The possibility of obtaining stem cells from human embryos has given rise to an intensive legal and ethical debate. In this paper, attention is paid to the normative disparity and ambiguity in Europe. An argument for the need for a minimal legal harmonization is made; and a prudent and flexible way to reach this successfully is suggested. Establishing a common legal framework seems to be the only way to guarantee true competitiveness for the European scientific community.

The risks of uncontrolled dissemination of GMOs has made it clear that biosafety is a very relevant matter that goes beyond the State boundaries. This approach has had its corresponding reflection at the policy level, which reveals that the public powers and the legislators have been sensitive to this existing preoccupation in ever-growing sectors of society. From the European regulations, one can deduce a set of principles, which must guide the decisions of the public powers in matters related to biosafety: (...) precaution, authorisation and inspection, “step by step”, “case by case”, traceability and transparency, among other. (shrink)

The new generation of psychopharmacological products have proved their efficacy. Some neuro-degenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, could be treated by means of the gene therapy. Although the aetiology of such diseases is still not completely known, it has been proven that the patients lack some substances that could be produced by means of the transfer of in vivo or ex vivo genes that codify them in the proper places of the brain. Furthermore, it is announced that the (...) implantation in laboratory grown stem cells of diverse origins is very hopeful. Cerebral (micro)electronic implants could be effective to fight some motor diseases as well as sensory functions. All of these kinds of new treatments need to be tested through clinical research. Most national legislation includes provisions on the clinical trials of drugs and a series of guarantees, procedures and conditions which are designed to ensure protection for individuals used in experiments and to assure that the trial is indeed of scientific relevance. However, few lay down similar regulations or provide for specific controls for the research of other treatments. Finally, enhancement of psychic capacities pose new problems for society as well as do the need for new legal decisions. (shrink)

Biolaw is an autonomous interdisciplinary legal discipline, with great theoretical and practical relevance because of its possible social effects. This contribution deal with the most relevant different approaches to bioethical problems according to the main juridical systems, as they are civil law and common law. A main topic is also the relation between Biolaw, Bioethics and Biopolitics.

This paper reports on the meeting of the Sounding Board of the EU Reprogenetics Project that was held in Budapest, Hungary, 6–9 November 2005. The Reprogenetics Project runs from 2004 until 2007 and has a brief to study the ethical aspects of human reproductive cloning and germline gene therapy. Discussions during The Budapest Meeting are reported in depth in this paper as well as the initiatives to involve the participating groups and others in ongoing collaborations with the goal of forming (...) an integrated network of European resources in the fields of ethics of science. (shrink)

This paper reports on the meeting of the Sounding Board of the EU Reprogenetics Project that was held in Budapest, Hungary, 6–9 November 2005. The Reprogenetics Project runs from 2004 until 2007 and has a brief to study the ethical aspects of human reproductive cloning and germline gene therapy. Discussions during The Budapest Meeting are reported in depth in this paper as well as the initiatives to involve the participating groups and others in ongoing collaborations with the goal of forming (...) an integrated network of European resources in the fields of ethics of science. (shrink)

This paper reports on the meeting of the Sounding Board of the EU Reprogenetics Project that was held in Budapest, Hungary, 6–9 November 2005. The Reprogenetics Project runs from 2004 until 2007 and has a brief to study the ethical aspects of human reproductive cloning and germline gene therapy. Discussions during The Budapest Meeting are reported in depth in this paper as well as the initiatives to involve the participating groups and others in ongoing collaborations with the goal of forming (...) an integrated network of European resources in the fields of ethics of science. (shrink)

A Bioética, que podemos qualificar, sem a menor dúvida, como uma ciência jovem - embora cheia de vigor, dinamismo e em plena expansão - se ocupa, desde as multifacetadas óticas das grandes perguntas que se formula a cada dia, o homem moderno, em torno da vida. Neste livro, os autores tratam de alguns aspectos conceituais que, às vezes, são obliterados no discurso bioético. Por exemplo, quais as relações que se interpõem entre Bioética e Direito, começando por delimitar cada uma destas (...) disciplinas. (shrink)

Fornece um panorama sobre os avanços biotecnológicos, dando ênfase aos aspectos jurídicos e éticos do impacto destes na área genética sobre o homem e o meio ambiente.

La obra incluye legislación de quince países, así como diversos documentos de la ONU, la UNESCO, el Consejo de Europa, la Unión Europea, Comités Nacionales de Ética, dictámenes y resoluciones de Instituciones Internacionales, jurisprudencia española y una selección bibliográfica con unas 1.300 referencias, clasificada por materias. Algunas leyes nacionales y los documentos del Consejo de Europa se publican traducidos al español y en su idioma original, cuando éste se ha considerado fácilmente asequible, con el fin de facilitar el acceso a (...) la fuente directa. (shrink)

A collection of essays on the human genome, European patent law, cloning, and genetic malpractice suits.

The possibility of obtaining stem cells from human embryos has given rise to an intensive legal and ethical debate. In this paper, attention is paid to the normative disparity and ambiguity in Europe. An argument for the need for a minimal legal harmonization is made; and a prudent and flexible way to reach this successfully is suggested. Establishing a common legal framework seems to be the only way to guarantee true competitiveness for the European scientific community.

Investigating school performance and competencies, especially on leadership, received a considerable attention in the past. In fact, there have been multitudes of evidence that leadership can impact school performance, student achievement, or outcome. Also, there was no single measurement of school performance. This study examined the influence of leadership and core behavioral competencies on the school performance of school heads. This was to build a new model of school performance. Using an explanatory research design, it administered a survey questionnaire to (...) 192 randomly chosen school heads from the 37 districts of Department of Education Division of Surigao del Sur. Also, it used data mining for the performance ratings of school heads from the division office. Regression analysis tested three hypothesized models of school performance where leadership and core behavior competencies serve as independent variables. Results showed that leading people was a significant predictor of school performance. Thus, leading people can best explain the school improvement as a proposed model. The results have implications for future research, leadership practice, and theoretical development of school performance model among school heads. (shrink)

Nous vivons dans une société mondialisée apparemment unie par une vision commune de l’humanité. Mais derrière l’illusion première d’un ‘’Nous’’ déjà là, se cache la réalité de l’hétérogénéité des croyances, des modes de vies et des cultures. Modèles différents entre pays et dans les pays eux-mêmes, sur le plan mondial comme ‘’national’’, nous cherchons encore ce qui constitue ce Nous tant rêvé. Quel est donc le fondement de notre vie commune? Qu’est-ce qui nous permet de dire que nous faison...

Visual feedback regulation during movement is not fully captured in Plamondon's kinematic theory. However, numerous studies indicate that visual response-produced feedback is a powerful determinant of performance and kinematic characteristics of target-directed movement.

Many of the computing systems programmed using Machine Learning are opaque: it is difficult to know why they do what they do or how they work. Explainable Artificial Intelligence aims to develop analytic techniques that render opaque computing systems transparent, but lacks a normative framework with which to evaluate these techniques’ explanatory successes. The aim of the present discussion is to develop such a framework, paying particular attention to different stakeholders’ distinct explanatory requirements. Building on an analysis of “opacity” from (...) philosophy of science, this framework is modeled after accounts of explanation in cognitive science. The framework distinguishes between the explanation-seeking questions that are likely to be asked by different stakeholders, and specifies the general ways in which these questions should be answered so as to allow these stakeholders to perform their roles in the Machine Learning ecosystem. By applying the normative framework to recently developed techniques such as input heatmapping, feature-detector visualization, and diagnostic classification, it is possible to determine whether and to what extent techniques from Explainable Artificial Intelligence can be used to render opaque computing systems transparent and, thus, whether they can be used to solve the Black Box Problem. (shrink)

Le nom de Brunschvicg est indissolublement lié à celui de Pascal. Sa grande entreprise éditoriale est restée inégalée, comme ses très nombreuses études dédiées directement ou non à l’auteur des Pensées. Pascal a été pour Brunschvicg l’interlocuteur d’une vie entière : cela s’entend du philosophe et du mathématicien qui affrontent l’infini, mais aussi du polémiste chrétien avec qui Brunschvicg a dit n’avoir « pas une idée en commun », mais dont il a saisi les secrets plus qu’aucun autre. Cet article (...) étudie la contribution de Brunschvicg comme éditeur, puis s’attache à cerner la figure brunschvicgienne d’un Pascal dont les Pensées, « nées du miracle » et « pleines de son âme », expriment, bien davantage que l’oeuvre de Descartes et plus directement que celle de Spinoza, les tensions constitutives de la conscience moderne. (shrink)

The received view of dynamical explanation is that dynamical cognitive science seeks to provide covering law explanations of cognitive phenomena. By analyzing three prominent examples of dynamicist research, I show that the received view is misleading: some dynamical explanations are mechanistic explanations, and in this way resemble computational and connectionist explanations. Interestingly, these dynamical explanations invoke the mathematical framework of dynamical systems theory to describe mechanisms far more complex and distributed than the ones typically considered by philosophers. Therefore, contemporary dynamicist (...) research reveals the need for a more sophisticated account of mechanistic explanation. (shrink)

Models developed using machine learning are increasingly prevalent in scientific research. At the same time, these models are notoriously opaque. Explainable AI aims to mitigate the impact of opacity by rendering opaque models transparent. More than being just the solution to a problem, however, Explainable AI can also play an invaluable role in scientific exploration. This paper describes how post-hoc analytic techniques from Explainable AI can be used to refine target phenomena in medical science, to identify starting points for future (...) investigations of causal relationships, and to generate possible explanations of target phenomena in cognitive science. In this way, this paper describes how Explainable AI—over and above machine learning itself—contributes to the efficiency and scope of data-driven scientific research. (shrink)

To date, no definition of life has been unequivocally accepted by the scientific community. In frustration, some authors advocate alternatives to standard definitions. These include using a list of characteristic features, focusing on life’s effects, or categorizing biospheres rather than life itself; treating life as a fuzzy category, a process or a cluster of contingent properties; or advocating a ‘wait-and-see’ approach until other examples of life are created or discovered. But these skeptical, operational, and pluralistic approaches have intensified the debate, (...) rather than settled it. Given the failure of even these approaches, we advocate a new strategy. In this paper, we reverse the usual line of reasoning and argue that the “life problem” arises from thinking incorrectly about the nature of life. Scientists most often conceptualize life as a class or kind, with earthly life as a single instance of it. Instead, we advocate thinking about Earth’s Life as an individual, in the way that species are now thought to be. In this view, Life is a monophyletic clade that originated with a last universal common ancestor, and includes all its descendants. We can continue to use the category ‘life’ pragmatically to refer to similarities between various phenomena and Life. But the relevant similarities are a matter of interest and preference, not a matter of fact. The search for other life in the Universe, then, is merely a search for entities that resemble parts of Life in whatever sense astrobiologists find most appealing. This does not mean that the search for evolved complexity elsewhere in the universe or its creation in the lab are futile endeavors, but that debates over whether they count as ‘life’ are. Ironically, finally abandoning the concept ‘life’ may make our searches for evolved complexity more fruitful. We explain why. (shrink)

In the Schrödinger equation, time plays a special role as an external parameter. We show that in an enlarged system where the time variable denotes an additional degree of freedom, solutions of the Schrödinger equation give rise to weights on the enlarged algebra of observables. States in the associated GNS representation correspond to states on the original algebra composed with a completely positive unit preserving map. Application of this map to the functions of the time operator on the large system (...) delivers the positive operator valued maps which were previously proposed by two of us as time observables. As an example we discuss the application of this formalism to the Wheeler-DeWitt theory of a scalar field on a Robertson-Walker spacetime. (shrink)

"Epistola a Memeceo, Maximas capitales, Sentencias vaticanas, fragmentos y testimonios; texto griego y traduccion": p. [87]-161.

This paper discusses the varieties of capitalism in transitional societies in Latin America and Central / Eastern Europe. The intended purpose of these transitions from semi-closed import-substituting economies in the first case and state socialist ones in the second was to institutionalize open-market economies. Twenty or thirty years later, there is a variety of types of capitalism in these countries, which I classify into three: open-market, neo-mercantilist, and anemic. The question for sociology is whether these quite different variants represent temporary (...) stages or distortions in the same process of transition or whether, on the contrary, they may institutionalize as discrete forms of peripheral capitalism. Neither standard “legacy” argu­ments nor institutionalist theories offer satisfactory answers to this question. The multiple modernities approach, on the other hand, is more appropriate as a theoretical perspective, but it has not produced yet specific propositions applicable to this question. My paper makes two claims. First, the successful transfer of institutions depends on the congruence between these institutions and the broader institutional framework of the recipient economies, a point not developed by institutionalist theories. I offer a hypothesis in this regard: Two critical nodes of congruence are the regulatory and extractive capacity of the state and the strength of civil society. Second, market capitalism (as liberal democracy as well) is a complex institution, and some of its components “travel” more easily across societies and institutional frameworks, and therefore are easier to institutionalize. This is the source of the hybrid variants. (shrink)

Bayesian reverse-engineering is a research strategy for developing three-level explanations of behavior and cognition. Starting from a computational-level analysis of behavior and cognition as optimal probabilistic inference, Bayesian reverse-engineers apply numerous tweaks and heuristics to formulate testable hypotheses at the algorithmic and implementational levels. In so doing, they exploit recent technological advances in Bayesian artificial intelligence, machine learning, and statistics, but also consider established principles from cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Although these tweaks and heuristics are highly pragmatic in character and (...) are often deployed unsystematically, Bayesian reverse-engineering avoids several important worries that have been raised about the explanatory credentials of Bayesian cognitive science: the worry that the lower levels of analysis are being ignored altogether; the challenge that the mathematical models being developed are unfalsifiable; and the charge that the terms ‘optimal’ and ‘rational’ have lost their customary normative force. But while Bayesian reverse-engineering is therefore a viable and productive research strategy, it is also no fool-proof recipe for explanatory success. (shrink)