Western society today is less unified by a set of core values than ever before. Undoubtedly, the concept of moral consensus is a difficult one in a liberal, democratic and pluralistic society. But it is imperative to avoid a rigid majoritarianism where sensitive personal values are at stake, as in bioethics. Bioethics has become an influential part of public and professional discussions of health care. It has helped frame issues of moral values and medicine as part of a more general (...) effort to find consensus about some of the most perplexing questions of our time. But why is it thought that a moral consensus is important or that it deserves respect? How does moral consensus acquire legitimacy in a society that includes diverse value systems? How is moral consensus possible and how do small groups help create or distort consensus processes? Written by a medical school professor trained in philosophy, this timely work tackles these questions from philosophical, historical, and social scientific standpoints. It begins by describing the traditional ambivalence about consensus in Western culture as well as the uncertain relationship in modernity between consensus and expertise. After outlining the current bioethical consensus, the book gives philosophical and political analyses of the idea of consensus, then assesses the role of consensus in national ethics commissions and in the ethics committee movement. Moreno constructs an original, naturalistic philosophy of moral consensus, referred to as "bioethical naturalism", and then applies sociology and social psychology to actual consensus processes. The book concludes with an account of bioethics as a consensus-oriented social reform movement. This insightful volume will be essential reading for bioethicists, philosophers, physicians, members of ethics committees, and all those concerned with ethical and social issues in health care. (shrink)

Since Darwin, Biology has been framed on the idea of evolution by natural selection, which has profoundly influenced the scientific and philosophical comprehension of biological phenomena and of our place in Nature. This book argues that contemporary biology should progress towards and revolve around an even more fundamental idea, that of autonomy. Biological autonomy describes living organisms as organised systems, which are able to self-produce and self-maintain as integrated entities, to establish their own goals and norms, and to promote the (...) conditions of their existence through their interactions with the environment. Topics covered in this book include organisation and biological emergence, organisms, agency, levels of autonomy, cognition, and a look at the historical dimension of autonomy. The current development of scientific investigations on autonomous organisation calls for a theoretical and philosophical analysis. This can contribute to the elaboration of an original understanding of life - including human life - on Earth, opening new perspectives and enabling fecund interactions with other existing theories and approaches. This book takes up the challenge. (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)

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

Review of Alvaro Moreno and Matteo Mossio. 2015. Biological autonomy: a philosophical and theoretical enquiry.

The authors consider the nature of explanatory models in the social sciences in order to suggest ways in which conceptual systems differ. They suggest that, in many cases, theorists, researchers and clinicians can utilize insights from rival models in building their own models, without sacrificing the integrity of their own work.

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)

The author reminds us in his Introduction that a phenomenological examina- tion of intersubjectivity is guided by a "twofold critical design". Against sociologism, which stresses the primacy of the We-relationship, so that the irreducible sense-bestowing function of the ego is overlooked, and against psychologism, which ignores a "subjectual" dimension that stands open to objectivity, Moreno M~irquez attempts to throw light on "the essential nexus between egological subjectivity, transcendental intersubjectivity and dialogical praxis, and on the other hand the possibilities of (...) ontological openness and sense-bestowing" (p. 24). In view of various criticisms raised against Husserl's theory, he points out that its primary concern was the cooperation between subjects aimed at the emergence of objectivity, and delimits his subject matter so that the unifying thread among the diverse topics covered is the "ontological competence" of transcendental intersub- jectivity. (shrink)

George Santayana is not one of the most famous, yet one of the few whose huge oeuvre offers different ways to explain his main notions in connection with a number of possible topics within philosophy. At first sight it takes a real challenge to choose Santayana as a central topic in contemporary research but later one can realize that the spaciousness of the Santayanan oeuvre can provide new opportunities of its interpretation in every time. Daniel Moreno with his doctoral (...) dissertation on San... (shrink)

Este artículo analiza la dictadura del proletariado desde las revisiones en la coyuntura político-filosófica de los años setenta, marcada por la emergencia de la crisis del marxismo y la revisión antiestalinista de los principales conceptos bolcheviques, hasta la actualidad. Para ello, contrastamos las obras de Antoni Domènech y Étienne Balibar y sus tradiciones filosóficas respectivas destacando sus encuentros y problemas comunes. Por otro lado, hemos decidido acometer la dictadura del proletariado a partir de tres oposiciones: clase contra clase/alianza de clases, (...) dictadura comisaria/dictadura soberana, planificación/mercado. (shrink)

Leading scholars debate politically progressive perspectives on bioethics and the implications for society, politics, and science in the twenty-first century.

El presente trabajo surge de la reflexión acerca del fracaso de modelos educativos exteriores aplicados en contextos emergentes sin considerar la realidad de cada pueblo. A juicio de Carnoy (1974) en los países subdesarrollados existe una fuerte tradición en copiar las formas culturales y modelos de sociedades de primer mundo, sin analizar las condiciones objetivas y subjetivas que determinarán el éxito o el fracaso. El objetivo de este documento es analizar los fundamentos ontológicos presentes en el sistema educativo finlandés con (...) la finalidad de identificar los principales referentes que servirán de base para superar problemáticas de la realidad educativa en sociedades emergentes. El documento presenta una revisión de tipo exploratoria, descriptiva y comparativa que por la naturaleza del estudio es de carácter bibliográfico y cualitativo apoyado en el uso de los métodos lógico-científicos (deductivo-inductivo) con sus respectivos procedimientos, y fortalecido con la aplicación de los métodos filosóficos fenomenológico-hermenéutico. La tendencia a la imitación y a la copia de modelos educativos ajenos a nuestra realidad ha dado como resultado sistemas educativos deficientes y que no responden a las necesidades concretas propias de la realidad educativa de las sociedades emergentes. Es preciso determinar el ser, el sentido y el significado del sistema educativo finlandés con miras a la localización de aspectos esenciales que podrían convertirse en pautas para repensar otros modelos educativos. (shrink)

Este no es un libro de filosofía, ni de astrología, ni de esoterismo. No hay en él ninguna pretensión más allá de la simple expresión de un recorrido intelectual y vital, de una búsqueda y un encuentro. Desde este punto de vista se intentan exponer tres esferas distintas del ser y del conocer, de forma separada pero con las oportunas referencias cruzadas, y manteniendo siempre la jerarquía que las diferencia. La primera de ellas es la que aquí se considera como (...) un tipo de exoterismo, es decir, un ámbito externo de considerar las cosas (en referencia a los dos siguientes): la filosofía; con la razón como facultad analítica y reflexiva por excelencia, pretende buscar las razones de ciertas problemáticas mediante el pensamiento discursivo. El segundo ámbito, el intermedio, definido como el del simbolismo, de la analogía universal o del anima mundi, es tratado aquí en referencia a una ciencia tradicional y sagrada: la astrología. Y el tercero y último es aquel dominio correspondiente a la Metafísica integral, en el sentido profundo que apunta hacia la Trascendencia misma, como núcleo de toda forma espiritual; se presentará aquí desde el esoterismo tradicional en la línea de los trabajos de René Guénon, pero principalmente desde la tradición más reciente (la islámica) y la considerada por muchos más primordial (la hindú). (shrink)

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)

Transformar el modo de vida individual es necesario para abordar la crisis ecosocial, y resulta perentorio que las políticas comprometidas con su resolución promocionen una capacidad individual de acción ecosocial. Sin embargo, parece que cierta brecha motivacional está obstaculizando la transformación del modo de vida individual. A fin de dar respuesta a esta brecha, ensayamos una mixtura del enfoque de las capacidades con las teorías de Hartmut Rosa. Argumentamos que la resonancia natural funge de factor personal de conversión necesario, si (...) bien no suficiente, para la capacidad de acción ecosocial; y que una política que promocione la resonancia natural se adecuaría también a los requisitos impuestos al desarrollo humano tanto por el enfoque de las capacidades como por la sostenibilidad. (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)

El presente artículo reconoce que las dos grandes metodologías de Foucault (la arqueología y la genealogía) surgieron en dos momentos diferentes de su enfoque metodológico, y argumenta que a partir de la década del setenta se desarrolla el concepto de dispositivo en el filósofo debido a una discontinuidad en su investigación. Se sostiene que este problema surgió a raíz de una serie de situaciones: el descubrimiento de un nuevo problema de investigación y su relación con la ocurrencia de una coyuntura (...) sociopolítica especifica (fracaso de las movilizaciones sociales del mayo francés en 1968). Lo anterior llevó a Foucault a plantear la pregunta por ¿cómo se ejerce el poder y cuál es su relación con el saber?, en lugar del antiguo interrogante sobre ¿qué es el poder? Esta transformación de la pregunta resultó fundamental en Foucault, ya que le permite concluir que todo dispositivo presupone la existencia de un poder y que todo poder se ejerce mediante la utilización de un saber. El artículo se cierra con una referencia a Jurgen Habermas, autor que precisa la crisis que generó en Foucault el fracaso de las movilizaciones sociales ocurridas durante el denominado mayo francés. El presente trabajo se elaboró a partir de un método de investigación cualitativa y una técnica de rastreo bibliográfico. (shrink)

reto de un jurista que urge a la razón individual de cada lector para que éste verifique por sí mismo la falacia de las modas ideológicas en las que puede hallarse eventual e inconscientemente inmerso. El autor ha pretendido hacer un libro «sensato», es decir, de sentido común o «buen juicio», que es una manera de sabiduría llana y común; todo lo contrario de la sensacional originalidad que suele estragar al público de nuestros días. Aunque quizás ocurra hoy que lo (...) sensato resulte ser excepcional y nuevo, es lo más conforme al auténtico estilo de un jurista, que, por su profesión, nunca busca destacar por su singularidad, sino por la conveniente edificación crítica del derecho fundado sobre una tradición respetable. Como hay un arte de ser sencillo, hay también un arte de ser sensato, y a esa «sagesse» aspira precisamente el autor. I. Naturaleza. II. Verdad. III. Patrimonio. IV. Potestad. V. Persona. VI. Matrimonio. VII. Servicio. Índice tópico. Referencias bibliográficas complementarias. (shrink)