Este artículo de revisión examina la importancia que tienen las comunidades microbianas que colonizan los ambien­tes y equipos de procesado de alimentos formando biopelículas o biofilms en la persistencia microbiana en la industria alimen­taria y consecuentemente, en la seguridad y la calidad de los alimentos. La atención se centra especialmente en biopelículas formadas por microorganismos no deseados, es decir, microor­ganismos alterantes y patógenos. Se presenta información so­bre la variabilidad intraespecífica en la formación, la ecología y la arquitectura de las biopelículas, (...) y los factores que influyen en su formación. Asimismo, se resume la información disponible sobre nuevos agentes o estrategias para el control de la forma­ción o eliminación de biopelículas. (shrink)

The term “lean in” was popularized by Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, via her #1 Best Seller encouraging women to defy their fears and dare to be leaders in their fields. She received criticism because although admitting to external barriers contributing to the gender gap in leadership, the scope of her book focused on the internal shortcomings of women. She asserted that women are hindered by barriers that exist within themselves, and provided practical tips, backed by research, to equip women with (...) strategies to proactively progress in the workplace instead of shying away. Sandberg is not the first to raise concern about gender inequality. Other women in history like Susan B. Anthony and Maggie Lena Walker also challenged lopsided gender roles through their words and actions. Using the critical biography methodology, this paper explores these women’s experiences, philosophies and contributions, reflects on Sandberg’s insight, and develops a framework, based on the theory of planned behavior as well as the ethical principles of utilitarianism and corporate social responsibility, that links internal factors, organizational external factors, and societal external factors to intentions to lean in and leaning in behavior. Thus, via critical biography, this paper examines both internal and external factors, showing how they are linked, and how they may impact leaning in intentions and behavior. The paper also discusses how leaning in may influence both individual and gender mobility for women, and ultimately, increased gender equality. (shrink)

The main object of this paper is classifying the prerequisites required for a candidate to attain the consulate. Framed within Cicero's theory of action, it is a structural analysis where it is concluded that there are three: the titles of lineage, the merits due to actions, and the trust in public opinion. Once the classification has been established, the paper is focused on the merits-trust binomial and stresses its meaning and interest nowadays, such as it stated in the papers on (...) justice by Michael Walzer. (shrink)

El legado enciclopedista de Diderot sobre el poder político y el derecho en vísperas de Revolución -- Un célebre profesor de jurisprudencia de siglo XVIII, después marginado durante siglos: el caso de Jean Jacques Burlamaqui y sus Elementos de derecho natural -- Lardizábal, jurista "ilustrado" en los albores de la Independencia de México -- Los ilustrados, infatigables inventores de derechos vitales. Escolio a una obra de Lynn Hunt -- Lichtenberg, un ilustrado minimalista. A manera de epílogo.

Los estudios recientes sobre Hobbes han puesto una gran atención en el uso de las imágenes. Permanece, sin embargo, una objeción seria y factible: se podría argumentar que Hobbes no relaciona su producción de imágenes, ni a su política, ni a su teoría de la percepción y que, por tanto, no tenemos razón para creer que sus imágenes son una aplicación de esta doctrina. El propósito de este trabajo es mostrar que Hobbes de hecho sí vincula — de un modo (...) implícito — la construcción de imágenes y su teoría psicológica al orden político. Primero, el artículo reconstruye la teoría hobbesiana de la percepción y sus implicaciones. Segundo, se muestra que el Leviathan establece encubiertamente el vínculo entre la teoría de las imágenes y las imágenes políticas, incluyendo, por consiguiente, las creadas por el propio Hobbes. Tercero, se muestra que el Leviatán de Hobbes rara vez descubre su rol como dispositivo para ver, para hacer que el lector vea imágenes que él considera necesarias. Finalmente, se discuten las consecuencias de este descubrimiento para nuestra comprensión de Hobbes y de la visualidad y las imágenes en el pensamiento político. (shrink)

From the beginning of the COVID-19 global pandemic, it became clear that the practices of naming the disease, its nature and its handling by the health authorities, the news media and the politicians had social and ideological implications. This article presents a sociosemiotic study of such practices as reflected in a corpus of headlines of eight newspapers of four countries in the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis. After an analysis of the institutional naming choices of the World Health Organization (...) and the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, the study focuses on the changes in newspapers’ naming patterns following the WHO’s announcement of the disease name on 11 February 2020. A subsequent political controversy related to naming in the United States is then examined in reports of The New York Times and The Washington Post as a further illustration of how public discourses and perceptions can rapidly evolve in the context of health crises. (shrink)

Conscientious Objection: A Bioethical and Legal ApproachObjeção de consciência: uma aproximação bioética e jurídicaScientific and medical developments, added to our reality in Colombia, demand the training of professionals consistent with ethical principles and clear theoretical concepts on current regulations that are aimed at respect for human life. The country’s current constitutional situation poses a challenge to any professional, beyond the legal or health fields, since fundamental rights such as life and freedom of conscience are being questioned. This paper demonstrates the (...) need and importance of promoting and accessing conscientious objection as a response to the legal landscape of the protection of life in Colombia, which may be an example for other countries in Latin America.Para citar este artículo / To reference this article / Para citar este artigo Prieto-Soler MP, Muñoz D, Restrepo OI. Objeción de conciencia: una aproximación bioética y jurídica. Pers Bioet. 2020; 24: 205-17. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5294/pebi.2020.24.2.7Publicado: 27/11/2020. (shrink)

La educación cívica se encuentra en la misma base de la democracia . T odo sistema democrático que prescinda de esta necesidad acabará haciendo de s v anecerse la racionalidad democrática de sus instituciones. La democracia liberal es un buen ejemplo de este debilitamiento pr o g res i v o de las estructuras democráticas. Benjamin R. Barber no tarda en referirse a ella como "democracia débil". La democracia carece de plenitud sin ciudadanos fo r mados cívicamente. Educación y democracia (...) están indisol u b lemente unidas. P or eso, para este autor la r e generación de la democracia, con sus contenidos reales de pa r ticipación política, pasa necesariamente por la educación. Enseñar democracia es se r vir a la comuni dad. (shrink)

Pretende a autora do presente artigo estabelecer algumas das condições necessárias a uma ontologia da emergênciaem biologia. A suaanálise confronta o reducionismo e o emergentismo a partir do recente abandono das duas rupturas disciplinares clássicas da biologia realizado, por urn lado, pela biologia molecular, e por outro, pela etologia. Estas duas disciplinas são abordadas nas relações metodológicas e teóricas que estabelecem tanto com a fisico-química como com as ciências humanas. Conclui-se o artigo acentuando a necessidade ontológica da perspectiva emergencial no (...) que toca à definição histórica das operações da ciência, assim como no que respeita à elaboração de uma epistemologia não-contraditória do sujeito bio-social. /// L'Auteur de l'article prétend établir quelques-unes des conditions matérielles nécessaires à une ontologie de l'émergence en biologie. Son analyse confronte le réductionisme et l'émergentisme à partir de l'abandon récent des deux ruptures disciplinaires classiques de la biologie réalisé, d'un côté par la biologie moléculaire, et de l'autre, par l'éthologie. Ces deux disciplines sont abordées dans leurs relations méthodologiques et théoriques avec la physico-chimie et avec les sciences humaines. On conclut en accentuant la nécessité de la perspective emergentielle pour ce qui concerne la définition historique des opérations de la science ainsi que pour l'élaboration d'une épistémologie non-contradictoire du sujet bio-social. /// The author pretends to establish some of the material conditions for an ontology of emergence in biology. Her analysis confronts reductionism and emergentism in molecular biology and ethology, the two disciplines which apparently eliminate biology's classical frontiers. These two disciplines are studied in their methodological and theoretical relations with physical and chemical sciences and twith human sciences. The ontological necessity of the emergence viewpoint is emphasized in what concerns the historical definition of the operations of science, as well as in what matters a noncontradictive epistemology of the bio-social individual. (shrink)

Forgiveness seeking after a relational transgression is an important aspect of relational repair from an interpersonal perspective, although it has received much less attention than the process of granting forgiveness. This research focuses on the victim's perspective of the transgressor's behaviors and how they are related to forgiveness and offense characteristics. This paper proposes a multidimensional concept of seeking forgiveness that includes four dimensions: apologies, restorative action, relational caring behaviors, and diverting behaviors. A questionnaire for assessing these dimensions was developed (...) and tested with a general population sample of 450 subjects. Participants recalled a specific offense and then answered a questionnaire about the perceived usefulness of different forgiveness-seeking behaviors, a forgiveness inventory, and several questions regarding the characteristics of the offense. Our results support the four-factor structure of the questionnaire. As the perceived intentionality of the offense increases, behaviors that are directly related to the transgression, such as apologies and restorative actions, are experienced as less useful for forgiveness. The more hurtful the offense, the less useful the diverting behaviors are. Behavior such as apologies and restorative action are related to a lower motivation for revenge, while all forgiveness-seeking behaviors are related to an increase in feelings of benevolence toward the offender. (shrink)

As James Chapman has famously put it in National Identity and the British Historical Film, historical films are “as much about the present in which they are made as they are about [the] past in which they are set.” This article discusses Shekhar Kapur’s aesthetically ground-breaking Elizabeth and its sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age focusing on two main aspects, namely national identity issues and the representation of the enemy. Kapur’s Elizabeth films will first be placed within the larger context of (...) Elizabeth’s film and television appearances. Informed by Giroux’s critical methodology guidelines, in an attempt to “historize” the films under scrutiny and so foster “sane historical sense,” a se­miotic analysis will then be offered. Largely inspired by the tenets of Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis and Kress and Leeuwen’s visual grammar, this will draw a parallel between the verbal and visual discourses in both films. Data will finally be discussed and the contention will be made that England’s religious heritage has left indelible traces which remain latent in the English imagination, for which historical evi­dence will be presented. The article’s ultimate aim will be to provide evidence suggesting that, in the English case, religious and national discourses merged from the late 16th century onwards, clearly influ­en­cing not only the perception that the English had of themselves but also and crucially the image they may still have of “Other” nations. (shrink)

On June 16, 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that forced administration of antipsychotic drugs to a defendant facing serious criminal charges is appropriate in order to render that defendant competent to stand trial, but only in limited circumstances. The treatment must be medically appropriate, substantially unlikely to have side effects that may undermine the fairness of the trial, and necessary to significantly further important government interests, after taking account of less-intrusive alternatives.Charles Sell, a former dentist, had a long history of (...) mental illness. He had been hospitalized twice, in 1982 and 1984, after expressing paranoid ideas to law enforcement officials. In May 1997, Sell was charged with fifty-six counts of mail fraud, six counts of Medicaid fraud, and one count of money laundering. He was released on bail after a magistrate determined that he was currently competent to stand trial. (shrink)

On June 16, 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that forced administration of antipsychotic drugs to a defendant facing serious criminal charges is appropriate in order to render that defendant competent to stand trial, but only in limited circumstances. The treatment must be medically appropriate, substantially unlikely to have side effects that may undermine the fairness of the trial, and necessary to significantly further important government interests, after taking account of less-intrusive alternatives.Charles Sell, a former dentist, had a long history of (...) mental illness. He had been hospitalized twice, in 1982 and 1984, after expressing paranoid ideas to law enforcement officials. In May 1997, Sell was charged with fifty-six counts of mail fraud, six counts of Medicaid fraud, and one count of money laundering. He was released on bail after a magistrate determined that he was currently competent to stand trial. (shrink)

The article presents the political thinking of Suárez’s De opere sex dierum, a literary work which as yet does not count on a translation into Spanish. The article is divided into two parts. The first one describes and analyses the political thinking of this work, reaching the conclusion that the central theme is that of the distinction between economic and political power, carried out in order to save –faced with the theory of the divine right of kings– the liberty and (...) equality of all men and the contractual character of the State. The second part covers the relation of this work with Filmer’s Patriarcha, as well as the inspiration found in Suárez’s writing upon which to base the themes of liberty and equality found in Locke’s second Treatise on Government. (shrink)

Scotus’ mark on Suárez’s metaphysics can be perceived not only in his elaboration of intellectual knowledge of the singular, but also in the idea that prime matter is not pure potency, but possesses its own act, as well as in the thesis that states that the accident possesses too its own being. Of these two ideas, in addition to the tendency towards hypostatisation both regarding matter and accident, comes the breakdown of the unity of material substance both in the substantial (...) and accidental planes, something that Suárez, in a way very similar to Scotus, tries to remedy by appealing to the modes of union. Lastly, a fundamental consequence of the hypostatisation of the accident is phenomenism, as seen in the works of authors such as Locke and Kant. (shrink)

This text is focused on the question of what we should teach in high school philosophy and the relationship of this teaching to recognizing oneself as a good philosophy teacher. We hold that these points are connected to the idea of “canon” and “history of philosophy” that we gained with and despite Ricœur himself. This paper advances a critical view of contemporary practices in philosophy teaching in Colombia through Ricœur’s thought. In the first part, we follow Ricœur’s considerations about the (...) history of philosophy and its connections to the very practice of thinking. In the second part, we concentrate on the question of the canon. At the end of each section, we will give some pedagogical stitches to interweave Ricœur’s philosophical legacy with the didactics and theory of the curriculum, thus forming a tripod that should be part of the didactics of philosophy as an independent discipline. (shrink)

the main relevant philosophical aspect in Suárez’s interpretation of the transcendentals is his doctrine of the notions res and aliquid . therefore, after analyzing the nature and the number of the transcendentals, as well as the relationship between them and the first principles, the article goes into a detailed historical analysis of the notions res and aliquid. With precedents in Avicenna and Duns Scotus, the ens is understood according to Suarez, negatively, as it is not nothing and, in such sense, (...) it is something ( aliquid ) and, positively, as it has got a quidditas and, therefore, it is res. the question of nothing ( nihil ) is thus introduced into modern metaphysics. What’s more, the said interpretation is one of the fundamental conditions of the transformation of metaphysics in modern ontology . thus, in the post- Cartesian context of Schulmetaphysik, and its aliquitas (as non-nihil ) and its quiditative character (as res ) being presumed, the ens will be understood as an intelligible . through that, a Copernican revolution commenced that anticipated Kant himself. (shrink)

The John of Saint Thomas' critique of the suarecian concept of the prime matter The figure of Juan Poinsot is inserted in the movement of return to a Thomism free of nominalist adherences promoted in the Hispanic Thomism by relevant figures of the order of preachers. In this sense must be understood the Poinsot’s critique of some ideas of Scotistic and Ockhamistic origin, present in the metaphysics of Suarez, referred to the ontological status of the material substance, such as: the (...) actuality of matter, the substantial mode of union, the immediate inhesion of the quantity in matter and the idea of entitative extension. (shrink)

Este trabajo presenta y valora el reciente libro de Pablo Font, El derecho de resistencia civil en Francisco Suárez. Virtualidades actuales, deteniéndose especialmente en los precedentes y contexto del derecho de resistencia, las cuestiones fundamentales de la teoría política de Suárez y en los tres niveles de la doctrina suareciana del derecho de resistencia al tirano: desobediencia, deposición y occisión o tiranicidio. This paper presents and values Pablo Font's recent book, El derecho de resistencia civil en Francisco Suárez. Virtualidades actuales (...) attending especially to the precedents and context of the right of resistance, the fundamental issues of the political theory of Suárez and the three levels of Suárez’s doctrine of the right of resistance to the tyrant: disobedience, deposition and occision or tyrannicide. (shrink)

In Ogborn v. United Food & Commercial Workers Union, Local No. 881, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that while major depression can constitute a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act, isolated bouts of depression do not. Furthermore, the court held that an employee's firing after taking medical leave for depression does not violate the Family and Medical Leave Act, where evidence shows that the employee would have been fired for poor performance even if he (...) had not taken the leave.Alleging that he was fired in violation of the ADA and the FMLA, Jerry Ogborn sued his former employer, Local 881 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, as well as the union's vice president. Beginning in 1980, Ogborn worked as a business agent for the union, which represents members employed primarily in the retail grocery industry. Ogborn's duties consisted of visiting retail grocery stores employing workers represented by the union, meeting with members about working conditions, and filing and processing members’ grievances. (shrink)

In Ogborn v. United Food & Commercial Workers Union, Local No. 881, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that while major depression can constitute a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act, isolated bouts of depression do not. Furthermore, the court held that an employee's firing after taking medical leave for depression does not violate the Family and Medical Leave Act, where evidence shows that the employee would have been fired for poor performance even if he (...) had not taken the leave.Alleging that he was fired in violation of the ADA and the FMLA, Jerry Ogborn sued his former employer, Local 881 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, as well as the union's vice president. Beginning in 1980, Ogborn worked as a business agent for the union, which represents members employed primarily in the retail grocery industry. Ogborn's duties consisted of visiting retail grocery stores employing workers represented by the union, meeting with members about working conditions, and filing and processing members’ grievances. (shrink)

The critical analysis of the concept of identity has marked implications for gender studies, specifically in relation to fragmenting the notion of static and metaphysical identity of sexualized subjects. This paper analyzes how gender identity can be constructed and reconstructed based on culture, periods in history, symbolism and the discourse of power. To this end, this article will discuss various concepts of gender identity described in the work of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, as well as the concepts of performativity (...) and gender parody developed by Judith Butler. Finally, the concept of pastiche, developed by Fredric Jameson, will be discussed. Photographs of Cindy Sherman’s Centerfolds will be used as support. (shrink)

This year we celebrate Raimon Panikkar’s centenary; one of the most important Spanish thinkers and, undoubtedly, one of those who had the widest international repercussion, together with the other three big philosophers of the 20th century: Unamuno, Ortega and Zubiri. The present work explores the relationship between his thinking and Xabier Zubiri’s, a well-known thinker in the History of Spanish Philosophy, and that of Amor Ruibal, a Galician thinker not so wellknown outside specialized circles. This connection among the three thinkers (...) lies particularly in a conception of reality marked by the relation, reaching its culmination in the Catalan-Hindu thinker: The cosmotheandric perspective of Raimon Panikkar, Zubiri’s respectivity and radical relativity, and the ontological relativity or universal correlationism of Amor Ruibal. (shrink)

This article uses Jacques Réda's theory of poetic swing to show how the traditional metrical analysis of poetic rhythm might be updated to better reflect the rhythmic intricacies of contemporary French literary language. It begins by situating Jacques Réda's rhythmic practices with respect to the deconstructive theories of rhythm and subjectivity espoused by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Henri Meschonnic. Using the concept of swing, Réda seeks to show why certain rhythmic patterns feel ‘right’ to him, and how they enable him to (...) put his personal stamp on the French language as he seeks to show, like Lacoue-Labarthe and Meschonnic, that there is such a thing as a rhythmic ‘essence of the subject’. (shrink)

BackgroundThe Catalan Institute of Health is the largest health services public provider in Catalonia. “CIH Code of Ethics Virtual Forum”, was created within the Intranet of the CIH to facilitate participation among their employees. The current study aims to: a) Analyse the CIH workers’ assessment of their own, their colleagues’ and the organization’s observance of ethical values; b) Identify the opinions, attitudes, experiences and practices related to the ethical values from the discourse of the workers that contributed voluntarily to the (...) CEVF.MethodsMixed methods study with convergent parallel design:1.Cross sectional study by means of a self-administered, ad hoc, anonymous questionnaire to assess the observance of the ethical values of the CIH according to the participants. A total of 712 workers responded to the questionnaire. A descriptive, bivariate analysis of the results was carried out. 2.Qualitative study to determine the meaning for the workers of the ethical values put forward by the organization. Their individual opinions and experiences were explored by means of a thematic contents analysis of 225 comments posted in the CEVF. The study was conducted between May and December 2008.ResultsThe average score for observance of the CE by the respondents themselves was high, between 3.5-4/5 for the observance by their colleagues and close to 3/5 for the CIH management. These results do not change when we compare by gender, age group and professional discipline. The comments on the values are information-rich, they mirror the ethical environment of the institution and show various ethical dilemmas and suggestions.ConclusionsResults show that it is feasible for a publicly funded health care organization to develop a CE with the participation of employees and the support of the management. Results underscore the relevance of this strategy for the implementation, improvement and update of the CE as a responsibility shared by all workers. Practices consistent with ethical values are rewarded by social approval, enhance employee’s confidence and coherence in decision-making and improve public engagement and institutional policies. (shrink)

While recent studies have claimed that non-referential gestures are used to mark discourse-new and/or -accessible referents and focused information in adult speech, to our knowledge, no prior investigation has studied the relationship between information structure and gesture referentiality in children’s narrative speech from a developmental perspective. A longitudinal database consisting of 332 narratives performed by 83 children at two different time points in development was coded for IS and gesture referentiality. Results revealed that at both time points, both referential and (...) non-referential gestures were produced more with information that moves discourse forward and predication rather than topical or background information. Further, at 7–9 years of age, children tended to use more non-referential gestures to mark focus and comment constituents than referential gestures. In terms of the marking of the newness of discourse referents, non-referential gestures already seem to play a key role at 5–6 years old, whereas referential gestures did not show any patterns. This relationship was even stronger at 7–9 years old. All in all, our findings offer supporting evidence that in contrast with referential gestures, non-referential gestures have been found to play a key role in marking IS, and that the development of this relationship solidifies at a period in development that coincides with a spurt in non-referential gesture production. (shrink)

Legal Translation in Context. Professional Issues and Prospects, edited by Anabel Borja Albi from Jaume I University and Fernando Prieto Ramos from the University of Geneva, both practising sworn translators, offers an insightful overview of professional practices in the public and private sectors. As such, the book falls within the emerging track of research in Translation Studies, namely—workplace studies, and is a valuable contribution to the field. The book is a fruit of a two-year international project run at the (...) University of Geneva’s Faculty of Translation and Interpreting. Although, due to the growing autonomy of the field of Legal Translation Studies and intense research activity, there are increasingly more publications on legal translation, this book stands out because it approaches legal translation from the perspective of translators and their employers rather than from the usual perspective of the product of their .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist NarrativeRandall Everett AllsupEric Prieto, Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative ( Lincoln NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2002)Modernism. The Interpretation of Dreams, the assembly line, The Rite of Spring, the Panama Canal. The modernist sensibility is characterized above all by the "willful big idea"—history as text, a manifesto in conflict with itself and its past. Hopeful and revolutionary (...) like the writings of Karl Marx or progressive and corrupt like the Manhattan Project, such events-as-manifesto had a way of feeding off each other. Through collaboration, conflict, and competition, modernists from Robert Moses to Elliott Carter raced to explain and exemplify, often deliberately creating conflict as if crisis were its own rationale, its own sine qua non. One could hypothesize that this arms race of complexity collapsed—exhausted—about the same time that Communism did. Its failure to sustain its ideas (rather than outpace them one after another) may be one reason we live in an anti-dialectical world, an unmodern place of fundamentalisms and easy freedoms.Author Eric Prieto is at home in the modern world more so than the present; his heroes are French intellectuals after all, those lovers of complexity. In Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative, he investigates late modernist authors who looked to music as a way to exemplify the inward nature of mind [End Page 93] and the outward nature of place. To understand this book, we must revisit some formal aesthetic theories, namely that music's value resides in its ability to name without signifying, that musical properties like intervallic distance, dynamic contrast, and the space-time component that is rhythm put us in touch with the Kantian a priori—the-thing-in-itself, the Schopenhauerian will. Music as sound-in-itself (to riff on Kant and Schopenhauer) becomes a metaphor for the noumenal world or is mimetic at the very least of the abstract and non-linear nature of thought. Prieto argues that "wherever a music model is present [among his examples] it always serves to further this inwardly directed mode of mimesis I call 'listening in,' where the primary object of representation is not the outside world but the subtly modulating interactions between consciousness and world."1Prieto's book is highly consistent. He masterfully captures the spirit of cooperation from modernist writer to musician to thinker and back. Concentrating on three authors, Robert Pinget, Michel Leiris, and Samuel Beckett, Prieto cites the influences of composers like Bach and Beethoven, as well as philosophers like Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer on their literary works. He brings in thinking from Nelson Goodman and Ferdinand de Saussure. The result is literary criticism as manifesto. Reader beware, this is a book for an elevated audience, those rare folk who are comfortable with structural linguistics, nineteenth-century music aesthetics, specialized academic scholarship, and word puzzles. To explain for example why an author like Beckett is inspired by music to create abstract or associative narratives rather than traditional stories of cause and effect, Prieto writes:In music, this progression necessarily takes place on the level of audible resemblances, but in literature, by virtue of the properties of the two-tiered linguistic sign, analogical progression may take place either on the level of the signifier (via the principle of paronomasia), on the level of the signified (via metaphorical substitutions, as in the association of ideas), or between the two levels (punning, "imitative harmony").2This density of language and concept speak well of Prieto's intellect and one is likewise impressed by his broad understanding of music and letters, yet it is the musical scholar who gets the short end of the deal. Paronomasia? "Audible resemblance" is not a musical term I have heard used. In Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative, music serves as starting point, an inspiration, not as an equal partner. This holds true for Beckett and Pinget as well as for Prieto. The result can be disconcerting, even to readers like me for whom the cross-disciplinary study of music and literature is a fascinating endeavor.Difficulty, nonetheless, has its rewards and this is one lesson of... (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to present a possible theoretical articulation between Terrence Deacon’s concept of ententionality and the concept of pertinence as posed by semio-linguist Luis J. Prieto. The advantage of such articulation is that it brings together two seemingly incompatible approaches within semiotics, namely the Peircean and the Saussurean ones. We start by subscribing to the definition of semiotics as the study of forms of knowledge in order to highlight the importance of analyzing intentional phenomena as (...) semiosic phenomena. Afterwards, we present the concept of ententionality and the levels of organization that ultimately set the conditions for entention to emerge. Then, we present an analysis of this concept aided by Prieto’s notion of pertinence. Our main conclusion is that ententionality and teleodynamic organization presupposes the existence of a pertinence principle that enables the recognition of differences in the extrinsic conditions of a system, and that such recognition of differences is at the basis of proper intentional phenomena. (shrink)

Digital technologies can be an asset to serving communities and societies through data analytics and management to achieve greater good. However, care must be exercised in that societies without digital access do not get overlooked or, worse, face abuses of privacy disclosure or exploitation. Regulations exist to prevent this happening, but ethical considerations are important in deciding in what is allowable and what is not. The further risk of artificial intelligence where computers start to make autonomous decisions and the vulnerabilities (...) we are exposed to is considered. Steps are proposed to develop an ethics-based digital strategy and how to mitigate cyber risk. (shrink)

This comprehensive and important volume includes contributions by activists, journalists, lawyers and scholars from twenty-one countries. The essays map the directions the movement for women's rights is taking--and will take in the coming decades--and the concomittant transformation of prevailing notions of rights and issues. They address topics such as the rapes in former Yugoslavia and efforts to see that a War Crimes Tribunal responds; domestic violence; trafficking of women into the sex trade; the persecution of lesbians; female genital mutilation; and (...) reproductive rights. (shrink)

Eric Prieto is a professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative, and numerous essays on music-and-literature, literary spatiality, Caribbean literature, and literary theory.

The globalization in business and tourism becomes crucial more and more for the economical sustainability of local communities. In the presence of an epidemic outbreak, there must be such a decision on the policy by the host community as whether to accept visitors or not, the number of acceptable visitors, or the condition for acceptable visitors. Making use of an SIRI type of mathematical model, we consider the influence of visitors on the spread of a reinfectious disease in a community, (...) especially assuming that a certain proportion of accepted visitors are immune. The reinfectivity of disease here means that the immunity gained by either vaccination or recovery is imperfect. With the mathematical results obtained by our analysis on the model for such an epidemic dynamics of resident and visitor populations, we find that the acceptance of visitors could have a significant influence on the disease’s endemicity in the community, either suppressive or supportive. (shrink)

Sociology has largely followed Durkheim’s lead in ignoring the question: why do people die by suicide? This negation prioritizes a positivist, structuralist approach and stymies sociology’s contribution by closing off a wide range of tools sociologists might employ. An interpretivist turn in suicide studies accompanied by the growing adoption of qualitative methodology has opened up an array of opportunities to produce insights lost in a Durkheimian approach, but has yet to confront their own weaknesses. This paper shows we need not (...) abandon either tradition, advocating for a third path that integrates the strengths of both approaches. (shrink)

This is an investigation of Aristotle's conception of accidental compounds (or "kooky objects," as Gareth Matthews has called them)—entities such as the pale man and the musical man. I begin with Matthews's pioneering work into kooky objects, and argue that they are not so far removed from our ordinary thinking as is commonly supposed. I go on to assess their utility in solving some familiar puzzles involving substitutivity in epistemic contexts, and compare the kooky object approach to more modern approaches (...) involving the notion of referential opacity. I conclude by proposing that Aristotle provides an implicit role for kooky objects in such metaphysical contexts as the Categories and Metaphysics. (shrink)

This article continues a discussion the authors have had with Mats Wahlberg on evolutionary theodicies. We have previously suggested a theodicy where there are token unique goods that could only have been actualized through indeterministic evolution. Wahlberg objects that we cannot appeal to such goods, since given indeterminism, God cannot know that such goods will appear. In this article we respond by arguing that God can know well enough that certain kinds of token goods will appear, without knowing in detail (...) their specific character, or when they will happen. (shrink)