The Mondragon Corporation, a group of cooperatives, is a thriving example of how cooperatives can succeed. The authors describe six features of the corporation and five 'successful cooperative actions' that they consider to be crucial in explaining its accomplishments. Both the specific features and the successful actions are contrasted with those of standard capitalist companies, to show how this case is unique in the field of corporate organization and management. Through a combination of democratic principles, the values of solidarity, and (...) strong competitiveness, Mondragon has simultaneously achieved both efficiency and equity and has become an alternative to the organizational and governance models of traditional capitalist firms. (shrink)

This article explores the interrelationship among scientific knowledge, ethical debates and the question of responsibility through sustainability thinking. In a globalising world which appears to be establishing itself, sustainability should form the basis for achieving a new ethics, shared on both a local and global scale. The sustainability culture should become an integral part in this process, in which the rights of future generations, of non-human species and global shared resources are taken into account. Sustainable culture is, in fact, an (...) inevitable process that will involve changes in many of the established stances of society, science and ethics. (shrink)

Desde un punto de vista semántico-literario abordaremos el modo en que Joaquín Antonio Peñalosa se ha basado en los Ejercicios espirituales de San Ignacio de Loyola para la elaboración de su obra poética Ejercicios para las bestezuelas de Dios, un libro cuyos protagonistas son animales, donde adapta a su lenguaje poético, especialmente al franciscanismo poético, el itinerario ignaciano a seguir para alcanzar la unión con Dios. Nuestro propósito es comparar ambos textos para hacer objetiva una relación que evoca el (...) título de la obra peñalosiana, pero que aún no se había realizado de modo explícito. De tal trabajo concluiremos que Peñalosa sigue la misma estructura argumental que los Ejercicios de san Ignacio para lograr los mismos fines ascéticos, evidenciando así que el libro del mexicano es poesía ascética de estilo franciscano, con raíces en San Ignacio. (shrink)

Luego de un rápido bosquejo de las etapas por las que ha pasado el pensamiento filosófico-cristiano en América Latina, el trabajo se concentra en la principales tendencias y autores en el período que va de la década del 40 del siglo XX hasta el momento que se publica el ensayo en 1998.

Two aspects of the fine Flecha-Cruz paper can be usefully elaborated. The Mondragon cooperatives differ not only from capitalist firms but also from most other cooperatives in the doctrine of the 'priority of labor over capital' which means that the people working in any sort of cooperative will be members and will not be rented as employees. Also the Mondragon system of internal capital accounts solves the equity-structure problem that has plagued many modern cooperatives structured as non-profits or traditional worker (...) cooperatives with 'membership shares'. (shrink)

It is widely supposed that evolutionary debunking arguments against morality constitute a type of epistemological objection to our moral beliefs. In particular, the debunking force of such arguments is not supposed to depend on the metaphysical claim that moral facts do not exist. In this paper I argue that this standard epistemological construal of EDAs is highly misleading, if not mistaken. Specifically, I argue that the most widely discussed EDAs all make key and controversial metaphysical claims about the nature of (...) morality or the possibility of moral truth that belie their apparently epistemological character. I show that the debunking force of these EDAs derives largely from metaphysical claims about morality and their implications for the possibility of moral reduction, rather than from epistemological worries associated with the existence of an causal/non-moral explanation of our moral judgments. The paper briefly concludes with a dilemma that I believe confronts all EDAs such as those discussed in this paper: either such arguments are unsound, or else they prove too much, debunking our knowledge of science and the external world, as well as morality. (shrink)

A ‘companions in guilt’ strategy against moral error theory aims to show that the latter proves too much: if sound, it supports an implausible error-theoretic conclusion in other areas such as epistemic or practical reasoning. Christopher Cowie [2016 Cowie, C. 2016. Good News for Moral Error Theorists: A Master Argument Against Companions in Guilt Strategies, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94/1: 115–30.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar]] has recently produced what he claims is a ‘master argument’ against (...) all such strategies. The essence of his argument is that CG arguments cannot work because they are afflicted by internal incoherence or inconsistency. I argue, first, that Cowie's master argument does not succeed. Beyond this, I argue that there is no good reason to think that any such argument—one that purports to identify an internal incoherence in CG arguments—can succeed. Second, I argue that the main substantive area of disagreement between error theorists and CG theorists essentially concerns the conceptual profile of epistemic reasons—specifically, whether they are strongly categorical—not the ontological question of whether such reasons exist. I then develop an argument in favour of the CG theorist's position by considering the moral error theorist's arguments in support of the conceptual claim that moral reasons are strongly categorical. These include, notably, criticisms made by Joyce [2011] and Olson [2014] of Finlay's [2008] ‘end relational’ view of morality, according to which moral reasons are relative to some end or standard, hence not strongly categorical. Examining these criticisms, I argue that, based on what moral error theorists have said regarding the conceptual profile of moral reasons, there is a strong case to be made that moral reasons are strongly categorical if and only if epistemic reasons are. (shrink)

Following Post program, we will propose a linguistic and empirical interpretation of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem and related ones on unsolvability by Church and Turing. All these theorems use the diagonal argument by Cantor in order to find limitations in finitary systems, as human language, which can make “infinite use of finite means”. The linguistic version of the incompleteness theorem says that every Turing complete language is Gödel incomplete. We conclude that the incompleteness and unsolvability theorems find limitations in our finitary (...) tool, which is our complete language. (shrink)

The term “innovation” or “innovative care” has recently gained attention in the context of the use of novel and not yet fully validated medical interventions and technologies. Most notably, there have been various incidences of medical activities insufficiently validated for its regular use in healthcare that fall into this category, such as stem cell treatments, genome sequencing for diagnostic purposes, or novel reproductive technologies. Latin American countries are among the places where new and non-validated medical activities take place, notably due (...) to a lack of clear regulations and the poor support of authorities of existent legal and ethical guidelines, which is driven by “hidden battles” on the moral status of certain interventions. The increasing importance of innovative care underlines the importance of developing a general framework for these practices. Therefore, the present chapter scrutinizes this nascent field of inquiry in Latin America and offers a conceptual framework for innovation as well as its ethical justification. As we will argue, an important use of the term “innovation” or “innovative care” is best interpreted as “new non-validated practice” and not as a research activity. Then, we will defend that responsible innovation understood as responsible new non-validated practice is ethically permissible and poses an acceptable medical option if done in exceptional circumstances—where no reasonable alternatives can be provided to an individual patient—and following special ethical principles. Finally, we focus on the peculiarities and specific difficulties the concept of new non-validated practice poses to the Latin American context. We will conclude the chapter by some remarks and recommendations we draw from our analysis for individual patients, doctors, and societies in Latin America. (shrink)

The general aim of this article is to give a critical interpretation of post-trial obligations towards individual research participants in the Declaration of Helsinki 2013. Transitioning research participants to the appropriate health care when a research study ends is a global problem. The publication of a new version of the Declaration of Helsinki is a great opportunity to discuss it. In my view, the Declaration of Helsinki 2013 identifies at least two clearly different types of post-trial obligations, specifically, access to (...) care after research and access to information after research. The agents entitled to receive post-trial access are the individual participants in research studies. The Declaration identifies the sponsors, researchers and host country governments as the main agents responsible for complying with the post-trial obligations mentioned above. To justify this interpretation of post-trial obligations, I first introduce a classification of post-trial obligations and illustrate its application with examples from post-trial ethics literature. I then make a brief reconstruction of the formulations of post-trial obligations of the Declaration of Helsinki from 2000 to 2008 to correlate the changes with some of the most salient ethical arguments. Finally I advance a critical interpretation of the latest formulation of post-trial obligations. I defend the view that paragraph 34 of ‘Post-trial provisions’ is an improved formulation by comparison with earlier versions, especially for identifying responsible agents and abandoning ambiguous ‘fair benefit’ language. However, I criticize the disappearance of ‘access to other appropriate care’ present in the Declaration since 2004 and the narrow scope given to obligations of access to information after research. (shrink)

A systematic effort to rethink Freud's theory of the unconscious, aiming to separate out the different forms of unconsciousness.

Las tesis que aquí se presentan han sido elaboradas a partir del análisis del ensayo de Jan Mukarovsky: “Función, norma y valor estético como hechos sociales”. (Cfr. Jan Mukarovsky. Escritos de estética y semiótica del arte, pp. 44-121). Las mismas han sido enriquecidas como resultado del debate que, generación tras generación, sobre ellas hemos sostenido con los estudiantes —la mayoría de ellos hoy egresados del posgrado en Estética y Arte de la BUAP—. Es un trabajo que lleva su huella y (...) ningún marco mejor para incluirlo que el de este libro de la serie Academia y Egresados de la Colección La Fuente. Sirva su publicación, entonces, como reconocimiento a la participación activa y creativa de todos ellos en esos siempre gratificantes cursos de Estética y Teoría del Arte III. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 9, September 2020, Page 41-44.

The extent to which people anticipate and are influenced by the potential future consequences of their current behavior is called Consideration of Future Consequences. A well-established tool to measure this construct is the 14-item Consideration of Future Consequences Scale. The CFC-14 has shown appropriate psychometric properties in several languages. This scale comprises two factors: the CFC-Immediate and the CFC-Future. The main goal of this study was to assess the psychometric properties and internal consistency of the CFC-14 Scale in Spanish, using (...) an Argentine sample. A secondary goal was to determine its convergent validity with impulsivity, and determine differences across gender and age groups. Using a web-based survey, we collected data from 512 participants aged 13-74 years. Confirmatory Factor Analysis showed a 2-factor model as the best solution for 13-items version. Standardized regression weights ranged from.50 to.66 for CFC-F and between.43 and.83 for CFC-I. Composite reliability was also adequate: CFC-F achieve? =.80 and CFC-I? =.82. There were no differences across gender and age. The CFC-F subscale and UPPS-P subscales correlations, were negative and significant, highlighting the negative and moderate correlation between CFC-F and the lack of premeditation, a dimension strictly related to intertemporal decisions making. Thus, CFC-14 has adequate psychometric properties in an Argentinian population, although more studies are necessary to determine the robustness of these findings. (shrink)

Este artículo pretende ser una nueva aportación a la discusión que tuvo lugar durante el siglo XX sobre si santo Tomás afirma la existencia de un sentido literal múltiple. Para ello, el autor vuelve a revisar los textos teóricos en los que santo Tomás trató el tema para reconocer en ellos la afirmación de la pluralidad del sentido literal y aclarar los lugares donde el Aquinate parece negarla. Seguidamente considera el uso que santo Tomás hace de este principio en su (...) exégesis. Finalmente, lo enmarca en su hermenéutica bíblica para ver su sentido y mostrar que no es elemento yuxtapuesto, sino coherente con ella. Justamente son estos dos últimos puntos los que arrojan nueva luz para entender mejor el sentido y el fundamento de la pluralidad del sentido literal en el Aquinate. Pues, la Sagrada Escritura es una palabra que Dios quiere dirigir a cada hombre para su salvación, la cual se hace plural para poder comunicar su riqueza y alcanzar a cada hombre en su situación. (shrink)

Attempts to solve the issue of divine action in nature have resulted in many innovative proposals seeking to explain how God can act within nature without disrupting the created order but introducing novelty in the history of the universe. My goal is to show how Aquinas' doctrine of providence, mainly as expressed in his De Potentia Dei, fulfils the criteria for an account of divine action: that God's action is providential in the sense that God is involved in the individual (...) and particular here and now. -/- . (shrink)

The philosophical doctrine of Anaxarchus of Abdera is nowadays not very well known. This notwithstanding, Anaxarchus was a character of key importance in the development of Hellenistic philosophy. His ethics, in particular, is one of the first theories in stating that the ultimate goal of life is happiness. Moreover, he suggests that the only way to reach that goal is _adiaphoria_, i.e. ‘indifference’. However, the sceptic interpretation of _adiaphoria_ as denial of the criterion of truth will turn Anaxarchus into a (...) figure not related to sceptic thought, from the point of view of the sceptic philosophers themselves. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the way how Hellenistic and Roman tradition construed the role of Anaxarchus’ _eudaimonia_ and the place of this author in the development of thought in this period. (shrink)

Computer simulations have conventionally been understood to be either extensions of formal methods such as mathematical models or as special cases of empirical practices such as experiments. Here, I argue that computer simulations are best understood as instruments. Understanding them as such can better elucidate their actual role as well as their potential epistemic standing in relation to science and other scientific methods, practices and devices.

The dating of Hero of Alexandria has been linked with the lunar eclipse of March 13, ad 62, since Otto Neugebauer discovered that this eclipse is the only one that can fit the one described in Hero’s Dioptra 35. Although only a number of scholars claim that Hero himself observed the eclipse, almost all of them take Neugebauer’s identification for granted. We use statistical and linguistic methods to criticize this assumption: all indices we have found point to the fact that (...) the eclipse was merely invented as an example and, for that reason, that it cannot be used to determine Hero’s life span. (shrink)

The debate over the improvement of moral capacity or moral enhancement through pharmacology has gained momentum in the last decade as a result of advances in neuroscience. These advances have led to the discovery and allowed the alteration of patterns of human behavior, and have permitted direct interventions on the neuronal structure of behavior. In recent years, this analysis has deepened regarding the anthropological foundations of morality and the reasons that would justify the acceptance or rejection of such technology. We (...) present a review of proposals for pharmacological interventions directed directly towards moral enhancement. In addition, we identify the ethical dilemmas that such interventions may generate, as well as the moral assessment of the authors of these studies. There is a moderate consensus on the risks of any intervention on the intimate structure of the human condition, its autonomy and identity, but there are large differences in explaining the reasons for this concern and especially in justifying such interventions. These findings show that it is necessary to investigate the moral assessment of authors and the ethical dimension within the field of pharmacology in order to identify future trends. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Artificial Intelligence and the many data science methods associated with it, such as machine learning and large language models, are first and foremost epistemic technologies. In order to establish this claim, I first argue that epistemic technologies can be conceptually and practically distinguished from other technologies in virtue of what they are designed for, what they do and how they do it. I then proceed to show that unlike other kinds of technology (_including_ other (...) epistemic technologies) AI can be uniquely positioned as an epistemic technology in that it is primarily designed, developed and deployed to be used in _epistemic contexts_ such as inquiry, it is specifically designed, developed and deployed to manipulate _epistemic content_ such as data, _and_ it is designed, developed and deployed to do so particularly through _epistemic operations_ such as prediction and analysis. As has been shown in recent work in the philosophy and ethics of AI (Alvarado, AI and Ethics, 2022a), understanding AI as an epistemic technology will also have significant implications for important debates regarding our relationship to AI technologies. This paper includes a brief overview of such implications, particularly those pertaining to explainability, opacity, trust and even epistemic harms related to AI technologies. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 2, Page 121-133, February 2022.

BackgroundCurrently a variety of novel scenarios have appeared within nursing practice such as confidentiality of a patient victim of abuse, justice in insolvent patients, poorly informed consent delivery, non-satisfactory medicine outputs, or the possibility to reject a recommended treatment. These scenarios presuppose skills that are not usually acquired during the degree. Thus, the implementation of teaching approaches that promote the acquisition of these skills in the nursing curriculum is increasingly relevant.ObjectiveThe article analyzes an academic model which integrates in the curriculum (...) a series of specific theoretical concepts together with practical skills to acquire the basic ethic assessment competency.Research designThe project includes designing two subjects, General Anthropology and Ethics-Bioethics, with an applied approach in the nursing curriculum. The sequential structure of the curriculum in both subjects is constituted by three learning domains (theoretical, practical, and communicative) with different educational strategies.Ethical considerationsNo significant ethical considerations as this is a discussion paper.FindingsThe model was structured from the anthropology’s concepts and decision-making process, applied to real situations. The structure of the three domains theoretical–practical–communicative is present in each session.DiscussionIt is observed that theoretical domain fosters the capacity for critical analysis and subsequent ability to judge diverse situations. The practical domain reflected two significant difficulties: students’ resistance to internalizing moral problems and the tendency to superficial criticism. The communicative domain has frequently shown that the conflicting points are in the principles to be applied.ConclusionWe conclude that this design achieves its objectives and may provide future nursing professionals with ethical competences especially useful in healthcare practice. The three domains of the presented scheme are associated with the same process used in decision making at individual levels, where the exercise of clinical prudence acquires particular relevance. (shrink)

The best known algebraizable logics with a conjunction and an implication have the property that the conjunction defines a meet semi-lattice in the algebras of their algebraic counterpart. This property makes it possible to associate with them a semi-lattice based deductive system as a companion. Moreover, the order of the semi-lattice is also definable using the implication. This makes that the connection between the properties of the logic and the properties of its semi-lattice based companion is strong. We introduce a (...) class of algebraizable deductive systems that includes those systems, and study some of their properties and of their semi-lattice based companions. We also study conditions which, when satisfied by a deductive system in the class, imply that it is strongly algebraizable. This brings some information on the open area of research of Abstract Algebraic Logic which consists in finding interesting characterizations of classes of algebraizable logics that are strongly algebraizable. (shrink)

Leibniz filters play a prominent role in the theory of protoalgebraic logics. In [3] the problem of the definability of Leibniz filters is considered. Here we study the definability of Leibniz filters with parameters. The main result of the paper says that a protoalgebraic logic S has its strong version weakly algebraizable iff it has its Leibniz filters explicitly definable with parameters.

A logic in a finite language is said to be finitely presentable if it is axiomatized by finitely many finite rules. It is proved that binary non-indexed products of logics that are both finitely presentable and finitely equivalential are essentially finitely presentable. This result does not extend to binary non-indexed products of arbitrary finitely presentable logics, as shown by a counterexample. Finitely presentable logics are then exploited to introduce finitely presentable Leibniz classes, and to draw a parallel between the Leibniz (...) and the Maltsev hierarchies. (shrink)

A logic is selfextensional if its interderivability (or mutual consequence) relation is a congruence relation on the algebra of formulas. In the paper we characterize the selfextensional logics with a conjunction as the logics that can be defined using the semilattice order induced by the interpretation of the conjunction in the algebras of their algebraic counterpart. Using the charactrization we provide simpler proofs of several results on selfextensional logics with a conjunction obtained in [13] using Gentzen systems. We also obtain (...) some results on Fregean logics with conjunction. (shrink)

The positive fragment of the local modal consequence relation defined by the class of all Kripke frames is studied in the context ofAlgebraic Logic. It is shown that this fragment is non-protoalgebraic and that its class of canonically associated algebras according to the criteria set up in [7] is the class of positive modal algebras. Moreover its full models are characterized as the models of the Gentzen calculus introduced in [3].

De acuerdo con la fenomenología husserliana la experiencia primordial del valor descansa en vivencias emotivas. Para sostener esta idea Husserl sugiere el paralelismo entre la percepción externa y la percepción de los valores. El objetivo de este trabajo es clarificar tal paralelismo enfatizando un problema particular del análisis husserliano: la tonalidad afectiva del objeto de valor y su relación con la apercepción sentimental involucrada en la experiencia de los valores.According to husserlian phenomenology the primordial experience of value lays in emotive (...) lived-experiences. In order to sustain his Idea Husserl suggest a parallelism between the external perception and the perception of values. The aim of this work is to clarify such parallelism stressing a particular problem of husserlian analysis: the affective tonality of the object of value and its relation to the feeling apperception involved in the experience of values. (shrink)

There has recently been some literature on the properties of a Health-Related Social Welfare Function (HRSWF). The aim of this article is to contribute to the analysis of the different properties of a HRSWF, paying particular attention to the monotonicity principle. For monotonicity to be fulfilled, any increase in individual health—other things equal—should result in an increase in social welfare. We elicit public preferences concerning trade-offs between the total level of health (concern for efficiency) and its distribution (concern for equality), (...) under different hypothetical scenarios through face-to-face interviews. Of key interests are: the distinction between non-monotonic preferences and Rawlsian preferences; symmetry of HRSWF; and the extent of inequality neutral preferences. The results indicate strong support for non-monotonic preferences, over Rawlsian preferences. Furthermore, the majority of those surveyed had preferences that were consistent with a symmetric and inequality averse HRSWF. (shrink)

I wish to express, first of all, my profound gratitude to Professor J. M. Bochenski, without whose assistance the present work would have not been possible. To be concise, I would like to state that his contribution to this book may be viewed at three levels: (1) that of the general spirit, (2) that of the specific ideas, theses or approaches which are expressed in its pages, (3) that of this work qua doctoral dissertation. The general spirit which has guided (...) my research coincides with that underlying Professor :Oochenski's own works, in particular his Formale Logik (Munchen 1956). Moreover, the particular occasion which suggested my investigation was a statement included in that book according to which the literature in the field still lacked a detailed work on Frege (p. 317). I wish, likewise, to express my gratitude to other professors of the University of Fribourg for their generous help. I mention especially Professors P. Wyser, M. D. Philippe, N. Luyten, and V. Kuiper. I have also benefited from Professor E. Specker's lectures at the Eidge nossische Technische Hochschule (ZUrich) and from Professor Olof Gigon's lectures at the University of Bern. From an earlier period I wish to express my gratitude to the professors of the philosophy department of the Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, especially the late Professor Francisco Romero. The Swiss National Library (Bern) has greatly facilitated access to bibliographical sources, and the library of the University of Munster (Westphalien) has kindly provided microfilms of Frege's Nachlap. (shrink)

Among the many applications of artificial intelligence (AI), virtual assistants are one of the tools most likely to grow in the future. The development of these systems may play an increasingly important role in many facets of our lives. Therefore, given their potential importance and present and future weight, it is worthwhile to analyze what kind of challenges they entail. In this chapter, we will provide an overview of the ethical aspects of artificial virtual assistants. First, we provide a conceptual (...) clarification of the term ‘virtual assistant’, including different types of interfaces and recommender systems. Second, we address three ethical issues related to the deployment of these systems: their effects on human agency and autonomy and the subsequent cognitive dependence they would generate; the human obsolescence that may cause a generalized extension of the dependence problem; and the invasions of privacy that virtual assistants may cause. Finally, we outline the debates about the use of virtual assistants to improve human moral decisions and some areas in which these systems can be applied. (shrink)

At first sight, while taking into account the harmony of sensible reality, relation would seem to be a fundamental category of Plotinian thought. However, when one considers the references within the Enneades to relation, one discovers that this way of being should remain excluded from the supersensible realm and that, in last analysis, it only represents a weak surrogate within the sensible world for the unity proper to intelligible reality. The connection between the hypostases and between them and sensitive reality (...) cannot be explained by means of relation. (shrink)