Ten years ago National Geographic magazine reported that the Loma Linda Seventh-day Adventist population is one of the communities in the world that lives longer and with a higher quality of life thanks in part to the biological benefits of a vegetarian diet. Along with National Geographic, other media outlets have reported since then that the Adventist religious community considers a plant-based diet a very important factor for a healthy lifestyle. Adventists have been promoting this type of diet worldwide for (...) more than 150 years. This article is an attempt to understand from a social-scientific perspective the origin of the importance they lend to diet and see whether this helps explain why approximately 150 years after the founding of the church, diet remains crucial for Adventists around the world. The conclusion proposed is that Adventists understood the adoption of a plant-based diet as a special divine instruction in order to nourish their new identity as a special people differentiated from the rest of society. This was possible through a desecularisation of diet that placed food in the moral category of the Adventist belief system.Keywords: Seventh-day Adventist Church; vegetarian diet; religion; health; desecularisation; identity. (shrink)

En este artículo abordamos la tesis de Kant sobre la insociable sociabilidad de los humanos y algunos temas conexos como la paz perpetua, el cosmopolitismo y el patriotismo, así como su continuación por parte de Hegel. En la tesis kantiana vemos un marco más adecuado para observar la realidad actual que el ofrecido por muchas de las teorías políticas y sociales más en uso. A pesar de que Kant era sin duda un filósofo moral, la tesis mencionada responde a cierta (...) desconfianza sobrevenida hacia los meros imperativos morales. Estos últimos, por sí mismos, resultan ineficaces para «humanizar a la humanidad ». La racionalidad pasada por el lenguaje es lo que más nos distingue como especie. Sin embargo, probablemente no sea esto lo que más nos constituya como individuos de esta especie. La insociable sociabilidad, que caracteriza la doble pulsión conflictiva y cooperativa de los humanos, supone un concepto- marco que permite pensar mejor las dificultades actuales de las democracias, tanto en la esfera internacional como en el de proceder a una acomodación política estable de su pluralismo interno de carácter cultural y, en su caso, de carácter nacional. Kant y Hegel son filósofos de la historia porque esta última ofrece ejemplos de la superación de muchos conflictos mediante la política. Desde una perspectiva contemporánea, la insociable sociabilidad es un concepto que complementa tanto en sus dimensiones individuales como sociopolíticas lo que también resulta ser un rasgo insuperable del mundo contemporáneo: el pluralismo de valores, intereses, e identidades que habitualmente revisten un carácter agonístico y que remiten a componentes emocionales. (shrink)

This paper examines the astrological and religious thinking of Moshe ben Nahman (also known as Ramban or Nahmanides) and the intellectual connections in this field with two of the most outstanding Christian thinkers of his time, Ramon Llull and Arnau de Vilanova. Nahmanides, like many medieval scholars, admitted an astral influence, but he did not accept astrology as a divinatory science. He incorporated astrological doctrines in his exegetical works, assuming that Israel is not determined by any star because it only (...) responds to God. Yet the study of medieval medicine and its application cannot be separated from astrology practice because it was considered that the stars had a direct influence not only on the development of the human body, from birth to death, but also in the disease processes which affect it. Ramban and his disciple Solomon ben Adret accepted and practiced astrological medicine. Llull and de Vilanova also devoted themselves to this discipline. All of them agree on the influence of the stars on humankind but condemned astral magic. Like Ramban, Llull rejects other astrological methods considered non-scientific in his time, such as prediction through horoscope. Thus, these thinkers tried to develop an astrology that was not in contradiction with divine omnipotence or free will. (shrink)

Antonio Argandoña, Norbert Bilbeny, Victòria Camps, Miquel Calsina, Àngel Castiñeira, Cristian Palazzi, Ferran Requejo, Raimon Ribera, Begoña Román, Ferran Sàez, Miquel Seguró, Francesc Torralba, Josep Maria Vallès, Rosamund Thomas Ramon Llull Journal of Applied Ethics 2012 3(3):9-16.

Publicado originalmente como “Prólogo” al libro Risieri Frondizi. Pensamiento Axiológico. Antología ([Selección, Prólogo y Epílogo de José Ramón Fabelo]. Biblioteca Americana, Universidad del Valle-Instituto Cubano del Libro, Cali-La Habana, 1993, pp. VII-XXIII). El texto busca ubicar al filósofo Risieri Frondizi en los marcos del pensamiento sobre los valores en el contexto latinoamericano.

Publicado originalmente como “Prólogo” al libro Risieri Frondizi. Pensamiento Axiológico. Antología ([Selección, Prólogo y Epílogo de José Ramón Fabelo]. Biblioteca Americana, Universidad del Valle-Instituto Cubano del Libro, Cali-La Habana, 1993, pp. VII-XXIII). El texto busca ubicar al filósofo Risieri Frondizi en los marcos del pensamiento sobre los valores en el contexto latinoamericano.

The article is focused in texts of three authors of "the generation of 98": Azorín, Unamuno and Valle-Inclán. In them we found ways and forms to experience time: the present time, novelty, hurry against cyclic time, "intrahistory" and tradition, permanence, private time and common time, the transcendence of the time..

Resumo: O corpo está por toda parte: ele é aquele que «está irreparavelmente aqui» onde estou, eu que não «posso me deslocar sem ele», já disse o filósofo. Talvez por isso mesmo seja tão antigo e tão insistente o movimento que, multiplicando as metáforas para dizer sua presença, visa de fato a maior parte do tempo seu ocultamento. Assim, se é possível falar aqui de uma cartografia, ela sem dúvida designará o intenso movimento filosófico de ocultamento do corpo, que paradoxalmente (...) dá a ver o que tanto se buscou evitar: é que o corpo sempre resiste, insistindo em se fazer disponível aos «mundos múltiplos e divergentes» que a cada vez a arte aproxima. Palavras-chave: Corpo. Movimento. Formação humana. Cartography of the body and unmanageability: The body is everywhere: he is «is irreparably here» where I am, for «I cannot move without him», as the philosopher said. Perhaps it is why this ancient and persistent movement that multiplies the metaphors to tell its presence seeks in fact its concealment most of the time. Thus, if it is possible to speak about a cartography, it will undoubtedly designate the intense philosophical movement of body concealment, which paradoxically hints at what it has sought so much to avoid: is that the body always resists, insisting on making itself available to « multiple and divergent worlds» which art approaches each time. Keywords: Body. Mouvement. Human Formation. Cartographies du corps et de l’ingovernabilité Résumé: Le corps est partout: « il est ici irréparablement» où je suis, car «je ne peux pas me déplacer sans lui», comme le philosophe l’a dit. Et c’est peut-être là la raison par laquelle, à force de multiplier les métaphores pour signaler as présence, ce que lui vise, finalement, la plupart du temps est bien son effacement. Ainsi, s’il nous est permis de parler de cartographie, elle devra sans doute désigner cet intense mouvement philosophique d’oubli du corps, qui finalement révèle ce qui l’on a tellement voulu éviter : car le corps résiste, à chaque fois, et qu’il insiste de se faire disponible aux «mondes multiples et divergents» que, à chaque fois, l’art rend présent. Mots-clés: Corps. Mouvement. Formation humaine. (shrink)

Este trabajo se centra en la gestión de los bienes naturales comunes, y desarrolla brevemente dos enfoques sobre el ambiente y su cuidado; destaca las ventajas de un enfoque interdisciplinario en la gestión comunal de los bienes naturales y en la consiguiente elaboración de políticas ambientales. Se analiza la gestión comunal de estos bienes comunes partiendo de la noción de responsabilidad fuerte, que cuestiona la concepción de las personas como agentes autointeresados, y se identifican requisitos ineludibles: adecuación a las condiciones (...) sociales y ecológicas de cada lugar, información completa y relevante, procesos democráticos de decisión y reconocimiento por parte de los gobiernos de la capacidad y el derecho de los usuarios de elaborar sus propias normas y monitorear su cumplimiento. (shrink)

Muslim migrants are the counter-figures through whom the modern Western identity is shaped. In Islamophobic discourses, they are constructed as inherently sexist and homophobic. In this ideological context, queer migrants coming from Muslim countries occupy an intersectional social location between Islamophobia and homophobia. In this paper we analyze the cinematic representation of queer migrants living in Europe coming from Muslim backgrounds. The aim of the paper is to analyze whether the films reproduce or subvert the Western “gay narrative”. The corpus (...) of analysis is made up of 19 films which were studied through a process of categorization of the relevant fragments in a matrix. The films are classified in three categories according to their approach. The first gathers those films that hold an assimilationist discourse, according to which queer migrants should embrace the Western “gay narrative” and abandon the values of the communities of origin. In the second category, the films propose a hybrid perspective in which characters merge elements from both the country of residence and the cultural background of origin in the exploration of their sexuality and gender. The films in the third category revolve around a metaphorical relationship between a queer migrant and a native person, promoting a reflection on the possibilities of transformative encounters that break the boundaries between supposedly opposed social groups. (shrink)

The state members of the European Union have witnessed the emergence of equality policies which target discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. These are usually based on the single issue model focusing exclusively on discrimination suffered by LGBT people, however there are other approaches to this issue which take into account the interaction of different axes of inequality, namely, the multiple and intersectional discrimination models. This article analyses the implications of these three models from a theoretical (...) and empirical perspective, pointing out their respective advantages and disadvantages. (shrink)

Ian Rumfitt (2000) developed a bilateralist account of logic in which the meaning of the connectives is given by conditions on asserted and rejected sentences. An additional set of inference rules, the coordination principles, determines the interaction of assertion and rejection. Fernando Ferreira (2008) found this account defective, as Rumfitt must state the coordination principles for arbitrary complex sentences. Rumfitt (2008) has a reply, but we argue that the problem runs deeper than he acknowledges and is in fact related to (...) the challenge of establishing proof-theoretic harmony. We motivate a distinctively bilateral criterion for harmony and show how the bilateralist can meet it. This also resolves Ferreira's complaint. (shrink)

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

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

BackgroundHIV prevention research in resource-limited countries is associated with a variety of ethical dilemmas. Key amongst these is the question of what constitutes an appropriate standard of health care (SoC) for participants in HIV prevention trials. This paper describes a community-focused approach to develop a locally-appropriate SoC in the context of a phase III vaginal microbicide trial in Mwanza City, northwest Tanzania.MethodsA mobile community-based sexual and reproductive health service for women working as informal food vendors or in traditional and modern (...) bars, restaurants, hotels and guesthouses has been established in 10 city wards. Wards were divided into geographical clusters and community representatives elected at cluster and ward level. A city-level Community Advisory Committee (CAC) with representatives from each ward has been established. Workshops and community meetings at ward and city-level have explored project-related concerns using tools adapted from participatory learning and action techniques e.g. chapati diagrams, pair-wise ranking. Secondary stakeholders representing local public-sector and non-governmental health and social care providers have formed a trial Stakeholders' Advisory Group (SAG), which includes two CAC representatives.ResultsKey recommendations from participatory community workshops, CAC and SAG meetings conducted in the first year of the trial relate to the quality and range of clinic services provided at study clinics as well as broader standard of care issues. Recommendations have included streamlining clinic services to reduce waiting times, expanding services to include the children and spouses of participants and providing care for common local conditions such as malaria. Participants, community representatives and stakeholders felt there was an ethical obligation to ensure effective access to antiretroviral drugs and to provide supportive community-based care for women identified as HIV positive during the trial. This obligation includes ensuring sustainable, post-trial access to these services. Post-trial access to an effective vaginal microbicide was also felt to be a moral imperative.ConclusionParticipatory methodologies enabled effective partnerships between researchers, participant representatives and community stakeholders to be developed and facilitated local dialogue and consensus on what constitutes a locally-appropriate standard of care in the context of a vaginal microbicide trial in this setting.Trial registrationCurrent Controlled Trials ISRCTN64716212. (shrink)

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

Recommender Systems (RecSys) have been around since the early days of the Internet, helping users navigate the vast ocean of information and the increasingly available options that have been available for us ever since. The range of tasks for which one could use a RecSys is expanding as the technical capabilities grow, with the disruption of Machine Learning representing a tipping point in this domain, as in many others. However, the increase of the technical capabilities of AI-powered RecSys did not (...) come with a thorough consideration of their ethical implications and, despite being a well-established technical domain, the potential impacts of RecSys on their users are still under-assessed. This paper aims at filling this gap in regards to one of the main impacts of RecSys: personal autonomy. We first describe how technology can affect human values and a suitable methodology to identify these effects and mitigate potential harms: Value Sensitive Design (VSD). We use VSD to carry out a conceptual investigation of personal autonomy in the context of a generic RecSys and draw on a nuanced account of procedural autonomy to focus on two components: competence and authenticity. We provide the results of our inquiry as a value hierarchy and apply it to the design of a speculative RecSys as an example. (shrink)