The “universality” of critical phenomena is much discussed in philosophy of scientific explanation, idealizations and philosophy of physics. Lange and Reutlinger recently opposed Batterman concerning the role of some deliberate distortions in unifying a large class of phenomena, regardless of microscopic constitution. They argue for an essential explanatory role for “commonalities” rather than that of idealizations. Building on Batterman's insight, this article aims to show that assessing the differences between the universality of critical phenomena and two paradigmatic cases of “commonality (...) strategy”—the ideal gas model and the harmonic oscillator model—is necessary to avoid the objections raised by Lange and Reutlinger. Taking these universal explanations as benchmarks for critical phenomena reveals the importance of the different roles played by analogies underlying the use of the models. A special combination of physical and formal analogies allows one to explain the epistemic autonomy of the universality of critical phenomena through an explicative loop. (shrink)

El presente artículo, después de exponer en líneas generales la filosofía de Quentin Meillassoux, realiza una lectura política de la misma, intentando derivar de su ontología, su gnoseología y su ética factiales una política fundamentada en los elementos esenciales de su filosofía de la contingencia, en especial sus conceptos de Gran Afuera y de Hipercaos, e intenta demostrar su importancia para un nuevo paradigma político.

A central goal of the scientific endeavor is to explain phenomena. Scientists often attempt to explain a phenomenon by way of representing it in some manner—such as with mathematical equations, models, or theory—which allows for an explanation of the phenomenon under investigation. However, in developing scientific representations, scientists typically deploy simplifications and idealizations. As a result, scientific representations provide only partial, and often distorted, accounts of the phenomenon in question. Philosophers of science have analyzed the nature and function of how (...) scientists construct representations, deploy idealizations, and provide explanations. As such, our aim in this special issue is to bring these three pillars of research into closer contact with the contributions to it focusing on three main themes. -/- The first set of papers, Alan Baker (2021) and Marc Lange (2021), address mathematical explanations in science. Baker (2021), a proponent of mathematical Platonism, examines its capacity to evade the critique that the so-called Enhanced Indispensability Argument is circular. Lange (2021) examines distinctively mathematical explanations, arguing that neither Platonism nor representationalism are successful paths, and instead argues in favor of Aristotelian realism. A second theme emerging from the papers in this special issue is the impact that various conceptualizations of idealization have on our abilities to offer scientific explanations, to pro- duce an analysis of what explanations are or should be, and to understand scientific representation. Peter Tan (2021) suggests amending inferentialist accounts of scientific representation to account for inconsistent idealizations. Michael Strevens (2021) advocates a view wherein the introduction of idealizations into a model is legitimate so long as it pertains to non-difference-making factors, arguing for a logical reading of the notion of difference-making. Natalia Carrillo and Tarja Knuuttila (2022) offer an alternative account to the idealization-as-distortion view, emphasizing instead the holistic nature of idealization. -/- Finally, contributions by Carrillo and Knuuttila (2022), Terzian (2021), Valente (2021), and Rodriguez (2021) illustrate how issues regarding idealization, representation, and explanation are applied to specific contexts and across various sciences. Carrillo and Knuuttila (2022) examine conceptions of idealization in the context of models of the nerve impulse. Giulia Terzian (2021) extends the discussion of idealizations to the context of generative linguistics. Giovanni Valente (2021) examines how idealizations and evaluations of accurate representation impact capacities to explain phenomena in the context of statistical thermodynamics. Quentin Rodriguez (2021) examines the role of idealizations and analogies in various strategies to explain critical phenomena. -/- In what follows, we offer a brief overview of important philosophical issues connected to representation, idealization, and explanation in science. We then provide short summaries of the eight papers in this special issue. (shrink)

Natural modalities are often analysed from an abstract point of view where they are associated with putative laws of nature. However, the way possibilities are represented in physics is more complex. Lagrangian mechanics, for instance, involves two different layers of modalities: kinematical and dynamical possibilities. This paper examines the status of these two layers, both in the classical and quantum case. The quantum case is particularly problematic: we identify four possible interpretive options. The upshot is that a close inspection of (...) the way possibilities are represented in physics could lead to new ways of thinking about natural modalities. (shrink)

This original article outlines a theoretical path and posterior critical analysis regarding two relevant matters in modern nursing: patterns of knowing in nursing and commodification contexts in contemporary health systems. The aim of our manuscript is to examine the development of basic and contextual nursing knowledge in commodified contexts. For this purpose, we outline a discussion and reflexive dialogue based on a literature search and our clinical experience. To lay the foundation for an informed discussion, we conducted a literature search (...) and selected relevant articles in English, Spanish, and Portuguese that included contents on patterns of knowing, commodification, and nursing published from 1978 to 2017. Globalization, commodification, and austerity measures seem to have negative effects on nursing. Work conditions are worsening, deteriorating nurse–patient relationships, and limiting reflection on practice. Nurses must develop knowledge to challenge and participate in institutional organization and public health policies. Development of nursing knowledge may be difficult to achieve in commodified environments. Consequently, therapeutic care relationships, healthcare services, and nurses' own health are compromised. However, by obtaining organizational, sociopolitical, and emancipatory knowledge, nurses can use strategies to adapt to or resist commodified contexts while constructing basic knowledge. (shrink)

The commodification of health care, particularly primary care, presents challenges to care and knowledge development. The purpose of this study is to examine how nurses perceive and develop their knowledge in a commodified context. A mixed‐methods study was conducted that included a closed‐question survey and in‐depth interviews with nurses in public primary care in Catalonia. There were 104 valid responses to the questionnaire and 10 in‐depth interviews. The main findings of the survey were related to workload and limited time for (...) nursing care. Six themes emerged from the in‐depth interviews: (1) limited time for nursing, (2) feelings of burnout, (3) awareness of patient and family satisfaction, (4) organizational factors that favor nurses' needs, (5) organizational factors that hinder nurses' needs, and finally (6) public administration requirements. Participants perceive excessive workload and time constraints and feel that this affects their nursing care and their physical and mental health. However, nurses purposefully use knowledge patterns to cope with the problems associated with commodification. Nurses have multidimensional, contextualized, and integrated knowledge that allows them to optimize their care based on the needs of their patients. This research examines many challenges related to nursing practice and the nursing discipline and opens the door for further research that encompasses all areas of nursing. (shrink)

Este trabajo ha sido seleccionado para la V Olimpiada de Filosofía queorganiza FICUM en la modalidad de secundaria y bachillerato, para promocionar la filosofía entre los jóvenes.

A la hora de plantearse la realización de actividades relacionadas con la enseñanza de los aspectos astronómicos, se presentan problemas prácticos evidentes que no ayudan a desarrollar una adecuada actividad científica escolar. Las TIC son un instrumento de gran utilidad para sortear estas dificultades, dado que permiten reproducir los fenómenos celestes y experimentar con ellos. El objetivo de este artículo es, en concreto, reflexionar sobre la utilidad de las simulaciones informáticas para la enseñanza de los aspectos histórico-astronómicos. Como muestra de (...) sus posibilidades se presentan simulaciones que pueden realizarse para visualizar diversos fenómenos astronómicos descubiertos por Galileo Galilei. (shrink)

SummaryHuman height is a heritable trait that is known to be influenced by environmental factors and general standard of living. Individual and population stature is correlated with health, education and economic achievement. Strong sexual selection pressures for stature have been observed in multiple diverse populations, however; there is significant global variance in gender equality and prohibitions on female mate selection. This paper explores the contribution of general standard of living and gender inequality to the variance in global female population heights. (...) Female population heights of 96 nations were culled from previously published sources and public access databases. Factor analysis with United Nations international data on education rates, life expectancy, incomes, maternal and childhood mortality rates, ratios of gender participation in education and politics, the Human Development Index and the Gender Inequality Index was run. Results indicate that population heights vary more closely with gender inequality than with population health, income or education. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl intentó excluir supuestos metafísicos y ajustarse a lo dado en la experiencia inmediata, con el fin de buscar una verdad primera e indubitable sobre la cual basar verdades ulteriores, teóricas. Pero, en la segunda etapa de su pensamiento, él abandonó ese camino para usar, sin tematizarlo, el supuesto subjetivista de René Descartes. Para reconducir la fenomenología al proyecto original de ir a las cosas mismas, eliminando supuestos y ateniéndose a la experiencia inmediata, el lósofo español Antonio González Fernández (...) propone la praxeología. Esta aproximación reemplaza el concepto de sujeto, que considera al ser humano como una cosa pensante, por el de persona, entendida como acto encarnado. Esta definición antropológica, coherente con la visión teológica del ser humano como imagen y semejanza de Dios, posibilita orientaciones éticas de las acciones en pro de la descosificación y dignificación del ser humano y el cuidado de la naturaleza. (shrink)

Bernardo de Monteagudo en su texto: Diálogo entre Atahualpa y Fernando VII en los Campos Eliseos, parte de una crítica a las atrocidades llevadas a cabo por los españoles contra los americanos en la Conquista –atrocidades que sobrepasan las llevadas a cabo por Napoleón contra Fernando VII–, para proponer una integración social y cultural que movilice a los pueblos latinoamericanos a la independencia del colonialismo español. Sin embargo, su propuesta no reivindica al indígena, sino que su imagen es usada por (...) el escritor como símbolo de una Latinoamérica que se limita a los criollos. Es decir, el indígena quedará, luego de las independencias latinoamericanas, en una situación similar a la colonial, sólo que ahora bajo el dominio de los criollos. De igual manera, esto nos puede suceder en nuestra realidad bogotana: pensar que Latinoamérica, y especialmente Colombia, se reduce a los Andes, a las ciudades del interior, excluyendo así al Caribe. (shrink)

Regarding the epistemological borderlines between science and philosophy, this article approaches the human mind and ethics from biological and philosophical theories. For this purpose, the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection provides a scientific foundation to understand the human mind and ethics. However, not only Charles Darwin has studied mental faculties and ethics, this is also a topic researched by eminent contemporary paleontologists and biologists. Prior to modern biology, going back to Greek philosophy, philosophers have traditionally studied the human (...) mind and ethics, separating human beings and the rest of nature ontologically. Following modern biology, the philosopher Hans Jonas has developed a philosophical biology from the perspective of hermeneutical phenomenology to understand life. With the help of his hermeneutical phenomenology, Jonas has presented an ontological theory of organism-metabolism to understand the phenomenon of life from simple living beings to the human mind in relation to nature, based on the body. Recently, the evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala has proposed a coherent scientific and philosophical theory about biological and cultural roots for ethics, considering the evolution of human mental and intellectual capacities and the three conditions for ethical behavior as a part of human intellectual capacity, which scientifically complements and informs Hans Jonas’s philosophical biology and ethics of responsibility. (shrink)

Children with complex communication needs (CCN) regularly have barriers to express and discuss emotions, and have fewer opportunities to participate in emotional conversations. The study explores and analyzes the changes after a training program focused on offering an interactive home learning environment that encouraged and modeled emotion-related conversations between a parent and a child with CCN within storybook-reading contexts. An observational design (nomothetic/follow-up/multidimensional) was used to explore and analyze the changes in the communicative interaction around emotions between mother-child. Augmentative and (...) alternative communication (AAC) technologies were used to provide the child access to emotion-related vocabulary. The training program resulted in the mother providing more opportunities to engage her child in emotional conversations, suggesting that when opportunities and resources to talk about emotions were promoted, the child showed more engagement in emotion-related conversations using his AAC system. The mother–child communicative patterns and behavioral relationships observed during the phases are also presented. This case study illustrates the importance of a primary communication partners’ role in facilitating emotional conversations, and the promising efficacy of a training program implemented in a storybook interactive learning environment to promote conversations about emotion-related events while encouraging children with CCN to learn, explore, express, and discuss emotions. (shrink)

Although many philosophers espouse anti-realism, the only sustained arguments for the position are due to Michael Dummett and Hilary Putnam. Gardiner's unpretentious style and lucid organization make sense of Dummett's and Putnam's discourse.

In some small-scale societies, a sexual division of labor is common. For subadult hunter-gatherers, the onset of this division dates to middle childhood and the start of puberty; however, there is apparently no physiological explanation for this timing. The present study uses an experimental approach to evaluate possible energetic differences by sex in gathering-related activities. The energetic cost of gathering-related activities was measured in a sample of 42 subjects of both sexes aged between 8 and 14 years. Body mass and (...) other anthropometric variables were also recorded. Our results show that the energetic differences in the simulated gathering activities depend only on body mass. Both sexes expend a similar amount of energy during locomotion activities related to gathering. Discarding the energetic factor, the sexual division of tasks may be explained as an adaptation to acquire the skills needed to undertake the complex activities required during adulthood as early as possible. Carrying out gathering activities during childhood and adolescence could be favored by the growth and development cycles of Homo sapiens. Moreover, if most of the energetic costs of gathering activities depend on body mass, the delayed growth in humans relative to other primates allows subadults to practice these tasks for longer periods, and to become better at performing them. In fact, this strategy could enable them to acquire adults’ complex skills at a low energetic cost that can be easily subsidized by other members of the group. (shrink)

Antonio Caso, “La existencia como economía y como caridad” (1916). Translated with Jose G. Rodriguez Jr. as “Existence as Economy and as Charity,” in 20th Century Mexican Philosophy: Essential Readings, eds. Carlos Alberto Sánchez and Robert Eli Sanchez, Jr. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).

The paper clarifies the sense of remark 202 of Wittgenstein's *Philosophical Investigations* with respect to its relation to the private language argument. It argues, against what some have maintained, that remark 202 is not meant to reject the possibility of a private language as this is defined in remark 243.

El fraile capuchino Antonio de Fuentelapeña escribió en 1676 El ente dilucidado, obra de filosofía escolástica en la que su autor pretende demostrar la existencia de duendes. Sin embargo, la crítica posterior juzgó como extravagancia y locura la obra, sin reparar en que sus argumentos escolásticos analizaron muchos temas filosóficos de extrema importancia, como la racionalidad de los animales, tan en boga hoy día gracias al estudio de la conducta animal comparada, la Etología.

The final chapter of the book is devoted to the question of the epistemological status of holistic pragmatism itself. White thinks of it as a thesis, a statement that may have been originally a very generalized description of the methods of science but has become normative. Yet, in its own spirit, that does not make i t immune to correction. Still, as already noted, one is disinclined to modify or reject this sort of statement. White points out, correctly, that our (...) resistance t o reject or modify it is analogous to the reluctance of 19 th century physicists t o reject or modify the law of the conservation of energy. That law was “pinned down” but became later “unpinned”; the same may happen to holistic pragmatism. Here again, as so many times in this little book, one wants to thank its author for raising questions. Indeed the book as a whole is a challenge, a challenge to do philosophy (of culture), to fulfill its ambition. (shrink)

Para San Juan de Ávila la salvación de las almas es el principal negocio de Dios que estará unido, dada su situación histórica, a la reforma de la Iglesia y de los pastores. La Iglesia y el sacramento del orden, tienen un origen y una realización concomitante, obran simultáneamente la salvación, ninguno de ellos es consecuencia del otro sino que ambos son en Cristo. El objetivo de este artículo es presentar la identidad eclesial del sacramento del orden desde la doctrina (...) de San Juan de Ávila. Las consecuencias de esta reflexión sobre la identidad eclesial del sacerdocio nos llevará a comprender la profundidad de la doctrina avilista y saber enriquecer la actual reflexión teológica. (shrink)

The consideration of racial differences in the biology of disease and treatment options is a hallmark of modern medicine. However, this time-honored medical tradition has no scientific basis, and the premise itself, that is, the existence of biological differences between the commonly known races, is false inasmuch as races are only sociocultural constructions. It is time to rid medical research of the highly damaging exercise of searching for supposed racial differences in the biological manifestations of disease. The practice not only (...) condoned but required by the National Institutes of Health of utilizing racial identification as a demographic characteristic with assumed biological implications is at best badly flawed, and at worst unintentionally contributes to perpetuating the fallacy of natural differences between persons of different skin color, which has been used in the past to advance the cause of racial discrimination. (shrink)