The goal of this paper is to show how culture – shared norms and values – is challenged and used to facilitate cooperative behavior within the context of farmer field schools (FFS) in central Luzon, Philippines. The success of the FFS is primarily associated with cultural norms that encourage experiential and collective learning and eventually lead to the adoption of integrated pest management (IPM) methods among the farmers. The study was conducted in central Luzon, the rice granary region of the (...) Philippines, from 1992 to 1995 and again in 1999. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed. Results indicate that a keen understanding of Filipino culture and values is essential if FFS is to be successful and if farmers are to successfully learn and practice IPM. (shrink)

Rice crop diversity hasdecreased dramatically in the recent past.Understanding the causes that underlie theevident genetic erosion is critical for thefood security of subsistence rice farmers andbiodiversity. Our study shows that farmers inthe northeastern Philippines had a markedreduction in rice diversity from 1996 to 1998.The ultimate causes were a drought resultingfrom the El Niño phenomenon in 1997 andflooding due to two successive typhoons in1998. The proximate causes, however, includedlocal water control factors, limitations in thehousehold and village-level seedinfrastructure, farm location in relation (...) tothe goods and services necessary to obtainseeds, policies and programs of the Departmentof Agriculture, and the characteristics of therice varieties themselves. The implications ofour study are that genetic erosion is notalways the result of purposeful acts by farmersnor is it necessarily gradual. Improvingon-farm seed technology will stabilize the seedproduction, distribution, and use system andthereby enhance household food security.Ultimately, rice diversity will be improvedonly if diversity is a safe and viable optionfor farmers. Therefore, public policy thatsupports farmers who maintain a diverse set ofcultivars is critical for any on-farmconservation strategy. (shrink)

In this article, we propose the Fair Priority Model for COVID-19 vaccine distribution, and emphasize three fundamental values we believe should be considered when distributing a COVID-19 vaccine among countries: Benefiting people and limiting harm, prioritizing the disadvantaged, and equal moral concern for all individuals. The Priority Model addresses these values by focusing on mitigating three types of harms caused by COVID-19: death and permanent organ damage, indirect health consequences, such as health care system strain and stress, as well as (...) economic destruction. It proposes proceeding in three phases: the first addresses premature death, the second long-term health issues and economic harms, and the third aims to contain viral transmission fully and restore pre-pandemic activity. -/- To those who may deem an ethical framework irrelevant because of the belief that many countries will pursue "vaccine nationalism," we argue such a framework still has broad relevance. Reasonable national partiality would permit countries to focus on vaccine distribution within their borders up until the rate of transmission is below 1, at which point there would not be sufficient vaccine-preventable harm to justify retaining a vaccine. When a government reaches the limit of national partiality, it should release vaccines for other countries. -/- We also argue against two other recent proposals. Distributing a vaccine proportional to a country's population mistakenly assumes that equality requires treating differently situated countries identically. Prioritizing countries according to the number of front-line health care workers, the proportion of the population over 65, and the number of people with comorbidities within each country may exacerbate disadvantage and end up giving the vaccine in large part to wealthy nations. (shrink)

COVID-19 vaccines are likely to be scarce for years to come. Many countries, from India to the U.K., have demonstrated vaccine nationalism. What are the ethical limits to this vaccine nationalism? Neither extreme nationalism nor extreme cosmopolitanism is ethically justifiable. Instead, we propose the fair priority for residents framework, in which governments can retain COVID-19 vaccine doses for their residents only to the extent that they are needed to maintain a noncrisis level of mortality while they are implementing reasonable public (...) health interventions. Practically, a noncrisis level of mortality is that experienced during a bad influenza season, which society considers an acceptable background risk. Governments take action to limit mortality from influenza, but there is no emergency that includes severe lockdowns. This “flu-risk standard” is a nonarbitrary and generally accepted heuristic. Mortality above the flu-risk standard justifies greater governmental interventions, including retaining vaccines for a country's own citizens over global need. The precise level of vaccination needed to meet the flu-risk standard will depend upon empirical factors related to the pandemic. This links the ethical principles to the scientific data emerging from the emergency. Thus, the FPR framework recognizes that governments should prioritize procuring vaccines for their country when doing so is necessary to reduce mortality to noncrisis flu-like levels. But after that, a government is obligated to do its part to share vaccines to reduce risks of mortality for people in other countries. We consider and reject objections to the FPR framework based on a country: having developed a vaccine, raising taxes to pay for vaccine research and purchase, wanting to eliminate economic and social burdens, and being ineffective in combating COVID-19 through public health interventions. (shrink)

BackgroundCritical public health measures implemented to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic have disrupted health research worldwide, including HIV prevention research. While general guidance has been issued for the responsible conduct of research in these challenging circumstances, the contours of the dueling COVID-19 and HIV/aids pandemics raise some critical ethical issues for HIV prevention research. In this paper, we use the recently updated HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) Ethics Guidance Document (EGD) to situate and analyze key (...) ethical challenges related to the conduct of HIV prevention research during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as identify potential areas for refinement of the guidance document based on this unprecedented state of affairs.Main bodyNecessary actions taken for HIV prevention research studies due to the COVID-19 pandemic involve an array of ethical issues including those related to: (1) risk mitigation; (2) behavior change; (3) compounding vulnerability; (4) community engagement; (5) trial reopening; and 6) shifting research priorities.ConclusionsIn the context of the dueling HIV and COVID-19 global pandemics, research teams and sponsors must be nimble in responding to the rapidly changing environment by being sensitive to the associated ethical issues. The HTPN EGD provides a rich set of tools to help identify, analyze and address many of these issues. At the same time, future refinements of the HPTN EGD and other research ethics guidance could be strengthened by providing explicit advice regarding the ethical issues associated with disrupted research and the reopening of studies. In addition, additional consideration should be given to appropriately balancing domains of risk (e.g., physical versus social), addressing the vulnerability of research staff and community partners, and responding to un-anticipatable ancillary care needs of participants and communities. Appropriately addressing these issues will necessitate conceptual work, which would benefit from the careful documentation of the actual ethical issues encountered in research, the strategies implemented to overcome them, and their success in doing so. Throughout all of these efforts, it is critical to remember that the HIV pandemic not be forgotten in the rush to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

This study, originally published in 1959, traces the origin of Buddhism in Brahmanism, and fixes its relationship to Hinduism, describing and stressing the basic importance of Buddhist contemplation. The first half of the book introduces the very heart of Buddhism, while the second part presents the Teaching itself, as handed down in the canonical writings of the ancient East.

This book approaches the Dhamma, the Buddha’s teaching, from a Buddhistic perspective, viewing various individual teachings presented in hundreds of early discourses of Pali canon, comprehending them under a single systemic thought of a single individual called the Buddha. It explicates the structure of this thought, going through various contextual teachings and teaching categories of the discourses, treating them as necessary parts of a liberating thought that constitutes the right view of one who embraces the Buddha’s teaching as his or (...) her sole philosophy of life. It interprets the diverse individual dhammas as being in congruence with each other; and as contributory to forming the whole of the Buddha’s teaching, the Dhamma. By exploring some selected topics such as ignorance, configurations, not-self, and nibbāna in thirteen chapters, the book enables readers to understand the whole in relation to the parts, and the parts in relation to the whole, while realizing the importance of studying every single dhamma category or topic not for its own sake but for understand the entirety of the teaching. This way of viewing and explaining the teachings of the discourses enables readers to clearly comprehend the teaching of the Buddha in early Buddhism. (shrink)

This article examines a poem in the Kaludayittherapadanavannana which expands on the poem attributed to Kaludayitthera in the Theragatha; the poem in the Kaludayittherapadanavannana did not make it into the final canon. The hypothesis of this paper is that the poem may be a popular Dravidian song adapted to Buddhist use and translated into Pali, and this is the primary reason it was excluded from the canon. This conclusion is based on several factors. 1) The author of the Pali poem (...) was not well versed in the Pali language and made constant mistakes in translation. 2) Gratuitous repetition; the poem itself is not very good poetry, containing the kind of needless repetition one associates with a popular song. 3) 13.4% of the words in the poem are direct lifts from Dravidian words; this compares to only 3.9% of the words in the Theragatha poem itself, of which this poem is an extension. While this does not prove that the source was a Dravidian poem, it raises the probability quite significantly. In addition, this kind of literature—making lists of biota in the natural world for comparison, personification and poetic effect— is common in Dravidian Sangam literature. 4) The poem contains wrong or awkward phrases in Pali which can be better understood as Dravidian imports, and 5) an extensive and growing body of linguistic evidence shows that the adoption of Dravidian terminology into Buddhist thought and practice was not an uncommon occurrence. It has long been assumed that the Buddha spoke more than just Indic languages, and that his oral teachings in Dravidian or Munda languages were lost. Although this poem is probably not in itself a teaching of the Buddha, but a popular Dravidian song adapted for Buddhist purposes, its analysis is the first attempt to show that some Pali transmissions may be adaptations or translations of indigenous languages; the ramifications and conclusions of such a hypothesis, if proven, open up a whole new area of Buddhist studies, i.e., the transmission of the Buddha’s teachings through indigenous, non Indo-Aryan languages. (shrink)

Tales and Teachings of the Buddha The Jataka Stories in Relation to the Pali Canon. John Garrett Jones. Foreword by Dr I. B. Horner. George Allen and Unwin, London 1979. xvi-216 pp. £6.95.

Bazzocchi disposes the text of the Tractatus in a user-friendly manner, exactly as Wittgenstein's decimals advise. This discloses the logical form of the book by distinct reading units, linked into a fashioned hierarchical tree. The text becomes much clearer and every reader can enjoy, finally, its formal and literary qualities.

El siguiente trabajo parte del análisis de dos obras literarias que vieron su aparición en el Siglo XXI: Historia de los abuelos que no tuve, de Ivan Jablonka, y El gueto interior, de Santiago Amigorena, dos novelas que toman como eje temático y vertebrador de las narraciones la búsqueda e indagación del pasado reciente a través de dos historias de vida que guardan una profunda conexión con los hechos acontecidos durante el Holocausto. El objetivo es abordar y analizar la construcción (...) de la voz narrativa en cada una de las obras propuestas a partir de su articulación con la figura del silencio. En la obra de Jablonka, se observa, hay una identificación entre el narrador y sus abuelos paternos, mecanismo que se despliega al anular toda inconsistencia o vacío memorial; el silencio dejado por Mates e Idesa es el silencio de su nieto. Por su parte, en el relato de Amigorena, la voz del narrador toma distancia respecto a los acontecimientos al adoptar un punto de vista externo; a la vez que ficcionaliza la historia de su abuelo Vicente y la envuelve de un silencio absoluto e impotente, deja entrever que ese silencio desolador que atraviesa su historia familiar puede ser resignificado desde el presente. (shrink)

The poverty of stimulus argument is one of the most controversial arguments in the study of language acquisition. Here we follow previous approaches challenging the assumption of impoverished primary linguistic data, focusing on the specific problem of auxiliary (AUX) fronting in complex polar interrogatives. We develop a series of corpus analyses of child-directed speech showing that there is indirect statistical information useful for correct auxiliary fronting in polar interrogatives and that such information is sufficient for distinguishing between grammatical and ungrammatical (...) generalizations, even in the absence of direct evidence. We further show that there are simple learning devices, such as neural networks, capable of exploiting such statistical cues, producing a bias toward correct AUX questions when compared to their ungrammatical counterparts. The results suggest that the basic assumptions of the poverty of stimulus argument may need to be reappraised. (shrink)

En este artículo sostengo, frente a las explicaciones de carácter general basadas en supuestos doctrinales (p.ej., Allen y Falco), que el tipo de platonismo (y su relación con el orfismo) que revive con las labores filosóficas de Marsilio Ficino está anclado en el ejercicio de las tecnologías textuales que hereda de los neoplatónicos tardíos. Para mostrarlo, examino la negativa de Ficino de comentar el pasaje del Banquete (179d) donde se presenta a Orfeo como contraejemplo del valor de los amantes y (...) la comparo con la posición de Pico della Mirandola. Con ello pretendo distinguir el platonismo ficiniano del posible platonismo piquiano y subrayar su importancia como transmisor de la tradición platónica que incluye, en su caso, un orfismo comprometido no sólo doctrinalmente, sino también textualmente. In this paper I propose, against general explanations based on doctrinal assumptions (e.g., Allen and Falco), that the kind of Platonism (and its relationship with Orpheus) reviving in the philosophical works of Marsilio Ficino is anchored in the exercise of textual technologies inherited from the late Neoplatonists. To show this, I examine Ficino's refusal to comment on Symposium (179d) where Orpheus is presented as a counterexample of the lovers' courage and I compare it to the position of Pico della Mirandola on the same passage. This way, I distinguish Ficino's Platonism from Pico's and I emphasize its importance as a transmitter of the Platonic tradition that includes a committed Orphism not only doctrinally but also in a textual manner. (shrink)

In this article I examine several criticisms of the concept of vulnerability. Rather than rejecting the concept, however, I argue that a sufficiently rich understanding of vulnerability is essential to bioethics. The challenges of international research in developing countries require an understanding of how new vulnerabilities arise from conditions of economic, social and political exclusion. A serious shortcoming of current conceptions of vulnerability in research ethics is the tendency to treat vulnerability as a label fixed on a particular subpopulation. My (...) paper examines the role of this “label” metaphor in current statements of research ethics. In contrast to this prevailing “label” metaphor, my own positive account of vulnerability develops a dynamic way of understanding the structure of the concept of vulnerability based on the idea of “layers of vulnerability.” I examine several cases involving women, as they are sometimes labeled as a vulnerable population and sometimes not. My analysis demonstrates the essential role of this revised concept of vulnerability in bioethics and research ethics. (shrink)

El artículo analiza algunas problemáticas centrales de la literatura caribeña, en particular de expresión francófona y anglófona, relacionadas, por un lado, con la falta de desarrollo y el funcionamiento colonial de sus sistemas literarios, y, por el otro, con el problema social, económico y político de la emigración en las Antillas. Como propongo, es la misma condición migrante de la literatura caribeña, en tanto sistema atravesado por el desplazamiento masivo de sus productores, la que en gran parte determina sus motivaciones (...) e intereses, enfocados a la identidad regional (y a la cultura regionalista) de modo recurrente. El artículo indaga, entre otros lugares-comunes (Glissant) del discurso literario caribeño, su estética geográficamente marcada que es enunciada aun desde un locus migrante (distante) con fines descolonizadores, los cuales se vinculan con la tradición anticolonialista, masculina y de sesgo militante del siglo pasado. Luego de una revisión de este legado a partir de dos aproximaciones críticas (Tinsley, Condé), se lee una serie de textos donde se observa la persistencia de la geoestética antillana, como A Small Place de Jamaica Kincaid, los cuales se apropian creativamente del discurso turístico desde una perspectiva geopolítica de resistencia a las dominaciones aún coloniales. (shrink)

Organisms that share the capability of storing information about experiences in the past have an actively generated background resource on which they can compare and evaluate more recent experiences in order to quickly or even better react than in previous situations. This is an essential competence for all reaction and adaptation purposes of living organisms. Such memory/learning skills can be found from akaryotes up to unicellular eukaryotes, fungi, animals and plants, although until recently, it had been mentioned only as a (...) capability of higher animals. With the rise of epigenetics, the context-dependent marking of experiences at both the phenotype and the genotype level is an essential perspective to understand memory and learning in all organisms. Both memory and learning depend on a variety of successful communication processes within the whole organism. (shrink)

The Ancient Age introducesuncountless problems to the specialists of the same one. On one hand, wehave problems related with the direct sources, and, for other, with the indirectsources. Same Plato points out, in the Letter VII, that his dialogues don’tcontain the fundamental teachings, but it belon..

It is widely assumed that language in some form or other originated by piggybacking on pre-existing learning mechanism not dedicated to language. Using evolutionary connectionist simulations, we explore the implications of such assumptions by determining the effect of constraints derived from an earlier evolved mechanism for sequential learning on the interaction between biological and linguistic adaptation across generations of language learners. Artificial neural networks were initially allowed to evolve “biologically” to improve their sequential learning abilities, after which language was introduced (...) into the population. We compared the relative contribution of biological and linguistic adaptation by allowing both networks and language to change over time. The simulation results support two main conclusions: First, over generations, a consistent head-ordering emerged due to linguistic adaptation. This is consistent with previous studies suggesting that some apparently arbitrary aspects of linguistic structure may arise from cognitive constraints on sequential learning. Second, when networks were selected to maintain a good level of performance on the sequential learning task, language learnability is significantly improved by linguistic adaptation but not by biological adaptation. Indeed, the pressure toward maintaining a high level of sequential learning performance prevented biological assimilation of linguistic-specific knowledge from occurring. (shrink)

“Vulnerability” is a key concept for research ethics and public health ethics. This term can be discussed from either a conceptual or a practical perspective. I previously proposed the metaphor of layers to understand how this concept functions from the conceptual perspective in human research. In this paper I will clarify how my analysis includes other definitions of vulnerability. Then, I will take the practical‐ethical perspective, rejecting the usefulness of taxonomies to analyze vulnerabilities. My proposal specifies two steps and provides (...) a procedural guide to help rank layers. I introduce the notion of cascade vulnerability and outline the dispositional nature of layers of vulnerability to underscore the importance of identifying their stimulus condition. In addition, I identify three kinds of obligations and some strategies to implement them. This strategy outlines the normative force of harmful layers of vulnerability. It offers concrete guidance. It contributes substantial content to the practical sphere but it does not simplify or idealize research subjects, research context or public health challenges. (shrink)

En su sitio de Facebook, llamado “Fantasmas del Cordobazo”, Sebastián Cánepa, actualiza, por medio de la superposición de imágenes pasadas y presentes, la insurrección popular en las calles cordobesas. Aflora un tiempo superpuesto, condensado que se vuelve nítido con el contraste entre el color y las formas de las fotos actuales y el blanco y negro del año 69.

This essay examines the construction of a symbolic figure who has worked to support the reordering of power relationships. It is the invention of a foreign enemy, Islamic radicalism from which United States has served its objectives of establishing a new hegemony. Since the terrorist threat, has extended a speech level that adulterated and showed us a world divided into two opposite poles: a virtuous and civilized axis that is forced to attack to defend itself, and a barbaric and evil (...) axis that threatens global security. But this process is fraudulent, that has been able to violate international law, has a political, historical and economic issues should be unmasked. (shrink)

According to Bronislaw Baczko, utopias may be considered as different forms—they are not linked to any precise literary genre—of critique of social reality and the quest for alternatives. Some consist of a detailed description of a new social order, whereas others confine themselves to an overall design, which solely defines a series of values and principles. They all contain an ideal of perfection: a utopian view of the world always stems from the awareness of a breach between what must be (...) and social reality, which is deemed to be in crisis and dominated by evil. There is, thus, no utopia without an ideal opposed to reality. That said, idealized as they may be, utopias do allow such reality to cease to be deemed.. (shrink)

Se trata de la reseña bibliográfica del libro de Emmanuel Biset et. al., Sujeto, una categoría en disputa.

Interpersonalist theories of testimony have the theoretical virtue of giving room to the characteristic interpersonal features of testimonial exchange among persons. Nonetheless, it has been argued that they are at a serious disadvantage when it comes to accounting for the way in which testimonial beliefs may be epistemically justified. In this paper, we defend the epistemological credentials of interpersonalism, emphasizing that it is inseparable from the acceptance of non-evidential epistemic reasons to believe, which demands proper conceptual elaborations on the notions (...) of epistemic reasons and of epistemic justification. We offer a proper reading of epistemic reason, and we defend non-purism on justification as the adequate way to conceive the epistemic proposal of interpersonalism on testimony, realizing that only this combination is capable of apprehending certain cases in which there seems to be no way to rule out the idea that the assurance offered by the testifier offers an epistemic reason to believe that it is not evidential. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that language in some form or other originated by piggybacking on pre-existing learning mechanism not dedicated to language. Using evolutionary connectionist simulations, we explore the implications of such assumptions by determining the effect of constraints derived from an earlier evolved mechanism for sequential learning on the interaction between biological and linguistic adaptation across generations of language learners. Artificial neural networks were initially allowed to evolve “biologically” to improve their sequential learning abilities, after which language was introduced (...) into the population. We compared the relative contribution of biological and linguistic adaptation by allowing both networks and language to change over time. The simulation results support two main conclusions: First, over generations, a consistent head-ordering emerged due to linguistic adaptation. This is consistent with previous studies suggesting that some apparently arbitrary aspects of linguistic structure may arise from cognitive constraints on sequential learning. Second, when networks were selected to maintain a good level of performance on the sequential learning task, language learnability is significantly improved by linguistic adaptation but not by biological adaptation. Indeed, the pressure toward maintaining a high level of sequential learning performance prevented biological assimilation of linguistic-specific knowledge from occurring. (shrink)

In this article I focus on two issues concerning bioethics in Argentina: reproductive health and ethics in research. Although these topics are quite dissimilar, they share a particular feature: their special relationship with context.

Dentro de la academia los estudios sobre el juego suelen ser marginados o subestimados como cuestiones secundarias al pensamiento, o como espacios de discusión dirigidos solamente al ocio contemplativo. Sin embargo, en oposición a este tipo de inferencias nos dedicaremos enteramente a reivindicar el papel del juego como fenómeno existencial fundamental en la pregunta por el ser y su relación con el mundo. En el presente trabajo propondremos un cruce lúdico y metafísico entre dos reconocidos pensadores: Carlos Astrada, filósofo argentino, (...) y Eugen Fink, filósofo alemán. Ambos autores comparten la herencia heideggeriana que pondrán en discusión y que servirá como hilo conductor del diálogo teórico sobre el carácter ontológico del juego. (shrink)

In this article, the authors focus on Argentina's activity in the developing field of regenerative medicine, specifically stem cell research. They take as a starting point a recent article by Shawn Harmon (published in this journal) who argues that attempts to regulate the practice in Argentina are morally incoherent. The authors try to show first, that there is no such ‘attempt to legislate’ on stem cell research in Argentina and this is due to a number of reasons that they explain. (...) Second, by examining the role played by different values, conflicting legal and moral views, and the influence of various actors, they attempt to show that the legislative silence regarding stem cell research may not necessarily be a manifestation of a legal/moral disconnection but rather a survival strategy for navigating the long and heated battle on the moral status of the embryo and the kind of treatment it deserves. (shrink)

This article examines the problems that research ethics confronts in developing countries and the impact that research in developing countries has had on research ethics. In order to show this it analyzes the first paradigmatic cases that gave rise to the ‘classic’ analysis of research ethics. Hence, in this article, many of the ethical concerns apply wherever research is conducted and are not particular to developing countries. Secondly, the article describes the complex process of research by analyzing different research actors (...) and their interests in the current research process. Thirdly, it sketches some of the recent cases that have prompted fierce ethical debate surrounding research in developing countries. (shrink)