Este ensayo se propone mirar las evoluciones sociales y políticas de la región andina, inscritas en las demandas por procesos constituyentes y la elaboración de nuevas constituciones en Ecuador y Bolivia, uno de cuyos aportes profundos está en que ambas recuperan el concepto, de los pueblos indígena..

Nowadays, the quality standards of higher education institutions pay special attention to the performance and evaluation of the students. Then, having a complete academic record of each student, such as number of attempts, average grade and so on, plays a key role. In this context, the existence of missing data, which can happen for different reasons, leads to affect adversely interesting future analysis. Therefore, the use of imputation techniques is presented as a helpful tool to estimate the value of (...) missing data. This work deals with the academic records of engineering students, in which imputation techniques are applied. More specifically, it is assessed and compared to the performance of the multivariate imputation by chained equations methodology, the adaptive assignation algorithm based on multivariate adaptive regression splines and a hybridization based on self-organisation maps with Mahalanobis distances and AAA algorithm. The results show that proposed methods obtain successfully results regardless the number of missing values, in general terms. (shrink)

The internationalization of professional practices and the export of western technology and higher education are accompanied by a need to establish international standards of ethics across different professions. This pioneering and provocative group of essays constitutes essential reading for those interested in understanding, formulating, and teaching ethical standards for professions in an international and particularly cross-cultural context.

Notions of research quality are contextual in many respects: they vary between fields of research, between review contexts and between policy contexts. Yet, the role of these co-existing notions in research, and in research policy, is poorly understood. In this paper we offer a novel framework to study and understand research quality across three key dimensions. First, we distinguish between quality notions that originate in research fields and in research policy spaces. Second, drawing on existing studies, we identify three attributes (...) considered important for ‘good research’: its originality/novelty, plausibility/reliability, and value or usefulness. Third, we identify five different sites where notions of research quality emerge, are contested and institutionalised: researchers themselves, knowledge communities, research organisations, funding agencies and national policy arenas. We argue that the framework helps us understand processes and mechanisms through which ‘good research’ is recognised as well as tensions arising from the co-existence of conflicting quality notions. (shrink)

본 연구는 칸트의 선험철학에 대한 체계론적 방법론으로 ‘사이로서의 형식’을 제안한다. 요컨대 사이로서의 형식은 규정들의 병존 관계에 대한 반성을 유기적으로 수행할 수 있는 사유 조건이다. 사이로서의 형식은 규정 관계들의 간격을 통일성 있게 반성할 (reflektierend) 수 있다는 점에서 하나의 ‘인식원리’로 작용한다. 사이성 형식을 매개로 칸 트의 주요 개념들이 임의적 간극을 형성하는 가운데 ‘공존’에 관한 규정문제가 앎의 인식 론적 지평에서 재고되고 숙고될 수 있다. 구체적으로 본 연구는 ‘칸트의 사이와 공존’을 불일치 개념들의 사이성 속에서 논한다. 칸트의 주요 철학 개념들 간에 환치될 수 없는 규정들의 (...) 경계들을 찾아, 그 사이에 ‘공존’의 의미를 체계론적으로 재사유한다. 첫 번째로 다룰 개념들은 칸트의 1770년 『교수 취임논문』에서의 ‘감성계’와 ‘지성계’의 사이성이다. 이 두 규정항들의 불일치하는 지점들 을 분석하여, 양자의 벌어진 거리 속에 공존의 가능 조건들을 반성한다. 다음으로 칸트의 ‘형이상학’과 ‘순수이성’ 간의 사이성과 공존에 관해 논구한다. 『순수이성비판』을 토대로 두 규정항들의 간극을 분석하고, 그 불일치의 사이에서 공동체 앎에 관한 인식론적 의미를 반추한다. 마지막은 ‘선험철학’과 ‘아프리오리’의 불일치와 공존이다. 마찬가지로 『순수이 성비판』에 기반하여 양자의 사이성을 고찰하고 공존의 현대적 의미를 재확립한다. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore the evolving discussion surrounding vulnerability and flourishing. This conversation has gained significant relevance in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and amid global uncertainties, including the effects of violence and war-trauma. The central idea here is to reconsider vulnerability and flourishing not simply as universal experiences tied to one's own humanity and social context, but rather as co-existing, interdependent, and contingent aspects of human existence. Without proposing that human flourishing is conditioned (...) by vulnerability, this perspective seeks to challenge the notion that vulnerability and flourishing are fundamentally separate. The following discussion will not only examine vulnerability and flourishing as theoretical concepts but will also address their practical significance as integral components of the human experience, and how they intersect in a real-life situation. It's important to note that both vulnerability and flourishing are influenced by specific contexts and circumstances, including personal, social, economic and cultural factors. In the course of this discussion, I will provide examples to illustrate these points. The first section will focus on vulnerability, while the second will delve into the concept of flourishing from a Christian perspective, drawing on Miroslav Volf's ideas about a flourishing life. (shrink)

Three studies examined the co-existence of natural and supernatural explanations for illness and disease transmission, from a developmental perspective. The participants (5-, 7-, 11-, and 15-year-olds and adults; N = 366) were drawn from 2 Sesotho-speaking South African communities, where Western biomedical and traditional healing frameworks were both available. Results indicated that, although biological explanations for illness were endorsed at high levels, witchcraft was also often endorsed. More important, bewitchment explanations were neither the result of ignorance nor replaced by (...) biological explanations. Instead, both natural and supernatural explanations were used to explain the same phenomena, and bewitchment explanations were highest among adults. Taken together, these data provide insight into how diverse, culturally constructed belief systems about illness co-exist across development. (shrink)

In this contribution, the author argues that there are in our European tradition two fundamental conceptions of politics since the French Revolution. We can call them the politics as the art of co-existence, and the politics of dénouement. Both conceptions also have a very different stance towards the traditional religions: for the first one mentioned freedom of religion is constitutive, for the second one religion must serve the state or can even be made redundant. Paradigmatic in this respect was (...) the communist treatment of religion as a relic of the past that will disappear when historic reason makes our society transparant . Here politics transforms in a quasi-eschatological political religion. In the twientieth century neo-marxist philosophers say farewell to this kind of politics and begin to rediscover religious inheritances and theological motives. Today two other positions towards religions are noticeable: the utilitaristic reductionist treatment of religion as a need , and ‘Enlightment fundamentalism’ which continues the rationalist communist conception of religion as a relic of the past. The author criticises both tendencies, and defends a ‘politics without dénouement’ which correspondents to a ‘religion without guarantee’. In closing the author argues that the recent populist politics either dream of a new alliance between religion and/or ‘culture’ and the state, or – in a strange inversion of the multicultural ideals of the nineties – promote a purely polemical identity against an ‘alien’ religion, i.c. Islam. Here the author claims that both tendencies fail to recognize the real nature of the new problems. (shrink)

In this contribution, the author argues that there are in our European tradition two fundamental conceptions of politics since the French Revolution. We can call them the politics as the art of co-existence, and the politics of dénouement. Both conceptions also have a very different stance towards the traditional religions: for the first one mentioned freedom of religion is constitutive, for the second one religion must serve the state or can even be made redundant. Paradigmatic in this respect was (...) the communist treatment of religion as a relic of the past that will disappear when historic reason makes our society transparant. Here politics transforms in a quasi-eschatological political religion. In the twientieth century neo-marxist philosophers say farewell to this kind of politics and begin to rediscover religious inheritances and theological motives. Today two other positions towards religions are noticeable: the utilitaristic reductionist treatment of religion as a need, and ‘Enlightment fundamentalism’ which continues the rationalist communist conception of religion as a relic of the past. The author criticises both tendencies, and defends a ‘politics without dénouement’ which correspondents to a ‘religion without guarantee’. In closing the author argues that the recent populist politics either dream of a new alliance between religion and/or ‘culture’ and the state, or – in a strange inversion of the multicultural ideals of the nineties – promote a purely polemical identity against an ‘alien’ religion, i.c. Islam. Here the author claims that both tendencies fail to recognize the real nature of the new problems. (shrink)

Every year, the Vietnamese people reportedly burned about 50,000 tons of joss papers, which took the form of not only bank notes, but iPhones, cars, clothes, even housekeepers, in hope of pleasing the dead. The practice was mistakenly attributed to traditional Buddhist teachings but originated in fact from China, which most Vietnamese were not aware of. In other aspects of life, there were many similar examples of Vietnamese so ready and comfortable with adding new norms, values, and beliefs, even contradictory (...) ones, to their culture. This phenomenon, dubbed “cultural additivity”, prompted us to study the co-existence, interaction, and influences among core values and norms of the Three Teachings –Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism–as shown through Vietnamese folktales. By applying Bayesian logistic regression, we evaluated the possibility of whether the key message of a story was dominated by a religion (dependent variables), as affected by the appearance of values and anti-values pertaining to the Three Teachings in the story (independent variables). Our main findings included the existence of the cultural additivity of Confucian and Taoist values. More specifically, empirical results showed that the interaction or addition of the values of Taoism and Confucianism in folktales together helped predict whether the key message of a story was about Confucianism, β{VT ⋅ VC} = 0.86. Meanwhile, there was no such statistical tendency for Buddhism. The results lead to a number of important implications. First, this showed the dominance of Confucianism because the fact that Confucian and Taoist values appeared together in a story led to the story’s key message dominated by Confucianism. Thus, it presented the evidence of Confucian dominance and against liberal interpretations of the concept of the Common Roots of Three Religions (“tam giáo đồng nguyên”) as religious unification or unicity. Second, the concept of “cultural additivity” could help explain many interesting socio-cultural phenomena, namely the absence of religious intolerance and extremism in the Vietnamese society, outrageous cases of sophistry in education, the low productivity in creative endeavors like science and technology, the misleading branding strategy in business. We are aware that our results are only preliminary and more studies, both theoretical and empirical, must be carried out to give a full account of the explanatory reach of “cultural additivity”. (shrink)

This is the editorial for the special issue 'Concord, Conflict and Co-existence: Religion and Society in the Middle East and North Africa'.

Journal of Chinese Philosophy, EarlyView.

Dozens of articles have addressed the challenge that gambles having undefined expectation pose for decision theory. This paper makes two contributions. The first is incremental: we evolve Colyvan's ``Relative Expected Utility Theory'' into a more viable ``conservative extension of expected utility theory" by formulating and defending emendations to a version of this theory proposed by Colyvan and H\'ajek. The second is comparatively more surprising. We show that, so long as one assigns positive probability to the theory that there is a (...) uniform bound on the utility of possible gambles (and assuming a uniform bound on the amount of utility that can accrue in a fixed amount of time), standard principles of anthropic reasoning (as formulated by Brandon Carter) place lower and upper bounds on the expected values of gambles advertised as having no expectation--even assuming that with positive probability, all gambles advertised as having infinite expected utility are administered faithfully. Should one accept the uniform bound premises, this reasoning thus dissolves (or nearly dissolves, in some cases) several puzzles in infinite decision theory. (shrink)

Contemporary Nigerian society is in its doldrums as regards the culture of violence and distrust among peoples from various ethnic groups that make-up this nation. To an extent, religio-political reasons are fueling this culture of violence and distrust. The thrust of this paper is that: Christian military chaplains are stakeholders as promoters of peace and mutual co-existence in Nigeria with regard to controlling the culture of violence and disunity. The core of this thesis remains Jesus’ convictions concerning non-resistance to (...) the evil one as documented in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5: 38-42, and His life as the Peace-Builder. Therefore, contemporary Nigerian context calls for Christian military chaplains to be more conscious that being messengers of peace and promoters of peaceful coexistence in our country, they have ethical responsibility to build bridges to harmony. Since Christ (God) is love, the chaplains should rediscover the poetics of testimony as a principle for building and reconstructing paths that lead to mutual co-existence in view of encouraging the reign of justice, unity, and peace in Nigeria. (shrink)

Large corporations are coming under intense pressure to act in a socially responsible manner. Corporations have accepted this notion provided that it is exercised voluntarily. It has also been argued that corporations can do well by doing good, and that good ethics is good business. This paper presents an alternative viewpoint by demonstrating that while voluntary socially responsible conduct is desirable, it plays a rather small role in inspiring good corporate conduct. Instead, (a) it is the external economic-competitive conditions that (...) define the parameters and opportunities for good corporate conduct; and (b) the values and traditions of the corporations, and their perceived risk in exploiting those opportunities, that influence the extent of a corporation's socially responsible conduct. The framework presented here analyzes certain market-competitive conditions, which determine the scope and direction of socially responsible corporate conduct, and the instruments available to society to enhance ethical corporate conduct. It suggests that from society's perspective, we should move away from the notion of corporate social responsibility and toward corporate social accountability. Most modern economies operate under conditions of imperfect competition where corporations gain above-normal profits, i.e., market rent, from market imperfections. Therefore, corporations should be held accountable for a more equitable distribution of these above-normal profits with other groups, e.g., customers, employees, etc., who were deprived of their market-based gains because of market imperfections and corporate power. Three approaches are suggested for measuring corporate accountability through corrections. These are: information imbalance, bargaining power imbalance, and, adjudication, remedy and relief imbalance. (shrink)

The 4th volume of “Manuscripts and Speeches” by the prominent contemporary thinker Paul Ricoeur (1913‑2005) contains works discussing one of his central themes — the problem of a common existence of men considered from the point of view of politics, economics, power, law, culture, morality, and ethics. At the same time, the French thinker specifically highlights and discusses such burning problems of modern life as mutual recognition, the fragility of human existence and earthly civilization in general, tolerance, care, (...) justice, responsibility for the future of humanity, for the very idea of man. In a number of works, Ricoeur expresses his views on the possible future of Europe — on its new ethos overcoming the boundaries and structures of national states, on the combination of their “identity” and “otherness” at the global level. Translation from one language to another as a kind of a priori communication, exchange of memory as a preliminary transfer to a different cultural environment, forgiveness that stems from the suffering of others and raises the question of the burden of debt, — all this is being considered as a models of integration. Originally presented at philosophical congresses and symposia, as well as qua journal publications, the highlighted problems were fundamentally studied by the philosopher in his works “History and Truth” (1955), “Oneself as Another” (1990), “Ethics and Responsibility” (1994), “The Just” (vols. 1, 2 — 1995, 2001), “Ideology and Utopia” (1997), “Memory, History, Oblivion” (2000), “The Way of Recognition” (2004). The book “Paul Ricoeur. Politics, Economics and Society. Manuscripts and Speeches 4” is addressed to philosophers, cultural and political scientists and scholars representing different branches of humanitarian studies, as well as to readers interested in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

By considering situations from the paradox of the twins in relativity, it is shown that time passes at different rates along different world lines, answering some well-known objections. The best explanation for the different rates is that time indeed passes. If time along a world line is something with a rate, and a variable rate, then it is difficult to see it as merely a unique, invariant, monotonic parameter without any further explanation of what it is. Although it could, conceivably, (...) be explained by the flow of something, it is better explained by the passing of a point present, which faces the problem that there is no absolute simultaneity in special relativity so that the present for an object is confined to just that object. This raises problems about presentism, eternalism, simultaneity, and special relativity. These issues are addressed first by giving accounts of presentism and eternalism and then an account of existence and times for objects relative to world lines. Finally, an analogy between a world of relativistic objects and Leibniz’s ontology of monads. (shrink)

Force and Freedom, a new book by Professor Arthur Ripstein, offers a comprehensive and highly sophisticated articulation of Kant’s legal and political philosophy. While Kant’s thinking on metaphysics and ethics has received paramount attention in the academic discourse, his contribution to legal and political theory has been somewhat marginalized. One reason for Kant’s exclusion from the central canon of political and legal philosophy is the abstract and very complicated nature of Kantian writing on law and political power, most particularly in (...) the Doctrine of Right. Another reason is the difficulties many writers have encountered in their attempts to reconcile Kant’s political and legal writing with his moral philosophy. Against this background, the novelty and importance of Force and Freedom cannot be overstated. (shrink)

Journal of Mass Media Ethics, Volume 27, Issue 2, Page 157-159, April-June.