In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ippolito Desideri S.J.: Opere e BibliografiaFrancis V. TisoIppolito Desideri S.J.: Opere e Bibliografia. By Enzo Gualterio Bargiacchi. Roma: Institutum Historicum S.I., 2007. 303 pp.One of the great lacunae in the history of Buddhist-Christian relations has been a lack of attention to the work of missionaries who reported on Buddhist belief and practice in various parts of East and South Asia. As a result, the important work [End (...) Page 166] of the Italian Jesuit Ippolito Desideri (1684–1733) has not received the attention it deserves. There had been centuries of missionary contact with the Buddhists of Sri Lanka, Japan, and China, but it was not until the mission of Desideri to Tibet (1716–1721) that the connection between the Buddhism of Southeast Asia and that of China and Japan could be established on the basis of Desideri’s study of Tibetan historiographical materials.Desideri was the first European to become fluent in Tibetan, the first to understand Buddhist Mahayana scholasticism, the first to grasp the meaning of Vajrayana ritual and practice, the first to describe the political situation of Tibet, the first to engage in serious debate with Tibetan lamas, and the first to write extensively on Catholic Christianity in Tibetan. Desideri left a body of works in Tibetan that have been translated into Italian by Giuseppe Toscano, SX, and published by IsMEO during the 1980s. Yet Desideri’s greatest achievement, the translation into Latin of Je Tsong Kapa’s Lam Rim Chen Mo, seems to have been lost. Moreover, the great intellectual and spiritual accomplishments of this Jesuit missionary were not much appreciated in his own lifetime, in part because of the political situation of the Society of Jesus at that time. As a result, although the overall facts of Desideri’s life were never completely forgotten, his writings lay hidden in the Jesuit Archives at Rome at precisely the time when those engaging in contact with Asian religions would have benefited from his insights.The author of this summary of the works of Ippolito Desideri and of the entire corpus of materials related to his oeuvre, Enzo Gualtiero Bargiacchi, is convinced that even today the works of this eighteenth-century Jesuit missionary have something to offer. I would agree with Bargiacchi, because I am equally convinced that the Desiderian project is in many ways a better model for interreligious dialogue between Christians and Buddhists than any of the more recent models that have been proposed and implemented since the Second Vatican Council. Recent essays by Trent Pomplun and Michael Sweet in Buddhist-Christian Studies (vol. 26, 2006) have shown that exchanges between missionaries and Buddhists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were more profound and more fruitful than we are inclined to believe on the basis of superficial histories of the period. It seems that, with the suppression of the Jesuits (1773–1815), a certain retrenchment in the Catholic theology of grace operating outside the confines of the Church set in, muting the vibrant speculations of theologians seeking to make theological sense of the reports of missionaries such as Desideri.Desideri’s approach to the Buddhism of Tibet continues to challenge our own approach to interreligious dialogue. In the first place, Desideri underwent extensive linguistic, spiritual, and theological training as a young Italian Jesuit. He seems to have had unusual physical stamina and mental acuity, particularly for the study of languages. He learned Tibetan in about four months and immediately began writing a treatise, the Tho rangs, explaining Christianity to the Tibetan literati. As his Tibetan improved, he composed other, more sophisticated works in which he took up the topics on which Buddhists and Catholic Christians could agree (the contingency of the created world, the moral law) and on which they disagree (the law of karmic retribution, [End Page 167] emptiness, reincarnation, soteriology). Desideri sought to take seriously the philosophical positions of the lamas, with whom he lived and engaged in debate. He adapted his presentation of Christianity to the linguistic requirements of Tibet, and he did not hesitate to acknowledge the excellence he found in the moral character and intellectual refinement of the Tibetans. Finally, one detects a respect... (shrink)

This paper investigates the semantics of the focus particle only and is primarily concerned with the relation between the exclusive proposition and the proposition expressed by the prejacent. We argue that, in a sentence of the form only A is B, only triggers the conditional presupposition that if something is B, A is B. We show that in a positive- only sentence, the prejacent is a conversational implicature and therefore it is cancellable. Instead, in a negative- only sentence the prejacent (...) is shown to be entailed by any context that satisfies the conditional presupposition and to which the assertion is added. Hence, the prejacent of a negative- only sentence is not cancellable. The entailment analyses, the strong presupposition analyses and the weak presupposition analyses of only are discussed, together with the problems that each type of theories faces. (shrink)

Este trabajo presenta algunas discusiones preliminares a una reconstrucción de la mecánicacuántica desde una perspectiva estructuralista. Intento responder a la pregunta por lostérminos MQ- no teóricos, es decir, qué magnitudes pueden ser medidas con independenciade la ecuación de Schrödinger y de la regla de Born. Uno de los aspectos relevantes que puedeser analizado una vez que se ha respondido a esta pregunta es el problema de la medición.Dado que el problema de la medición está directamente relacionado con el carácter linealde (...) la evolución temporal del estado dada por la ecuación de Schrödinger, la medición delos valores de aquellos conceptos que no presupongan esta ley no se verá afectada por esteproblema. Si bien esto no responde a todas las preguntas sobre la medición cuántica, indicaun primer paso a dar en la dirección hacia una comprensión más acabada de este problema. (shrink)

Los orígenes de la APS y de la Política de SALUD PARA TODOS se remontan al siglo XVIII y al movimiento de Medicina Social de 1848. Del siglo XX se destacan las experiencias pioneras de los años 30-50s. Entre ellas, Chile, Saskachewa (Canadá), EUA, Suráfrica, con Henry Sigerist, Sidney Kark, Salvador Allende, Gustavo Molina, trabajos pioneros de la medicina y la epidemiologia social vinculados a los del antropólogo Benjamin Paul. Así como personajes menos reconocidos en APS especialmente el italiano Franco (...) Basaglia transformador de la atención psiquiátrica y sanitaria con los principios de libertad terapéutica. A éstas están articuladas numerosas y desconocidas experiencias en América Latina y Colombia con Héctor Abad Gómez, Santiago Rengifo y César Uribe Piedrahita por el proceso de “Renovación de APS” de la OPS. En Latinoamérica, las luchas por la salud estaban articuladas a la luchas por una sociedad justa, con personajes como Ernesto Guevara desde la medicina, Paulo Freire en pedagogía, teología y filosofía de la liberación, y el sociólogo colombiano Camilo Torres, que aportaron metodologías cualitativas en la investigación en salud, los que junto aportes de integración como el Desarrollo a Escala Humana, consideran a los servicios sanitarios como elementos principales en la vida de las personas, y aportan a la construcción transdisciplinar e intersectorial de la salud para nuestro hoy. (shrink)

In this study, we examine the influence of senior leadership on firms’ corporate social responsibility. We integrate upper echelons research that has investigated either the influence of the CEO or the top management team on CSR. We contend that functional experience complementarity between CEOs and TMTs in formulating and implementing CSR strategy may underlie differentiated strategies in CSR. We find that when CEOs who have predominant experience in output functions are complemented by TMTs with a lower proportion of members who (...) have experience in output functions, there is a pronounced effect on the community, product, and diversity dimensions of CSR. In turn, when output-oriented CEOs are complemented by output-oriented TMTs, we observe an effect on the employee relations dimension of CSR. Interestingly, we find no influence of CEO-TMT complementarity on the environment dimension of CSR. In general, our empirical results support the relevance of the interaction between CEOs and their TMTs in defining their firms’ CSR profile. (shrink)

The use of conventional manufacturing methods is mainly limited by the size of the production run and the geometrical complexity of the component, and as a result we are occasionally forced to use processes and tools that increase the final cost of the element being produced. Additive manufacturing techniques provide major competitive advantages due to the fact that they adapt to the geometrical complexity and customised design of the part to be manufactured. The following may also be achieved according to (...) field of application: lighter weight products, multimaterial products, ergonomic products, efficient short production runs, fewer assembly errors and, therefore, lower associated costs, lower tool investment costs, a combination of different manufacturing processes, an optimised use of materials, and a more sustainable manufacturing process. Additive manufacturing is seen as being one of the major revolutionary industrial processes of the next few years. Additive manufacturing has several alternatives ranging from simple RepRap machines to complex fused metal deposition systems. This paper will expand upon the structural design of the machines, their history, classification, the alternatives existing today, materials used and their characteristics, the technology limitations, and also the prospects that are opening up for different technologies both in the professional field of innovation and the academic field of research. It is important to say that the choice of technology is directly dependent on the particular application being planned: first the application and then the technology. (shrink)

In this article, I propose a semantic account of temporally mismatched past subjunctive counterfactuals. The proposal consists of the following parts. First, I show that in cases of temporal mismatch, [past] cannot be interpreted inside the proposition where it occurs at surface structure. Instead, it must be interpreted as constraining the time argument of the accessibility relation. This has the effect of shifting the time of the evaluation of the conditional to some contextually salient past time. Second, I will propose (...) specific felicity conditions (presuppositions) for subjunctive conditionals and I will argue that there is a strict correspondence between the time of evaluation in the truth conditions of a conditional and the time relevant for the felicity conditions. In other words, if the time relevant for the accessibility relation has been shifted to the past, then the conditional's presupposition will make reference to a past context. On the other hand, if no past is constraining the time argument of the accessibility relation, the conditional's felicity will make reference to the current (main) context. Third, I will argue that the intuition that the antecedent of mismatched counterfactuals is not true is a scalar implicature arising from a competition not between assertions but between presuppositions. Finally, I will investigate the repercussions of my proposal for the general theory of modality. (shrink)

In this paper, we study the distribution and interpretation of a non-temporal use of the future tense in Italian, called ‘presumptive’ or ‘epistemic’, which we label here PF. We first distinguish PF from its closest modal relatives, namely epistemic necessity/possibility/likelihood modals, as well as weak necessity modals. We then propose an account of PF in declaratives and interrogatives that treats it as a special comparative subjective likelihood modal, and test its empirical predictions. A theoretical lesson drawn from this detailed study (...) of the semantics of PF is that semantics needs sharpened theoretical tools to be able to capture the fine-grained distinctions languages make when it comes to signaling modulated epistemic commitment to a proposition. (shrink)

In this paper I provide a unified analysis of a number of pragmatic anomalies that have been discussed in the literature. The paper’s main goal is to account for Sobel sequences of conditionals and sequences of disjunctive sentences, but I will also propose that this analysis can be extended to sequences of sentences with superlatives. The starting point is the observation that, while all these sequences are felicitous in one order, they are infelicitous when the order is reversed. Previous proposals (...) have focussed on particular types of infelicitous sequences Ken Hale: A life in language, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2001; Moss in Noûs 46:516–586, 2012; Lewis in Noûs 52:481–507, 2018; a.o.), or a subset of all the phenomena cited above Linguistic and psycholinguistic approaches on implicatures and presuppositions. Palgrave McMillan, Basingstoke, 2017; a.o.). I propose that sequences of sentences belonging to the same structured set of alternatives T are subject to a Specificity Constraint : sequences are acceptable if both alternatives are dominated by the same number of nodes in the structured set of alternatives T. Violations of SC can be avoided by strengthening the weaker alternative. However, covert strengthening violates an economy condition if the overtly stronger alternative is among those made salient by the preceding utterance in the sequence. I propose that the set of alternatives made salient by an utterance of a sentence s consists of s’s sisters and mother in T. I will show that the strengthening mechanism varies depending on the kind of sequence we have. (shrink)

El presente artículo se propone cotejar dos lecturas antimodernas de Platón y la tradición platónica, la de Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) y la de Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907) que resultan a la vez complementarias e inversas. Estas apropiaciones, que abren y cierran el siglo XIX, expresan el auge y el declive del “platonismo romántico”. De Maistre recurre intensamente a los diálogos de Platón, a los que cita, comenta, traduce y reescribe, así como a diversos textos del neoplatonismo antiguo y de la (...) tradición platónica moderna. Por su parte los textos de Huysmans, en particular _À rebours_ (1884), la novela más representativa de la sensibilidad decadente, expresa la crisis de ese platonismo romántico, tal como se advierte en cuestiones tales como el nihilismo, el recurso a la figura del simulacro y el replanteo del tópico del andrógino. El platonismo y su crisis interrogan la temporalidad histórica, desde la aceleración revolucionaria hasta la decadencia finisecular. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to offer a compositional semantics for subjunctive and indicative will conditionals, and to derive the projection properties of the types of conditionals we consider and in particular those of counterfactual conditionals. It is argued that subjunctive conditionals are "bare" conditional embedded under temporal and aspectural operators, which constrain the interpretation of the modal operators in the embedded conditional. Furthermore, it is argued that a theory of presupposition projection à la Heim together with the present (...) proposal about their logical form explains the projection facts. (shrink)

This Article considers the conditions under which administrative agencies - particularly those with public health-related missions - may obtain partial autonomy from external interests or politicians. In the process, it critiques the proposition that administrative agencies in advanced industrialized countries such as the United States are routinely “captured” by external economic interests. Through case studies and the application of relevant theory from law and the study of political organization, the Article describes how agencies can produce a measure of autonomy by (...) forging coalitions of stakeholders both internal and external to the agency, and considers how partial autonomy may be modeled as a strategic process involving decisions under uncertainty. The Article then investigates how American publichealth agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, the Food Safety Inspection Service, and the Centers for Disease Control have been able to use their partial autonomy to develop significant health policy innovations. Although agencies are by no means guaranteed even a partial degree of autonomy, they are nonetheless capable of affecting their political and legal environment, with consequences not only for public-health policy but also for the legitimacy of the nation-state. (shrink)

La hipótesis principal es que el crecimiento conduce inexorablemente a un rendimiento económico continuamente menguante, lo que nos coloca en una situación paradójica: siendo la economía un «juego de suma cero», sostener y acrecentar la riqueza monetaria de las poblaciones ya ricas requiere cada vez más esfuerzo, es cada vez más difícil, requiriendo mayores poblaciones que explotar a la vez que mayor transporte a fin de ampliar mercados, extraer recursos a mayores distancia, etc. Y puesto que la jerarquía mundial de (...) conurbaciones, desde las denominadas ciudades globales hasta las megalópolis del Tercer Mundo, forman la máquina clave que sustenta el crecimiento; las conurbaciones se han ido transformando en los nodos fundamentales de la red de flujos y en el espacio del conflicto. Y nada, salvo el decrecimiento, puede modificar esa transformación. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the aspectual, marginality, and concessive uses of the grading particles still and already can be reduced to the fol lowing three classes of focus sensitive-grading particles: additive particles like too, scalar particles like even, and exclusive particles like only. The meaning differences among the occurrences of still (and already) are mostly reduced to the differences among these three classes of grading particles. In turn, these differences are shown to correlate with what type of object (...) is denoted by the phrase in the scope of the particle. The proposal has repercussions also for the focus-sensitive particle again. I investigate the latter too, and I propose a parallel between the temporal and nominal domains where the contrast between still and again is analyzed along the lines of the contrast between definite and indefinite noun phrases. (shrink)

In this paper I provide a unified analysis of a number of pragmatic anomalies that have been discussed in the literature. The paper’s main goal is to account for Sobel sequences of conditionals and sequences of disjunctive sentences, but I will also propose that this analysis can be extended to sequences of sentences with superlatives. The starting point is the observation that, while all these sequences are felicitous in one order, they are infelicitous when the order is reversed. Previous proposals (...) have focussed on particular types of infelicitous sequences Ken Hale: A life in language, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2001; Moss in Noûs 46:516–586, 2012; Lewis in Noûs 52:481–507, 2018; a.o.), or a subset of all the phenomena cited above Linguistic and psycholinguistic approaches on implicatures and presuppositions. Palgrave McMillan, Basingstoke, 2017; a.o.). I propose that sequences of sentences belonging to the same structured set of alternatives T are subject to a Specificity Constraint : sequences are acceptable if both alternatives are dominated by the same number of nodes in the structured set of alternatives T. Violations of SC can be avoided by strengthening the weaker alternative. However, covert strengthening violates an economy condition if the overtly stronger alternative is among those made salient by the preceding utterance in the sequence. I propose that the set of alternatives made salient by an utterance of a sentence s consists of s’s sisters and mother in T. I will show that the strengthening mechanism varies depending on the kind of sequence we have. (shrink)

In this paper I provide a unified analysis of a number of pragmatic anomalies that have been discussed in the literature. The paper’s main goal is to account for Sobel sequences of conditionals and sequences of disjunctive sentences, but I will also propose that this analysis can be extended to sequences of sentences with superlatives. The starting point is the observation that, while all these sequences are felicitous in one order, they are infelicitous when the order is reversed. Previous proposals (...) have focussed on particular types of infelicitous sequences Ken Hale: A life in language, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2001; Moss in Noûs 46:516–586, 2012; Lewis in Noûs 52:481–507, 2018; a.o.), or a subset of all the phenomena cited above Linguistic and psycholinguistic approaches on implicatures and presuppositions. Palgrave McMillan, Basingstoke, 2017; a.o.). I propose that sequences of sentences belonging to the same structured set of alternatives T are subject to a Specificity Constraint : sequences are acceptable if both alternatives are dominated by the same number of nodes in the structured set of alternatives T. Violations of SC can be avoided by strengthening the weaker alternative. However, covert strengthening violates an economy condition if the overtly stronger alternative is among those made salient by the preceding utterance in the sequence. I propose that the set of alternatives made salient by an utterance of a sentence s consists of s’s sisters and mother in T. I will show that the strengthening mechanism varies depending on the kind of sequence we have. (shrink)

In this paper I provide a unified analysis of a number of pragmatic anomalies that have been discussed in the literature. The paper’s main goal is to account for Sobel sequences of conditionals and sequences of disjunctive sentences, but I will also propose that this analysis can be extended to sequences of sentences with superlatives. The starting point is the observation that, while all these sequences are felicitous in one order, they are infelicitous when the order is reversed. Previous proposals (...) have focussed on particular types of infelicitous sequences Ken Hale: A life in language, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2001; Moss in Noûs 46:516–586, 2012; Lewis in Noûs 52:481–507, 2018; a.o.), or a subset of all the phenomena cited above Linguistic and psycholinguistic approaches on implicatures and presuppositions. Palgrave McMillan, Basingstoke, 2017; a.o.). I propose that sequences of sentences belonging to the same structured set of alternatives T are subject to a Specificity Constraint : sequences are acceptable if both alternatives are dominated by the same number of nodes in the structured set of alternatives T. Violations of SC can be avoided by strengthening the weaker alternative. However, covert strengthening violates an economy condition if the overtly stronger alternative is among those made salient by the preceding utterance in the sequence. I propose that the set of alternatives made salient by an utterance of a sentence s consists of s’s sisters and mother in T. I will show that the strengthening mechanism varies depending on the kind of sequence we have. (shrink)

El proyecto del _Vocabulaire européen des philosophies. Dictionnaire des intraduisibles _(_VEP_, 2004) es el primer abordaje a gran escala del problema de la traducción en el discurso filosófico. Su principal animadora, Barbara Cassin, postula, a partir de la revalorización del relativismo sofístico, que la traducción implica un “saber hacer con las diferencias” de alcances éticos y comunitarios a escala transnacional. Sin embargo, más allá del pluralismo que supone la “logología sofística”, se insinúa en la traducción al castellano del _VEP_, el (...) _Vocabulario de las Filosofías Occidentales_ (_VFO_, 2018), una imagen de Latinoamérica estereotipadamente eurocéntrica, que entra en conflicto con otras narrativas también presentes en la edición española. El objeto de este trabajo es pues analizar la cartografía de la filosofía mundial que traza el _VFO_, lo cual supone revisar la teoría de la traducción de Cassin y establecer conexiones con las posiciones que tomaron la filósofa y algunos de sus colaboradores en las discusiones que se dieron en los últimos años en la Argentina en torno a la adopción del “modelo sudafricano” como forma de tramitar la violencia del pasado reciente. (shrink)

Una serie de avisos televisivos que el Frente de Todos difundió en las elecciones bonaerenses de 2019 introdujo un elemento sobre la banda de imagen que concitó cierta atención en los medios de prensa. Se trata de un automóvil con el cual el líder del binomio, Axel Kicillof, recorrió el interior de la Provincia de Buenos Aires con el objeto de que el espacio político que representaba recuperase el gobierno de dicho territorio, tras un período de cuatro años administrado por (...) la coalición Cambiemos. En nuestro estudio creemos oportuno examinar, a partir de aquel vehículo y otros operadores de superficie, la diégesis que atravesó los anuncios que podríamos denominar Llegando, debido a que los elementos, espacios y situaciones que los conforman revelan un sentido connotado más amplio que el encuentro entre los candidatos y los electores. La metodología consistió en la realización de un corpus de unidades de observación, de acuerdo a la dimensión argumental que las unifica y a los espacios referenciales en los cuales acontece la trama de los spots. El impacto que se espera obtener consiste en un estudio de la banda de imagen de los avisos, debido a que los dispositivos técnicos de propaganda concernientes a la política partidaria electoral constituyen muestras pertinentes para examinar un aspecto sustancial de la cultura visual contemporánea. (shrink)

Dentro de las diversas relecturas de la literatura latina 'decadente' del fin-desiècle, Le latin mystique de Remy DE GOURMONT ocupa un lugar excepcional, en la medida en que no se trata solamente de un texto crítico sino también de una antología comentada y traducida. Le latin mystique, texto que se plantea como la exploración de una literatura no estudiada por críticos y profesores, es una obra clave para comprender aspectos de la sensibilidad fin-de-siècle y las lecturas 'no académicas' que escritores (...) del siglo XX, tales como Ezra POUND o Jorge Luis BORGES, harán de la latinidad clásica y medieval. Among the various fin-de-siècle reinterpretations of the 'decadent' latin literature, Le latin mystique of Remy DE GOURMONT has a singular place, because is not only a critical essay but also an annotated and translated anthology. Le latin mystique, book that reviews a literature supposedly not studied by critics and scholars, is a key text for understanding aspects of the fin-de-siècle sensibility and the 'non-academic' readings that twentieth century writers, like Ezra POUND or Jorge Luis BORGES, will make of the classical and medieval latin literature. (shrink)

Las experiencias de unio mystica alcanzadas por Plotino encuentran su reflejo en los escritos que los pensadores gnósticos utilizan en sus discusiones con este en Roma, tal como describen Zostrianos (NH VIII, 1) y Allógenes (NH XI, 3). A pesar de dicha rivalidad filosófica, es posible encontrar similitudes entre los testimonios si analizamos estas experiencias a través de su relación con los denominados Estados Alterados de Consciencia (EAC), concepto propuesto por la psicología de la religión. Tanto el corpus filosófico como (...) la tradición gnóstica describen este estado particular del alma (ψυχἠ) al detallar el proceso mistico. En dicho proceso destaca para ambos el cambio profundo en la consciencia del iniciado, aunque neoplatónicos y gnósticos difieren en los límites de identificación con la divinidad.De esta forma, a través del análisis textual y filológico, centraremos el presente trabajo en el estudio de la unio mystica en dos aspectos. Por una parte, en el proceso mismo seguido por el iniciado. Por otra, en el grado de unión o contacto del visionario-iniciado con el Absoluto o la divinidad. Dicho análisis subrayará los caminos comunes que impulsaban ambas escuelas de pensamiento en su búsqueda de lo trascendente, a la vez que planteará preguntas esenciales sobre dicho proceso que delimitarán claramente las diferencias entre las mismas. (shrink)

Tu duca, tu signore, e tu maestro». Con estas palabras se inicia una relación educativa entre Virgilio y Dante que manifiesta de manera concreta una visión sobre el maestro de permanente validez y actualidad. El viaje de Dante permite descubrir en la Divina Comedia la existencia de unos principios universales que fundamentan la acción del maestro. No obstante, dichos principios no son del todo originales, sino que permiten evidenciar la influencia que Tomás de Aquino ha ejercido en Dante. El Aquinate (...) no solo es mencionado en el Paraíso en los cantos X al XIV, sino que los principios pedagógicos tomistas, especialmente los contenidos en la Suma de Teología, informan la relación concreta entre los dos poetas. En este estudio intentaremos explicitar la visión del maestro propuesta por Dante, a la vez que se buscará mostrar que Tomás de Aquino es la fuente principal de la que Dante se nutre para labrar esa específica relación entre maestro y discípulo. (shrink)

The Somatic Mutation Theory has been challenged on its fundamentals by the Tissue Organization Field Theory of Carcinogenesis. However, a recent publication has questioned whether TOFT could be a valid alternative theory of carcinogenesis to that presented by SMT. Herein we critically review arguments supporting the irreducible opposition between the two theoretical approaches by highlighting differences regarding the philosophical, methodological and experimental approaches on which they respectively rely. We conclude that SMT has not explained carcinogenesis due to severe epistemological and (...) empirical shortcomings, while TOFT is gaining momentum. The main issue is actually to submit SMT to rigorous testing. This concern includes the imperatives to seek evidence for disproving one’s hypothesis, and to consider the whole, and not just selective evidence. (shrink)

The moving spotlight account (MS) is a view that combines an eternalist ontology and an A-theoretic metaphysics. The intuition underlying MS is that the present time is somehow privileged and experientially vivid, as if it were illuminated by a moving spotlight. According to MS-theorists, a key reason to prefer MS to B-theoretic eternalism is that our experience of time supports it. We argue that this is false. To this end, we formulate a new family of positions in the philosophy of (...) time, which differ from MS in that, intuitively, they admit a plurality of moving spotlights. We argue that these ‘deviant’ variants of MS cannot be dismissed as conceptually incoherent, and that they are as well-supported by our experience as is MS. One of these variants, however, is consistent with the B-theory. Thus, if our experience of time supports MS, then it supports the B-theory as well. (shrink)

Este trabajo tiene por objetivo analizar Hch 16 en tanto relato organizado por el autor en base a las tensiones de las ἐκκλησίαι de inicios del siglo II. Identificaremos en la narración cómo se representan las inquietudes por el liderazgo comunitario y la forja de una identidad grupal. En el primer caso, la interacción de Pablo con los οἶκοι filipenses propicia una reflexión acerca de la relación entre ministros y fieles. En el segundo, las diferentes designaciones que recibe Pablo en (...) el capítulo evidenciarían no solo la compleja identidad de los creyentes, sino la propuesta comunitaria del autor. (shrink)

Open futurism is the indeterministic position according to which the future is ‘open’, i.e., there is now no fact of the matter as to what future contingent events will actually obtain. Many open futurists hold a branching conception of time, in which a variety of possible futures exist. This paper introduces two challenges to branching-time open futurism, which are similar in spirit to a challenge posed by Fine to tense realism. The paper argues that, to address the new challenges, open (...) futurists must adopt an objective, non-perspectival notion of actuality and subscribe to an A-theoretic, dynamic conception of reality. Moreover, given a natural understanding of “actual future”, it is perfectly sensible for open futurists to hold that a unique, objectively actual future exists, contrary to a common assumption in the current debate. The paper also contends that recognising the existence of a unique actual future helps open futurists to avoid potential misconceptions. (shrink)

Different cell lineages growing in microgravity undergo a spontaneous transition leading to the emergence of two distinct phenotypes. By returning these populations in a normal gravitational field, the two phenotypes collapse, recovering their original configuration. In this review, we hypothesize that, once the gravitational constraint is removed, the system freely explores its phenotypic space, while, when in a gravitational field, cells are “constrained” to adopt only one favored configuration. We suggest that the genome allows for a wide range of “possibilities” (...) but it is unable per se to choose among them: the emergence of a specific phenotype is enabled by physical constraints that drive the system toward a preferred solution. These findings may help in understanding how cells and tissues behave in both development and cancer. In microgravity, cells undergo spontaneous and reversible transitions between different phenotypes. In the absence of physical constraints, living systems could yield bi-stable decisions. On the contrary, physical ‘boundaries’ constrain cells to acquire only a specific configuration by selecting and shaping different gene expression patterns provided by the intrinsic genetic stochasticity. (shrink)

This 1995 volume views important social and political issues through the eyes of economists. Pioneered by Gary Becker, this approach asserts that all actions, whether working, playing, dating, or mating, have economic motivations and consequences, and can be analysed using economic reasoning. Intended as an introduction to the current state of the field, the essays are informal and non-technical, while still using up-to-date economic reasoning to illuminate such topics as crime, marriage, discrimination, immigration, fads and fashions. The expanding domain of (...) economics is illustrated, as problems from sociology, political science, anthropology, and public policy are all included in this Beckerian view: the world of human interaction, as seen by an economist. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo abordaremos la noción de “apócrifo” en un sentido amplio. Este sentido abarca tanto la noción original de “oculto”, existente ya en la literatura antigua, como la surgida posteriormente de “extracanónico”. Nuestra metodología de análisis se desprende de los estudios cognitivos y particularmente desde el historicismo cognitivo, ya que consideramos indispensable, ubicar estos textos dentro de las estructuras mentales de los autores que les dieron origen. De esta manera buscamos comprender las representaciones existentes en los individuos que (...) son compartidas públicamente con las representaciones de otros habitantes de la comunidad. Es decir, analizar estos textos tal cual funcionaban en las sociedades que los crearon. Así, esperamos demostrar que estos escritos “apócrifos” considerados tanto por rabinos como por eclesiásticos como “fuera del canon” y por lo tanto no determinantes para la historia y la teología, son en realidad indispensables para la comprensión del proceso de formación de dicho canon. Asimismo, estos textos conforman depósitos de sucesos, conceptos e ideas que alguna vez pertenecieron a determinados grupos tanto judíos como cristianos y que fueron luego dejados de lado en el intento de establecer un conjunto cerrado de textos que definiera cierta “autoridad” normativa para dichas comunidades. (shrink)