teaching and Learning Experiences in Indigenous Australian Women’s Music and Dance. A university-level anthropology course dealing with the music and dance traditions of Australia’s Yanyuwa women was the setting for this “ethnographic case study” (p. 17). Through this course, Mackinlay sought to help students connect Indigenous Australian performance practices to social and political issues while fostering awareness of gender issues and learning processes within Indigenous Australian music and dance performance contexts. These objectives were met through a distinctive approach—by disposing of the strict lecture class format and bringing the field into the classroom. Disturbances and Dislocations documents the experiences of Mackinlay, her students, and several Yanyuwa women who come together as part of the course to engage in hands-on, authentic music and dance exchanges that bring the Yanyuwa women’s voices to the fore. [End Page 90]From the very beginning of the book, Mackinlay highlights her unique point of view as author of this work. She is a “white, middle class, educated woman” (p. 15) researching the experiences of and teaching university-level courses relating to Indigenous Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples, a cultural background that is not her own. She is a political, educational, and ethnic outsider to the groups of peoples she studies. The wife of an Aboriginal man and mother to Aboriginal children, she is afforded links to the Yanyuwa people that provide her with a measure of status as a family member within the community. The dichotomy of being at once an insider and an outsider in the Yanyuwa community lends a fascinating level of complexity to Mackinlay’s exploration and analysis of the presence and impact of Yanyuwa culture-bearers in her classroom. The warmth, honesty, and openness with which she addresses her unique role in this learning exchange is engaging to the reader, and allows her personal situation to add humanity and life to the words on the page.The eight-chapter book commences with an introductory section that reflects upon her personal experiences in engaging in scholarship relating to Indigenous Australian issues. Additionally, the reader is introduced to the site of the ethnography, her classroom, in which her personal and professional lives intertwine. The next chapter further establishes the context of the ethnography by discussing a pilot project that laid foundations for the main study presented in the book. In this 1999 pilot project, a group of Mackinlay’s students, largely white women, participated in hands-on music and dance workshops under the guidance of Mackinlay and several Yanyuwa women. Student responses from this pilot project indicated that they felt awkward at times, but valued the time spent with the Yanyuwa guests and wished for more of these types of class sessions. Mackinlay determined that this cultural exchange could be even richer if more class time could be dedicated to it, an important observation for her own work, and also for others who seek to furnish cultural encounters for students.The fourth chapter delves into a theoretical discussion of the meanings of the inclusion of the study of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in contemporary classroom settings. Issues of political positioning, representation of Indigenous voices, identity, and “speaking from and of in-between spaces” (p. 64) as one with a foothold in both white and Indigenous worlds are all addressed, engaging the reader in Mackinaly’s own complex journey of coming to terms with her own teaching and scholarly pursuits. It is refreshing to the reader that Mackinlay acknowledges her unique viewpoint as facilitator of this course and this research study. While she is an authority in this realm, she highlights her own backgrounds and biases, her individual lens... (shrink)

Este trabajo tiene como propósito reflexionar sobre el liderazgo educativo intercultural y abordar la resolución de conflictos en la escuela desde la perspectiva de la normativa wayuu como alternativa. Se aborda lo relativo a la resolución de los conflictos en la escuela desde modelos alternativos, específicamente, la normativa wayuu. Con el fin, de que este liderazgo docente fomente la valoración de la diferencia, respeto y diálogo de saberes como mecanismo para fomentar la identidad cultural. El trabajo se realizó en el (...) departamento de la Guajira, Colombia, en nuestra estancia allí para el dictado de cursos, talleres y seminarios sobre educación intercultural a maestros de distintas zonas del departamento entre el 2017-2022. La investigación se formaliza desde el paradigma cualitativo, fundamentada en el método etnográfico. Los datos recopilados para hacer la reflexión pertinente en este trabajo, son producto de las actividades realizadas y de nuestras vivencias con los maestros wayuu. Como conclusión tenemos que los docentes wayuu deben contribuir con la preservación de las normas de resolución de conflictos wayuu en el contexto educativo, entendiendo que una convivencia sana implica también tener que recurrir a normas incluyentes. Con esto se propiciará un liderazgo desde la matriz cultural étnica. (shrink)

Resumen Este artículo busca analizar y hacer una lectura de la identidad, misión, ubicación y aporte que la parroquia ha venido realizando y tejiendo en relación con el contexto urbano. Al mismo tiempo desea comprender cómo ha incidido dicho fenómeno en el modo en el que la parroquia se ve y se lee, como también la manera en que se evidencian sus exigencias y los retos en tal contexto. Es de gran relevancia la pregunta sobre la identidad y la misión (...) de la parroquia en la ciudad, ya que parecería muchas veces diluirse entre tantas propuestas y dinámicas que ofrece la ciudad y los desafíos que le ofrece el ser humano-urbano y el nuevo estilo de congregante. Por ello urge redescubrir su sentido más profundo, ya que, si la parroquia no tiene una clara identidad en medio de la ciudad, corre el riesgo de permanecer en su autorreferencialidad, perdiendo su dinamismo misionero.This article seeks to analyze and read the identity, mission, location and contribution that the parish has been making and weaving in relation to the urban context, at the same time understanding how this phenomenon has affected the way in which it is seen and it is read, as well, to show what their demands and challenges are in this context. The question about the identity and mission of the parish in the city is of great relevance, since it would seem many times to be diluted between so many proposals and dynamics that the city offers and the challenges that the human-urban being offers and the new style of congregant. For this reason, it is urgent to rediscover its deepest meaning, since if the parish does not have a clear identity in the middle of the city, it runs the risk of remaining in its self-referentiality, losing its missionary dynamism. (shrink)

Neural Geographies draws together recent feminist and deconstructive theories, early Freudian neurology and contemporary connectionist theories of cognition. In this original work, Elizabeth A. Wilson explores the convergence between Derrida, Freud and recent cognitive theory to pursue two important issues: the nature of cognition and neurology, and the politics of feminist and critical interventions into contemporary scientific psychology. This book seeks to reorient the usual presumptions of critical studies of the sciences by addressing the divisions between the static and (...) the changeable; the natural and the political; the neuro-cognitive and the cultural that have been traditional to both scientific and critical accounts of neurology and cognition. (shrink)

Introduction: Depression, biology, aggression -- Underbelly -- The biological unconscious -- Bitter melancholy -- Chemical transference -- The bastard placebo -- The pharmakology of depression.

Hegel critica la falta de consecuencia de la teología cristiana tradicional por hacer de Diosalgo inaccesible, abstracto, desligado de la realidad finita, y por aceptar la facticidad de laconciencia religiosa como una postura alienada, que no lucha por la transformación de larealidad. Pero la racionalización de la fe cristiana introducida por el reduccionismo deHegel es desenmascarada por la teología consciente de que el discurso de la filosofía sobrela religión elimina el elemento de misterio y relación interpersonal que es constitutivo dela (...) experiencia religiosa cristiana. La fe cuestiona todo discurso sobre Dios. (shrink)

Both Jacques and Raïssa Maritain produced large and diverse bodies of writing, and their creative lives spanned decades and encompassed the most turbulent periods of the twentieth century. Scholarly engagement with their work continues to reap new insights, and that includes engagement with the writings produced in the earlier portions of their respective careers. Those earlier portions were themselves remarkably productive, and issued not only in important writings but also in profoundly influential professional and personal relationships nurtured and developed with (...) a truly diverse array of scholars, clergy, and artists, including such figures as Henri Bergson, Leon Bloy, Ernest Psichari, and Georges Rouault. This new anthology of essays manages both to interact with the biographies and writings of the Maritains themselves (and to a degree their close early associates) and also to contribute to novel Thomistic reflection on themes from their early careers, among them war, suffering, politics, art, intuition, and foundational issues in moral theology. The essays are historically informed yet address perennial issues of vital significance for the life of the Church and the broader culture. The contributing authors are Prudence Allen, John Deely, Elizabeth Jane Doering, Heather Erb, Doug Flippen, Heidi Giebel, Ben Huff, James Jacobs, Florian Michel, Mark Moes, Brenna Moore, Bernadette OConnor, Matthew Pugh, James V. Schall, Joshua Schulz, Daniel Shields, Michael Torre, and John Wippel. (shrink)

A large body of literature considers the ethico-legal and regulatory issues surrounding assisted conception. Surrogacy, however, within this body of literature is an odd-fit. It involves a unique demand of another person—a form of reproductive labour—that many other aspects of assisted conception, such as gamete donation do not involve. Surrogacy is a form of assisted gestation. The potential alternatives for individuals who want a genetically related child but who do not have the capacity to gestate are ever increasing: with the (...) advent of uterus transplantation, and the anticipated development of artificial placentas.In this paper, I highlight the pertinent conceptual differences between technologies assisting conception and those assisting gestation to demonstrate that distinct issues arise when assisted gestative technologies are used. I argue that there is utility in considering AGTs as a genus of technologies. These technologies perform the same function from the perspective of putative parents and might exist on a spectrum of alternatives when they become more available. Moreover, since many of the same or very similar ethical, social and legal issues are raised by surrogacy, UTx and ectogestation, analysis of these issues will be better contextualised by considering these technologies together. Many of the matters currently being highlighted for reform in the context of surrogacy will inevitably impact on how other forms of assisted gestation are governed. The conversation should be broadened; we should consider how far other emerging technologies might be accommodated in revised regulatory schemes. (shrink)

In this article, we scrutinize views that justify exclusionary policies regarding transgender athletes based primarily on physiological criteria. We introduce and examine some elements that deserve...

Resumo: O artigo desdobra algumas implicações decorrentes de uma análise ficcional em torno das artes neoliberais de governo. Nessa direção, articula os pressupostos das teorias biopolíticas da formação humana agenciadas pela entrada no Antropoceno, a fim de pensar a desabilitação do que Elizabeth Povinelli chama de imaginário do carbono e seus processos de marcação, distinção e desqualificação ontológica. Trata-se, portanto, de um ensaio especulativo produzido em torno do diagnóstico de um desmoronamento catastrófico da distinção fundamental da episteme moderna, a (...) distinção entre as ordens cosmológica e antropológica, sugerindo uma cartografia precária dos corpos ingovernáveis ancorada em uma sutil arte política: a arte de segurar o céu pelas diferenças. Essa arte almeja atravessar o abismo que historicamente separou um povo com filosofia em oposição aos povos com mito, construindo pontes que incitem a Filosofia da educação e seus praticantes a se situarem na equivocidade dos mundos e aí habitar. Palavras-chave: Antropoceno. Geontologia. Cartografias da diferença. Formação humana. Altered bodies, ungovernable bodies: ethical-aesthetic cartographies to hold the sky through diferences: The article unfolds some implications arising from a fictional analysis around the neoliberal arts of government. In this sense, it articulates the presuppositions of the biopolitical theories of human formation that were introduced by the entry into the Anthropocene, in order to think about the disabling of what Elizabeth Povinelli calls the carbon imaginary and its processes of marking, distinction and ontological disqualification. The argument is a speculative essay produced around the diagnosis of a catastrophic collapse of the fundamental distinction of modern episteme, suggesting a precarious cartography of ungovernable bodies anchored in a subtle political art: art of holding the sky through the differences. This art aims to bridge the chasm that has historically separated a people with philosophy as opposed to people with myth, building bridges that incite the Philosophy of education and its practitioners to lie in the equivocity of worlds and dwell there. Keywords: Anthropocene. Geontology. Cartographies of the difference. Human formation. Cuerpos alterados, cuerpos ingobernables: cartografías ético-estéticas para sostener el cielo a través de las diferencias Resumen: El artículo desarrolla un análisis sobre las artes neoliberales del gobierno. En este sentido, refleja las presuposiciones de las teorías biopolíticas de la formación humana frente a la entrada al Antropoceno, a fin de pensar la desactivación de lo que Elizabeth Povinelli llama el imaginario del carbono y sus procesos de distinción y descalificación ontológica. Es, por lo tanto, un ensayo especulativo producido en torno al diagnóstico de un colapso catastrófico de la distinción fundamental de la episteme moderna, sugiriendo una cartografía de cuerpos ingobernables anclados en un sutil arte político: la arte de sostener el cielo a través de las diferencias. Esta arte tiene como objetivo cerrar el abismo que ha dividido un pueblo con filosofía y un pubelo con mitos, construyendo puentes que inciten a la Filosofía de la educación y a sus practicantes a pararse en la ambigüedad de los mundos y habitar allí. Palabras clave: Antropoceno. Geontología. Cartografías de la diferencia. Formación humana. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore how the prospect of artificial placenta technology (nearing clinical trials in human subjects) should encourage further consideration of the loss experienced by individuals when their pregnancy ends unexpectedly. Discussions of pregnancy loss are intertwined with procreative loss, whereby the gestated entity has died when the pregnancy ends. However, we demonstrate how pregnancy loss can and does exist separate to procreative loss in circumstances where the gestated entity survives the premature ending of the pregnancy. In outlining (...) the value that can be attached to pregnancy beyond fetal-centric narratives, we illustrate how pregnancy loss, separate to procreative loss, can be experienced. This loss has already been recognised among parents who have experienced an unexpected early ending of their pregnancy, resulting in their child being cared for in neonatal intensive care unit. Artificial placentas, however, may exacerbate these feelings and make pregnancy loss (without procreative loss) more visible. We argue that pregnancy is an embodied state in which gestation is facilitated by the body but gestation itself should be recognised as a process—and one that could be separable from pregnancy. In demarcating the two, we explore the different ways in which pregnancy loss can be understood. Our objective in this paper goes beyond contributing to our philosophical understanding of pregnancy towards practical-orientated conclusions regarding the care pathways surrounding the artificial placenta. We make recommendations including the need for counselling and careful consideration of the language used when an artificial placenta is used. (shrink)

We examine the framing mechanisms used to maintain a cross-sector partnership that was created to address a complex long-term social issue. We study the first 8 years of existence of an XSP that aims to create a market for recycled phosphorus, a nutrient that is critical to crop growth but whose natural reserves have dwindled significantly. Drawing on 27 interviews and over 3000 internal documents, we study the evolution of different frames used by diverse actors in an XSP. We demonstrate (...) the role of framing in helping actors to avoid some of the common pitfalls for an XSP, such as debilitating conflict, and in creating sufficient common ground to sustain collaboration. As opposed to a commonly held assumption in the XSP literature, we find that collaboration in a partnership does not have to result in a unanimous agreement around a single or convergent frame regarding a contentious issue. Rather, successful collaboration between diverse partners can also be achieved by maintaining a productive tension between different frames through “optimal” frame plurality—not excessive frame variety that may prevent agreements from emerging, but the retention of a select few frames and the deletion of others toward achieving a narrowing frame bandwidth. One managerial implication is that resources need not be focussed on reaching a unanimous agreement among all partners on a single mega-frame vis-à-vis a contentious issue, but can instead be used to kindle a sense of unity in diversity that allows sufficient common ground to emerge, despite the variety of actors and their positions. (shrink)

This book explores the tradition of the 'science of man' in French medicine of the era 1750-1850, focusing on controversies about the nature of the 'physical-moral' relation and their effects on the role of medicine in French society. Its chief purpose is to recover the history of a holistic tradition in French medicine that has been neglected because it lay outside the mainstream themes of modern medicine, which include experimental, reductionist, and localistic conceptions of health and disease. Professor Williams also (...) challenges existing historiography, which argues that the 'anthropological' approach to medicine was a short-term by-product of the leftist politics of the French Revolution. This work argues instead that the medical science of man long outlived the Revolution, that it spanned traditional ideological divisions, and that it reflected the shared aim of French physicians, whatever their politics, to claim broad cultural authority in French society. (shrink)

Resumen: En el presente ensayo se expone y discute la idea de que el lenguaje, más allá de ser un medio de comunicación, se manifiesta como poesía; esto en el sentido de que es en el lenguaje donde diariamente se configura el mundo con sentido humano. Poesía del lenguaje aparece como una expresión que busca dar cuenta de la energía creadora del lenguaje a la hora de instituir la realidad en la dimensión lingüística de esta. La discusión toma la forma (...) de comentarios y diálogo con tesis de pensadores como Heidegger, Saussure, Benjamin, Maturana, y de poetas como Novalis, Neruda, Huidobro, con el propósito de elucidar la dimensión poética del lenguaje y sus efectos prácticos y morales en la vida social.: In this essay we explain and discuss the idea that language, beyond its quality of being a means of communication, manifests itself as poetry; in the sense that it is in language where the daily configuration of a world with human meaning takes place. The poetry of language appears as an expression that thrives to explain the creative energy of language, as it institutes reality in its linguistic dimension. The discussion take shape in the form of comments on, and dialogue with, thinkers such as Heidegger, Saussure, Benjamin, Maturana, and with poets such as Novalis, Neruda, Huidobro, with the purpose of elucidating the poetic dimension of language and its practical and moral effects on social life. (shrink)

L’activité créatrice du design industriel est l’héritière directe du concept grec du τέχνη, et de la notion romaine d’ ars. Au contraire des Beaux-Arts, le design n’a jamais complètement renoncé à sa dimension fonctionnelle, et sa créativité s’est déployée au service des objets qui nous entourent. Victor Papaneck a lancé en 1971, dans son libre Design for the Real World, un appel à l’attention des designers en leur rappelant leur responsabilité sociale et en exigeant d’eux une attitude respectueuse envers l’environnement. (...) Cependant, aujourd’hui les choses ont beaucoup changé, tant à un niveau conceptuel que technologique. Pour cela il est nécessaire d’analyser, à partir des produits concrets des designers au xxi e siècle, la nouvelle orientation de l’ecodesign et d’approfondir les lignes d’action du design actuel qui maintiennent un engagement éthique avec la société : inclusive design/universal design et design pour la nécessité/ Design Takes of Risk. (shrink)

In the United Kingdom the law and medical guidance is supportive of women making choices in childbirth. NICE guidelines are explicit that a competent woman’s informed request for MRCS should be respected. However, in reality pregnant women are routinely denied MRCS. In this paper I consider whether there is sufficient justification for restricting MRCS. The physical and emotive significance of childbirth as an event in a woman’s life cannot be understated. It is, therefore, concerning that women are having their wishes (...) ignored, and we must ascertain whether the denial of agency is justifiable. To answer this question I first demonstrate that access to MRCS is a lottery in the UK. Second, I argue that there is nothing unique about pregnancy that displaces the ethical norm of respecting patents’ sufficiently autonomous choices. Thus, the starting presumption is that all informed choices regarding MRCS should be respected. To ascertain whether any restriction of MRCS is justifiable the burden of proof must be placed on those who argue that MRCS is ethically impermissible. I argue that the most common justifications in the literature against MRCS are insufficient to displace the presumption in favour of autonomous choice in childbirth. I conclude that MRCS should be available to pregnant women, and we must strive to reduce the lottery in access to choice. (shrink)

This article examines Aristotle's views concerning the possibility of friendship between human beings and nonhuman animals. The suggestion that he denies this possibility is rejected. I reassess the textual evidence adduced by scholars in support of this reading, while adding new material for discussion. Central to the traditional reading is the assumption that animals, in Aristotle's view, cannot be friends in virtue of their cognitive limitations. I argue that Aristotle's account of animal cognition is perfectly consistent with the possibility of (...) friendship between human beings and nonhuman animals. (shrink)

This paper forges links between early analytic philosophy and the posits of semiotics. I show that there are some striking and potentially quite important, but perhaps unrecognized, connections between three key concepts in Wittgenstein’s middle and later philosophy, namely, complex, rule-following, and language games. This reveals the existence of a conceptual continuity between Wittgenstein’s “early” and “later” philosophy that can be applied to the analysis of the iterability of representation in computer-generated images. Methodologically, this paper clarifies to at least some (...) degree, the nature, progress and promise of an approach to doing philosophy and semiotics from a modally modest perspective that sees in the intellectual products of humanities, and not in unreflective empiricism, the future of scientific development. This hybrid, non-reductionist approach shows, among other things, that semiotic processes are encoded by specific types of complexes in computer-generated images that display iterability in time and space. (shrink)

In this paper, I critique two conceptions of mechanisms, namely those put forth by Stuart Glennan (Erkenntnis 44:49–71, 1996; Philosophy of Science 69:S342–S353, 2002) and Machamer et al. (Philosophy of Science 67:1–25, 2000). Glennan’s conception, I argue, cannot account for mechanisms involving negative causation because of its interactionist posture. MDC’s view encounters the same problem due to its reificatory conception of activities—this conception, I argue, entails an onerous commitment to ontological dualism. In the place of Glennan and MDC, I propose (...) a “modified conception” of mechanisms, which (a) obviates the problem of negative causation by reinterpreting MDC’s activities according to a “descriptivist” account, and (b) avoids MDC’s problem by postulating a monistic ontology of entities. Thus, by solving these problems, my modified conception offers a cogent, more adequate alternative to Glennan’s and MDC’s conceptions of mechanisms. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore the connections between semiotics and biology by examining the behaviors of both humans and non-cognizant agents, using Bayesian and heuristic inference. The argument is that higher-level organisms use complex predictive reasoning to deal with uncertainty, while non-cognizant species, such as SARS-CoV-2, rely on an economy-driven heuristic to enter host cells. From this viewpoint, the current pandemic is characterized as a clash of representations resulting from the anthropocentric construction of the self, which neglects (...) the complexities of the natural world. (shrink)

We can freely cross disciplinary boundaries, as well as the line between theory and practice, and allow practices to cast their light back on the theory and show us its deficiencies. In short, this approach reorients some much-discussed issues of professional, business, and military ethics and reveals them as variations on one deeply rooted theme. The author does not treat current institutions as final and unalterable. If these arrangements frustrate moral evaluation, she finds that an argument for change. To make (...) intelligent changes, however, we need a clear view of the reasoning that makes them seem natural and inevitable. That is what this book attempts to do. In the process, the author also reexamines the concept of "person." Not all cultures put so much stress on the idea as Western - and particularly American - cultures do. If we wish to keep this emphasis, then here is another argument for change. (shrink)