To explain the causal relation between institutional rules and people’s actions and expectations, Searle relies upon his concept of the Background, the thesis that intentional states function only given a background of capacities that do not themselves consist in intentional phenomena. Any sentence, for instance, only acquires truth conditions or other conditions of satisfaction against a background of capacities, dispositions, know-how, etc. that are not themselves part of the content of the sentence. The Background also structures expectations. La Rouchefoucauld said, (...) for instance, that few people would fall in love if they had never read about it. (shrink)

La traduction apparaît comme un domaine majeur de recherche dans les sciences humaines et sociales depuis deux ou trois décennies, suscitant une abondante production scientifique. A la fois technique linguistique et outil potentiellement puissant de médiation culturelle, elle constitue le type de transfert culturel par excellence, et à ce titre a attiré l’attention des chercheurs en études culturelles. Cet article passe en revue quelques-uns des travaux-clés dans ce domaine, leurs apports, et la manière dont ils ont sorti les études traductologiques (...) de leur tour d’ivoire linguistique et philologique pour en faire un objet d’étude pleinement en prise avec des questions sociétales plus larges de production et de circulation non seulement de textes mais d’idées, de discours et de modèles, dans lesquelles le traducteur est invité dorénavant à assumer sa responsabilité de « passeur » pas forcément neutre. Cette nouvelle interdisciplinarité a incontestablement apporté un dynamisme et des perspectives nouvelles à la traductologie (et vice-versa) ; cependant, elle soulève la question des compétences requises pour aborder ces thématiques, et celle des limites disciplinaires. Si l’ouverture de la traduction en tant qu’objet d’étude apparaît comme un enrichissement, l’apport de la notion de traduction comme méthode et comme modèle d’échanges culturels doit encore faire ses preuves, malgré l’existence de plusieurs tentatives stimulantes allant dans ce sens. (shrink)

La traduction apparaît comme un domaine majeur de recherche dans les sciences humaines et sociales depuis deux ou trois décennies, suscitant une abondante production scientifique. A la fois technique linguistique et outil potentiellement puissant de médiation culturelle, elle constitue le type de transfert culturel par excellence, et à ce titre a attiré l’attention des chercheurs en études culturelles. Cet article passe en revue quelques-uns des travaux-clés dans ce domaine, leurs apports, et la manière dont ils ont sorti les études traductologiques (...) de leur tour d’ivoire linguistique et philologique pour en faire un objet d’étude pleinement en prise avec des questions sociétales plus larges de production et de circulation non seulement de textes mais d’idées, de discours et de modèles, dans lesquelles le traducteur est invité dorénavant à assumer sa responsabilité de « passeur » pas forcément neutre. Cette nouvelle interdisciplinarité a incontestablement apporté un dynamisme et des perspectives nouvelles à la traductologie (et vice-versa) ; cependant, elle soulève la question des compétences requises pour aborder ces thématiques, et celle des limites disciplinaires. Si l’ouverture de la traduction en tant qu’objet d’étude apparaît comme un enrichissement, l’apport de la notion de traduction comme méthode et comme modèle d’échanges culturels doit encore faire ses preuves, malgré l’existence de plusieurs tentatives stimulantes allant dans ce sens. (shrink)

Inspired by the success of generative linguistics and transformational grammar, proponents of the linguistic analogy (LA) in moral psychology hypothesize that careful attention to folk-moral judgments is likely to reveal a small set of implicit rules and structures responsible for the ubiquitous and apparently unbounded capacity for making moral judgments. As a theoretical hypothesis, LA thus requires a rich description of the computational structures that underlie mature moral judgments, an account of the acquisition and development of these structures, and an (...) analysis of those components of the moral system that are uniquely human and uniquely moral. In this paper we present the theoretical motivations for adopting LA in the study of moral cognition: (a) the distinction between competence and performance, (b) poverty of stimulus considerations, and (c) adopting the computational level as the proper level of analysis for the empirical study of moral judgment. With these motivations in hand, we review recent empirical findings that have been inspired by LA and which provide evidence for at least two predictions of LA: (a) the computational processes responsible for folk-moral judgment operate over structured representations of actions and events, as well as coding for features of agency and outcomes; and (b) folk-moral judgments are the output of a dedicated moral faculty and are largely immune to the effects of context. In addition, we highlight the complexity of the interfaces between the moral faculty and other cognitive systems external to it (e.g., number systems). We conclude by reviewing the potential utility of the theoretical and empirical tools of LA for future research in moral psychology. (shrink)

James Allen, qui fut pendant 21 ans le mari d’Abigail, mourut à la suite d’un accident du travail. C’est à cette époque que les médecins découvrirent qu’Allen était une femme. De nombreux journaux britanniques en parlèrent. Cet article situe le cas d’Allen dans le contexte plus large des female husbands (telles que Mary Hamilton et Catherine Vizzani) et analyse trois aspects récurrents dans la presse de 1829, ainsi que dans les autres récits : d’abord le travestissement et la dissimulation, ensuite (...) la sexualité féminine, y compris le lesbianisme, et enfin la terminologie utilisée, ce qui ouvre un débat sur la multiplicité générique, confrontée à l’organisation dichotomique de la société. (shrink)

La distinction de droit pénal entre la conduitemalum in seetmalum prohibitumest vieille de cinq siècles dans les juridictions de common law, et pourtant son sens autant que son utilité continuent d’être débattus. Je me joins à la mêlée, en faisant valoir que les conditions ne peuvent pas être interprétées littéralement, mais que il existe un moyen d’établir la distinction qui est à la fois plausible et utile. Une conduitemala in seest un comportement quidoitêtre interdit dans toute société politique juste, alors (...) que la conduitemala prohibita peutêtre criminalisée, mais nedoitpas absolument l’être. Je sollicite dans mon explication des concepts de la théorie du contrat social. (shrink)

The debate about what constitutes the discipline of ethics and who qualifies as an ethics consultant is linked unavoidably to a debate that is potentiated by the reality of a rapidly changing and high-stakes health care consultation marketplace. Who we are and what we can offer to the moral gesture that is medicine is shaped by our fundamental understanding of the place of expert knowledge in the transformation of social reality. The struggle for self-definition is particularly freighted since clinical ethics (...) consultation aspires to be more than academic contemplation. Two recent books (Ethics Consultation by John La Puma and David Schiedermayer and The Health Care Ethics Consultant: A Practical Guide, edited by Francoise Baylis) exemplify the two most popular but most widely divergent positions on these issues. We argue that while useful, neither book addresses fully the particular and distinct role of the professional ethicist. (shrink)

De 1872 à sa mort à la fin de 1882, Léon Gambetta et son amante Léonie Léon ont échangé quelque 6 000 lettres, dont presque 1 100 ont été conservées. En raison de l’importance politique de Gambetta, l’un des pères fondateurs de la Troisième République, cette correspondance constitue une source exceptionnelle sur les luttes des républicains pour établir une véritable République. Il s’agit en outre d’une correspondance romantique parmi les plus belles du XIXe siècle. À travers leurs lettres, Léonie Léon (...) et Léon Gambetta se montrent des amoureux profondément ancrés dans les pratiques culturelles de leur époque, pratiques marquées à la fois par des conventions littéraires et des conventions de rapport social de sexe. Ces lettres, étudiées à la lumière des théories d’épistolarité, nous démontrent les richesses d’un discours d’amour façonné par un désir autant politique que personnel. (shrink)

De 1872 à sa mort à la fin de 1882, Léon Gambetta et son amante Léonie Léon ont échangé quelque 6 000 lettres, dont presque 1 100 ont été conservées. En raison de l’importance politique de Gambetta, l’un des pères fondateurs de la Troisième République, cette correspondance constitue une source exceptionnelle sur les luttes des républicains pour établir une véritable République. Il s’agit en outre d’une correspondance romantique parmi les plus belles du XIXe siècle. À travers leurs lettres, Léonie Léon (...) et Léon Gambetta se montrent des amoureux profondément ancrés dans les pratiques culturelles de leur époque, pratiques marquées à la fois par des conventions littéraires et des conventions de rapport social de sexe. Ces lettres, étudiées à la lumière des théories d’épistolarité, nous démontrent les richesses d’un discours d’amour façonné par un désir autant politique que personnel. (shrink)

Les milliers de milliards de dollars injectés pour renflouer les institutions financières pèseront sur les économies intérieures pour les années à venir. Mais les interventions massives des États ont-elles signé la fin du modèle néolibéral ? Au plan idéologique, les créations de richesse mirifiques de la haute finance ont été son principal instrument de légitimation. On a senti, et pas seulement à gauche, que le paradigme néolibéral ne sortirait pas indemne de la crise, qui pouvait même porter un coup fatal (...) à l’hégémonie américaine. L’humiliation des géants de Wall Street semblait indiquer que le monde se trouvait au seuil d’une nouvelle ère. Entre-temps, le système financier a été stabilisé sans qu’aucun de ses problèmes de fond n’ait été résolu. Malgré le déferlement d’analyses consacrées à la crise, sa portée historique reste obscure. À quoi la crise de septembre 2008 a-t-elle mis fin ? À quoi n’a-t-elle pas mis fin ? (shrink)

This paper discusses Baker’s Enhanced Indispensability Argument for mathematical realism on the basis of the indispensable role mathematics plays in scientific explanations of physical facts, along with various responses to it. I argue that there is an analogue of causal explanation for mathematics which, of several basic types of explanation, holds the most promise for use in the EIA. I consider a plausible case where mathematics plays an explanatory role in this sense, but argue that such use still does not (...) support realism about mathematical objects. (shrink)

RESUMENSe analiza la integridad de la ciencia, entendida como la firme adhesión a valores epistemoló- gicos. Los valores fundamentales considerados son el respeto por las pruebas y el intercambio de pruebas. Paralelamente se examinan las amenazas actuales a estos valores, en particular en el campo de la investigación biomédica y farmacéutica.PALABRAS CLAVEINVESTIGACIÓN BIOMÉDICA, VALORES EPISTEMOLÓGICOS, INTERCAMBIO DE PRUEBAS, RESPETO POR LAS PRUEBASABSTRACTThe integrity of science understood as the firm adherence to epistemological values is analysed in this paper. Respect for evidence (...) and evidence-sharing are considered to be core values. At the same time, the author examines the current threats to these values, especially in the fields of biomedical and pharmaceutical research.KEYWORDSBIOMEDICAL RESEARCH, EPISTEMOLOGICAL VALUES, EVIDENCE-SHARING, RESPECT FOR EVIDENCE. (shrink)

James Allen, qui fut pendant 21 ans le mari d’Abigail, mourut à la suite d’un accident du travail. C’est à cette époque que les médecins découvrirent qu’Allen était une femme. De nombreux journaux britanniques en parlèrent. Cet article situe le cas d’Allen dans le contexte plus large des female husbands (telles que Mary Hamilton et Catherine Vizzani) et analyse trois aspects récurrents dans la presse de 1829, ainsi que dans les autres récits : d’abord le travestissement et la dissimulation, ensuite (...) la sexualité féminine, y compris le lesbianisme, et enfin la terminologie utilisée, ce qui ouvre un débat sur la multiplicité générique, confrontée à l’organisation dichotomique de la société. (shrink)

Professor Janna Thompson, FASSA, FAHA died in Melbourne on 24 June 2022. She retired in 2011 as Professor of Philosophy from La Trobe University after more than.

Le livre de Françoise Thébaud, Écrire l’histoire des femmes, constitue une contribution importante à l’historiographie de la France et a reçu un accueil très favorable en 1998. Méditation, en premier lieu, sur l’évolution professionnelle de son auteure, le livre analyse en outre le développement de « l’histoire des femmes » et les débats théoriques et méthodologiques qui l’ont marqué. Cette nouvelle édition rend compte des développements jusqu’à l’année 2007 et met à jour la bibliographie. C...

RESUMENSe analiza la integridad de la ciencia, entendida como la firme adhesión a valores epistemoló- gicos. Los valores fundamentales considerados son el respeto por las pruebas y el intercambio de pruebas. Paralelamente se examinan las amenazas actuales a estos valores, en particular en el campo de la investigación biomédica y farmacéutica.PALABRAS CLAVEINVESTIGACIÓN BIOMÉDICA, VALORES EPISTEMOLÓGICOS, INTERCAMBIO DE PRUEBAS, RESPETO POR LAS PRUEBASABSTRACTThe integrity of science understood as the firm adherence to epistemological values is analysed in this paper. Respect for evidence (...) and evidence-sharing are considered to be core values. At the same time, the author examines the current threats to these values, especially in the fields of biomedical and pharmaceutical research.KEYWORDSBIOMEDICAL RESEARCH, EPISTEMOLOGICAL VALUES, EVIDENCE-SHARING, RESPECT FOR EVIDENCE. (shrink)

Peirce’s response to the anti-metaphysical positivism of his day draws on Kant’s response to Hume, but moves beyond it, being thus a valuable resource, especially in our own post-Logical Positivist era. Kant’s legacy to Peirce was a lasting conviction that metaphysics need not be the hopelessly "airy science" Hume had pooh-poohed, but could and should become a legitimate and valuable area of investigation. Peirce's legacy to philosophy today is a distinctively plausible post-Kantian reconstruction of how this might be achieved.

A genuine inquirer seeks the truth; pseudo-inquirers, to make a case for some proposition determined in advance: the sham reasoner, for some proposition his commitment to which is already evident; the fake reasoner, for some proposition to the truth-value of which he is indifferent, but advancing which he believes will benefit himself. Our preposterous environment, in which "everyone shall produce written research in order to live, and it shall be decreed a knowledge explosion" (Barzun) hinders genuine inquiry, encourages the sham (...) and the fake. It has encouraged the factitious despair of the possibility of honest inquiry articulated in much recent philosophy. (shrink)

La metáfora no tiene ningún lugar en la ciencia, dicen algunos; al contrario, la metáfora es crucial para la ciencia, defienden otros. La ciencia es una empresa racional con una lógica distintiva propia; no, la ciencia no es en esencia diferente de la literatura, al igual que ésta, es una forma de creación de mundos. Hay un tipo de significado propiamente metafórico; no, las expresiones metafóricas poseen únicamente significados literales, en los cuales son simplemente falsas. Brillando por su ausencia, se (...) encuentra un razonable punto intermedio que Haack dibujará aquí. La metáfora es útil, pero no esencial, al trabajo científico; las metáforas no tienen una clase especial de significado, pero desempeñan un rol pragmático especial; el trabajo científico y la escritura de ficción tienen en común cosas importantes, pero hay también diferencias significativas entre estas dos empresas. Una vez que entendamos cómo funciona la ciencia (§1), y luego cómo funcionan las metáforas (§2), podremos articular las semejanzas, y diferencias, entre las metáforas científicas y las literarias. (§3). (shrink)

This volume of papers, arising from the Royal Institute of Philosophy Conference on Philosophy and Medical Welfare, includes contributions from doctors, nurses, and administrators in the field of health care as well as academics in the disciplines of philosophy, economics, and politics.

Les publications sur le thème de l’histoire de la jeunesse française au xxe siècle sont aujourd’hui nombreuses. Les premières s’intéressaient aux jeunes intellectuels, aux mouvements de jeunesse durant la période d’entre-deux-guerres, et à la jeunesse sous le régime de Vichy, tandis que les plus récentes se sont penchées sur les années après 1945, et plus particulièrement sur les Trente Glorieuses et les années soixante. Ces ouvrages expliquent comment la jeunesse française est devenue la cib...

The article compares the work of Peirce and Popper. It focuses on issues in epistemology and philosophy of science, especially Peirce's claims that abduction is a matter of logic, and that induction can be given a weak form of justification. Peirce's and Popper's accounts of the nature of truth and its role in scientific inquiry are compared, and difficulties are diagnosed in both their attempts to reconcile fallibilism with a definition of truth which.

A natural language is an organic living thing; and meanings change as words take on new, and shed old, connotations. Recent philosophy of language has paid little attention to the growth of meaning; radical philosophers like Feyerabend and Rorty have suggested that meaning-change undermines the pretensions of science to be a rational enterprise. Thinkers in the classical pragmatist tradition, however -Peirce in philosophy of science and, more implicitly, Holmes in legal theory- both recognized the significance of growth of meaning, and (...) understood how it can contribute to the progress of science and to the adaptation of a legal system to changing circumstances. This paper develops these insights, and illustrates them by reference to the growth of meaning of "DNA" from the identification of "nuclein" to the discovery of mtDNA almost a century later, and the growth of meaning of "the establishment of religion" in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution from its ratification in 1791 to the present day. Arguing that the growth of meaning can indeed contribute to rationality, it also shows why narrowly formal models are inadequate both to science and to law. Un lenguaje natural es una cosa viviente orgánica, y los significados cambian a medida que las palabras adoptan nuevas connotaciones y abandonan viejas. La filosofía del lenguaje reciente ha prestado poca atención al desarrollo del significado; filósofos radicales, como Feyerabend y Rorty han sugerido que el cambio de significado socava las pretensiones de la ciencia de ser una empresa racional. Pensadores en la tradición pragmatista clásica, sin embargo -Peirce en la filosofía de la ciencia y, más implícitamente, Holmes en la teoría del Derecho- reconocieron la importancia del desarrollo del significado y comprendieron cómo éste puede contribuir al progreso de la ciencia y a la adaptabilidad de un sistema jurídico a las circunstancias cambiantes. Este trabajo desarrolla estas ideas, y las ilustra por medio de una referencia a el desarrollo del significado de "ADN" desde la identificación de la "nucleína" hasta el descubrimiento del ADN mitocondrial casi un siglo más tarde, y el desarrollo del significado de "el establecimiento de una religión" en la Primera Enmienda de la Constitución de los Estados Unidos desde su ratificación en 1791 hasta la actualidad. Argumentando que el desarrollo del significado puede contribuir mucho a la racionalidad, también muestra por qué los modelos estrechamente formales son inadecuados, tanto para la ciencia como para el Derecho. (shrink)

Este ensayo propone una hipótesis: que el modelo de Sujeto “educable” y “moral” que expone José Enrique Rodó en su Ariel puede corresponderse con el ideal de mousikós (??st?ó?), término griego que, según ciertas acepciones, se traduce por “culto” o “cultivado”, y que designaba a las personas eruditas.

It is hardly necessary to rent I Spit on Your Grave or Tool Box Murders for your VCR in order to find images of sexuality contaminated by depersonalization or violence. As far back as Rabelais’ Gargantua, for example, Panurge proposes to build a wall around Paris out of the pleasure-twats of women [which] are much cheaper than stones”: “the largest … in front” would be followed by “the medium-sized, and last of all, the least and smallest,” all interlaced with “many (...) horney joy-dinguses” so that fortification would be impregnable, except for the “ordure and excretions” of the flies it would doubtlessly attract.1 Two centuries later, one of Rabelais’ compatriots, the Marquis de Lade, described the rage of a sexually initiated daughter against a woman who refuses to consider her “pleasure-twat” “cheaper than stones.” The Sadeian heroine first sodomizes her puritanical mother with an artificial penis, then has her infected with syphilis, and finally performs infibulations to prevent the infected semen from leaking out: “Quickly, quickly, fetch me needle and threat! … Spread your thighs, Mama, so I can stitch you together.”2One century later in England, the author of My Secret Life explained that, when in a state of sexual excitement, “he is ready to fuck anything,” from his sister to his grandmother, from a ten-year-old, to a woman of sixty, for a standing prick has no conscience.” To this credo, he adds the admonition, “Woe be to the female whom he gets a chance at, if she does not want him, for he will have her if he can.”3 The sexually aroused man in the contemporary American film Looking for Mr. Goodbar curses the woman who does not want him as much as she wants a room of her own and the freedom to choose a succession of male lovers. After he resentfully determines to have her when he gets the chance , he rapes her and finally knifes her to death, exclaiming “That’s what you want, bitch, right? That’s what you want.”However these individual works are labeled, such passages remind us of the long history of pornography, a gender-specific genre produced primarily by and for men but focused obsessively on the female figure. In their depictions of female sexuality, narratives from Gargantua to La Philosophie dans le boudoir, My Secret Life, and Looking for Mr. Goodbar explain why definitions of the pornographic have recently moved away from “obscenity,” a term that generally refers to the sexually stimulating effects of a picture, a novel, or a film on the male reader/observer, and toward “dehumanization,” a word that is used to evoke the objectification of women. As Irene Diamond has demonstrated, during the past decade the generally held assumption that pornography is about male sexuality has been qualified by those who argue that “the ‘what’ of pornography is not sex but power and violence, and the ‘who’ of concern are no longer male consumers and artists but women.”4 1. François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, trans. Jacques Le Clercq , bk. 2, chap. 15. I have used this translation because it is employed in Helene Iswolsky’s translation of Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World . With no analysis of gender, Bakhtin’s exclusive focus on the grotesque wipes out the significance of Rabelais’ sexual imagery.2. Marquis de Sade, quoted in a brilliant reading of this text by Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography , p. 127; all further references to this work , abbreviated SW, will be included in the text.3. My Secret Life , p. 361.4. Irene Diamond, “Pornography and Repression: A Reconsideration,” in Women: Sex and Sexuality, ed. Catharine Stimpson and Ethel Spector Person , p. 132. Susan Gubar is professor of English and women’s studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. Together with Sandra M. Gilbert, she has coauthored The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination and co-edited both Shakespeare’s Sisters: Feminist Essays on Women Poets and the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Tradition in English. This fall they will publish the first volume of a three-volume work, No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century. Her previous contribution to Critical Inquiry is “ ‘The Blank Page’ and the Issues of Female Creativity”. (shrink)

Para entender por qué la interacción de la ciencia y el derecho puede ser tan problemática, no basta con apuntar vagamente hacia un supuesto contraste entre los “modos de pensamiento” científico y jurídico. Es necesario considerar, en cambio, las consecuencias de los distintos objetivos que tanto la ciencia como el derecho persiguen, así como las limitaciones bajo las cuales dichos objetivos son perseguidos, y las diferentes culturas que involucran a ambas empresas. Desde esa perspectiva, es posible observar no sólo por (...) qué el derecho en algunas ocasiones pide más de lo que la ciencia puede dar en tanto que en otras recibe menos de lo que la ciencia podría dar, sino también por qué la simple dicotomía “inferencia científica” vs. “razonamiento jurídico” es en realidad más engañosa que útil. (shrink)

Como se usa act ual ment e l a pal abr ainglesa “scientism”, es una verdad verbaltrivial que se debe evitar el cientismo –una actitud inapropiadamente deferentehaci a l a ci enci a. Pero const i t uye unacuestión sustancial determinar cuando,y por qué, la deferencia hacia las cienciases inapropiada o exagerada. Este artículot r a t a d e r e s p o n d e r a e s t a c u e s t i ó (...) narticulando “seis signos de cientismo”: eluso honorífico de “ciencia,” etc.; el empleode los símbolos de la ciencia de manerapuramente decorativa; la preocupaciónpor la demarcación; la preocupación porel “método científico”; la búsqueda derespuestas en las ciencias para preguntasque est án más al l á de su al cance; l anegación de la legitimidad o valor dela indagación no-científica o de actividades como escribirpoesía o producir arte.As t he Engl i s h wor d “ s c i e nt i s m” i sc ur r e nt l y us e d, i t i s a t r i vi al ve r baltruth that scientism-an inappropriatelydeferential attitude to science-should beavoided. But it is a substantial questionwhen, and why, deference to the sciencesis inappropriate or exaggerated. This papertries to answer that question by articulating“six signs of scientism”: the honorific useof “science,” etc.; using scientific trappingspur e l y de c o r a t i v e l y ; pr e o c c upa t i o nwith demarcation; preoccupation with“scientific method”; looking to the sciencesfor answers beyond their scope; denyingthe legitimacy or worth of non-scientific inquiry, or of writingpoetry or making art. (shrink)

Los materiales producidos por entidades ligadas a la salud de las infancias como la OMS, UNICEF o la OPS tienden a enumerar argumentos en contra de las tecnologías, desde los que se desalienta el “uso”, la “exposición” o el “consumo” de pantallas por parte de niñas y niños. Los diseños curriculares para la educación inicial, al contrario, se refieren a las tecnologías como parte de los saberes a enseñar, como oportunidades para la innovación, potenciales recursos para la enseñanza o incluso (...) como rasgos de las llamadas nuevas infancias. En este artículo procuraremos analizar los escenarios de encuentro entre infancias y tecnologías que surgen de ambas fuentes, sobre la hipótesis de que consideran escenarios muy diferentes: no hablan de las mismas tecnologías ni de las mismas infancias. La producción se inscribe en un estudio en curso de la Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, titulado “Infancias, tecnologías digitales y escuela: un análisis desde la educación infantil”. (shrink)

The debate about what constitutes the discipline of ethics and who qualifies as an ethics consultant is linked unavoidably to a debate that is potentiated by the reality of a rapidly changing and high-stakes health care consultation marketplace. Who we are and what we can offer to the moral gesture that is medicine is shaped by our fundamental understanding of the place of expert knowledge in the transformation of social reality. The struggle for self-definition is particularly freighted since clinical ethics (...) consultation aspires to be more than academic contemplation. Two recent books (Ethics Consultation by John La Puma and David Schiedermayer and The Health Care Ethics Consultant: A Practical Guide, edited by Francoise Baylis) exemplify the two most popular but most widely divergent positions on these issues. We argue that while useful, neither book addresses fully the particular and distinct role of the professional ethicist. (shrink)

What humans know about the soil has material implications for the future of life on Earth. This paper looks at how soil is in the process of becoming visible as a living world at the heart of an epoch marked by technoscientific management of the environment. Scientific knowledge of the natural world is encountering a range of collectives and individuals striving to renew humans’ relationships with non human and organic ways of life. Soil is an interesting case for the study (...) of absence: all around, yet hardly apparent for many of us. Drawing upon Susan Leigh Star’s approach to “residues” and “infrastructures” allows soil to appear in all its ecological significance, as the final home to all residues and the dismissed infrastructure of bios. The aim of this essay is not only contributing to make soil visible, but to treat its passing into visibility as an event in its own right that reveals soil’s ambivalent material and cultural significance. As ecological visions come to reclaim this mistreated living ecosystem, it is not only the knowledge about soil that could be transformed but the soil itself. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that, if it is true that maximum self-development is better both for individuals and society, and if it is true that that self-development is being seriously curtailed by pervasive environmental tech forces, then clearly educational systems, since they are guardians of “developing” young humans, have a moral imperative to push back against forces that diminish the self. On the other hand, if it is not true that “more self is always better,” that perhaps “goodness of (...) fit” between self and society is optimum, then education systems are justified in continuing to pay scant attention to the forces of self-development (or lack thereof). In line with Sherry Turkle’s (2011) argument that tech forces are diminishing the sort of reflective reasoning necessary for self-development, we will argue that since communicative interchange is necessary for self-development, and an ever-developing self is necessary for ever deeper and more meaningful dialogue (hence forming a dialectic), the fact that social media and other forms of tech connection stunts deep and meaningful interchange has serious implications. Specifically, we will argue that, in contemporary high-tech society (what we are calling Society 2.0), the dialectic between self and communication is going the “wrong” way; that genuine dialogue is becoming ever more rare, which in turn is resulting in “diminished-I’s,” which in turn is resulting in ever more complacency in the face of utterly superficial communicative interchange. We will begin with an overview of what we mean by a “diminished-I,” and then follow by noting how social media, the reading vacuum, roboticism, crowd communication, and decreasing social capital are resulting in diminished-I’s. Since this is resulting in an “I-diminished” society, we will reflect on the question of whether those dialogical educational initiatives that promote self-development are, in fact, making dodos, i.e., making youngsters unfit for the environment in which they find themselves. Ultimately, we will argue that, if educators choose to fight back against the I-diminishing forces of Society 2.0, they need to take selves seriously and actively engage youngsters in dialogue with those with opposing viewpoints. Ultimately, youngsters in Society 2.0 will need all the assistance educators can muster to fight the addictive, literally mind-numbing forces of being “happily” “alone together,” and instead chose the riskier often unhappy-making option of diving into the truth-seeking process with varying coalitions of the willing. (shrink)