Desde la publicación de la encíclica Laudato si ‘(LS) del Papa Francisco en 2015, se han llevado a cabo múltiples acciones para fomentar una visión integral de la ecología en la Iglesia Católica. El objetivo fue el desarrollo de una propuesta curricular que incluye el desarrollo sostenible e integral en la enseñanza de la religión católica. El curso CHANCES ofrece un nuevo paradigma de la enseñanza de la religión católica, mostrando cómo desde ella se pueden descubrir motivaciones profundas, y potenciar (...) actitudes y virtudes, que pueden contribuir al desarrollo de competencias en sostenibilidad. (shrink)

Las investigaciones sobre biopolítica llevadas a cabo por M. Foucault fueron objeto de una amplia recepción entre autores consagrados. Pero, a pesar de tomarlas como punto de partida para sus propios análisis, no se privaron de dirigirle críticas tan severas que obligan a preguntarse cuál es el mérito del abordaje del pensador francés. En este artículo, intentaré refutar esas objeciones y demostrar que su aporte consistió en asociar la conformación del dispositivo con el advenimiento de las gubernamentalidades liberal y neoliberal, (...) mostrando de esta manera la incidencia sobre la vida y la muerte que ejercen ambos marcos de racionalidad política. (shrink)

In the last two decades there has been extensive study of the origins of Aljamiado writing in the Mudejar period and its later development in the Morisco era. Scholars have prepared many editions of Aljamiado manuscripts and proposed new interpretations of their content and meaning. This article contains an up-to-date bibliography of all the studies of Aljamiado manuscripts that have appeared in the last ten years and/or are not cited in A. Vespertino Rodríguez, «Una aproximación a la datación de los (...) manuscritos aljamiado-moriscos», Homenaje al profesor Luis Rubio, 2, 1419-39. (shrink)

In this article I am concerned with whether it could be morally significant to distinguish between doing something 'in order to bring about an effect' as opposed to 'doing something because we will bring about an effect'. For example, the Doctrine of Double Effect tells us that we should not act in order to bring about evil, but even if this is true is it perhaps permissible to act only because an evil will thus occur? I discuss these questions in (...) connection with a version of the so-called Trolley Problem known as the Loop Case. I also consider how these questions may bear on whether a rational agent must aim at an event which he believes is causally necessary to achieve an end he pursues. (shrink)

In this article I am concerned with whether it could be morally significant to distinguish between doing something 'in order to bring about an effect' as opposed to 'doing something because we will bring about an effect'. For example, the Doctrine of Double Effect tells us that we should not act in order to bring about evil, but even if this is true is it perhaps permissible to act only because an evil will thus occur? I discuss these questions in (...) connection with a version of the so-called Trolley Problem known as the Loop Case. I also consider how these questions may bear on whether a rational agent must aim at an event which he believes is causally necessary to achieve an end he pursues. (shrink)

An additional compartment of vaccinated individuals is considered in a SIS stochastic epidemic model with infection reintroduction. The quantification of the spread of the disease is modeled by a continuous time Markov chain. A well-known measure of the initial transmission potential is the basic reproduction number $$R_0$$, which determines the herd immunity threshold or the critical proportion of immune individuals required to stop the spread of a disease when a vaccine offers a complete protection. Due to repeated contacts between the (...) typical infective and previously infected individuals, $$R_0$$ overestimates the average number of secondary infections and leads to, perhaps unnecessary, high immunization coverage. Assuming that the vaccine is imperfect, alternative measures to $$R_0$$ are defined in order to study the influence of the initial coverage and vaccine efficacy on the transmission of the epidemic. (shrink)

This article examines arguments concerning enhancement of human persons recently presented by Michael Sandel (2004). In the first section, I briefly describe some of his arguments. In section two, I consider whether, as Sandel claims, the desire for mastery motivates enhancement and whether such a desire could be grounds for its impermissibility. Section three considers how Sandel draws the distinction between treatment and enhancement, and the relation to nature that he thinks each expresses. The fourth section examines Sandel's views about (...) parent/child relations and also how enhancement would affect distributive justice and the duty to aid. In conclusion, I briefly offer an alternative suggestion as to why enhancement may be troubling and consider what we could safely enhance. (shrink)

The Doctrine of Double Effect and the Principle of Do No Harm raise important theoretical and practical issues, some of which are discussed by Boyle, Donagan, and Quinn. I argue that neither principle is correct, and some revisionist, and probably nonabsolutist, analysis of constraints on action and omission is necessary. In making these points, I examine several approaches to deflection of threat cases, discuss an argument for the permissibility of voluntary euthanasia, and present arguments relevant to medical contexts which justify (...) intentionally hanning some to aid others, with and without the consent of those harmed. Keywords: consent, double effect, euthanasia, harming, organ transplantation, scarce resources, trolley problem CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Philosophers may play the role of insider, e.g., serving as advisor to government commissions, or of outsider, commenting on the work of such commissions. Each role may raise dilemmas. It is argued that as insider the philosopher's primary duties should be to clarify and inform, as well as philosophize with the commissioners, and help them stay on a course in which moral considerations are given their proper weight. Fulfilling these duties means that the philosopher will sometimes have to help produce (...) a weaker intellectual document than he would prefer, or lose a chance to directly promote the public good. The insider philosopher will also have to consider whether it is appropriate for a policy proposal from a commission to differ from much current government policy, and how morally appropriate compromise can be reached among commissioners. Given his understanding of how an insider philosopher should function and how commission reports are constructed, the outsider philosopher can comment both on how close a report comes to being perfect of its type, and how far short of an ideal philosophical analysis even a perfect government report is. It may be appropriate for him to give greater weight to the public good, if his comments are very likely to affect it, than the insider philosopher. Examples for discussion are drawn from government reports on organ transplantation, embryo research, terminating care, and compensation for research subjects. Keywords: embryo research, government commissions, moral conflict, moral compromise, organ transplants, philosophers and public policy CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Decreasing philanthropic funding from governments and foundations and increasing social needs are putting pressure on nonprofits to generate financial resources in more entrepreneurial ways. This type of social innovation within the nonprofit sector can be facilitated through collaborative alliances with universities, corporations and other public/private partnerships. This paper presents a case study of a university partnership between Institute of Social Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University and the Pittsburgh Social Innovation Accelerator.

Background:Choice to live and die at home is supported by palliative care policy; however, health resources and access disparity impact on this choice in rural Australia. Rural end-of-life home care is provided by district nurses, but little is known about their role in advocacy for choice in care.Objectives:The study was conducted to review the scope of the empirical literature available to answer the research question: What circumstances influence district nurse advocacy for rural client choice to live and die at home?, (...) and identify gaps in the knowledge.Method:Interpretive scoping methodology was used to search online databases, identify suitable studies and select, chart, analyse and describe the findings.Results:34 international studies revealed themes of ‘the nursing relationship’, ‘environment’, ‘communication’, ‘support’ and ‘the holistic client centred district nursing role.Discussion:Under-resourcing, medicalisation and emotional relational burden could affect advocacy in rural areas.Conclusion:It is not known how district nurses overcome these circumstances to advocate for choice in end-of-life care. Research designed to increase understanding of how rural district nurses advocate successfully for client goals will enable improvements to be made in the quality of end-of-life care offered. (shrink)

The logic BN4 was defined by R.T. Brady in 1982. It can be considered as the 4-valued logic of the relevant conditional. E4 is a variant of BN4 that can be considered as the 4-valued logic of entailment. The aim of this paper is to define reduced general Routley-Meyer semantics for BN4 and E4. It is proved that BN4 and E4 are strongly sound and complete w.r.t. their respective semantics.

In this article, I examine several distinctions that may be relevant to the morality (and conceptual characterization) of terrorism: (1) the state/nonstate agent distinction, (2) the combatant/noncombatant distinction, (3) the intention/foresight distinction, (4) the means/side-effect distinction, (5) the interrelated necessary/nonnecessary means and produce/sustain distinctions, (6) the mechanical/nonmechanical use distinction, (7) the military/political distinction, (8) the harm/terror distinction, and (9) the harm-for-terror/terror-for-goal distinction. I conclude that some of these factors (though not those most commonly cited) account for the prima facie wrongness (...) of terrorism and that the nondistinctive properties of terrorism (which it shares with some nonterrorist acts) are what make it most seriously wrong. I also provide a conceptual examination of terrorism as we commonly think of it and its relation to torture. In the course of discussing the distinctions and also in concluding the article, I consider why terrorism may sometimes be morally permissible. (shrink)

Atran conjectures that a triggering algorithm for a living- kind module could involve inputs from other modules that detect animacy and intentionality. Here we further speculate about how algorithms for detecting specific intentions could be used to trigger between- or within-species categorization. Such categorization may be adaptively important in Eldredge's energy and information realms.

Book reviewed in this article: Greation and Abortion: A Study in Moral and Legal Philosophy. By Frances M. Kamm.

Este trabajo consiste en una reconstrucción de los motivos de reflexión en ese ámbito privilegiado de la experiencia filosófica al que de la mano de Habermas, vamos a denominar pensamiento postmetafísico, como superación mediadora de la eterna disputa entre el pensar metafísico y el pensar antimetafísico. En él desarrollaremos aquellas categorías empírico-trascendentales que van a constituir las condiciones de posibilidad de esta nueva experiencia filosófica, a saber, racionalidad procedimental, razón sin trascendencia, razón comunicativa, giro lingüístico y deflación de lo extracotidiano.

Knowledge and true relations represent the principal task of Theory of Knowledge. This paper argues about various solutions to the justification of knowledge, given by William James, Richard Rorty and Jürgen Habermas. For classic Pragmatism Knowledge and Truth converge with the idea of a guideline, direction and orientation with an effective value for men. The Newpragmatism represented by Rorty tries out the way of the widest possible widening of justification contexts, taking as last referent the features of a western liberal (...) culture. Habermas pleads for a strong idealization in his discussion with Rorty up to the ideal speech situation. (shrink)

La tesis que deseo discutir en este trabajo es la siguiente: las ciencias humanas (ciencias del espíritu según Dilthey, ciencias histórico-hermenéuticas según Habermas) son posibles en la medida en que pueda ser epistemológicamente justificado el método que las hace posibles, a saber, la comprensión hermenéutica del sentido cuyo núcleo central lo constituye el círculo hermenéutico. Se trata, pues, de justificar epistemológicamente la hermenéutica como comprensión del sentido de las vivencias propias y ajenas, para lo cual es preciso analizar la reflexividad (...) y reciprocidad que impregna la estructura del lenguaje ordinario. En el diálogo que Habermas establece con Dilthey en Conocimiento e interés aparecen los suficientes argumentos para dicha fundamentación. Nuestro texto hará especial hincapié en los siguientes tópicos: distinción entre ciencias de la naturaleza y ciencias del espíritu, comprensión hermenéutica del sentido, lenguaje ordinario y reflexividad, especificidad del círculo hermenéutico, ciencia y contexto vital, y, finalmente, haremos un balance de la interpretación habermasiana de Dilthey a partir de las relaciones entre ciencias histórico-hermenéuticas e interés práctico del conocimiento. (shrink)

I propose in this paper a reflection, a self-analysis, about my extensive teaching experience, not from a formal point of view of the specificity of the program and the subjects of my courses, but about the singularity of the teaching activities. The commitment with the students, with the topic taught and with the Institution in which I have the honor to work, constitute the fundamental motive that leads and conducts my profession as teacher. My explanation displays ten items. Each of (...) them presents a speculation about one of the ideal elements of the good teacher all of us aim to be. For that reason this essay is not a positivist description of the teaching reality, but it expects to reconstruct the critical demarcation between the ideality which all of us try to achieve and the empirical reality that constantly pull us in the opposite direction. The coercion without coercions of the exemplariness pushes us to maintain alive the faith in the appropriation of the nature and soul of the ideal teacher. (shrink)