Millions of people in various parts of the world and within each country are presently surviving in categories described as “mere”, “miserable”, “idealistic”, “irresponsible”, and “acceptable”. The term “acceptable survival” is proposed as a bioethical goal of global survival, looking beyond the 21st century to the year 3000 and beyond. The frequently used alternative term is “sustainable development”, but in most contexts this is an economic concept and does not imply any moral or ethical constraints, except where these are spelled (...) out. Acceptable survival, broadly defined, means acceptable to a universal sense of what is morally right and good and what will continue in the long term. The expanding dominant, but irresponsible, world culture is not an acceptable type of development because it cannot survive in the long term. [M&GS 1995:185–191]. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyzed the discussion on the principle of universalizability which took place in moral philosophy in 1970–1980s. In short, I see two main problems that attracted more attention than others. The first problem is an opposition of universalizability and generalization. M.G. Singer argued for generalization argument, and R.M. Hare defended universalizability thesis. Hare tried to refute Singer’s position, using methods of ordinary language philosophy, and claimed that in ethics generalization is useless and misleading. I have examined Singer’s (...) defense and concluded that he was right and Hare was mistaken. Consequently, generalization argument is better in clarification of the relationship between universality and morality than Hare’s doctrine of universalizability, and hence the universality of moral principles is not incompatible with the existence of exclusions. The second problem is the substantiation of the application of categorical imperative in the theory of relevant act descriptions and accurate understanding of the difference between maxims and non-maxims. In Generalization in Ethics, Singer drew attention to this theme and philosophers have proposed some suggestions to solve this problem. I describe ideas of H.J. Paton, H. Potter, O. O’Neill and M. Timmons. Paton coined the teleological-law theory. According to Potter, the best criterion for the relevant act descriptions is causal one. O’N eill suggested the inconsistency-of-intention theory. Timmons defended the causal-law theory. My claim is that the teleological-law theory and the causal-law theory fail to solve the relevant act descriptions problem and the causal criterion and the inconsistency-of-intention theory have their limits. From this, I conclude that these approaches cannot be the basis for clarifying the connection between universality and morality, in contrast to Singer’s approach, which, therefore, is better than others to clarify the nature of universality in morality. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe the use of legal ontologies as a basis to improve IT support for professional judges. As opposed to most legal ontologies designed so far, which are mostly based on dogmatic and normative knowledge, we emphasize the importance of professional knowledge and experience as an important pillar for constructing the ontology. We describe an intelligent FAQ system for junior judges that intensively use the ontology.

A bioética de V. R. Potter comemora em 2020 os seus primeiros 50 anos. O cientista preocupado com os avanços das ciências, sem o devido saber ético, propõe um diálogo entre as ciências com as humanidades, de modo a se alcançar a sabedoria necessária de como usar o conhecimento em vista do bem comum, a fim de assegurar o futuro da humanidade. A partir dessa ponte inicial entre as ciências com as humanidades, Potter mais tarde propõe outras pontes, (...) em especial com as ciências biomédicas, pois identifica que a saúde humana depende do ambiente em que o indivíduo está inserido, o que ele classifica como bioética global. A obra O princípio responsabilidade, de Hans Jonas, em 2019, celebrou 40 anos. Embora Jonas não tenha utilizado a expressão bioética, o filósofo dedicou parte da sua vida no trabalho interdisciplinar no Hastings Center, para refletir sobre temas que hoje são do universo da bioética. Desse modo, essa reflexão quer saber: como a filosofia de Hans Jonas contribui na construção de um estatuto epistemológico à bioética global de V.R. Potter? Trata-se de uma pesquisa bibliográfica, de caráter narrativo, a partir das obras do cientista e do filósofo e seus comentadores. Conclui-se que embora Jonas não tenha utilizado da expressão bioética em sua reflexão, o filósofo não ignorou os problemas emergentes de seu tempo, porém classificou-os dentro do universo da ética prática. Assim sendo, sua produção filosófica, construída principalmente a partir da prática interdisciplinar de trabalho, constitui um verdadeiro estatuto epistemológico à bioética, em busca de fundamentos éticos para proteger a vida humana e extra-humana no futuro, o que faz do filósofo, um verdadeiro bioeticista. (shrink)

Throughout Christianity, its activities are in one way or another connected to the historical reality of its time. Usually, for different epochs, the strength of these bonds was different, but during the Middle Ages, they were significantly stronger than before and after. It is here that perhaps the most important moment was the rise of Christianity, which spread over a relatively short period of time almost throughout Europe. It was then - and never again in all its history - that (...) the Church was able to participate in the formation of all aspects of its contemporary life, in accordance with its spirit. When solving this task, it inevitably came in close contact with the "world" and the various forms in which it was represented. (shrink)

This study focuses on retraction notices from two major Latin American/Caribbean indexing databases: SciELO and LILACS. SciELO includes open scientific journals published mostly in Latin America/the Caribbean, from which 10 % are also indexed by Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge Journal of Citation Reports. LILACS has a similar geographical coverage and includes dissertations and conference/symposia proceedings, but it is limited to publications in the health sciences. A search for retraction notices was performed in these two databases using the keywords “retracted”, (...) “retraction” “withdrawal”, “withdrawn”, “removed” and “redress”. Documents were manually checked to identify those that actually referred to retractions, which were then analyzed and categorized according to the reasons alleged in the notices. Dates of publication/retraction and time to retraction were also recorded. Searching procedures were performed between June and December 2014. Thirty-one retraction notices were identified, fifteen of which were in JCR-indexed journals. “Plagiarism” was alleged in six retractions of this group. Among the non-JCR journals, retraction reasons were alleged in fourteen cases, twelve of which were attributed to “plagiarism”. The proportion of retracted articles for the SciELO database was approximately 0.005 %. The reasons alleged in retraction notices may be used as signposts to inform discussions in Latin America on plagiarism and research integrity. At the international level, these results suggest that the correction of the literature is becoming global and is not limited to mainstream international publications. (shrink)

El artículo sostiene una relación fundacional entre la visión bioética potteriana con el cometido de la sostenibilidad. Teniendo en cuenta que V. R. Potter no desarrolló conceptualmente cómo y desde qué enfoque tendría que entenderse la sostenibilidad de la humanidad, se hace necesario mostrar tal desarrollo conceptual. Así, la visión bioética potteriana podría ser repensada y actualizada para enfrentar el desafío de la humanidad en la época actual. En este orden de ideas, se propone analizar descriptivamente los enfoques teóricos (...) y las ampliaciones conceptuales del concepto de sostenibilidad para reconocer en qué sentido contribuyen a la construcción de una supervivencia aceptable para la humanidad, en términos de la bioética global. Para esto, se presenta el eje teórico del desarrollo sostenible, del cual se resalta su componente sistémico e intergeneracional, sin dejar de exponer las críticas a su estructura de crecimiento económico y la incompatibilidad de esto con la visión bioética potteriana. Seguidamente, se expone la propuesta alternativa del ecodesarrollo y de la racionalidad ambiental, como elementos importantes para ampliar el paradigma de la sostenibilidad. Finalmente, se concluye con una integración de los elementos de ambos ejes teóricos como un punto de partida para pensar en la sostenibilidad de una visión bioética. (shrink)

The state of globalization that modern humanity has entered, translates the problem of morality from the plan of choosing an individual into a social and even planetary context. This brings us back to the original moral concept of P. Teillard de Chardin, which is the subject of analysis in this article.

Teyyar eschatology, as a doctrine of the ultimate destiny of mankind, is deeply rooted in the concept of the ultimate goal, which is regarded as a true result, though it emerges as a tool designed to fill some of the emptiness created by humanity in the course of natural science practice. Teillard felt that the deplorable state of modern mankind was the result of his neglect of eschatology, his inability to adapt to the needs of his activities, and his lack (...) of courage in further design. "A lighter skyscraper of hope is being constructed," G. Grespi notes. The belief that the Earth is exhausting its limited resources necessarily leads to the thought of the destruction of the Earth. (shrink)

There Could Not Be A More Fundamental Approach To The Various Problems Of Education Than The One That The Learned Author, Who Is A Doyen In The Field Of ...

Study on Mānameyodaya of Nārāyaṇabhaṭṭapāda, treatise on Mimamsa philosophy.