En la Editorial Franciscanum 178 se expresa la opinión sobre las guerras, especialmente la invación del gobierno Ruso al Estado de Ucrania. También se menciona la guerra que se vive en Colombia. Seguidamente se presentan los doce artículos de este número de la revista.

One challenge posed by climate change education is that, despite the scientific consensus on human induced climate change, the issue is controversial and politicised. A recent poll conducted in the USA revealed that 45% of respondents did not believe that human activity is a key cause of climate change, while 8.3% denied that climate change was occurring at all. The poll also found that those with conservative political beliefs were far more likely to deny anthropogenic climate change. The controversial nature (...) of climate change is a double-edged sword for educators—offering both benefits and risks. Controversial topics can be engaging for students, allowing them to critically examine competing perspectives, justify opinions and, thus, develop and practice critical thinking skills. On the other hand, they may provoke classroom conflict and expose teachers to backlash from students, parents, colleagues or even members of the public, including accusations of indoctrination. This risk has resulted in some teachers adopting problematic approaches to teaching about climate change, such as presenting students with an impartial account of ‘both sides’ of the debate. Some climate change sceptics groups have even developed their own curriculum materials and lobbied for their implementation in schools in order to provide students with a ‘balanced’ account of the issue. These problems, and suggestions for overcoming them, are explored by several papers in this special issue. (shrink)

Cosmopolis A Review of Cosmopolitics -/- 2015/3-4 -/- Editorial Dominique de Courcelles & Paul Ghils -/- This issue addresses the general concept of “spirituality” as it appears in various cultural contexts and timeframes, through contrasting ideological views. Without necessarily going back to artistic and religious remains of primitive men, which unquestionably show pursuits beyond the biophysical dimension and illustrate practices seeking to unveil the hidden significance of life and death, the following papers deal with a number of interpretations covering (...) a wide field extending from belief to theory, from emotions to concepts, from the wisdom of personal experience to the most sophisticated doctrines. Spirit and spirituality are indeed many-faceted notions. They may refer to the intricate world of the interacting spirits which inhabit living beings in animistic traditions, without excluding a “grand force” linking human beings within a dynamic whole on which their very existence rely . They also bear upon more atomistic and either/or approaches of Western philosophy, which have become embodied in Cartesian dualism against a monotheist background, to the point of freezing the essence of individuals and culminating in the extreme individualism that characterizes our contemporaries. However, this equally refers to the opposite conception of materialism, across times and cultures, from ancient India and Greece (Cārvāka, originally known as Lokāyata, or some Buddhist doctrines for the former, Democritus or Lucretius for the latter) to more contemporary materialistic schools, whether modern or postmodern. -/- The following papers look at the contrasting forms of the philosophy and spirit of the human factor set into a whole, with no artificial disjoint between the psychical and the physical levels, as Wittgenstein put it: “And how can a body have a soul?”. This approach is not unrelated to the notion of anthropocene examined in a recent issue of Cosmopolis, with provides another comprehensive framework open to a spiritual life emerging from the very environment that generated it. -/- *** The first section of this issue was edited by Dominique de Courcelles, director at the National French Research Centre (CNRS), whom we wish to thank for collecting relevant studies relating to the religious and political questions, with a view to focusing on the war of ideas inevitably waged behind images, concepts and perceptions, taking an asymmetrical approach. To the extent that they are mindful of global/local interactions and include representations, opinions and beliefs, such disciplines as philosophy, philology, history and social sciences can provide useful studies accounting for new practices in geopolitics and a fair diplomacy. -/- In her introduction, Dominique de Courcelles first poses the question of how the religious and political spheres interrelate, with their corresponding religious demands and humanistic values. She then suggests that the right question today may be breaking with the philosophy of human rights concerned with the defense of human beings against the hazards of arbitrary politics or the instrumental use of religion, in favour of a fair philosophy of humankind, a new humanism. This would consist in recognizing a common loyalty of all towards one interhuman, not only interstate community, to protect it from both the autonomy demanded by individuals and the instrumental use of minorities. -/- Considering the fact of diversity, so important today in terms of both politics and religion, Abdelhai Azarkan looks at the conditions under which tolerance could obtain the double status of right and duty. He revisits to two philosophers, John Locke and Voltaire, who thought about it from the historical reality of religious wars. The former made tolerance into a right, basing his analysis on the political-legal level, while the latter saw tolerance as a duty, from an analysis based on ethical-political criteria. -/- Mathieu Guidère examines what he calls semantic denominationalism, a term which implies religious attributes and identities, whichever national loyalties or personal belonging they may have at the same time. Since the early 2000s, thie phenomenon has expanded tremendously, compounded by the “war on terror” and the over media-oriented terrorist actions. Denominational expressions act as formal names for ordinary and high-profile players in domestic and foreign policies of democratic states. These systems reveal a receding secularization, while the powerful comeback of religious identities signals the failure of nation-states and the weakening of the humanist spirit. -/- Barbara De Poli retraces the history of a contemporary jihadism claiming its Islamic essence and asserting the truth of genuine coranic principles via the war on infidels, with a view to restoring the Caliphate. After defining the term jihad, she shows that even if this contemporary jiadism is spreading in the Muslim world, it radically departs from Islamic law and the received use of the term jihad, in so far as it is rooted in the early radical thinking of Islamic ideologues in the 20th century, starting with with Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. This current has been fueled by by international conflicts since the outbreak of the war in Afghanistan, in which the so-called Western countries bear a major responsibility. -/- Abderrazak Sayadi starts from the Tunisian experience to ask the question of humanist values and democracy within the relationships between the religious and political spheres. As a historian of religion, he is brought to demystify certain islamic principles and to paying attention to the reform of law, seeing the separation of religion and politics as a precondition to a successful democratic gamble and the establishment of a renewed humanism. -/- Dominique de Courcelles reminds us that getting a better knowledge of narrations and words makes it possible to better understand how logical and rhetorical thinking works for those who wage an asymetriccal war, re-enchanting and mystifying the world to better take control. As soon as 1932, an exchange of letters between Einstein and Freud made it clear that, in order to free man from fatality and war, education understood as culture was fundamental. Such illustrations as the exécution of Oussama ben Laden and the Caliph’s speech in Mossoul show that a premiminary analysis of images and words is essential to a fair diplomacy conducted by people from civil society, whose culture and wisdom allow justice and force to speak together and better resist war. -/- Marcel Boisard thinks that on the day the guns fall silent, exhausted by war, we will not return to the state borders that have prevailed for a century as an outcome of the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. It is time to prepare the “day after”, which will be a huge challenge. To this end, a summit of Middle-East nations is urgently needed to globally decide the fate of those peoples. On the condition that we know who the enemy is and accept to name it, to understand the history of the countries, groups and alliances, and to question any false or self-interested sense of certainty. -/- *** In the second section, Paul Schafer provides the author’s experiences to explain how culture, from the artistic to the biological, has the power to to open the doors to spirituality, from the inner self to the global environment. He asks himself whether a relative permanence of spirituality can arise from the specific moments that characterize it. Laurent Ledoux synthesizes the conclusion of a symposium held on 22 January 2015 on the links between philosophy and management, on the basis of the spiritual dimension conceived as “natural” and the answers it may suggest to the issues that face the organizations in a “contemporaniversal” world. Jacques Rifflet makes that question in a secular perspective, based on the wellsprings of personal commitment before it can be caught by any religious creed or scientific theory. In this sense spirituality, in alliance with reason, both inspires human consciousness and illuminates its destiny. Sami Aldeeb asks himself whether Islam can be reconciled with human rights. Caught between the belief in an absolute and final Word descended from the sky, and evidence showing that any religion is the creation of a given culture and a society situated in time and space, the Makkan and … contexts et médinois call for differentiated, if not opposite answers and exegeses. Bernard Carmona provides the outline of a dialogical framework, which is known to be a feature of debates between the various philosophical schools of classical India, exemplified here by the transdisciplinary perspective of debates within a Buddhist context. *** The articles not focused on the previous topic include a study by Landry Signé on China’s strategy, competing with the United States to control African resources. The author deals with the specific case of China’s rapprochement with Southern Sudan since Sudan was broken up. In the last paper, Goran Fejić and Rada Iveković, return to the essential role that women should play, and comments upon the role of some international legal instruments related in particular to the elimination of all forms of discrimination. The perspective is transnational and transethnic and is based on secular criteria, as regards nation-building and more generally society-building. Considering the persistence of widespread violence, whether in times of armed conflict or in times of peace, the question remains whether it is possible to fully implement rights and justice instruments. (shrink)

If we accept that all plagiarism is wrong, the issue is black and white. But are there more challenging questions that color the issue with shades of gray that may influence or help clarify the ethical underpinnings of the act? Does intent matter? Does the venue matter? Does the form of writing matter? What about a professor when working as a private citizen, rather than in his/her academic role? Might plagiarism be mitigated when there is no associated financial gain? Is (...) a writer’s history that exhibits impeccable ethical integrity relevant? Should these factors, and/or other factors, even be considered in a university’s administrative response — or non-response? What might employing an ethical approach contribute to wrestling with the dilemma? The authors explore critical issues that might face a senior academic administrator when confronting the need to respond on behalf of a university to a charge of plagiarism leveled by an influential newspaper against a university professor for a social responsibility-focused opinion-editorial published in this newspaper. (shrink)

Dear Readers,Welcome to this issue of our beloved Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics! In this sweltering heat we are all seeking for some cool and comfort. We bring this issue of BJB on different ethical practices and bring up related questions. Are we respecting the rights of every human being when we are either doing research or practicing health service provision? What are the minimum norms and standards to be maintained or are we circumventing those? The issue looks into different issues (...) and provides us with indepth information, queries, fears and reservations.In the article on Knowledge, attitude and practice of medical ethics among medical intern students in a Medical College in Kathmandu, Ramesh P Aacharyaand Yagya L Shakya, report on a Knowledge Attitude and Practice survey of 46 medical undergraduate interns of Maharajgunj Medical Campus. The result of the survey is quite interesting. ‘Doctors know the best irrespective of patients’ opinion was agreed upon by 35 %, ‘Confidentiality cannot be kept in modern era and should be abandoned’ was strongly disagreed by 34.8% and disagreed by 60.9%. The Authors hope that the findings will assist the faculties to strengthen the teaching of medical ethics and guiding the interns for ethical professional conduct. In the article titled Organizational Justice and Employee’s Service Behavior in the Healthcare Organizations in Bangladesh is an agenda for Research, Md. Nuruzzaman and Md. Humayun Kabir Talukder present a conceptual framework and a set of hypotheses regarding the relationships among distributive justice, procedural justice, interactional justice, employee’s citizenship behaviour, role prescribed behaviour and counterproductive behavior in the healthcare organizations in Bangladesh. The authors state that the purpose is to assist the policy makers and service providers in identifying desirable and undesirable HRM practices in order to maintain optimum level of employee commitment for ensuring quality and efficient service delivery to the communities. Though the article is theoretical it may be useful for the policy makers and service providers. If an operational research could be carried out to test the hypothesis the practical utility of the concept could be tested in Bangladesh.Zoheb Rafique in the article Ethical Justification of Conducting Research Trials in Lower and Middle Income Countries Including Pakistan: The Responsibilities of Research Enterprises explores the ethical aspects of research sponsored by commercial agencies. He looks into the factors that influence selection of a study site for a sponsored trial particularly in traditional countries like Pakistan where cultural values add to the problem in assuring that research is conducted in an ethical manner. In this paper, the Author discusses the responsibilities of researchers and funders in low and middle income countries like Pakistan and the ethical justifications of doing research trials in developing countries. He concludes that research participants should be fully informed about the research trial and their participation and it is their right to know all risks and benefits so that they have the option of rejecting participation.The article on Ethical aspects of Dhaka University Tele-medicine System by Ahmed Raihan Abir provides and analysis of the tele- medicine system in Dhaka University. The Author is a member of an extended group at Dhaka University (DU) which has been developing telemedicine equipment and data acquisition software to promote telemedicine practice in Bangladesh. Recently the Telemedicine group of DU and a local NGO named SAMAMA with support from Service innovation fund (SIF) of the Prime Minister Office (PMO) of Bangladesh took the initiative to establish eight rural telemedicine centers and one expert center for the field trial of telemedicine in Bangladesh. The aim of this paper is to examine the ethical challenges of such health care system and the effort to overcome these problems before starting the field trial. The author looks into the details of Data confidentiality and security, Responsibilities of Doctor and Rural Technician, Quality of service and Implications of telemedicine in Bangladesh. He concludes that DU telemedicine project will essentially bring the services of qualified medical experts to the doorsteps of the common people throughout the country, even in the remote rural areas. Although a telemedicine cannot match a face to face consultation, DU tele-medicine system is much better than no consultation at all.Sifat Rahman in the article on Ethical Issues of Fair Subject Selection in Research provides an overview of the criterion for maintaining ethical standards for conducting research. The Author reviews the three fundamental conditions to be met for adhering to strict ethical standards which are: Respect for Persons by protecting the autonomy of people, treating them with courtesy and respect and obtaining informed consent.; Beneficence which incorporates the philosophy of "Do no harm" while maximizing benefits for the research project and minimizing risks to the research subjects; and Justice by ensuring that reasonable, non-exploitative, and well-considered procedures are administered fairly. Finally the Author concludes that Researchers must be truthful and conduct no deception.Dear Readers, as you can see from the above ethics and maintaining the values in research and services are of utmost importance in the improvement of the quality of life. Through our queries, questions and sense of respect for every living being can our endeavors to ensure ethics in all spheres of development be successful.Dear Readers, please keep on sending your articles, notes or thoughts to us. Your participation will make a difference in the quality of our lives.Best regardsTahera AhmedEditor. (shrink)

In a recent opinion paper, it was argued that individuals with multiple retractions or a record of academic misconduct should not serve as editors, including as editors-in-chief, on the editorial boards of scholarly or academic journals. As a first step towards appreciating how such a policy could be applied in practice, the presence of 30 individuals listed on the Retraction Watch Leaderboard on editorial boards was screened. Six cases are highlighted to gain an appreciation of the potential (...) reputational risks that journals and publishers might incur by including individuals with a tainted academic record on editorial boards. Given the reputational, legal and other risks associated with this type of assessment and decision, more formal positioning and guidance are needed by global ethics policy-related bodies such as COPE, the ICMJE, and the CSE, even more so in journals that claim to follow these organizations’ ethical guidelines. (shrink)

While some may argue that universities are in a state of crisis, others claim that we are living in a post-university era; a time after universities. If there was a battle for the survival of the institution, it is over and done with. The buildings still stand. Students enrol and may attend lectures, though let’s be clear—most do not. But virtually nothing real remains. What some mistakenly take to be a university is, in actuality, an ‘uncanny’ spectral presence; ‘the nagging (...) presence of an absence … a “spectralized amnesiac modernity with its delusional totalizing systems”’. It is the remains and remnants of the university.[1]Overstatement? Perhaps. We think many if not most administrators, at all levels, will likely dissent. So too will many if not most teachers and students. Trying to determine whether this is correct, or to what extent, by consulting polls and reading opinion pieces in various education journals and professional papers is likely to be of little help. In any case, it is the hypothesis, along with closely related ones, and concerns about what can be done in the circumstances, that have generated this special issue.This special issue highlights and illustrates that most of the contested issues regarding educational theory and practice central to how universities and schools should be, and how they should be run, are first and foremost questions of value rather than fact. They are questions regarding what we want, but more importantly what we should want, from our universities and schools; about what they should be and what students, teachers and administrators should be doing to facilitate this.[1] See Cox and Levine and Boaks, Cox and Levine. (shrink)

In these editorials I prefer not to revisit issues I’ve covered before, much less recycle previous editorials. But the recent Michigan conference of the SSE has convinced me that the time may have arrived. What provoked me was this. On several occasions I happened to overhear attendees making confidently dismissive remarks about what they took to be the extreme or outlandish views and presentations they’d encountered during the conference. And I was reasonably certain that many of those expressing these opinions (...) did so with little or no justification for the certitude they displayed. With that in mind, I submit again, with a few suitable updates, some remarks I made back in Volume 23. It’s not often that I get to feel like a spokesperson for empirical conservatism. But that happened when I was invited to give a talk at the 50th Annual Conference on Anomalous Phenomena sponsored by the International Fortean Organization (INFO). The occasion provided several healthy illustrations about what I suppose we can call boggle relativity. The conference was stimulating, challenging, and professionally run, and I was happy to meet quite a few very smart and pleasant attendees. (shrink)

Science presents us with a variety of accounts of the world. While some of these accounts posit deep theoretical structure and fundamental entities, others do not. But which of these approaches is the right one? How should science conceptualize the world? And what is the relation between the various accounts? Opinions on these issues diverge wildly in philosophy of science. At one extreme are reductionists who argue that higher-level theories should, in principle, be incorporated in, or eliminated by, the basic-level (...) theory. According to this view, higher-level theories do not ultimately exhibit conceptual integrity or provide genuine explanations. At the other extreme are pluralists who take higher levels of description and explanation seriously and argue for their independence and indispensability. It was the aim of the first Sydney–Tilburg conference on “Reduction and the Special Sciences”, which took place at the Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science (TiLPS) in Tilburg, The Netherlands, over the 10–12th April 2008, to bring researchers working on these questions together and provide a platform to discuss them in a focused way. The papers in this special issue were presented at this conference. We would like to thank the Royal Netherlands Academy of Art and Sciences (KNAW), the Sydney Centre for the Foundations of Science at the University of Sydney and TiLPS for financial and institutional support. We also thank the authors and referees of the papers for their work, and Hans Rott for his support of this project. (shrink)

The lingering controversy concerning the usefulness and safety of antidepressants for children and adolescents is likely to confuse clinicians. Recent papers perpetuate the claim that antidepressants are shown to be safe and effective in randomised controlled trials. Others claim that antidepressants have been shown to prevent suicides. In this editorial we address the manipulation of outcomes that result from academics’ alliance with industry. We explain how industry and key opinion leaders have distorted the clinician’s perception of the safety (...) and usefulness of antidepressants for the treatment of depression in children and adolescents through publication bias, poor methodology, and selective reporting. (shrink)

We are addressing this letter to the editors of Philosophical Psychology after reading an article they decided to publish in the recent vol. 33, issue 1. The article is by Nathan Cofnas and is entitled “Research on group differences in intelligence: A defense of free inquiry” (2020). The purpose of our letter is not to invite Cofnas’s contribution into a broader dialogue, but to respectfully voice our concerns about the decision to publish the manuscript, which, in our opinion, fails (...) to meet a range of academic quality standards usually expected of academic publications. (shrink)

The violation of editorial independence by the CMA seriously damaged trust in CMAJ and raises questions whether the CMA can operate a truly independent journalOn February 20, 2006, John Hoey and Anne Marie Todkill, the two most senior editors of the Canadian Medical Association Journal were fired by the journal’s publisher, Graham Morris. At first, CMA spokespersons said that the firing had been planned for some time based on a desire to “refresh” the journal. Later they refused to offer (...) any explanation, and weeks later they declared that there had been “irreconcilable differences,” without specifying anything more. After the journal’s editorial board tried fruitlessly to convince the Canadian Medical Association to reinstate the dismissed editors, I resigned from the editorial board. I had been a member since 1999. My letter of resignation to the CMA’s president made these points:" “By interfering with the editorial autonomy of two outstanding editors and firing them without explanation, you have provoked a scandal that will be long remembered as a blot on Canadian Medicine. … Despite the acknowledged success of the CMAJ, you gave no cause for the editors’ dismissals. … You caused the editors to be fired without consultation with major members of the Journal Oversight Committee. … In your public comments, you were even disingenuous about whether the editors were fired. … In answering to the issue of the editors’ departure, you have hidden behind a veil of bureaucratic legalisms, and by arguing that the Editorial Board knows only “one side,” you have left the impression that the editors have done something nefarious. Thereby, you have besmirched the good names and reputations of the editors. … You have mounted a PR campaign to “spin” public opinion at the expense of honest, respectable and hard working … ". (shrink)

Drawing on the theory of inter-cultural rhetoric analysis and considering the important role of newspaper editorials in shaping public opinions, this article examines the schematic structures of Persian and English newspaper editorials of criticism. The aim of this comparative study was to explore the discourse conventions employed in the editorials of The New York Times and Tehran Times. While revealing some interesting genre-specific features of schematic structures of the editorials in the two newspapers, the results of the study also indicated (...) that cultural constraints did not substantially affect the schematic structures of the editorials. However, they had implications for realization of certain rhetorical structures in the editorials. (shrink)

Based on systemic functional linguistics, and especially newly developed appraisal theory, this study uses editorials from the China Daily to investigate patterns of interpersonal rhetoric devised to construct and shape public opinion. Attitudinal lexis and modal expressions are examined separately with the object of discovering how editorials communicate their evaluation of their subject matter. This article contends that the author of an editorial is more likely to be explicit in evaluating events and implicit in evaluating behaviour and that (...) he/she seldom attributes attitudes to other sources. Modality occurs frequently in editorial discourse. Modal expressions of certainty, necessity and obligation are particularly common and indicate the authority and power nature of the discourse. Modal expressions of obligation/necessity normally occur at the end of the text in order to make the most powerful possible appeal to the reader. (shrink)

The Guest Editorial On Wolverines and Epistemological Totalitarianism by Etzel Cardeña (JSE 24(3), Fall 2011) is little more than a rant, in which invective, ridicule, and mockery take the place of reasoned argumentation. Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with a good rant, especially when one agrees with the overall perspective, and I actually found myself in agreement with much of what the author had to say. Most of Cardeña’s anger is directed at those Materialist philosophers and psychologists who happily (...) pontificate against the possibility of psi while remaining studiously ignorant of the data that parapsychological research has uncovered. I think everyone who comes to parapsychology with an open mind at some point experiences the same frustration that Cardeña expresses toward Materialist idealogues, whose conclusions and opinions have been formed a priori and appear to be impervious to empirical data. But he seems equally upset with those who are “pro-psi,” lamenting "the epistemological absolutism that pervades both the strident anti-psi and pro-psi proponents from what I consider a healthy abeyance from fully committing to a closed position in science or in other aspects of life." (Cardeña, p. 539). (shrink)

This article argues that afirm and consistent editorial focus on a poilitician's public virtue would serve well as the essence of journalistic communication about piitical character. Public virtue is defined as the ethical character traits attributed to a politician by an editorialist, based on direct obsemation, of the politician's words and deeds, broadly construed. After presenting the theoretical foundation of this definition, via qualitative case-study methodology, this essay analyzes the editorial claims made in the Atlanta newspapers about Gov. (...) Bill Clinton's political character during the 1992 presidential campaign. The Atlanta case demonstrates how a clear focus on public virtue can operate in practice. The conclusion discusses expectations that readers, opinion columnists, and newspaper editors should keep in mind as character issue is broughtforth in the press. (shrink)

Nanotechnology has been established as a priority research and policy focus, cutting across several R&D fields from pharmaceutics, food and electronics. The raise of nanotechnologies has been accompanied by an enduring uncertainty characterising the developments of the scientific knowledge related to this field, as well as the social trajectories of technological applications. Such a condition inevitably affects regulatory responses to such technologies, their development and their uses. This special issue addresses this junction between uncertainty and regulation. With no ambition of (...) providing a comprehensive assessment of such a complex issue, this collection of articles examines three relevant dimensions for understanding uncertainty in nanotechnology regulation, which can be useful entry points for further reflection and discussion: scientific uncertainty, regulatory fragmentation, social actors’ opinions about and attitudes to nanotechnology and regulation. (shrink)

Versão integral do v.6, n.1: Caleidoscópio Byung-Chul Han.