The article presents the first critical edition of Augustine’s Sermo Haffner 1, which is identical to Sermo Étaix 3, based on all nine known manuscripts andthe three printed editions. A thorough introduction to the transmission of the text, its variants and structure is added, also an ample apparatus fontium et testimoniorum, especially regarding the parallels from other works of St. Augustine, a German translation of the text, and a commentary on the majorpoints of interest.

In this paper, we argue that there are epistemic norms on evidence-gathering and consider consequences for how to understand epistemic normativity. Though the view that there are such norms seems intuitive, it has found surprisingly little defense. Rather, many philosophers have argued that norms on evidence-gathering can only be practical or moral. On a prominent evidentialist version of this position, epistemic norms only apply to responding to the evidence one already has. Here we challenge the orthodoxy. First, we argue that (...) there is no significant normative difference between responding to evidence you have and gathering more evidence. Second, we argue that our practices of epistemically criticizing agents for their poor evidence-gathering indicate the existence of epistemic norms on evidence-gathering. Finally, we show that our thesis has important implications for recent debates about the relationship between epistemic norms and inquiry. (shrink)

The Buddha taught a unique and verifiable method to end suffering in sentient beings. This is the eightfold noble path. But there are 84,000 discourses in which the Buddha describes just how one may come out of suffering. Is a seeker then expected to learn all these 84,000 discourses? Is there a shorter way out for the ardent meditator? There is. There is one discourse in particular that propounds the essence of the Buddha’s Teaching in crisp and clear terms. It (...) is the “Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta”. Its seminal importance is universally acknowledged. So, the next question that arises is: what is the core of the “Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta”? Which aspects of it are vital to one’s emancipation? A careful perusal of this discourse leads one to conclude that the Buddha repeatedly exhorts his monks to meditate in a particular manner. This involves three characteristics: Atāpi, Sampajāno and Satima. Of these, Atāpi is easy to understand: it means ardent, earnest, strenuous. The same holds for Satima. It means, in turn, with mindfulness or with awareness. It is Sampajāno which deserves our special attention, though. While it is essential to understand just what it means, its meaning is not so obvious. Once one does understand its meaning, its significance to the successful way out of ones own suffering becomes crystal clear. (shrink)

The central concern of this book is to demonstrate how Puritanism was a theme which ran through all Green's biography and political philosophy. It thereby reveals how Green’s connections with Evangelicalism and his known affinities with religious dissent came from his way of conceiving Puritanism. In Green’s eyes, its anti-formalist viewpoint made Puritanism the most suitable tool for avoiding the drawbacks of democracy. The key objective of the book is to illustrate how the philosophy elaborated by Green aimed to encapsulate (...) the best of Puritanism whilst eschewing the dangerous abstractions of both Puritan philosophy and German idealism. It follows that Green’s conception of positive and negative freedom, and his vision of political obligation, stemmed from his effort to revive the Puritan heritage rather than from an ambiguous flirtation with idealism. The book purports to show how the influence of Puritanism in Green’s political thought is an element which can help to integrate the literature in the area, contributing to a better comprehension of a philosopher who, despite being unanimously considered as the founder of the so-called Oxford idealist school, had a very difficult and sometimes obscure connection with idealism. It has been widely argued that Green’s relationship with idealism seemed to be infected by a religious germ which, because it was unrelated to German idealism, gave it a bad taste. This study aims to encourage further investigation into the nature and propagation of that germ in the British idealist School. (shrink)

In this article, I offer a methodological analysis of the empirical research on the causal effects of trade liberalisation, and assess whether such studies can be of any use for guiding policy prescriptions in real-world economies. The analysis focuses on the mainstream economic research that has been used to support arguments in favour of trade liberalisation during the last decades. Even though there are empirical results that could be taken as valid evidence for a causal connection between free trade and (...) economic gains, none of the existing evidence licences trustworthy inferences about the policy effectiveness of trade liberalisation reforms in real-world cases. There are three aspects of the empirical literature that make it highly problematic for making reliable policy inferences: (a) the criteria used to define the notion of ‘free trade’, (b) the background assumptions embedded in the econometric techniques used for estimating causal effects, and (c) the widespread desire among academic economists to attain scientific results in terms of universally valid generalisations. The analysis exposes a worrisome mismatch between, on the one hand, the research aims and outcomes of scientific economics and, on the other, the kind of evidence that would be useful for guiding actual policy deliberations. (shrink)

Resumen Este artículo tiene como objetivo analizar el debate filosófico entre Ernst Cassirer y Martin Heidegger en el periodo de entreguerras, a partir de su modo disímil de comprender la libertad del hombre como proceso de autoconfiguración del sujeto o Dasein. En primer lugar, se examinará la reinterpretación global de la filosofía kantiana por parte de ambos pensadores a la luz de sus proyectos filosóficos: en el caso de Cassirer, la filosofía de las formas simbólicas, en el de Heidegger, la (...) hermenéutica de la facticidad. En segundo lugar, se analizarán sus interpretaciones sobre el pensamiento estético de Friedrich Schiller, en el marco de sus reflexiones sobre la función del arte para la comprensión de la Selbstbildung. Ello permitirá iluminar un nuevo aspecto de esta disputa, así como determinar la distancia entre sus dos orientaciones filosóficas y políticas.This paper aims to analyze the philosophical debate between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger in the interwar period, starting from their dissimilar way of understanding human freedom as a process of selfconfiguration of the subject or Dasein. First, we will examine the global reinterpretation of Kantian philosophy by both thinkers in the light of their philosophical projects: in the case of Cassirer, the philosophy of symbolic forms, in the case of Heidegger, the hermeneutics of facticity. Second, their interpretations of the aesthetic thought of Friedrich Schiller will be analyzed, within the framework of their reflections on the function of art for the understanding of the Selbstbildung. This will illuminate a new aspect of this debate and determine the distance between their two philosophical and political orientations. (shrink)

The dominating theologian in Europe between Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus, Henry of Ghent produced a massive Summa of Ordinary Questions as well as fifteen quodlibets during his long tenure at the University of Paris. His work constituted a new synthesis of faith and reason which competed with that of Thomas Aquinas and influenced the history of both philosophy and theology. The first five articles of the Summa, dealing with various issues associated with human knowledge, constitute an adequate introduction (...) to Henry's thought. In them we find his approach to fundamental principles and themes developed in detail in the rest of his corpus. Of the five, only article one has appeared as a whole in English translation. The next four articles reinforce and develop the findings of the first article, providing additional treatments that indicate Henry's principles and orientation. In fact, these four articles alone provide a condensed but remarkably rich portrait of Henry's basic thought, and so are an invaluable resource for beginning and advanced students alike. Articles 2-5 include important positions on knowledge and reality, a conception of humanity's ultimate purpose and the pursuits most conducive to it, and an approach to faith and reason. These four articles are presented here for the first time in English translation with an introduction and notes. Along with the translation, the volume includes the Latin text of the modern critical edition. --Book cover. (shrink)

In a context of pervasive digitalization of the social world, both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, the field of education has undergone major changes with the development of digital practices and settings. However, the physical presence of the subjects and the body remain something primordial and irreplaceable in traditional educational processes. Thus, it is often assumed that virtuality is opposed to the corporeal reality of the subjects involved in teaching, learning and studying. In this paper we aim to critically (...) challenge this assumption by addressing the phenomenon of virtuality in a more original sense: as a fundamental dimension of corporeality itself. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological insights, we argue that the experience of the virtual is inherently embodied and fully real. We understand corporeality and virtuality as entangled and multidimensional phenomena. At the same time, this leads us to rethink the digital as only one possible medium in which virtuality can appear as inherent to embodied experience. We develop our phenomenological approach in three instances. First, we question and bracket two common assumptions about corporeality. From our critical perspective, assumptions about a disembodied digitality and a devirtualized corporeality represent extremes within which educational discourses currently move. Second, we address the inherent virtuality of embodied experience. We outline the heuristic concept of the virtual body to describe corporeality and virtuality as entangled and multidimensional phenomena that encompass extension, intercorporeality and intermediality. Finally, we make some remarks on the relationships of corporeality and virtuality considering the challenges of digital education. (shrink)

Understanding Computers and Cognition presents an important and controversial new approach to understanding what computers do and how their functioning is related to human language, thought, and action. While it is a book about computers, Understanding Computers and Cognition goes beyond the specific issues of what computers can or can't do. It is a broad-ranging discussion exploring the background of understanding in which the discourse about computers and technology takes place. Understanding Computers and Cognition is written for a wide audience, (...) not just those professionals involved in computer design or artificial intelligence. It represents an important contribution to the ongoing discussion about what it means to be a machine, and what it means to be human. Book jacket. (shrink)

This article comprises an up-to-date critical review of the field known as Economic Methodology or Philosophy of Economics (EM/PE). Two edited volumes (Kincaid and Ross 2021; Heilmann and Reiss 2021), a special issue of the Journal of Economic Methodology (2021), and a recent bibliometric analysis of the field (Claveau et al. 2021) constitute the basis of the review. Drawing on these sources, we identify a number of problematic trends in current EM/PE research. We claim that these trends could be interpreted (...) as two kinds of biases, namely a micro-level bias and a mainstream bias. We discuss the respective details of these biases and their normative implications for the discipline. (shrink)

This research was carried out in a classroom of the center of comprehensive family development in the municipality of Durango, Mexico. The center trains young people in making crafts. From these young people, 13 teenage mothers ages 15-23, all victims of abuse as children, were selected. With this group, we implemented the philosophical-pedagogical proposal called "Philosophy for children and teenagers," first developed by the American philosopher Matthew Lipman. The main goal was to form a "community of inquiry," where through philosophical (...) dialogue the participants developed cognitive skills, allowing them to share, in an ethical and moral dialogue, their life experiences within a democratic setting. The results were demonstrated through the disclosures made by the participants during the philosophical dialogues, We also recorded the cognitive abilities detected over 20 sessions. We contrast the results with the theories to demonstrate the participants’ cognitive changes. We also observed unexpected findings in other academic fields that facilitate ethical and moral thinking. (shrink)

This article is an edited transcript of the roundtable entitled “What is Philo-Performance?” that took place in Paris on 28 June 2014, within the framework of the “Theatre, Performance, Philosophy International Conference: Crossings and Transfers in Anglo-American Thought”. The conference was organized by Julien Alliot, Flore Garcin-Marrou, Liza Kharoubi and Anna Street from the LAPS, a French research group on performance philosophy.

This text seeks to introduce a question related to the place that philosophy occupies within the contemporary scene, thus opening a problematization regarding whether it can respond to the demands imposed on it by the present. In this regard, we seek to rethink the notion of philosophy from a standpoint that rescues its practical, material, and affective dimensions, making visible the transformative impulse that it can have with respect to the usual meanings associated with disciplinary production linked to the traditional (...) division between theory and practice, thus opening it to a dimension that recognizes the implicating (creative, interventional) role that philosophy has in the production of reality. (shrink)

Resumen Es muy conocida la opinión de Kant en relación con la inmoralidad del suicidio. De ahí que, muchos autores lo consideren como un prohibicionista absoluto. Sin embargo, no hay hasta el momento un análisis puntual sobre la definición metafísica-conceptual del suicidio en la teoría kantiana. En este artículo propongo entender el suicidio en Kant como una muerte física, total, autorreferencial, voluntaria e inmoral. Esta definición contrastará con la privación de la vida, la cual no implica inmoralidad. Al ser voluntarios, (...) tanto la privación de la vida, como el suicidio son actos racionales y entendibles a partir de las máximas de acción. La inmoralidad del suicidio sólo surgirá al considerar la primacía de las razones morales por encima de razones no morales.It is common knowledge theposition of Kant regarding the immorality of suicide. Several authors attribute him an absolutist-forbidden criterion. Nerveless, there is no extended analysis about the metaphysical-conceptual definition of suicide in Kantian theory. In this paper I hold that suicide in Kant can be defined asphysical death, full, self-referential, voluntary, and immoral. This definition conflicts with the definition of deprivation of life which is not immoral. As voluntarily acts, both suicide and deprivation of life are rational acts that can be understood as maxims of action. The immorality property of suicide is due to the primacy of moral over non-moral reasons. (shrink)

This paper investigates properties of \(\sigma \) -closed forcings which generate ultrafilters satisfying weak partition relations. The Ramsey degree of an ultrafilter \({\mathcal {U}}\) for _n_-tuples, denoted \(t({\mathcal {U}},n)\), is the smallest number _t_ such that given any \(l\ge 2\) and coloring \(c:[\omega ]^n\rightarrow l\), there is a member \(X\in {\mathcal {U}}\) such that the restriction of _c_ to \([X]^n\) has no more than _t_ colors. Many well-known \(\sigma \) -closed forcings are known to generate ultrafilters with finite Ramsey degrees, (...) but finding the precise degrees can sometimes prove elusive or quite involved, at best. In this paper, we utilize methods of topological Ramsey spaces to calculate Ramsey degrees of several classes of ultrafilters generated by \(\sigma \) -closed forcings. These include a hierarchy of forcings due to Laflamme which generate weakly Ramsey and weaker rapid p-points, forcings of Baumgartner and Taylor and of Blass and generalizations, and the collection of non-p-points generated by the forcings \({\mathcal {P}}(\omega ^k)/\mathrm {Fin}^{\otimes k}\). We provide a general approach to calculating the Ramsey degrees of these ultrafilters, obtaining new results as well as streamlined proofs of previously known results. In the second half of the paper, we calculate pseudointersection and tower numbers for these \(\sigma \) -closed forcings and their relationships with the classical pseudointersection number \({\mathfrak {p}}\). (shrink)

With the ascent of modern epidemiology in the Twentieth Century came a new standard model of prediction in public health and clinical medicine. In this article, we describe the structure of the model. The standard model uses epidemiological measures-most commonly, risk measures-to predict outcomes (prognosis) and effect sizes (treatment) in a patient population that can then be transformed into probabilities for individual patients. In the first step, a risk measure in a study population is generalized or extrapolated to a target (...) population. In the second step, the risk measure is particularized or transformed to yield probabilistic information relevant to a patient from the target population. Hence, we call the approach the Risk Generalization-Particularization (Risk GP) Model. There are serious problems at both stages, especially with the extent to which the required assumptions will hold and the extent to which we have evidence for the assumptions. Given that there are other models of prediction that use different assumptions, we should not inflexibly commit ourselves to one standard model. Instead, model pluralism should be standard in medical prediction. (shrink)

The 14th Conference of the International Network for Economic Method was held in Finland at the University of Helsinki, from 18th to 21st of August 2019. It was the second time the biannual...

We report on the simultaneous determination of complementary wave and particle aspects of light in a double-slit type “welcher-weg” experiment beyond the limitations set by Bohr’s Principle of Complementarity. Applying classical logic, we verify the presence of sharp interference in the single photon regime, while reliably maintaining the information about the particular pinhole through which each individual photon had passed. This experiment poses interesting questions on the validity of Complementarity in cases where measurements techniques that avoid Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and (...) quantum entanglement are employed. We further argue that the application of classical concepts of waves and particles as embodied in Complementarity leads to a logical inconsistency in the interpretation of this experiment. (shrink)

Resumen Este artículo tiene como objetivo analizar el debate filosófico entre Ernst Cassirer y Martin Heidegger en el periodo de entreguerras, a partir de su modo disímil de comprender la libertad del hombre como proceso de autoconfiguración del sujeto o Dasein. En primer lugar, se examinará la reinterpretación global de la filosofía kantiana por parte de ambos pensadores a la luz de sus proyectos filosóficos: en el caso de Cassirer, la filosofía de las formas simbólicas, en el de Heidegger, la (...) hermenéutica de la facticidad. En segundo lugar, se analizarán sus interpretaciones sobre el pensamiento estético de Friedrich Schiller, en el marco de sus reflexiones sobre la función del arte para la comprensión de la Selbstbildung. Ello permitirá iluminar un nuevo aspecto de esta disputa, así como determinar la distancia entre sus dos orientaciones filosóficas y políticas.This paper aims to analyze the philosophical debate between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger in the interwar period, starting from their dissimilar way of understanding human freedom as a process of selfconfiguration of the subject or Dasein. First, we will examine the global reinterpretation of Kantian philosophy by both thinkers in the light of their philosophical projects: in the case of Cassirer, the philosophy of symbolic forms, in the case of Heidegger, the hermeneutics of facticity. Second, their interpretations of the aesthetic thought of Friedrich Schiller will be analyzed, within the framework of their reflections on the function of art for the understanding of the Selbstbildung. This will illuminate a new aspect of this debate and determine the distance between their two philosophical and political orientations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:It Is Going to Be a Long Clinic DaySalvador Cruz-FloresIt was a routine neurology clinic day. I entered the room where one of the residents was seeing a patient that we will call Patty, a 32-year-old long-standing epilepsy patient. Patty was sitting in the chair with her husband by her side. She started screaming at me, complaining that she was tired of feeling sick and unable to do anything. (...) She had been in and out of emergency rooms with a variety of complaints, from passing out to dizziness with nausea and vomiting. She was visibly angry and started cursing me with direct expletives and blaming me for all her ailments.Her husband was quiet and, at times, would cover his face as if he was embarrassed. I felt an initial burst of anger. I felt my face getting red. I made a great effort to stay quiet, leaned on the exam table facing them, lowered my voice, and braced to take the barrage of insults that were coming my way. I had to make a strong conscious effort to control my emotions and let her vent. I felt that if I responded in kind, I would inflame the situation. Moreover, a resident and a student working with me that day were also present in the room, and I felt it was my duty to behave professionally, so I sat and tried to do active listening with the idea of offering solutions to her complaints. I am not sure how long the event lasted, but it seemed like an eternity. As she slowed down, I apologized for making her feel not cared for, repeated some of her complaints, and tried to offer solutions to them, but she would not have it and did not accept anything I said. She wanted to get her prescriptions and leave the clinic. I offered to have one of my colleagues do the follow-up as she really did not want to see me anymore.Patty is one of those patients that when you see the name in the schedule, you cringe and tell yourself, it is going to be a long clinic day. She could be in the group of patients who are considered very difficult. Before me, she had been seen by several other neurologists. They likely also preferred not to see her on the schedule because she is one of the 20–30% of patients that have a type of functional psychogenic disorder that becomes more complicated because of the coexistence of epileptic seizures along with non-epileptic psychogenic events. The latter is a more problematic event because it does not respond to pharmacological treatment and causes a lot of disability. The best way to establish whether an event is a true epileptic event or a non-epileptic psychogenic event is to do continuous electroencephalographic monitoring to capture as many events as possible on video. I tried different combinations of medications to no avail and with significant side effects. I tried to set her up for electroencephalogram home monitoring to tease the epileptic and psychogenic events apart. In truth, her social circumstances, insurance coverage, and economic situation made it impossible to do so. Every time she came to the clinic, she had a multitude of complaints, and she would ask for a medication to treat the problem. Any mention of the potential psychogenic nature of her problems would result in a defensive attitude "so you are saying I am crazy." We discussed multiple times the need to be careful with the medications and the potential bad side effects. I wanted to help her, but with every visit, there seemed to be a barrier, and the visit would end on bad terms. At least, that is how I felt. I was left every time, with a feeling of frustration. I believe that she left the clinic feeling the same. That day, I left the clinic upset and depressed. I tried to convince myself I had done all I could to help her. I just could not understand why this was the result.Several years have passed since I have seen Patty in the clinic. She certainly has not... (shrink)

Possible etiological factors of congenital malformations as well as of human trisomies are considered in the framework of the repressor hypothesis. In this approach gene expression is envisaged from the point of view of the functional variations of the total activation energy for normal gene expression in homeostatic equilibrium. We restrict our attention to variations of the total activation energy under the effect of temperature gradients. We discuss the evidence that hyperthermia may be an etiological factor for trisomies in humans.

The current predominant conception of human rights implies that human beings have objective intrinsic value. In this paper, we defend that there is no satisfactory justification of this claim. In spite of the great variety of theories aimed at explaining objective intrinsic value, all of them share one common problematic feature: they pass from a non-evaluative proposition to an evaluative proposition by asserting that a certain entity has intrinsic value in virtue of having certain non-evaluative features. This is a step (...) that cannot be justified. In light of this negative result, we offer a radically different approach to intrinsic value. Our proposal reinterprets the claim that human beings have intrinsic value in terms of a commitment to value human beings intrinsically. This commitment provides both objective practical reasons for, and a rational explanation of, efforts aimed at defending and promoting human rights, without need to appeal to the existence of objective intrinsic value. (shrink)

Inuit customs establish that food must be shared with the community. For many Inuit, income from wage-work feeds back into the subsistence economy, as money is needed to buy snowmobiles, gas, or rifles to practice harvesting activities. In the last decade, both scholars and journalists have noted that the commercialization of traditional foods through Facebook is a current controversy among Inuit. This article will discuss this issue contrasting technological essentialism and postphenomenology. While technological essentialism establishes, from a Heideggerian perspective, that (...) technology transforms reality into pure resource, postphenomenology focuses on describing how technology helps to shape the relations between humans and the world. This article will propose that the commercialization of country foods reflects Facebook’s multistability—that is, the fact that any given technology can present the world in multiple ways. (shrink)

This paper seeks to highlight the methodological contributions developed by Michel Foucault in regard to a critical history. We propose a tour through various passages of the thinker´s work, with the aim of bashing the main elements that allegedly make up his method. From this exercise we maintain that, in order to record the existence of a Foucauldian method, it is necessary to reproblematize this notion beyond the displacements around the well-known three moments of his work -archeological/genealogical/ethical-, reorienting the look (...) towards the critical tension possible to peer around the unique place that occupies the question of history in his work. The novelty of our proposal is to point out that, beyond the well-known substantial contributions foreshadowed around Foucault's conceptual rig, his work must be understood as an eminently practical historical-philosophical methodology, aimed at disarticulating the canonical principles that legitimize knowledge produced by the historiographic method, thus opening a region of indiscernibility and rarity in historical practice that, we maintain, can be thought of in the vicinity of a parahistory. In sum, we propose the thesis that the displacement in Foucault's work takes on a singular power from the introduction of a strategic artifice ― anonymous ―, aimed at forcing a fold of history on itself, showing how historiographical plots actively tax to sustain and legitimize the regimes of knowledge, power and truth present in them. (shrink)

In this document, the objective is to identify organisational management under an approach that includes Risk Prevention in the College of Sciences and Humanities (CCH) of the Universidad Juárez del Estado de Durango (UJED), emphasising the actions and priority of offering certainty to students and their families, extending the commitment to risk-free facilities and contexts.

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a process for managing construction project information in such a way as to provide a basis for enhanced decision-making and for collaboration in a construction supply chain. One impediment to the uptake of BIM is the limited interoperability of different BIM systems. To overcome this problem, a set of Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) has been proposed as a standard for the construction industry. Building on IFC, the ifcOWL ontology was developed in order to facilitate representation (...) of building data in a consistent fashion across the Web by using the Web Ontology Language (OWL). This study presents a critical analysis of the ifcOWL ontology and of the associated interoperability issues. It shows how these issues can be resolved by using Basic Formal Ontology (ISO/IEC 21838-2) as top-level architecture. A set of competency questions is used as the basis for comparison of the original ifcOWL with the enhanced ontology, and the latter is used to align with a second ontology – the ontology for building intelligent environments (DOGONT) – in order to demonstrate the added value derived from BFO by showing how querying the enhanced ifcOWL yields useful additional information. (shrink)

The nature of the climatic response to solar variability is assessed over a long-time scale, as in the case of the periodicity of 1500 years (Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle). For this reason it is important to perform an analysis to detect the existence of this periodicity in the Holocene and the possible influence of the sun on this periodicity. For this purpose, the method of Wavelet analysis in time-frequency was used. The information of oxygen isotopes (δ18O) and Berilium-10 (10Be) at the North (...) Pole reveals a periodicity of approximately 1000 years, whereas at the South Pole it shows the existence of a periodicity of about 1500 years. The comparison of the information of δ18O and 10Be suggests a possible solar influence on the appearance of these periodicities. Possibly the current global warming is due to Dansgaard-Oescher cycle and not by anthropogenic effects. (shrink)

Both the commonsensical and leading theoretical accounts of entrepreneurship, democracy, and solidarity fail to describe adequately entrepreneurial, democratic, and solidarity?building practices. These accounts are inadequate because they assume a faulty description of human being. In this article we develop an interpretation of entrepreneurship, democratic action, and solidarity?building that relies on understanding human beings as neither primarily thinking nor desiring but as skillful beings. Western human beings are at their best when they are engaged in producing large?scale cultural or historical changes (...) in the way people and things are dealt with. The three domains of human activity where these historical changes are most clearly accomplished are entrepreneurship, democratic action, and solidarity. Section I, guided by a roughly Kuhnian notion of holding on to an anomaly until it re?gestalts the way we see things, offers a general interpretation of how skillful human beings open up new worlds by changing their shared background practices in three ways: reconfiguring, which makes a marginal practice central; cross?appropriation, in which one domain of practices takes over useful practices from another domain; and articulating, whereby dispersed or confused practices are brought into clearer focus. An entrepreneur creates a product which reconfigures the practices. This interpretation of entrepreneurial skills is contrasted with current accounts that overlook ehtrepreneurship to concentrate on instrumental or theoretical models of business activities. Section II claims that the most exemplary kind of political action in a liberal democracy is that of political action groups. Such groups produce a change in a nation's background practices through a kind of speaking that leads to massive cross?appropriation. We describe Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and suggest that it both satisfies the requirements for genuine democratic action that we have established in our examination of other views and lacks their disadvantages. We conclude that the relatively detached action suggested by current theories of liberal democracy fail to do justice to democratic practice. The final section argues that those who claim that a single highest value or procedure provides a source of solidarity that satisfies all the competing interests in a multi?cultural nation always arrive at a solidarity that is too thin to provide for the serious sort of commitments that one would be willing to die for. We propose that solidarity in multi?cultural states implies commitment to a set of thick values, and that when one realizes that these thick values construct one's identity one is willing to die for them. While political action concerns itself with ordering values, solidarity involves the cultivation of them in such a way that no ordering of them matters. But solidarity is not to be understood as a subjective feeling. It is rather the experience of a group identity, a ?we?, that sees things and deals with things in terms of shared concerns. This ?we? comes to recognize itself when the actions it engages in transform it. The paradigmatic action that transforms such a ?we? occurs when a culture figure articulates some forgotten concern or value. As in the cases of entrepreneurship and democratic action, a culture figure cultivates solidarity by changing the background practices in a historical manner. It is concluded that traditional theoretical accounts, by overlooking the primacy of involved skillful activities and the importance of background change, fail to capture the source, the function, and the point of entrepreneurship, liberal democracy, and solidarity. (shrink)

The contribution of roots to the biology of the whole plant is being reevaluated in the light of classical and recent findings. In addition to their role in water and nutrient uptake and in symbiotic associations, plant roots also synthesize a remarkable variety of secondary metabolites. These chemicals, many of which are used as pharmaceuticals, agrichemicals, flavors, dyes, or fragrances, may help the plant cope with biotic and abiotic stress. Root cultures are being used as experimental systems to explore both (...) root‐specific secondary metabolites and their biological significance. They may also provide future systems for commercial production of plant specialty chemicals. (shrink)

Introduction to the Inaugural Issue of the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics.

Two aspects of the chromatin repeat length (r t) are discussed: (i) Why is r t, longer for slowly dividing cells than in rapidly dividing cells?, and (ii) Why is the temporal evolution of r ta decreasing function of time (t) in mammalian cortical neurons, whereas it is an increasing function of t for granule cells around the time of birth? These questions are discussed in terms of a hypothesis which assumes a correlation between deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) packaging, transcription, and (...) replication. (shrink)

_Retraces the history of postmodern philosophy and proposes solutions to overcome its impasses._.

Research in instrumental stakeholder theory often discusses the benefits of a stakeholder strategy that balances all stakeholders’ interests as if the firm’s managers were not constrained much in choosing a strategy. Yet, through their value appropriation behavior, stakeholders with high bargaining power can significantly constrain managers’ choices. Our objective is, therefore, to understand when powerful stakeholders give managers the latitude to balance all stakeholders’ interests, rather than forcing them to satisfy primarily their own interests. Building on enlightened self-interest and the (...) justice literature, we identify five motivational drivers that help explain powerful stakeholders’ value appropriation behavior. We next explore the endogenous relationship between the stakeholder strategy adopted by the firm and its effect on powerful stakeholders’ value appropriation behavior. This article complements instrumental stakeholder theory by looking at powerful stakeholders’ motivation to exercise their bargaining power, and in so doing brings powerful stakeholders’ moral responsibility in the treatment of weak stakeholders to the forefront. (shrink)

El artículo ofrece una reflexión epistemológica sobre el trabajo educativo en la Universidad cubana, a partir de la sistematización de aspectos teóricos abordados por diferentes autores. Se presenta un estudio lógico e histórico apoyado en la selección de materiales, documentos, resoluciones, programas que rigen la política educacional del país, con el objetivo de reflexionar sobre las experiencias del trabajo educativo en la Educación Médica Superior en Cuba. The article provides an epistemological reflection on the educational work in the Cuban University (...) from the systematization of theoretical issues raised by different authors. A logical and historical study is presented supported by the selection of materials, documents, resolutions, programs governing the educational policy of the country in order to reflect on the educational work experiences developed in Higher Medical Education in Cuba. (shrink)

I discuss the two different responses from the angiosperms to the specific molecular mechanisms of the tumor-inducing agent contained in the bacteriumAgrobacterium tumefaciens. This is done in terms of the collective variables for expressing genetic response to a continuously varying supply of energy from metabolic pathways. We are led to the conjecture that the expression of the recessive oncogenes may not be restricted to humans (retinoblastoma and osteosarcoma), but may also occur in plants (crown gall), and be expressed through a (...) heat-shock. (shrink)

We formulate the following hypothesis: Life's origin may have occurred during the lower Archaean at a time when the environmental temperature was higher than it is at present. Preliminary consequences of this hypothesis are studied from the point of view of molecular evolution. We restrict our attention to implications regarding the genetic code. We conclude that alternative assignment of termination codons may be understood in terms of: (a) the elevated temperatures to which the progenote may initially have been exposed; and (...) (b) the subsequent response of its genome to the opportunity provided by the eventual loss of hyperthermal genetic expression during a thermal transition (TT) period, which was triggered off by the evolution of the dynamic Earth. (shrink)