The Purpose in Life Test is a measure of purpose in life widely used in many cultures and countries; however, cross-cultural assessments are scarce. The present study aimed to evaluate the cross-cultural measurement invariance of the PIL in the general population of seven Latin American countries. A total of 4306 people participated, selected by non-probabilistic convenience sampling, where Uruguay has the highest mean age ; while Ecuador has the lowest mean age. Furthermore, in each country, there is a higher proportion (...) of women than men. Using Multi-Group Confirmatory Factor Analysis, the factorial structure does not show evidence of invariance among the included countries. However, based on the Multi-Group Factor Analysis Alignment, there is evidence that a three-dimensional structure of the PIL is the same in the participating countries. Results based on item response theory indicate that most PIL items can significantly differentiate responses according to the level of life purpose. In addition, people with low life purpose will tend to choose the lower response alternatives on the PIL; while people with higher life purpose will choose higher response alternatives. The findings indicate that the PIL has the potential to increase knowledge about how people conceive and experience their purpose in life in different countries. (shrink)

Is it possible ontologically to think about education? Can the ontological category of “being” allow us to think of an educational human being? How can the ontological category of “being there” contextualize the educational reality in Latin America? These questions will guide an ontological reflection based on Latin-American philosophical categories “being” and “being there” for thinking about education. This reflection will propose an ontological presence of the symbol from the analogy and the educational experience, as a reality that opens to (...) new experiences in teaching and learning. (shrink)

The demonstrations of monks in Tibet and Myanmar (Burma) in recent times as well as the age-old conflict between a predominantly Buddhist population and a Hindu minority in Sri Lanka raise the question of how the issues of human rights and Buddhism are related. The question applies both to the violation of basic rights in Buddhist countries and to the defence of those rights which are well-grounded in Buddhist teachings. The volume provides academic essays that reflect this up to now (...) rather neglected issue from the point of view of the three main Buddhist traditions, Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana. It provides multi-faceted and surprising insights into a rather unlikely relationship. (shrink)

Contiene una sección especial sobre Filosofía Latinoamericana, donde hay ponencias de los siguientes autores: Carlos Alemián, Abelardo Barra Ruatta, Alberto Buela y Oscar Wingartz Plata. Además, sobre Arturo A. Roig (dos artículos, uno de Estela Fernández y otro de Marisa Muñoz, Dante Ramaglia y Oscar Zalazar); sobre ensayo y fenomenología en América Latina (Clara Alicia Jalif de Bertranou); sobre Agustín Alvarez (Dante Ramaglia); y sobre Simón Rodríguez (Oscar Salazar). De otras secciones destacamos una ponencia de Arturo A. Roig sobre la (...) historia de las ideas y la filosofía latinoamericana, y otras dos, una sobre Mariátegui (Néstor Kohan) y la segunda sobre Andrés Mercado Vera (Isabel Luchetta)"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58. (shrink)

Data are lacking with regard to participants' perspectives on return of genetic research results to relatives, including after the participant's death. This paper reports descriptive results from 3,630 survey respondents: 464 participants in a pancreatic cancer biobank, 1,439 family registry participants, and 1,727 healthy individuals. Our findings indicate that most participants would feel obligated to share their results with blood relatives while alive and would want results to be shared with relatives after their death.

_Fish, Justice, and Society_ is a novel scholarly work that goes in depth into the fishing industry, fish, and aquatic environments. This book delves past the façade of what may be known by the average fisherman, bringing to the surface new information about numerous species and aquatic habitats.

Gene editing techniques, such as CRISPR, are being heralded as powerful new tools for delivering agricultural products and foods with a variety of beneficial traits quickly, easily, and cheaply. Proponents are concerned, however, about whether the public will accept the new technology and that excessive regulatory oversight could limit the technology’s potential. In this paper, we draw on the sociotechnical imaginaries literature to examine how proponents are imagining the potential benefits and risks of gene editing technologies within agriculture. We derive (...) our data from a content analysis of public comments submitted to the Food and Drug Administration’s 2017 docket titled “Genome Editing in New Plant Varieties Used for Food.” Our sample frame consists of 26 comments representing 30 agriculture and biotech companies, organizations, and trade associations. Our findings reveal three key sociotechnical imaginaries, including that gene editing technologies in agriculture: are not GMO but instead equivalent to traditional plant breeding; have the potential to usher in a new Green Revolution; and could facilitate the democratization of agricultural biotechnologies. We argue that forming and projecting these collective interpretations of the potential of gene editing technologies for crops and foods plays an important role in efforts by proponents to influence regulatory oversight, modes of governance, and build public acceptance. This research contributes to calls by science and technology studies scholars to investigate emergent concerns and imaginaries for novel technoscientific advances to help inform upstream models of public engagement and governance decisions. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is exposition on the themes of method and mysticism in the work of Simone Weil. Nearly a decade before the onset of her first mystical experience, Weil developed a method to be rigorously applied in daily philosophical reflection. She outlines this method in her dissertation on Descartes (1929-1930). I examine the question of how Weil applied method to philosophical reflection on her mystical experiences (onset 1938-1939). I analyze Weil’s mystical experiences as a type of transformative (...) experience in L. A. Paul’s strict sense of the term. On Paul’s view, an experience is transformative if it is both epistemically and personally transformative. An experience is epistemically transformative if the only way to know what it is like to have it is to have it yourself. An experience is personally transformative if it changes your point of view, including your core preferences (Paul, 2014). I present a thought experiment and textual evidence to motivate the claim that Weil’s mystical experiences meet Paul’s conditions for transformative experience. I then propose two epistemological facts that can be revealed by philosophical reflection on mystical experience. First, it is possible to read meaning erroneously in the appearances of things. Second, it is possible to come to hold to the certainty of a conviction for reasons that elude the intellect. My findings suggest that Weil’s late views on philosophy accommodate these two epistemological constraints, thereby demonstrating a possible connection between Weil’s mystical experiences and her mature views on the nature, scope, and proper method of philosophy. However, my preliminary findings also suggest that Weil’s early work on method may have anticipated these epistemological obstacles prior to the onset of her first mystical experience. Thus, further exposition of Weil’s method is needed to support or elucidate the claim (Rozelle-Stone and Davis, 2021) that Weil’s epistemology underwent significant changes because of her mystical experiences. (shrink)

The perception of sensory effects generated by one’s own actions is typically attenuated compared to the same effects generated externally. However, it is unclear whether this specifically relates to self-generation. Recent studies showed that sensory attenuation mainly relies on action preparation, not actual action execution. Hence, an attenuation of sensory effects generated by another person might occur if these actions can be anticipated and thus be prepared for.Here, we compared the perceived loudness of sounds generated by one’s own actions and (...) actions of another person that either could or could not be anticipated. We found an attenuation of the perceived loudness for self- as compared to other-generated sounds. This difference was independent of whether the sound-eliciting actions of the other person could be anticipated or not. Thus, sensory attenuation seems to be specifically tied to self-generation instead of being a secondary effect of agent-independent preparation for an upcoming action. (shrink)

Tomando como fundamento la historia y literatura astrobiológicas, exploramos la posibilidad y necesidad de una Filosofía de la Astrobiología, proponemos una definición de Filosofía de la Astrobiología y su consideración como subdisciplina de la Filosofía de la Ciencia, distinta de la Filosofía de la Biología. Incluimos una bibliografía para una Filosofía de la Astrobiología.

Jonathan Neufeld proposes a concept of aesthetic disobedience that parallels the political concept of civil disobedience articulated by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice. The artistic transgressions he calls aesthetic disobedience are distinctive in being public and deliberative in their aim to bring about specific changes in accepted artworld norms. We argue that Neufeld has offered us valuable insight into the dynamic and potent nature of art and the artworld; however, we contend that Neufeld errs by constraining aesthetic disobedience (...) to the artworld. Through a reconsideration of the parallel between aesthetic and civil disobedience, we illustrate how aesthetic disobedience is more accurately conceived of in terms of two kinds of acts: artistic and artworld. In addition to artistic disobedience and artworld disobedience, we add a broader and more diverse sort of transgressive aesthetic disobedience. Our aim is to articulate how Neufeld’s account of a kind of disobedience in the artworld that parallels civil disobedience can prove even more generative. (shrink)

This paper deals with the concept of religiousness and religion in the context of Krause´s panentheist metaphysics, understood as a life of union, as intimacy of and with God, particularly on the part of human beings and also in relation to the rest of the existing. An evolutionary review of this conception of religion is undertaken throughout Krause´s work, and the program of a philosophy of religion is traced, which, besides a metaphysical and anthropological substantiation, would address an understanding of (...) the history of religions and especially of Christianity, proposing a vision of reciprocal illumination between religion, knowledge, feeling and morality, as well as the possibility of an appealing notion of religious freedom, the hallmark of Krausism in its historical development. (shrink)

Given the crucial role of the mass media in influencing public discourse, this study examines the discourses around climate change within the Brazilian press, covering the time period of 2003–2013. Survey evidence has shown that Brazilians’ degree of concern about climate change is higher than almost anywhere else, with nine out of 10 Brazilians considering climate change a serious problem. The primary purpose of this study is to investigate how the press engendered Brazilians’ striking level of climate change concern, with (...) special attention to how the discourse developed over time. To this end, I undertake a corpus-assisted discourse analysis to examine the most dominant linguistic patterns in the discourse, presenting evidence on an unprecedented scale and with considerable depth. The corpus consists of 19,686 newspaper texts published by 12 Brazilian broadsheet papers. The results are interpreted in the light of available opinion polls on the public’s perception of climate change as well as Brazil’s national context and environmental governance. (shrink)

This essay examines the relationship between African American internal colonialism and democracy, highlighting the complexities of democracy that make it both susceptible to oppressive violence at home and abroad, as well as a potential resource for emancipation and equality. I understand “internal colonialism” here to encompass various terms used by African Americans beginning in the 1830s, including semi-colonialism, domestic colonialism, and a nation within a nation. Much political philosophy assumes that society is “nearly just” or “generally just,” or that oppression (...) and injustice are found in societies that we nonetheless deem legitimate. Centering the complexities and possibilities of democracy instead shifts the focus to how democracy is compatible with violence and injustice, as well as their overcoming. Such a focus leads to a consideration of abolition democracy and the question of what the process of overcoming internal colonialism demands. (shrink)

This article turns to Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem in order to illustrate the difficulties involved in approaching the (formerly) metaphysical concept of evil as a secular phenomenon. It asks how the advocate of plurality, natality and forgiveness could also vouch for the death sentence of Eichmann based on a rhetoric of retribution and revenge. It then shows that Arendt's surprisingly consistent view of evil is based on a quasi-ontological understanding of the human condition that allowed her to negate Eichmann's (...) humanity. Rather than simply unmasking a metaphysical account in disguise, however, the article develops an alternative perspective that emerges from the conversation between Arendt and Jaspers. It argues that Jaspers's interpretation of Kant offers a way to defend the idea of secular evil and judge Eichmann on the basis of his thoughtlessness. (shrink)

What paths are taken by post-posi tiv ist so - cial the ory?. Be yond the three ba sic types of contemporarty the o ries stud ied in this pa per, the pre sup po si tions of which com bine struc ture and agent, the study of so ci ety in which ac knowl - edge ment of the prop er ties of dis tinct..

1. Reflexiones de la realidad con enfoque de género -- 2. Aportes para un nuevo andamiaje social.

El tema de los celos ha sido recurrente en las novelas europeas del cambio de siglo XIX al siglo XX. Senilità (1898) y Un amour de Swann, –la segunda parte de Du côté de chez Swann (1913)– comparten esta temática que se encuentra relacionada con la noción de enfermedad. Los celos en tanto enfermedad que contraen los protagonistas de estas novelas tienen implicancias directas en nuevas formas estéticas del género novelesco Fin-de-Siècle. Este trabajo analiza hermenéuticamente y desde una perspectiva comparada (...) la composición de la novela de los celos y la figura del celoso. Sostiene que dicha composición de la trama inclina a las novelas seleccionadas a tomar un estilo decadente que recupera la mímesis (en momentos en los que l’art pour l’art atenta contra ella). Esta recuperación de la mímesis es una creación estética que entabla un vínculo explícito con la praxis social a través del celoso burgués (de pequeña o alta burguesía) y sus acciones detectivescas que, sin embargo, no tienen ninguna finalidad orientada a la verdad o la moral. En consecuencia, al no obedecer a un propósito práctico, la novela del celoso concluye estéril. (shrink)

A la luz del análisis heideggeriano del espacio y del arte, y su vinculación con un hito de la escultura moderna como Eduardo Chillida, se presenta el espacio, junto al tiempo, como un elemento fundamental del arte y especialmente de la escultura y de la arquitectura, no como un fondo neutro homogéneo, sino como un fenómeno originario que compromete desde el principio la creación y el modo peculiar de trascendencia al que nos invita toda obra de arte. Toda obra nos (...) sumerge de un lado en una febril inmanencia sensible y corporal, en el misterio de lo sensible que somos, pero a su vez nos lleva más allá o más acá de los significados y relaciones convenidas y de nuestra situación. A partir de aquí se planteará si y cómo se puede poner la experiencia estética del espacio en relación con la trascendencia de la que habla comúnmente la religión, iluminada a su vez desde el estudio de lo sagrado de Mircea Eliade. (shrink)

Las sugerentes meditaciones de Zambrano sobre la ciudad se cotejan a la luz de otros escritos coetáneos sobre la casa; y no tanto porque la ciudad sea también arquitectura, sino porque es habitada y recorrida, porque presenta un orden a ser ejecutado, avivado desde el ritmo de nuestro ir, venir, nuestras estancias y nuestras ausencias; como la música. Para Zambrano la ciudad es paradigma y lugar idóneo de la creación humana a lo largo de la historia. Es el amor como (...) entrega y fe el motor de toda creación que trasciende su propia época, y sólo desde ahí cabe una recuperación de la ciudad en nuestro presente, en el que sólo vivimos en grandes construcciones urbanísticas, pero en el que ya no surgen ciudades. Zambrano reivindica recuperar la ciudad como centro sacral y creador, pero no como una vuelta nostálgica a las ciudades del pasado, sino como verdadera realización de su ideal político democrático. (shrink)

Existen conceptos o concepciones sobre la realidad que permean asiduamente el despliegue del pensamiento y la vida en sus devenires cotidianos o fácticos. En este sentido, quien comienza a formarse en los quehaceres de la investigación filosófica, encara con alguna frecuencia la responsabilidad de confrontar aquellas nociones que, bajo la forma de precomprensiones, obstruyen las transiciones comprensivas e interpretativas propias de toda tarea investigativa. En este caso, la posibilidad de distinguir el contenido característico de las ideologías naturalistas, de aquellas otras (...) que le son propias a las filosofías trágicas o inmanentistas, quizá pueda incidir argumentalmente en las tensiones dialógicas que hoy atraviesan a las culturas cuando se pone de manifiesto el deseo de reivindicar posiciones totalitarias o relativistas en relación con esferas de la vida y del pensamiento humanos tan diversas como la política, la religión, el género, la sexualidad, la etnia, la raza, entre otras. La tarea de quien se forma en investigación filosófica consiste, en buena medida, en advertir que los conceptos filosóficos logran vivificarse cuando ceden a la interlocución vital que les proponen constantemente las contingencias propias de todo lapso histórico. En efecto, algunos asuntos se palpan en la atmósfera de un tiempo determinado; también se encuentran en las tramas tangibles de las existencias humanas. (shrink)