Resumen: El presente trabajo analiza si los Sistemas de apoyo a la decisión (DSSs) y otros asistentes para su uso, como las Reflection machines o los Personal Assistants that Learn (PAL), contribuyen de hecho a una mejora cognitiva, como habitualmente se tiende a asumir. Es decir, se examina si su potencial para expandir e impulsar la acción de las facultades cognoscitivas se ve efectivamente actualizado y, en consecuencia, si sirven para reafirmar el sentido capacitante de la IA y la extensión (...) de la agencia del sujeto a través de ella. Para ello, se pone de manifiesto que el diseño y aplicación de estos sistemas están mediados por una comprensión del conocimiento que actúa a modo de marco que limita sus posibilidades de mejorar las capacidades cognoscitivas humanas. Se analizan las condiciones en que la mejora cognitiva es posible a través del uso de estos sistemas, que remiten a una aproximación integradora que no tiene en cuenta solo el factor tecnológico, sino que repara en cómo, en su uso, intervienen factores gnoseológicos, así como psicológicos y sociológicos, que median en la capacidad efectiva de estos sistemas de ampliar las facultades de conocimiento, y de los que las tecnologías se sirven para ejercer su influencia. Abstract: The present article questions whether Decision Support Systems (DSSs) and other assistants for their use, such as Reflection machines or Personal Assistants that Learn (PAL), do in fact contribute to cognitive enhancement, as it is usually taken for granted. In other words, it is analysed whether their potential to effectively expand or augment cognitive capacities is actualised and, therefore, if the capabilities and the agency of the person appear in fact extended through artificial intelligence. For that purpose, it is highlighted that the design and implementation of AI systems are dependent on a certain understanding of human knowledge that acts as a framework that limits their actual capacity to enhance the cognitive faculties of the mind. The conditions under which this cognitive enhancement is possible through these systems are analysed and require an integrative approach that not only takes technology into account but realises that, in its use, gnoseological, as well as psychological and sociological factors are involved and mediate in the actual capacity of these systems to extend cognitive functions. These factors are also crucial for these technologies to exert their influence. (shrink)

El transhumanismo o el movimiento a favor del mejoramiento humano a través de la tecnología vive, actualmente, un momento álgido. Los avances en Inteligencia Artificial e ingeniería genética permiten que soñemos con seres capaces de vencer a la muerte y poseer capacidades hasta ahora desconocidas. Sin embargo, en este artículo veremos que no todo el mundo está de acuerdo con estas ideas y hay quienes consideran las promesas del transhumanismo más como pesadillas que como sueños. Estos son los conservadores. Los (...) conservadores consideran que las mejoras prometidas por el transhumanismo conllevarán el fin de la especie humana. Frente al transhumanismo, los conservadores defienden la conservación y protección de la esencia y la naturaleza humana. También se rebelan contra la manipulación ilimitada del ser humano y la limitación de estas prácticas a aquellas contenidas en la esencia humana. Todo ello les otorga cierta reminiscencia aristotélica en la que muchos de ellos se amparan y la cual vale la pena estudiar. (shrink)

Para poder entender el pensamiento de Foucault es necesario enfocarse en varios principios que utilizaba o planteaba con el propósito de ir ligando cada uno de ellos para poder alcanzar y conocer su filosofía. Entre los principios o términos que hizo más resonar dentro de su filosofía fue el del “poder”, el cual manejaba, a grandes rasgos, como un factor sustancial que se da dentro de cualquier cuerpo social y, que, a su vez, tiene cada ser humano, este es un (...) principio de dominación que es aplicado desde la antigüedad, que bien con el paso del tiempo ha ido cambiando, pero también podemos decir que sigue teniendo el mismo contenido. Por lo tanto, esta investigación tiene como propósito mostrar, cómo el concepto de poder se ha ido forjando desde filósofos clásicos, también sobre cómo se plasmaba el sentido de quién en realidad podía tenerlo y quién no, explicado de tal modo, que, como lo plantea Foucault, los hombres mediante el contrato se den su poder por una colaboración.Nuestro trabajo, pretende establecer el término “poder” en el modo en que Foucault lo contemplaba, ya sea con todos sus pros y contras, para así mediante ello, poder forjar y reafirmar nuestras ideas y así extrapolar, poco a poco, su pensamiento, para crear nuestra propia crítica y mostrar cómo la sociedad contemporánea se está deshumanizando y, a su vez, se está perdiendo en un sin sentido de “poder” y manipulación por el otro, lo cual da como resultado, hombres máquina, incapaces de pensar y de forjar su pensamiento. (shrink)

El presente artículo busca establecer paralelos entre las propuestas de Edmund Husserl y de San Agustín en torno a la constitución del tiempo por parte de la conciencia. En ese marco, proponemos que ambos autores basan la constitución del tiempo en estructuras trinitarias de la conciencia. Dichas estructuras, a pesar de sus diferencias, coinciden en constar de tres elementos: uno retencional, uno protencional y uno impresional. Además, coinciden ambas propuestas en que lo fundamental de la estructura trinitaria de la conciencia (...) es la relación entre los términos mencionados. Esto último conlleva un cierto modelo de autoconciencia que no supone una identidad simple de la conciencia consigo misma, sino una identidad compleja y “desplazada” que sirve de fundamento último al tiempo y su constitución. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TellingAlvan A. IkokuMost everything had gone as I had imagined it. The plan was to eventually do international health work in Africa. So it was important to add another year to my medical studies, to leave Boston and gain some level of comfort working in French. The year was to be divided between France and Gabon. I was more than halfway there, having spent enough time in Paris to (...) feel proficient in the language, and having also completed several months of clinical rotation at the Hôpital Necker. There was one disruption: my father passing, perhaps of cardiac arrest, the attack occurring in the village—over an hour away from the nearest emergency room. The event required a month back home in Nigeria, to carry out funeral ceremonies and attend to my mother. But on my return to Paris the plans remained unchanged. I completed my rotation and soon after I was in Lambaréné. Ready for another three months of clinical work in a Francophone setting. Ready for a rural version of my rotation. Ready too for a second return home. Gabon was close to Nigeria, and I could visit once I was done.Medical school was my first attempt to fulfill deeply felt duties to two homes, Nigeria and the United States. Practicing international health in Africa was a way to resolve any tension between these duties. At the time, this meant training in the States and working to improve health south of the Sahara. There was little room for thinking the reverse might be more appropriate. I wanted to bring a standard of care from one home to another, or as I often said, to learn how to practice with limitations, to be as good a physician as one could in any setting. But one limitation I couldn't accept was a language barrier between myself and my patients. Learning a new language made the most technical text come alive and it made patients people. So I made my case for an additional year of medical school abroad, and it was granted.Once in Lambaréné, my limitations became apparent and troubling. It wasn't simply a matter of still being, in every sense of the word, a medical student, nor was it simply due to the waiting halls— not waiting rooms—of patients at the Polyclinique, almost as full in the evening as they were in the morning. As expected, there were several advanced cases of illness, even deaths, that I felt would have been prevented if we had seen the same patients in Boston. But what made my limitations so keenly felt was confronting them as a provider for people who were surprisingly and intimately not others, people who were suddenly so closely like myself. Gabon was not Nigeria. The fellowship was still meant to occur abroad; it was still a project of global health. Yet the patients themselves resisted that enterprise. They gestured to parts of their body as I had seen aunts, uncles and cousins do. They did to the French language what I had heard many in my family do to English, bending Europe in ways that were too familiar. Again, Gabon was not Nigeria. So this familiarity was neither expected nor prepared for. These encounters left me disarmed, porous and eventually aware that my education [End Page E1] to become a physician had relied on a process of de-familiarization.The inability to alleviate pain, decrease morbidity and prevent mortality felt strangely intimate and demanded reflection. The distance that seemed necessary for clinical practice was not possible, and I needed to learn to care while feeling the discomfort of being familiar. I found one way through language. I let my French become imperfect: bent, stilted, with gaps. The patients filled those gaps with words, or with more questions about their own illness. They seemed less intimidated, more willing to go over what I had encapsulated in a single concise, practiced sentence. They wanted any elegant sentence broken down. I obliged and the goal of each visit became to have the patient form sentences with me. I began to feel that what we produced together should be part of good... (shrink)

An individual's health, genetic, or environmental-exposure data, placed in an online repository, creates a valuable shared resource that can accelerate biomedical research and even open opportunities for crowd-sourcing discoveries by members of the public. But these data become “immortalized” in ways that may create lasting risk as well as benefit. Once shared on the Internet, the data are difficult or impossible to redact, and identities may be revealed by a process called data linkage, in which online data sets are matched (...) to each other. Reidentification, the process of associating an individual's name with data that were considered deidentified, poses risks such as insurance or employment discrimination, social stigma, and breach of the promises often made in informed-consent documents. At the same time, re-ID poses risks to researchers and indeed to the future of science, should re-ID end up undermining the trust and participation of potential research participants. The ethical challenges of online data sharing are heightened as so-called big data becomes an increasingly important research tool and driver of new research structures. Big data is shifting research to include large numbers of researchers and institutions as well as large numbers of participants providing diverse types of data, so the participants’ consent relationship is no longer with a person or even a research institution. In addition, consent is further transformed because big data analysis often begins with descriptive inquiry and generation of a hypothesis, and the research questions cannot be clearly defined at the outset and may be unforeseeable over the long term. In this article, we consider how expanded data sharing poses new challenges, illustrated by genomics and the transition to new models of consent. We draw on the experiences of participants in an open data platform—the Personal Genome Project—to allow study participants to contribute their voices to inform ethical consent practices and protocol reviews for big-data research. (shrink)

Whereas intersectionality presents a fruitful framework for theoretical and empirical research, some of its fundamental features present great confusion. The term ‘intersectionality’ and its metaphor of the crossroads seem to reproduce what it aims to avoid: conceiving categories as separate. Despite the attempts for developing new metaphors that illustrate the mutual constitution relation among categories, gender, race or class keep being imagined as discrete units that intersect, mix or combine. Here we identify two main problems in metaphors: the lack of (...) differentiation between positions and effects and the problem of reification. We then present a new metaphor that overcomes these two problems: a basket of apples. We argue that considering social positions as the diverse properties of different apples avoids reification by considering categories as properties and not as objects themselves, and at the same time it allows us to think about the effects dimension from a plural and contextual approach. With this shift, we propose a reframing of the discussion in debates on intersectionality theory on the relation among categories, their in/separability and fragmentation. (shrink)

The tradition of poets presenting eulogy to the sultan, being common in Turkish-Islamic societies, has strong religious backgrounds. According to the people, the sultanate is of divine origin and obedience to the sultan is obedience to Allah and his Messenger. The people respected the sultans because the Ottoman sultans were seen as the last guardians of the order with their justice. There are many examples of this in literary works such as odes, masnavis, and historical, religious-mystical works. Therefore it is (...) a very shortsighted approach to think that every poet presenting an ode to the sultan only expects rank and material gain. Sultan Bayezid II is an artist and an art-loving sultan who generously patronized scholars, artists and especially poets from all over the world during his princedom of in Amasya and his thirty-one-year reign (1481-1512). Being as an important calligrapher, composer and poet, Sultan Bayezid II is popularly known as "saint" in public. An inâmât book including registers of the gifts given to the poets during the reign of Sultan Bayezid II are an indication of the importance that the sultan gave to the poets. However most of the poets patronized by Sultan Bayezid II are unknown. Jauhari who is one of these poets, also his life and works are unknown. In this article, the newly found poems of Jauhari and the findings about his life are introduced. (shrink)

Resumen El presente artículo plantea la necesidad de un acercamiento histórico a los textos filosóficos tomando como ejemplo el caso de la propuesta ética de David Hume. Se muestra el interés de Hume por insertarse en el diálogo intelectual de su época y su propósito de integrar el método científico en las ciencias morales y cómo la crítica que hace a la razón debe ser comprendida bajo esta luz. Para ello se menciona el ambiente intelectual de la época y las (...) posturas en conflicto en el debate filosófico del siglo XVIII: el escepticismo-relativista, el racionalismo exagerado y el sentimentalismo ingenuo, señalando que, en el fondo, Hume no puede ser excluido totalmente de ninguna de estas posturas pero tampoco encasillado en alguna de ellas.This article raises the need of a historical approach to philosophical texts taking as an example the case of David Hume’s ethics proposal. It shows Hume`s interest in participating actively in the intellectual dialogue of his time and his intention to integrate the scientific method into the moral sciences and how his critique of reason must be understood in this light. To do this, we quickly mention the intellectual atmosphere of the time and the positions in conflict in the philosophical debate of the 18th Century: relativistic skepticism, radical rationalism and naive sentimentality, noting that, deep down, Hume cannot be excluded completely from any of these positions but not typecast in any of them. (shrink)

The present article explores the epistemological conditions of intercultural encounters. Based on an analysis of Raimon Panikkar's intercultural hermeneutics, we argue that intercultural encounters cannot take place adequately when they are based on purely rhetorical rationality or rational persuasion. We point to the limitations of grounding intercultural relationships on dialectical dialogue and, therefore, of educating them by simply enhancing discursive capacities. We underline the need for other epistemological conditions that should be fostered in order to move forward on the path (...) to actual interculturality. These can be summarised by what Panikkar calls "conversion", an epistemic framework of love—personal relationality, that goes beyond objectifying rationality—for the communication between (culturally different) subjects. We conclude that the culturally diverse human condition refers to being encountered and being understood on a level that is not merely logical or linguistic. What can be understood of a person with another cultural background goes beyond what can be comprehended by logical rationality or captured by veritative judgements about objects. In other words, in intercultural encounters, ontological, rather than merely logical truth is at stake, which means that the presence of the other can lead to experiences of meaning: it reveals a being that calls for conversion. Conversion demands an ontic action on the part of the subject, not merely an epistemological one, that cancels the violence that rational persuasion might entail. (shrink)

This text aims to rethink educational activity inspired by the thought of the philosopher Ignacio Ellacuría, in what we have synthesised as a pedagogy of poverty. This should be understood as a pedagogy that, in the neoliberal context of Western societies, takes poverty as its motor—its efficient cause—and as its essence or fundamental structure—its formal cause –, in the duality of dimensions of its genitive. It is concretised in what is presented as Problem-Based Service-Learning (PB-SL). Through specific pedagogical guidelines for (...) implementing this methodology, this study indicates how the teaching action can show the learner what is immediate, what is not constructed, what consciousness does not establish but rather encounters: reality—weak, limited, imperfect, needy; in short, poor—as a problem and, in its deficiency and insufficiency, as a task towards which the subject has a responsibility. This reveals the fundamental anthropological structure to the learner: its intrinsic relational character—its reality as a being-in-a-suffering-world, who lives-with and lives-to save the needy who share its humanity. It is then possible to perceive the scale of the ultimate aim of PB-SL: the need to create the social conditions for a praxis that enables a dignification of reality. (shrink)

Resumen La cuestión de la relación entre ciencia y fe ha adquirido nuevo vigor en los comienzos del siglo, cuando, tras años de especialización y separación fragmentaria de los saberes, que conducían a la esquizofrenia cultural del cognoscente, se empieza a percibir de manera cada vez más nítida la necesidad de su integración para dar cuenta de la multidimensionalidad de lo real. Tras poner de manifiesto la aparente tensión entre cultura y trascendencia como realidades que conviven en el ser humano, (...) se rastrea la posibilidad que Panikkar propone de una ciencia que, sin eliminarse a sí misma, sin cancelar la mediación que ella misma constituye ni despojarse de sus maneras y métodos propios, sin siquiera abandonar el plano de la pura inmanencia, reconoce en él lo divino: la infinita trascendencia del cuerpo -su carácter siempre abierto al misterio- y su infinita inmanencia -su profundidad insondable-. Esto tiene lugar en la forma concreta que el autor propone de una teofisica, de modo que con ella no ocurre algo semejante a lo que Wittgenstein indica respecto a la escalera de la que, una vez arriba -lograda la significación de lo Absoluto- puedo desprenderme, sino que, en ella, la escalera -la dimensión física- se conserva y se supera.The issue of the relationship between science and faith has acquired greater relevance since the beginning of the century, time in which, after years of specialization and fragmentation of human knowledge, which have led to a cultural schizophrenia of the knower, there is a growing awareness of the need to integrate both to account for a multidimensional reality. After noticing the apparent tension between culture and the divine as realities that coexist in human beings, it is examined Panikkar’s proposal of a science that, without eliminating itself, without cancelling the mediation that it constitutes, nor divesting itself from its own methods, not even without abandoning immanence, recognizes in itself the divine: the infinite transcendence of the body -its character always open to mystery- and its infinite immanence -its unfathomable depth-. This corresponds to the author’s theophysics, so that, in it, it does not happen something similar to what Wittgenstein indicates about the ladder of which one can get rid once up -when the significance of the divine has been attained-, but in it the ladder -the physical dimension- is preserved and surpassed. (shrink)

While most business ethics texts focus exclusively on individual decision making--what should an individual do--this resource presents the whole business ethics story. Highly realistic, readable, and down-to-earth, it moves from the individual to the managerial to the organizational level, focusing on business ethics in an organizational context to promote an understanding of complex influences on behavior. The new Fifth Edition is the perfect text for students entering the workplace, those seeking to become professionals in training, communications, compliance, in addition to (...) chief ethics officers, corporate counsel, heads of human resources, and senior executives. (shrink)

Whereas intersectionality presents a fruitful framework for theoretical and empirical research, some of its fundamental features present great confusion. The term ‘intersectionality’ and its metaphor of the crossroads seem to reproduce what it aims to avoid: conceiving categories as separate. Despite the attempts for developing new metaphors that illustrate the mutual constitution relation among categories, gender, race or class keep being imagined as discrete units that intersect, mix or combine. Here we identify two main problems in metaphors: the lack of (...) differentiation between positions and effects and the problem of reification. We then present a new metaphor that overcomes these two problems: a basket of apples. We argue that considering social positions as the diverse properties of different apples avoids reification by considering categories as properties and not as objects themselves, and at the same time it allows us to think about the effects dimension from a plural and contextual approach. With this shift, we propose a reframing of the discussion in debates on intersectionality theory on the relation among categories, their in/separability and fragmentation. (shrink)

La influencia de Hipócrates como padre de la Medicina es patente, sobre todo a través del “Juramento hipocrático” que ha iluminado el ejercicio de la profesión desde hace veinte cinco siglos. Las versiones modernas de estos postulados, constituyen el marco ético y deontológico de esta ciencia, que también es arte. La bioética surge para enriquecer esa práctica, también cuando la investigación científica utiliza seres humanos, y propone la dignificación de la persona y el respeto a los derechos humanos universales. Ante (...) la aceleración del desarrollo técnico y científico es imprescindible reforzar la reflexión ética con el fin de que la ciencia permanezca al servicio del hombre y no en detrimento suyo. De ahí la necesidad de un “Juramento del bioeticista”. (shrink)

RESUMEN En este artículo se presenta una reflexión crítica de la propuesta ética liberal de Charles Taylor y su viabilidad en el contexto político de las sociedades liberales actuales. Una conformación social y política liberal se entiende como aquella donde se promueven y se defiende mayores libertades en esquemas de derechos individuales junto con la exigencia del respeto a esas garantías individuales. Sin embargo, el contexto político liberal, siendo el más idóneo en las sociedades actuales, presenta varios problemas éticos que (...) Taylor ya ha identificado como malestares de la modernidad, tales como el exceso de individualismo, la primacía de la razón instrumental y la fragmentación y polarización de la sociedad. Ante estos retos y conflictos que surgen por el propio liberalismo, la ética de Taylor es una alternativa posible para comprenderlos y gestionarlos desde un civismo ético y la promoción de metas comunes. ABSTRACT This article presents a critical reflection on the liberal ethical proposal of Charles Taylor and its viability in the political context of current liberal societies. A liberal social and political configuration is understood as one in which greater liberties are promoted and defended in individual rights schemes together with the requirement of respect for those individual guarantees. However, the liberal political context although the most suitable in current societies, presents several ethical problems that Taylor has already identified as the malaise of modernity: excess of individualism, primacy of instrumental reason and fragmentation and polarization of the society. Faced with these challenges and conflicts arising from the liberalism itself, Taylor's ethics is a possible alternative to understand and manage them from an ethical civility and the promotion of common goals. (shrink)

An introduction to propositional logical and first-order logic.

Within feminist theory and a wide range of social sciences, intersectionality has emerged as a key analytic framework, challenging paradigms that consider gender, race, class, sexuality, and other categories as separate and instead conceptualizing them as interconnected. This has led most authors to assume mutual constitution as the pertinent model, often without much scrutiny. In this essay we critically review the main senses of mutual constitution in the literature and challenge what we take to be a problematic assumption: the problem (...) of reification, here understood as the conceptualization of social categories as entities or objects. We then present the properties framework, together with the emergent experience view, which conceptualizes categories and social systems in a way that maintains their ontological specificity while allowing for their being deeply affected by each other. (shrink)

'Two things', wrote Kant, 'fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe: the starry heavens above and the moral law within'. Many would argue that since Kant's day, the study of the starry heavens has advanced while ethics has stagnated, and in particular that Kant's ethics offers an empty formalism that tells us nothing about how we should live. In Acting on Principle Onora O'Neill shows that Kantian ethics has practical as well as philosophical importance. First published (...) in 1975, the book is regarded as a classic account and defence of the Kantian ethical position. It addresses Kant's account of reasoning about action, in particular his controversial claim that the Categorical Imperative guides action and is basic to ethics and justice. This second edition offers a substantial new introduction and updated bibliography, and will be valuable for a wide readership in Kant studies and those studying ethics. (shrink)

Esta dissertação encontra-se construída em torno de um núcleo central - a exposição, aná-lise e discussão do chamado 'Argumento da linguagem privada', de Wittengstein. A dinâmica própria da abordagem e discussão do tema leva necessariamente a percorrer o conjunto da obra de Wittengstein, o que motiva um notável aprofundamento do assunto e torna ainda mais aliciante este ensaio.

This article analyzes the evolution of best practices in the maquiladora industry in Mexico. Since the mid-1960s, the maquiladora has been understood as a simple assembly activity based on cheap labor, with low added value, and limited linkage with local suppliers. However, the maquiladora industry has evolved since the early 1980s as a consequence of the adoption of best practices in the productive processes and industrial organization. The best practices examined in this article are increases or improvements in complex activities, (...) capabilities, just-in-time, continuous improvement, environmental performance, and job safety. The data come from three surveys administered in major U.S./Mexico border cities in 1990, 2002, and 2006. Based on an analysis of these surveys, there has been a broad diffusion of the best organizational practices since the 1960s. (shrink)

This is the first modern, annotated and scholarly edition of Jean-Baptiste Du Bos’ _Critical Reflections on Poetry and Painting_, one of the seminal works of modern aesthetics in any language.

National Book Award Finalist. How did humanity originate and why does a species like ours exist on this planet? Do we have a special place, even a destiny in the universe? Where are we going, and perhaps, the most difficult question of all, "Why?" In The Meaning of Human Existence, his most philosophical work to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson grapples with these and other existential questions, examining what makes human beings supremely different from all other species. Searching (...) for meaning in what Nietzsche once called "the rainbow colors" around the outer edges of knowledge and imagination, Wilson takes his readers on a journey, in the process bridging science and philosophy to create a twenty-first-century treatise on human existence—from our earliest inception to a provocative look at what the future of mankind portends. Continuing his groundbreaking examination of our "Anthropocene Epoch," which he began with The Social Conquest of Earth, described by the New York Times as "a sweeping account of the human rise to domination of the biosphere," here Wilson posits that we, as a species, now know enough about the universe and ourselves that we can begin to approach questions about our place in the cosmos and the meaning of intelligent life in a systematic, indeed, in a testable way. Once criticized for a purely mechanistic view of human life and an overreliance on genetic predetermination, Wilson presents in The Meaning of Human Existence his most expansive and advanced theories on the sovereignty of human life, recognizing that, even though the human and the spider evolved similarly, the poet's sonnet is wholly different from the spider's web. Whether attempting to explicate "The Riddle of the Human Species," "Free Will," or "Religion"; warning of "The Collapse of Biodiversity"; or even creating a plausible "Portrait of E.T.," Wilson does indeed believe that humanity holds a special position in the known universe. The human epoch that began in biological evolution and passed into pre-, then recorded, history is now more than ever before in our hands. Yet alarmed that we are about to abandon natural selection by redesigning biology and human nature as we wish them, Wilson soberly concludes that advances in science and technology bring us our greatest moral dilemma since God stayed the hand of Abraham. (shrink)