Resumen: Este artículo busca observar las diferencias entre el modelo sistémico funcional y el modelo pragmático-formal en su comprensión de la experticia científica y su rol en las sociedades modernas. Se elaborará un breve diagnóstico acerca de la importancia de la confianza en experticia científica en la sociedad contemporánea y cómo este proceso ha sido analizado. Luego, se analizará la descripción del conocimiento científico en la sociedad contemporánea desde el modelo sistémico funcional. Utilizando los conceptos de diferenciación funcional y acoplamiento (...) estructural, se sugerirá que, desde este modelo, el conocimiento científico es una forma de comunicación especializada propia de un sistema funcional de la sociedad. A continuación, se describirá la aproximación del modelo pragmático formal. Especial importancia tienen aquí las ideas de mundo de la vida y esfera pública. Sobre la base de estas caracterizaciones, se comparan las visiones de estos autores y se analizan las diferencias en su conceptualización de la experticia. Se argumenta que las diferencias de estos dos modelos en relación con el estatus ontológico del mundo de la vida marcan sus visiones de la experticia y los debates actuales acerca de sus posibilidades de convertibilidad en la literatura especializada. El artículo finaliza con un resumen y posibles líneas futuras de investigación.: This article seeks to observe the differences between the functional-systemic model and the pragmatic-formal model in their understanding of scientific expertise and its role in modern societies. First, a brief diagnosis about the importance of trust in scientific expertise in contemporary society and how this process has been analyzed in the specialized literature will be made. Then, the description of scientific knowledge will be analyzed from the point of view of the functional systemic model. Using the concepts of functional differentiation and structural coupling, it will be argued that scientific knowledge is here considered a specialized form of communication characteristic of a functional system. Next, the approximation of the formal-pragmatic model is described. Of special importance here are the ideas of lifeworld and public sphere. On the basis of these characterizations, the visions of these authors are compared and the differences are analyzed in relation to their conceptualization of expertise. It is then suggested that the differences between these two models in relation to the ontological status of the lifeworld shape their views of scientific expertise as well as current debates on this topic. The article ends with a summary and possible future line of research. (shrink)

Physical and mental training are associated with positive effects on executive functions throughout the lifespan. However, evidence of the benefits of combined physical and mental regimes over a sedentary lifestyle remain sparse. The goal of this study was to investigate potential mechanisms, from a source-resolved event-related-potential perspective, that could explain how practicing long-term physical and mental exercise can benefit neural processing during the execution of an attention switching task. Fifty-three healthy community volunteers who self-reported long-term practice of Tai Chi, meditation (...) + exercise, simple aerobics, or a sedentary lifestyle, aged 47.8 ± 14.6 were included in this analysis. All participants undertook high-density electroencephalography recording during a switch paradigm. Our results indicate that people who practice physical and mental exercise perform better in a task-switching paradigm. Our analysis revealed an additive effect of the combined practice of physical and mental exercise over physical exercise only. In addition, we confirmed the participation of frontal, parietal and cingulate areas as generators of event-related-potential components commonly associated to the performance of switch tasks. Particularly, the N2-like component of the parietal and frontal domains showed significantly greater amplitudes in the exercise and mental training groups compared with aerobics and sedentary groups. Furthermore, we showed better performance associated with greater N2-like amplitudes. Our multivariate analysis revealed that activity type was the most relevant factor to explain the difference between groups, with an important influence of age, and body mass index, and with small effects of educational years, cardiovascular capacity, and sex. These results suggest that chronic combined physical and mental training may confer significant benefits to executive function in normally aging adults, probably through more efficient early attentional processing. Future experimental studies are needed to confirm our results and understand the mechanisms on parieto-frontal networks that contribute to the cognitive improvement associated with practicing combined mental and aerobic exercise, while carefully controlling confounding factors, such as age and body mass index. (shrink)

Citizen participation can be considered a key part of public policy making and is also one of the reasons for the growing expert interest in this issue. This article focuses on specific knowledge, socalled “lay knowledge”, which can be identified as knowledge gained from “non experts” through civic participation. The article establishes when and how this type of knowledge enters the policy-making process via specific selected tools and provides practical examples from local and municipal public policy.

With a growing corporate interest in pursuing public goods, numerous firms today endeavor to practice corporate social responsibility. Utilizing a multilevel structural equation modeling approach, we investigated the topic of employees' pro-environmental behavior, contributing to the growing literature on “green” issues in the workplace. We incorporated self-determination theory to examine how individuals' perceptions regarding their corporate environmental policies reflected in firm-level green psychological climate influence their environment-specific self-regulation, and whether support of autonomy, relatedness, and competence psychological needs moderates this relationship. (...) The relationship between environment-specific self-regulation and employees' engagement in pro-environmental behavior was also further explained. Analysis of the data from 649 employees working in 37 major South Korean companies revealed that firm-level green psychological climate is positively related to employees' environment-specific self-regulation and that environment-specific self-regulation is also positively related to their pro-environmental behavior. Moreover, while we found that the positive association between firm-level green psychological climate and employees' environment-specific self-regulation was stronger when they had a higher level of relatedness need satisfaction, interactions between firm-level green psychological climate with autonomy and competence need satisfaction did not demonstrate any significant effects. Theoretical and practical contributions together with suggestions for related future research are discussed as well. (shrink)

Štúdia sa zameriava na psychologické a didaktické metódy použité v Platónovom dialógu Menón. S využitím metódy dramatického čítania dialógu autor analyzuje dve kľúčové časti sokratovskej pedagogiky: negatívnu (aporetickú) charakterizovanú elenchom s cieľom nájsť a eliminovať chybné predpoklady, a pozitívnu (euporetickú), ktorej cieľom je pomôcť študentovi nájsť nové riešenia a prostredníctvom argumentácie ho priviesť k lepšiemu porozumeniu problému. V závere autor uvádza, že hlavným cieľom dialógu Menón je ukázať rozdiel medzi „sofistickým“ a „sókratovským“ spôsobom učenia. Zatiaľ čo prvý spočíva v memorovaní (...) autoritatívnych názorov a poznatkov učiteľa, sókratovský je založený na spoločnom hľadaní lepších argumentov. Takáto metóda vedie k lepšiemu porozumeniu v oboch významoch tohto slova – v sociálnom (schopnosť sebaovládania a spolupráce), ako aj poznávacom (schopnosť chápať veci v súvislostiach a otvorenosť k ďalšiemu skúmaniu). (shrink)

En 1913, Walter Benjamín, escribirá un ensayo titulado Metafísica de la Juventud. En él se expresarán los inicios de una reflexión filosófica sobre la historia, que acompañarán a este pensador durante toda su vida y cuya cristalización más elaborada corresponde a su texto Tesis sobre el concepto de Historia. El objetivo de este escrito es plantear una constelación de ideas que permita dar cuenta de algunos momentos claves en el desarrollo de la filosofía de la historia de este pensador hasta (...) llegar a la formulación de su materialismo mesiánico, deteniéndonos particularmente en algunas ideas sobre la mística judía y el marxismo. Para ello, la exposición se apoyará, entre otros materiales, en el intercambio epistolar que Benjamin mantiene a lo largo de toda su producción teórica con su íntimo amigo Gershom Scholem, intercambio que muestra, de una manera especialmente ilustrativa, como le van apareciendo los problemas filosóficos a este pensador. (shrink)

Der vorliegende Aufsatz stellt das Erbe der Kantischen Theorie der Konstitutions- und Regulationsleistung der Erfahrung – die Analytik der Grundsätze – dar, das unserer Auffassung nach zur Begründung der rein spekulativen Philosophie Hegels führt. In diesem Zusammenhang werden einerseits die transzendental-konstitutiven Grundsätze – Axiome der Anschauung und Antizipationen der Wahrnehmung – und andererseits die transzendental-regulativen Grundsätze – Analogien der Erfahrung und Postulate des empirischen Denkens überhaupt – als grundlegendes Material der Exegese benutzt. Als Resultat der Deutung erscheint das Problem des (...) Doppel-Verhältnisses zwischen Erfahrung und Verstandesgrundsätzen. Ein solches Verhältnis entfaltet sich nicht nur als die erfahrungsmäßige Verwirklichung der Grundsätze, sondern auch als die grundsätzliche Ermöglichung der Erfahrung. Der notwendige Charakter der Wahrheit in transzendentaler Hinsicht begründet sich dabei durch die allgemeine Beziehung der transzendentalen Grundsätze des reinen Verstandes zur Gesamtheit der Erfahrung. Es wird die These vertreten, dass die Auffassung der Natur – d.h. die das Dasein der Erscheinungen in der Zeit ermöglichende Einheit – das Hauptvermächtnis Kants für den Deutschen Idealismus im Allgemeinen und für Hegels Philosophie im Besonderen darstellt. (shrink)

La Agenda 2030 para el Desarrollo Sostenible sostiene que la educación financiera requiere promover conocimientos y habilidades que permitan a los estudiantes comprender y utilizar de mejor forma los productos financieros con el fin de mejorar su bienestar individual y social. En este artículo se indaga en las racionalidades curriculares presentes en los objetivos de aprendizaje e indicadores de evaluación pertenecientes a la “Unidad 4: Componentes y dinámicas del sistema económico y financiero: la ciudadanía como agente de consumo responsable” del (...) Programa de Estudio de Historia, Geografía y Ciencias Sociales de 1º medio, elaborado por el Ministerio de Educación de Chile (Mineduc). Esta investigación se realizó desde un paradigma fenomenológico interpretativo y utilizó el análisis de contenido para revisar sistemáticamente el apartado del documento curricular consignado, en función de los tres tipos de racionalidades curriculares existentes: técnica, praxeológica y crítica. Estas perspectivas permiten analizar los intereses hegemónicos sobre la importancia de la educación financiera en el alumnado, ya que ayudan a comprender la naturaleza de los aprendizajes asociados a la formación económica y la prevalencia de diversos fines educativos del área. Los resultados muestran el predominio de la racionalidad curricular técnica y praxeológica, pues se evidencia que los objetivos e indicadores de evaluación de la unidad temática examinada intencionan conjuntamente el desarrollo de aprendizajes financieros desde criterios predeterminados y procedimientos vinculados a la ejemplificación de situaciones cotidianas de consumo responsable y sostenible. (shrink)

Most readers of Habermas would not classify him as an existential thinker. The view of Habermas as a philosopher in German Idealist and Critical traditions from Kant to Hegel and Marx to the Frankfurt School prevails among Continental as much as among analytic philosophers. And the mainstream Anglo-American reception of his work and politics is shaped by the approaches of formal analysis rather than those of existential and social phenomenology or even current American pragmatism. One may argue that both these (...) readings eclipse richer existential dimensions of a thinker who challenges the notorious methodological and political splits among analytic, Continental and pragmatist orientations. I argue that Habermas’ critical relation to Heidegger’s a historical history of Being and his misguided political career cannot explain a competing narrative of his own affirmative appropriation of existential-ethical dimensions of thought and activism. Second, if one sets in the foreground this competing narrative, there emerges a weak thesis, whether or not a plausible complementarity between the communications critical social theory and concrete existential categories can be established. Third, one may inquire further into a stronger thesis whether or not this link must be developed in order to render Habermas’ own theory of a communicatively competent self sufficiently concrete and critical. (shrink)

A partir de los ODS establecidos en la Agenda 2030 para el Desarrollo Sostenible, la didáctica de la geografía requiere potenciar el pensamiento geográfico de los profesores en formación para que puedan preparar a las nuevas generaciones de estudiantes como ciudadanos críticos y comprometidos con el cuidado del medioambiente. En este artículo se analizan los conocimientos que poseen los futuros docentes de una universidad chilena respecto al desarrollo del pensamiento geográfico a partir de la aplicación de un cuestionario centrado en (...) consultar sobre tres aspectos claves de la última práctica pedagógica de los participantes; a saber, estos son: 1) Definición de pensamiento geográfico y de un aprendizaje de segundo orden de este metaconcepto otorgado vía sorteo; 2) Problemas constatados para desarrollar dichos conceptos en el aula de geografía; y 3) la proposición de sugerencias didácticas para enseñar de manera innovadora los aprendizajes asignados. Desde un punto de vista metodológico, se utilizó el análisis de contenido para evaluar las respuestas del instrumento aplicado, en función de las categorías que este contempla. Se concluye que los conceptos consultados son definidos desde el descriptivismo geográfico, que las principales dificultades didácticas señaladas se relacionan con el predominio de la enseñanza tradicional de la geografía y que las diferentes estrategias didácticas sugeridas están centradas en el desempeño individual del alumnado; en este contexto, no se mencionan metodologías de trabajo colaborativo y no hay evidencias que permitan prever técnicas específicas que posibiliten el desarrollo del pensamiento geográfico desde los principios didácticos de la geografía. (shrink)

Štúdia sa zameriava na psychologické a didaktické metódy použité v Platónovom dialógu Menón. S využitím metódy dramatického čítania dialógu autor analyzuje dve kľúčové časti sokratovskej pedagogiky: negatívnu (aporetickú) charakterizovanú elenchom s cieľom nájsť a eliminovať chybné predpoklady, a pozitívnu (euporetickú), ktorej cieľom je pomôcť študentovi nájsť nové riešenia a prostredníctvom argumentácie ho priviesť k lepšiemu porozumeniu problému. V závere autor uvádza, že hlavným cieľom dialógu Menón je ukázať rozdiel medzi „sofistickým“ a „sókratovským“ spôsobom učenia. Zatiaľ čo prvý spočíva v memorovaní (...) autoritatívnych názorov a poznatkov učiteľa, sókratovský je založený na spoločnom hľadaní lepších argumentov. Takáto metóda vedie k lepšiemu porozumeniu v oboch významoch tohto slova – v sociálnom (schopnosť sebaovládania a spolupráce), ako aj poznávacom (schopnosť chápať veci v súvislostiach a otvorenosť k ďalšiemu skúmaniu). (shrink)

History textbooks in Chile are characterized by exposing an adult-centered historical narrative that invisibilizes the participation of boys and girls, since they have traditionally focused on describing the political exploits carried out by elite adult men in national and western history. To evidence this problem, in this qualitative, exploratory and interpretive research, critical literacy is used to analyze the texts and images of four textbooks published between 2016 and 2019 by SM and Santillana publishers. From these manuals, thematic units related (...) to Ancient Rome and Greece, colonial Chile, and European history of the 19th and 20th centuries were selected because they have the most relevant evidence to examine the subject. It is concluded that the analyzed discourses show that infants are marginalized social actors in history or are represented from the adult-centered paradigm as dependent and subordinate subjects to the adult world. Faced with this scenario, the importance of prioritizing children’s perspectives in the study of history and in the problematization of historical contents taught in the classroom is emphasized. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2018 Heft: 225 Seiten: 103-127.

This chapter examines Merold Westphal's critique on the works of Calvin Schrag about the relationship of philosophy and a theistic belief in God. It talks about why neither devils speak as atheist nor god as theist. It reveals that God refuses to appear on philosophy's terms because in God's transcendence, God would appear more otherwise than Being. Also, theism does not explain why the divine “otherwise” ultimately signifies that a personally loving Creator and Redeemer in loving unconditionally always already love (...) also impersonally. (shrink)

Civility is often treated as an essential virtue in liberal democracies that promise to protect diversity as well as active disagreement in the public sphere. Yet the fear that our tolerant society faces a crisis of incivility is gaining ground. Politicians and public intellectuals call for "more civility" as the solution--but is civility really a virtue? Or is it something more sinister--a covert demand for conformity that silences dissent? Mere Civility sheds light on this tension in contemporary political theory and (...) practice by examining similar appeals to civility in early modern debates about religious toleration. In seventeenth-century England, figures as different as Roger Williams, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke could agree that some restraint on the wars of words and "persecution of the tongue" between sectarians would be required; and yet, they recognized that the prosecution of incivility was often difficult to distinguish from persecution.--. (shrink)

The presented paper focuses on the analysis of strategic documents at the level of the European Union concerning the regulation of artificial intelligence as one of the so-called disruptive technologies. In the first part of the article, we outline the basic terminology. Subsequently, we focus on the summarizing and systemizing of the key documents adopted at the EU level in terms of artificial intelligence regulation. The focus of the paper is devoted to issues of personal data protection and cyber security (...) included in these strategic documents. The final part contains recommendations for future research and evaluation of its key features. (shrink)

Intuitions about retractions have been used to motivate truth relativism about certain types of claims. Among these figure epistemic modals, knowledge attributions, or personal taste claims. On MacFarlane’s prominent relativist proposal, sentences like “the ice cream might be in the freezer” or “Pocoyo is funny” are only assigned a truth-value relative to contexts of utterance and contexts of assessment. Retractions play a crucial role in the argument for assessment-relativism. A retraction of a past assertion is supposed to be mandatory whenever (...) the asserted sentence is not true at the context of use and the context of assessment. If retractions were not obligatory in these conditions, there would be no normative difference between assessment-relativism and contextualism. The main goal of this paper is to undermine the claim that retractions reveal this normative difference. To this effect, the paper offers a review of three important objections to the obligatoriness of retractions. Taken together, these objections make a strong case against the alleged support that retractions give to assessment-relativism. The objections are moreover supported by recent experimental results that are also discussed. This will satisfy a further goal, which is to undermine the idea that there is a constitutive retraction rule. The paper also discusses two ways to understand what such a rule would be constitutive of, and concludes with a discussion of how to describe what retractions are. (shrink)

The idea that one can 'soak up' someone else's mood or sense the tension in a room is familiar - as in 'negative energy'. This ability to borrow or share states of mind is now pathologized, as the author shows in relation to affective transfer in psychiatric clinics.

Author: Norbert Waszek. Translated by Pedro Sepúlveda Zambrano.

La autora presenta El Centro Yungay como un espacio formativo, transversal y abierto, que desde la universidad potencia y acompaña a las comunidades locales en su desarrollo, promocionando el respeto a los derechos humanos, la autogestión, la identidad y diversidad, resignificando desde esa práctica el discurso y hacer universitario”. Recorre luego los fundamentos y reflexiones que determinaron su fundación, su historia, su misión, experiencias y propuesta actual.

En este artículo el autor desarrolla una mirada de generación y de género al consumo cultural de los jóvenes de sectores medios en Chile, a través de un enfoque no convencional de la diversión nocturna en el contexto postdictadura. El texto profundiza en las formas en que la sociedad se relaciona con los jóvenes y en los nuevos modelos de identidad, haciendo un contrapunto con la socialización que se generaba en el anterior modelo cultural respecto de este grupo etáreo. Se (...) focaliza para su exposición en dos espacios de entretención característicos de la juventud y en los códigos de esta generación. Como una de las conclusiones, destaca un tránsito desde los grupos de referencia a los grupos de consumidores. (shrink)

La experiencia de la sexualidad en los espacios de diversión propios de la cultura juvenil es un fenómeno que ha sido muy pocas veces considerado a la hora de construir políticas preventivas dirigidas a este sector en Chile. Es en los escenarios propios de las culturas juveniles, asociados a sus espacios de ocio, particularmente los vinculados al “carrete”, donde los y las jóvenes urbanos/as ensayan y ponen en escena diferentes experiencias de acercamiento a la sexualidad. Por otro lado, es en (...) el carrete y su vínculo con la sexualidad ocasional donde en el mundo juvenil emerge la problemática del cuerpo que se resiste a ser regulado desde una normatividad preventiva que no considera sus propias temporalidades y códigos. El presente artículo muestra los resultados de una investigación etnográfica sobre sexualidad juvenil en cuatro regiones de Chileque, aproximándose a un escenario cultural juvenil asociado a la sexualidad como es el ‘‘carrete’’, intenta aportar a la generación de nuevas aproximaciones preventivas que permitan obtener un mejor conocimiento y comprensión de los contextos y situaciones en que los y las jóvenes ejercitan y desarrollan su sexualidad. (shrink)

Este trabajo explora el tema de la vivencia conciente del aprendizaje. Específicamente, el momento en que una persona se da cuenta que algo nuevo se está articulando a su experiencia anterior. Desde la psicología del aprendizaje, este fenómeno estás comprendido en el concepto de metacognición. El trabajo aborda la comprensión de este concepto, y elabora los factores favorecedores del aprendizaje. Finalmente aborda los grupos de acción comunitaria como proyectos socioeducativos, abordando la construcción de utopías cotidianas, la resignificación de la historia (...) personal y la construcción de sentidos en el grupo. (shrink)

This book aims to enrich our understanding of the role the environment plays in processes of life and cognition, from the perspective of enactive cognitive science. Miguel A. Sepúlveda-Pedro offers an unprecedented interpretation of the central claims of the enactive approach to cognition, supported by contemporary works of ecological psychology and phenomenology. The enactive approach conceives cognition as sense-making, a phenomenon emerging from the organizational nature of the living body that evolves in human beings through sensorimotor, intercorporeal, and linguistic (...) interactions with the environment. From this standpoint, Sepúlveda-Pedro suggests incorporating three new theses into the theoretical body of the enactive approach: sense-making and cognition fundamentally consist of processes of norm development; the environment, cognitive agents actually interact with, is an active ecological field enacted in their historical past; and sense-making occurs in a domain consisting of multiple normative dimensions that the author names enactive place. (shrink)

Fomentar la educación abierta inclusiva es responsabilidad de todos. Se presenta el diseño instruccional de un libro electrónico para el desarrollo de competencias de información y alfabetización digital. Está enfocado a personas con deficiencia visual. Se utiliza el modelo ADDIE y los principios de Diseño Universal para el Aprendizaje. Se realizó una hoja de ruta para la definición de aspectos iniciales. Como trabajo futuro se contempla desarrollar el libro y compartirlo como recurso educativo abierto con licencia Creative Commons BY-SA para (...) fomentar su reutilización. Se sugiere medir el desarrollo de otras competencias a partir de su uso. (shrink)

Cultural diversity is an increasingly important phenomenon that affects not only social and political harmony but also the cohesion and efficiency of organisations. The problems that firms have with regard to managing cultural diversity have been abundantly studied in recent decades from the perspectives of management theory and moral philosophy, but there are still open questions that require deeper reflection and broader empirical analysis. Managing cultural diversity in organisations is of prime importance because it involves harmonising different values, beliefs, credos (...) and customs, and, in essence, human identity. Taking into consideration these cultural differences and harmonising them is a human rights issue and a central dimension of corporate social responsibility. Here we are going to focus on theoretical reflection about the ideas that lie behind corporate policies and organisational initiatives that deal with cultural diversity. The aim of our paper is twofold: to present a critical reflection on the ideology of tolerance, and propose an ideology of respect for dealing with cultural diversity. We start by presenting the plurality of interpretations of the concept of ideology, and justify its applicability to the field of cultural diversity. We then reflect on the differences between “tolerance” and “respect” and identifying the practical implications for managing cultural diversity. And finally, we propose a culture of respect that goes beyond tolerance and complements and legitimizes the “business case” perspective for managing cultural diversity in companies. The ideology of respect is based on the Kantian tradition and on the discursive approach where rational dialogue and argumentation are considered the legitimate process for creating a culture of intercultural respect. From this theoretical discussion of the key philosophical concepts we can suggest some general principles for managing cultural diversity in organisations. (shrink)

El artículo a continuación es un proemio del urbanismo en la ciudad de Medellín desde la figura jurídica de los operadores urbanos y la realidad socio-espacial que impone una expresión particular del capital. Es un escrito que pretende incoar las discusiones y problemas que atrae la planeación de la ciudad de Medellín desde la realidad neoliberal. Para esto aludiré al entorno teórico de la renovación urbana, seguiré con la estructura conceptual de los operadores urbanos, proseguiré con el contexto político institucional (...) neoliberal y un fugaz compendio histórico del desarrollo urbano del Municipio de Medellín, para finiquitar con las normas específicas que atañen a la renovación urbana y el operador urbano en Colombia. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that hate speech expresses hate, and answer some objections to expressivist views. First, I briefly comment on some limitations of pragmatic accounts of harmful speech. I then present an expressive-normative view of derogatory discourse according to which it is expressive of an affective state by presupposing it. A linguistic act expressive of an affective state inherits the normativity that is constitutive of that state, as directed to its intentional object. If the act is successful, it (...) updates the conversational context with the normative appraisal conditions of the affective state presupposed. I argue that this model can be applied to hate speech. I rely on current research on the psychology of hate to identify the appraisal conditions, action tendencies, and motivational goals characteristic of hate. The account supplements other pragmatic accounts of hate speech. (shrink)

Literature on consumer ethics tends to focus on issues within the public sphere, such as the environment, and treats other drivers of consumption decisions, such as family, as non-moral concerns. Consequently, an attitude–behaviour gap is viewed as a straightforward failure by consumers to act ethically. We argue that this is based upon a view of consumer behaviour as linear and unproblematic, and an approach to moral reasoning, arising from a stereotypically masculine understanding of morality, which foregrounds abstract principles. By demonstrating (...) the importance of context to consumption decisions and articulating the impact of caring relationships, we highlight how such decisions are both complex and situated. This is particularly evident for decisions involving the needs of others, as occurs in family life. We argue that the incorporation of care ethics provides both theoretical insights and a more complete account of consumer ethics. This is explored empirically through an investigation of the ethical dilemmas arising from consumption decisions made by mothers of young children. Such decisions juxtapose an ethical consumption orientation with care for one’s child. Therefore, what has been previously considered a failure to act ethically may in fact be the outcome of complex decision making, which involves competing ethical considerations. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory and practice and how this approach to consumer ethics could be applied more widely. (shrink)

Concepts stand at the centre of human cognition. We use concepts in categorizing objects and events in the world, in reasoning and action, and in social interaction. It is therefore not surprising that the study of concepts constitutes a central area of research in philosophy and psychology, yet only recently have the two disciplines developed greater interaction. Recent experiments in psychology that test the role of concepts in categorizing and reasoning have found a great deal of variation, across individuals and (...) cultures, in categorization behaviour. Meanwhile, philosophers of language and mind have investigated the semantic properties of concepts, and how concepts are related to linguistic meaning and linguistic communication. A key motivation behind this was the idea that concepts must be shared across individuals and cultures. With the dawn of experimental philosophy, the proposal that the experimental data from psychology lacks relevance to semantics is increasingly difficult to defend. -/- This volume brings together leading psychologists and philosophers to advance the interdisciplinary debate on the role of concepts in categorizing and reasoning, the relationship between concepts and linguistic meaning and communication, the challenges conceptual variation poses to communication, and the social and political effects of conceptual change. (shrink)

In History After Lacan, Teresa Brennan argues that Jacques Lacan was not an ahistorical post-structuralist. She tells the story of a social psychosis, beginning with a discussion of Lacan's neglected theory of history which argued that we are in the grip of a psychotic's era which began in the seventeenth century and climaxes in the present. By extending and elaborating on Lacan's theory, Brennan develops a general theory of modernity. Contrary to postmodern assumptions, she argues, we need a general (...) historical explanation. An understanding of historical dynamics is essential if we are to make the connections between the outstanding facts of modernity--ethnocentrism, the relation between the sexes, and ecological catastrophe. A challenging feminist, interdisciplinary study, History After Lacan will be essential reading for social, cultural, and political theorists, historians, psychoanalysts, and literary theorists. (shrink)

In this article, we explore the heuristic power of the theoretical distinction between framework and interaction theories applied to the case of General Relativity. According to the distinction, theories and theoretical elements can be classified into two different groups, each with clear ontological, epistemic and functional content. Being so, to identify the group to which a theory belongs would suffice to know a priori its prospects and limitations in these areas without going into a detailed technical analysis. We make the (...) exercise here with General Relativity, anticipate its ontological, epistemic and functional content and show afterwords that such expectations are justified in this case, being consistent with formal issues of General Relativity. With this, we attempt to make a case for the use of the distinction as a powerful tool for scientific and philosophical analysis. (shrink)

En nuestra sociedad de Post Dictadura, la temática del cuerpo, su expresión y exploración más allá de los cánones impuestos por la normatividad, constituyen un tema pendiente que -cuando emerge- genera des-orden, instalando la pregunta por los límites y consensos sobre nuestro orden social y cultural. Es así como las experiencias que incorporan la dimensión subjetiva del cuerpo como son el uso de drogas y la sexualidad entre otras, y que se sitúan desde lo orgiástico y festivo, son negadas, ..