This essay tells the story of the development of two of the most significant and controversial entitlement programs in twentieth-century U.S. history—collective bargaining and affirmative action. It focuses on the nexus between them—how New Deal empowerment of labor unions contributed to racial discrimination, and thus fed the Great Society race-based programs of affirmative action. The evolving relationship between the courts and the bureaucracies is emphasized, particularly how the judiciary went from an obstacle to an enabler of the entitlement state.

Pointing to similarities between challenges encountered in today's neural coding and twentieth-century behaviorism, we draw attention to lessons learned from resolving the latter. In particular, Perceptual Control Theory posits behavior as a closed-loop control process with immediate and teleological causes. With two examples, we illustrate how these ideas may also address challenges facing current neural coding paradigms.

This article carried out an analysis from the hermeneutical category of the symbol in the novel Blindness by José Saramago, following Paul Ricoeur, in which the symbols of sin, stain and guilt were chosen to be developed after defining the relevance and the impact of the category of analysis on current situations in our society. Making use not only of the texts referring to Ricoeur's hermeneutics, but also of The Symbolic of Evil, a conceptual journey is proposed to elucidate (...) how the senses and meanings of the symbols of evil are configured in our culture and, through this understanding, address the situation of the symbolic apparatus of Saramago's novel. Carrying out an analysis of these hermeneutical categories in a novel such as Blindness becomes the opportunity to show a different meaning and sense of a novel that has clearly shown its relevance in previous times and that today, in the middle of a pandemic, invites us to rethink that world and to face the fact of understanding our own blindness and the blindness of the world in the midst of a dizzying speed that requires us to assume our reality in another way. In the words of Ricoeur, the symbol gives food for thought and it is time for us to think through our own symbols about the reality that is presented to us in Saramago's novel and to extrapolate it to the realities that are configured every day in our Western world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IRBs Under the MicroscopeJonathan D. Moreno (bio)The spring and summer of 1998 were seasons in the sun for institutional review board (IRB) aficionados. Rarely have the arcana of the local human subjects review panels been treated to so much attention in both the executive and the legislative branches of government, not only at the federal but also at the state level. And it looks as if the attention (...) will continue for some time. The spate of interest is due to a series of coincidences: a powerful House of Representatives subcommittee held hearings after its chairman learned about the IRB system during a previous session on research in underdeveloped communities; the Department of Health and Human Services’s Inspector General (DHHS-IG) released a report on IRBs; the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Extramural Research completed a report on clinical trial monitoring; the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) readied a report on research involving persons with mental disorders; the states of Maryland and New York completed studies of research with subjects who lack decision-making capacity; and advocacy groups protested a psychiatric research project involving inner city children.Underlying these proximate causes for the IRB blitz is a growing realization that the already considerable clinical trial enterprise will expand significantly over the next few years. Congress is talking about giving the politically popular NIH half again the budget it currently receives, which in turn will stimulate more commercially supported research. The director of the National Cancer Institute is considering a five-fold increase in the number of subjects enrolled in oncology studies over the next several years. Phase I cancer studies are among the most ethically sensitive, so IRBs will have more work cut out for them if this goal is reached. Adding to the rush of interest in IRBs are the government’s recent apology to the survivors of the syphilis study in Tuskegee, continuing congressional dissatisfaction with the way the Pentagon handled its vaccine distribution during the Gulf War, and the controversy about AZT trials in developing countries.On the HillCongressman Christopher Shays, the moderate Connecticut Republican who has developed an interest in human research issues, convened hearings on human [End Page 329] subjects research and the IRB system on 11 June 1998. Shays chairs the House Government Reform/Human Resources Subcommittee. The committee’s ranking minority member is Edolphus Towns of Brooklyn, NY, who shares Shays’s interest in this area.The immediate rationale for the hearings was the release that day of the DHHS-IG report, Institutional Review Boards: A Time for Reform. The subtitle was changed from A System in Jeopardy apparently after some people in DHHS expressed reservations about its seemingly alarmist tone, but the IG staffers who testified before Shays’s subcommittee insisted that they stood behind the message that the IRB system is in trouble if considerable reforms are not undertaken. Among the factors in the research environment cited as support for the bleak forecast: managed care, commercialization, multi-site trials, high IRB workloads, minimal IRB oversight of approved studies, conflicts of interest, insufficient training of IRB members and investigators, and lack of IRB self-studies (DHHS-IG 1998).As is normally the case for congressional oversight hearings, the first panel of witnesses consisted of executive branch officials, including Eric Meslin, Executive Director of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and Gary Ellis, Director of the Office for Protection from Research Risks (OPRR). Shays pressed Ellis on the extent to which OPRR conducts on-site investigations of complaints about abuse of human subjects. Admitting that on-site investigations are rare, Ellis suggested that the agency is inadequately staffed to follow up on complaints as quickly as it might wish. The members of Congress who were present at the hearings generally expressed concern about the DHHS-IG’s findings.The second panel that day, which Shays was unable to attend, set a different tone. Four of the panelists—Paul Appelbaum of the University of Massachusetts at Worcester, Robert Levine of Yale University, Angela Bowen of the Western IRB (a private clinical trials review firm), and I—were invited as authorities on the current condition of the IRB system. Bert Spilker... (shrink)

Este trabajo explora una línea posible del diálogo entre Walter Benjamin y Hannah Arendt mediante la presentación de algunas intermitencias entre dos figuras relevantes de su pensamiento sobre la historia, la figura que Benjamin determina en su abordaje del Angelus Novus pintado por Paul Klee, y la figura de Er en los términos en que Arendt la elabora a partir de una parábola kafkiana. Retomamos ambas figuras con el objetivo de mostrar en ellas el intento filosófico de organizar un (...) pensamiento crítico que resista la esclerosis del concepto moderno y progresivo de historia: en un contexto en que el pasado pareciera diluirse en la impotencia de su presencia y el futuro se presenta como reproducción apocalíptica del desastre, sostenemos que Benjamin y Arendt convocan al Angelus Novus y al Er kafkiano como imágenes capaces de dislocar el anquilosamiento de la crítica y el flujo epistemológico implicado en la crisis moderna de la experiencia. (shrink)

Se presenta en este trabajo la encrucijada actual de la interpretación de la novela más célebre de Gabriel García Márquez dando cuenta, por un lado, de una tradición interpretativa que desde una cierta idea de “lo nacional” relaciona el sentido de la obra con un agotamiento de la historia y, por otro lado, postulando las condiciones de posibilidad de otra interpretación, vale decir, otra tradición interpretativa desde donde leer la novela para hallar en ella otro sentido con relación a la (...) historia. La argumentación se apoya en postulados de la hermenéutica de Hans-Georg Gadamer y de Paul Ricoeur. (shrink)

Timely and provocative essays on bioethical questions brought to the forefront by the bioterrorist threat.

In this paper, we analyze the legal situation regarding physician-assisted suicide in the world. Our hypothesis is that the prohibitive stance on physician-assisted suicide in most societies in the world today seems to be related to our moral attitudes toward suicide. This brings us to a discussion about life itself. We claim that the total lack of legal protection for physician-assisted suicide from international organizations and most countries in the world lies in a philosophical assumption that supports much of our (...) common beliefs about what life really is. This assumption states that life must be thought of as not belonging exclusively to the individual. We argue that this assumption is a misconception that can be heard in the debate on suicide. Consequently we endorse a different conception of life which tends to favor a pro-choice stance towards suicide and assisted death in general. This position takes the patient’s decision about when to die more seriously. We conclude that there is no reason why physician-assisted suicide does not deserve legal protection as an individual right to die under international law. (shrink)

El filósofo mexicano Emilio Uranga (1921-1988) es recordado por su Análisis del ser del mexicano (1952) y por su labor como periodista político y asesor de López Mateos, Díaz Ordaz, Echeverría y López Portillo. Es posible tender un puente entre los dos aspectos, gracias a su concepción ontologizante de la Revolución Mexicana, leitmotiv de su producción teórica.

The first form of the inside-outside dichotomy appears as a self-encapsulated system with an active border. These systems are based on two complementary but asymmetric processes: constructive and interactive. The former physically constitute the system as a recursive network of component production, defining an inside. The maintenance of the constructive processes implies that the internal organization also constrains certain flows of matter and energy across the border of the system, generating interactive processes. These interactive processes ensure the maintenance of the (...) constructive processes thus specifying a meaningful outside. Upon this basic form of identity formation, the evolutionary and historical domain is open for the emergence of a whole hierarchy and ecology of insides and outsides. These which mutually subsume and collaborate in the maintenance of the essential inside-outside dichotomy that defines the conditions of possibility of the subjects and the worlds they generate. (shrink)

Noam Chomsky and Frances Egan argue that David Marr’s computational theory of vision is not intentional, claiming that the formal scientific theory does not include description of visual content. They also argue that the theory is internalist in the sense of not describing things physically external to the perceiver. They argue that these claims hold for computational theories of vision in general. Beyond theories of vision, they argue that representational content does not figure as a topic within formal computational theories (...) in cognitive science. I demonstrate that Chomsky’s and Egan’s claims about Marr’s theory are false. Marr’s computational theory contains a mathematical theory of visual content, based on empirical psychophysical evidence. It also contains mathematical descriptions of distal physical surfaces and objects, and of their optic projection to the perceiver. Much computational research on vision contains these types of intentional and externalist components within the formal, mathematical, theories. Chomsky’s and Egan’s claims demonstrate inadequate study and understanding of Marr’s work and other research in this area. Computational theories of vision, by containing empirically based mathematical theories of visual content, to this extent present naturalizations of semantics. (shrink)

In her foreword to Science Next, Elizabeth Edwards wrote of science as a tool for social progress: "Innovation is not simply the abstract victory of knowledge [or] the research that gave me years to live; the next science can advance human flourishing and serve the common good. That's the kind of world I want to leave for my children, and for yours." With these words, she joined a tradition that goes back to America's founders, who saw America itself as a (...) "great experiment." Yet while no one can deny that science undergirds the American Dream, it has long been fertile terrain for the "culture wars." Along with arguing the pros and cons of abortion and healthcare, policymakers must now grapple with advancements that raise questions about what it means to be human: we've decoded the genome, but should we modify it to enhance certain "desirable" traits? If we can, should we prolong life at any cost? Will we soon be counting robots, cyborgs, and chimeras among our friends and family?The first book to unpack our love/hate relationship with science from our country's origins to today, The Body Politic is essential reading for science buffs and concerned citizens alike.Jonathan D. Moreno is editor of the Center for American Progress' online magazine Science Progress and professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. Author and editor of many seminal books and articles on science and science policy, he divides his time between Philadelphia, PA, and Washington, DC. (shrink)

This edition includes a new introduction by Peter J. Gomes that reflects on the impact of this book in the years since it was written.

Our goal in this paper is to articulate a precise concept of at least a certain kind of disease-mongering, showing how pharmaceutical marketing can commercially exploit certain diseases when their best definition is given through the success of a treatment in a clinical trial. We distinguish two types of disease-mongering according to the way they exploit the definition of the trial population for marketing purposes. We argue that behind these two forms of disease-mongering there are two well-known problems in the (...) statistical methodology of clinical trials (the reference class problem and the distinction between statistical and clinical significance). Overcoming them is far from simple. (shrink)

La lectura nos permite disponer de una caja de herramientas que puede y debe contribuir a la mejora de los entornos en donde los individuos y la sociedad tejen sus quehaceres. Este ensayo analiza con rigor y amenidad las distintas funciones que la lectura puede cumplir: desde su placer hasta sus usos como forma de conocimiento, pasando por la lectura como un instrumento de transformación moral.

Most everyday tasks involve multiple modalities, which raises the question of how the processing of these modalities is coordinated by the cognitive system. In this paper, we focus on the coordination of visual attention and linguistic processing during speaking. Previous research has shown that objects in a visual scene are fixated before they are mentioned, leading us to hypothesize that the scan pattern of a participant can be used to predict what he or she will say. We test this hypothesis (...) using a data set of cued scene descriptions of photo-realistic scenes. We demonstrate that similar scan patterns are correlated with similar sentences, within and between visual scenes; and that this correlation holds for three phases of the language production process (target identification, sentence planning, and speaking). We also present a simple algorithm that uses scan patterns to accurately predict associated sentences by utilizing similarity-based retrieval. (shrink)

When people communicate, they coordinate a wide range of linguistic and non-linguistic behaviors. This process of coordination is called alignment, and it is assumed to be fundamental to successful communication. In this paper, we question this assumption and investigate whether disalignment is a more successful strategy in some cases. More specifically, we hypothesize that alignment correlates with task success only when communication is interactive. We present results from a spot-the-difference task in which dyads of interlocutors have to decide whether they (...) are viewing the same scene or not. Interactivity was manipulated in three conditions by increasing the amount of information shared between interlocutors. We use recurrence quantification analysis to measure the alignment between the scan-patterns of the interlocutors. We found that interlocutors who could not exchange feedback aligned their gaze more, and that increased gaze alignment correlated with decreased task success in this case. When feedback was possible, in contrast, interlocutors utilized it to better organize their joint search strategy by diversifying visual attention. This is evidenced by reduced overall alignment in the minimal feedback and full dialogue conditions. However, only the dyads engaged in a full dialogue increased their gaze alignment over time to achieve successful performances. These results suggest that alignment per se does not imply communicative success, as most models of dialogue assume. Rather, the effect of alignment depends on the type of alignment, on the goals of the task, and on the presence of feedback. (shrink)

Recent research in philosophy of science has shown that scientists rely on a plurality of strategies to develop successful explanations of different types of phenomena. In the case of biology, most of these strategies go far beyond the traditional and reductionistic models of scientific explanation that have proven so successful in the fundamental sciences. Concretely, in the last two decades, philosophers of science have discovered the existence of at least two different types of scientific explanation at work in the biological (...) sciences, namely: mechanistic and structural explanations. Despite the growing evidence about the radically different nature of these two types of explanation, no inquiry has been conducted to date to determine the ontological reasons that might underlie these differences, nor the way in which these types of explanations can be systematically related with each other. Here, we aim to cover this gap by connecting this plurality of research strategies with the existence of emergent levels of reality. We argue that the existence of these different—and apparently incompatible—explanatory strategies to account for biological phenomena derives from the existence of “ontological jumps” in nature, which generate different regimes of causation that in turn demand the development of different explanatory frameworks. We identify two of these strategies—mechanistic modelling and network modelling—and connect them to the existence of two ontological regimes of causation. Finally, we relate them with each other in a systematic way. In this vein, our paper provides an ontological justification for the plurality of explanatory strategies that we see in the life sciences. (shrink)

Résumé Cet article traite des campements organisés par les Indignés espagnols de mai à juin 2011. L’observation ethnographique montre que derrière l’hétérogénéité des profils des campeurs se trouve une dimension générationnelle de cette mobilisation sans précédent en Espagne. L’expérience d’avoir participé aux campements a été vécue par des nombreux jeunes espagnols condamnés au chômage comme un réveil politique, un apprentissage accéléré de savoirs et d’actions, notamment ceux issus de la culture autogestionnaire.

The human sentence processor is able to make rapid predictions about upcoming linguistic input. For example, upon hearing the verb eat, anticipatory eye-movements are launched toward edible objects in a visual scene. However, the cognitive mechanisms that underlie anticipation remain to be elucidated in ecologically valid contexts. Previous research has, in fact, mainly used clip-art scenes and object arrays, raising the possibility that anticipatory eye-movements are limited to displays containing a small number of objects in a visually impoverished context. In (...) Experiment 1, we confirm that anticipation effects occur in real-world scenes and investigate the mechanisms that underlie such anticipation. In particular, we demonstrate that real-world scenes provide contextual information that anticipation can draw on: When the target object is not present in the scene, participants infer and fixate regions that are contextually appropriate. Experiment 2 investigates whether such contextual inference requires the co-presence of the scene, or whether memory representations can be utilized instead. The same real-world scenes as in Experiment 1 are presented to participants, but the scene disappears before the sentence is heard. We find that anticipation occurs even when the screen is blank, including when contextual inference is required. We conclude that anticipatory language processing is able to draw upon global scene representations to make contextual inferences. These findings are compatible with theories assuming contextual guidance, but posit a challenge for theories assuming object-based visual indices. (shrink)

Justifying his proposal for “health savings accounts,” which would allow individuals to set aside tax-free dollars against future healthcare needs, President Bush has said that “Health savings accounts all aim at empowering people to make decisions for themselves.” Who could disagree with such a sentiment? Although bioethicists may be among those who express skepticism that personal health savings accounts will be part of the needed “fix” of our healthcare financing system, self determination has long been part of their mantra. Indeed, (...) the field of bioethics played an important role in advancing this idea in the medical world when physician paternalism was regnant. Has its popularity caused it to become so vapid as to be ripe for misuse? (shrink)

Background: Serious games have shown positive results in increasing motivation, adherence to treatment and strengthening the therapeutic alliance in multiple psychiatric disorders. In particular, patients with impulse control disorders and other disorders in which the patient suffers from inhibitory control deficits have been shown to benefit from serious games.Aim: The aim of this study was to describe the characteristics and to evaluate the usability of a new serious videogame, e-Estesia. This serious videogame was designed to improve emotion regulation in patients (...) with gambling disorder. Preliminary results from a pilot sample are also reported.Method: A pilot sample of 26 patients undergoing treatment for GD was recruited. Participants used e-Estesia on a tablet, which was connected to a thoracic band that sent heart rate and heart rate variability data to the videogame platform in order to provide biofeedback. The System Usability Scale was completed by patients to determine the usability of e-Estesia.Results and Discussion: e-Estesia performed comparatively well for all the explored groups. Around 84.6% of the patients endorsed that it was easy to use. Female patients with GD presented higher HRV during the use of the serious videogame compared to men. (shrink)

This paper develops a largely neglected parallel between prudence and population ethics. Prudence is generally understood to be concerned with the balancing of well-being over time. How, precisely, well-being ought to be balanced over time, however, is a fervently debated question. I argue that developing a standard guiding such evaluations is exceedingly challenging. This is due to an often overlooked fact about prudence, namely that it shares a structural similarity with population ethics: In both contexts, we assess the comparative value (...) of populations of personstages/people, which may vary in number and level of well-being. Based on this analogy, I show that the development of an adequate theory of prudence runs into very similar impossibility results as obtain in population ethics. In particular, I prove that Arrhenius’ fifth impossibility theorem can be applied to prudence. I develop and compare four possible answers to this challenge. First, I discuss the possibility of accepting the very repugnant conclusion intrapersonally. Second, I present and further develop Donald Bruckner’s Minimax Regret approach, which gives up Transitivity. Third, I apply Jacob Nebel’s Lexical Threshold View to prudence and critically evaluate it. Lastly, I introduce what I call the Negative Lexicality View, which is based on Lexical Threshold View but overcomes some of its problems. (shrink)

Affordable light detection and ranging sensors are becoming available for tasks such as simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) in robotics and autonomous driving; however, these sensors offer less quality data of lower resolution that hinders the performance of registration methods. The deep learning based approaches seem to be sensitive to these data flaws. Specifically, a state-of-the-art deep learning-based approach failed to produce meaningful results after several attempts to carry out transfer learning over a dataset collected indoors with one such affordable (...) sensors. The paper introduces a hybrid approach combining two well-established registration techniques, the iterative closest point algorithm and the normal distributions transform that achieves good performance on the SLAM task over the same dataset. (shrink)

La tesis doctoral que desarrolló Marx entre 1838 y 1841 fue uno de los primeros trabajos filosóficos del pensador nacido en Tréveris. En el trabajo, que tituló Diferencia entre la filosofía de la naturaleza de Demócrito y Epicuro, quiere demostrar que hay una diferencia específica entre estos dos autores. Más allá de esto, el objetivo general era demostrar que las escuelas posaristotélicas o helénicas tienen un pensamiento propio que no copia ninguna de las tesis de sus predecesores. Pero, ¿por qué (...) Marx tomó a Demócrito y Epicuro y no a otros autores, como Sexto Empírico, Zenón de Citio o Antístenes? ¿Qué método utilizó Marx al realizar su tesis doctoral? En este escrito se quiere retomar ese texto, que para algunos no tiene mayor relevancia dentro de los primeros intereses filosóficos del alemán, para dilucidar que ya tenía nociones de un humanismo en el cual la libertad de la naturaleza física prima y en el que históricamente se empieza a acercar a las nociones materialistas y a dejar de lado los empantanados ríos de la metafísica hegeliana. (shrink)

Diabetes contributes to COVID‐19 deaths in Colombia and Mexico, where the latter having the highest prevalence of diabetes among OECD countries. Some reports consider that advertising influences diabetes by confusing labels on ultra‐processed foods and soft drinks that lead to unhealthy food choices. Both countries are in the process of modifying their labeling legislation; however, governments and food industries have pushed to delay its implementation. Using a mixed research design, we interviewed 550 consumers in both countries during June–July 2020; a (...) high number of respondents misunderstand today's food labeling and are unaware of the new labeling legislation. Respondents strongly agree that the food industry should be in charge of changing the labels; otherwise, they would consider not buying their products. Using cluster analysis, we identified three groups that would help design public policies, nutritional and educational campaigns. Although changes in food labeling alone are not enough to reduce obesity and diabetes rates, food labels constitute public health tools due they assist consumers to make food and nutritional choices (considering that nutrition can help prevent and overcome COVID‐19). The costs of maintaining current labels could increase Colombians and Mexicans illnesss and poverty. These deceptive practices of the food industry would harm their brands. (shrink)

Se realizó un modelo de investigación cuantitativo y cualitativo, de formación y desarrollo de recursos humanos con el objetivo de diseñar y aplicar una estrategia para mejorar los resultados en el desempeño de los cuadros de la Dirección Provincial de Salud en Camagüey. La investigación se efectuó entre marzo del 2011 a marzo del 2012.El universo y muestra estuvo conformado por los 39 cuadros de la Dirección Provincial de Salud en Camagüey. Se utilizaron métodos teóricos, empíricos y estadísticos. Se diseñaron (...) acciones en el orden didáctico teórico, práctico e integrado, donde se partió de las necesidades individuales y colectivas y de los resultados de la aplicación de encuestas, entrevista, entrevistas a informantes claves, revisión documental de las evaluaciones y planes de desarrollo individual. Luego de la implementación de la estrategia se constataron cambios positivos en el trabajo de los cuadros objeto de estudio, así como un mejor desempeño y resultados en los controles internos y externos. Se realizó la validación de la estrategia utilizando el criterio de expertos y la validación en la práctica. A quantitave and qualitative investigative model of formation and development of human resources was performed with the objective of designing and applying a strategy to improve the results of the human resources in the performance of the executives at the Provincial Health Direction in Camaguey. This investigation took place from March 2011 to March 2012. The universe and the sample included the 39 executives of the Provincial Health Direction in Camaguey. Theoretical, empirical and statistic methods were used. Different actions in the didactic theoretic, practical and integrative levels were designed taking into consideration the individual and groupal needs as well as the results of the interviews, and surveys to key informants, documental revisión of the evaluations and plans of the individual development. After implementation of the strategy positive changes in the work of the executives in the study as well as better performance and results in the internal and external controls. Validation of the strategy according to the expert criterium and functional validation by the results of the strategy applied to the executives in the study were performed. (shrink)

Se trata de un análisis del concepto de «capitalismo». Entre las notas inherentes al mismo, destaca el autor lo catatrófico. A su vez, se explica de qué modo debe pensarse la catástrofe en cuanto pecualiaridad de la sociedad capitalista: como cotidianidad y normalidad. El artículo interpreta desde esas perpectivas la teoría de la acumulación originaria, y propone leerla no como un tratado histórico de las fases iniciales del desarrollo capitalista, sino un determinante de la catástrofe para los individuos vivos que (...) le es constitutivo. (shrink)