Transparency has evolved from an individual, dangerous power in Plato to a desirable, collective property in the contemporary world. This paper intends to give a brief account of this long and somehow surprising path and extract some interesting consequences for economic and political activities, as well as for information technologies. Six literary masterpieces are used to highlight the contradictions and dangers entailed by the abuse of the fascinating metaphor of transparency. In the end, what is usually intended when demanding transparency (...) from a corporation, a firm or a state is more (or more accessible) information about it, i.e., understandable and abundant black and white data. This means reporting, picturing, producing material, becoming apparent, which is precisely the contrary of being transparent. We don’t want to look through , but to look directly at . The question, then, is not transparency, but opacity: what do we need and want to see, and how is this going to be produced? (shrink)

En estas líneas se pretende ofrecer pistas sobre cómo podría medirse, no ya la innovación como efecto, sino la innovación como acción; es decir, las condiciones de posibilidad de la innovación. Se argumentará que esta medida debe basarse en ciertas variables culturales, que ponderen la diversidad de los individuos y grupos de una sociedad, como indicador de su capacidad combinatoria. Se concluirá que una medida estable y precisa de la innovación es irrealizable.

Ethics committees are one of the main agents in the governance of science and technology, especially in the field of health care. This paper analyses some aspects of their nature, which show the internal relationship between the moral and the scientific-technological domains. Being both knowledge providers and users thereof, ethics committees deliberate and decide on complex contemporary ethical issues. To pursue their aims, they require adequate technical tools in order to deliberate and choose using new technologies of communication and information. (...) These tools carry new problems with themselves, so committees must acquire a mixed nature, dynamic, interdisciplinary and inclusive. Ethics committees do not only constitute a control device, rather they are an interactive means for the creation of value in society. (shrink)

Armando P. Ribas was born in Ciego de vila, Cuba, in 1932 and died in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2020. In 1956 he graduated as a Juris Doctor from Saint Thomas of Villanova University in Havana, Cuba. He later studied Law and Economics at Southern Methodist University and Columbia University in the United States. In Argentina, he worked as a journalist and economist and from 1889 to 1990 and was a Deputy in that country. This book clearly explains the (...) ethical and non-economic antagonism between socialism and the misnamed capitalism, as well as the importance of liberty for the individual to achieve prosperity with justice and solidarity. The " illuminism" fallacy clearly emerges from the work as a pretense of the course of reason in history. This explains how obscurantism arising from the confusion between reason and truth caused greater crimes in the West than the Manichean virtues of the Middle Ages. It explains the fundamental discrepancy between the reason of state, prevailing in Europe and the "rule of law" of Americans. The latter changed for the first time in history the relationship between the government and the citizen in defense of individual rights: to life, liberty, property and the search for their own happiness. Ribas also expands on the analysis of economic ideas, which, detached from private rights, have caused the recent failures of "democracies south of the Rio Grande." This book allows us to understand to a great extent the evolution and problems of the world that we have had to live, between the supposed globalization and the reality of terrorism. But just as he points out the problems, he also teaches the ways in which individual prosperity can be achieved for all men who know how to use their freedom. Armando Ribas has been pointed out as the most liberal of Cubans and also of Argentines, since he had two homelands in his life. (shrink)

Civility is formed by social norms that guide our behavior and allow us to interact appropriately with others. These norms affect everyone and are learned through the socialization process. However, in the same process, people also learn gender norms that dictate how men and women should behave, leading to gender stereotypes and differentiated behavioral characteristics. The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between gender and civility, and how we react to those who behave uncivilly given their gender. (...) The results of Study 1 showed that even in a fictional and gender-neutral society, uncivil behaviors were associated with stereotypically masculine characteristics, and those who behaved uncivilly were dehumanized. In Study 2, gender differences were observed in incivility. Women were harsher when facing uncivil transgressors than men, especially if the transgressor was another woman. Our findings support the notion that gender norms are applied to civility, leading those supposedly equal social norms to unequal perceptions and evaluations. (shrink)

The Purpose in Life Test is a measure of purpose in life widely used in many cultures and countries; however, cross-cultural assessments are scarce. The present study aimed to evaluate the cross-cultural measurement invariance of the PIL in the general population of seven Latin American countries. A total of 4306 people participated, selected by non-probabilistic convenience sampling, where Uruguay has the highest mean age ; while Ecuador has the lowest mean age. Furthermore, in each country, there is a higher proportion (...) of women than men. Using Multi-Group Confirmatory Factor Analysis, the factorial structure does not show evidence of invariance among the included countries. However, based on the Multi-Group Factor Analysis Alignment, there is evidence that a three-dimensional structure of the PIL is the same in the participating countries. Results based on item response theory indicate that most PIL items can significantly differentiate responses according to the level of life purpose. In addition, people with low life purpose will tend to choose the lower response alternatives on the PIL; while people with higher life purpose will choose higher response alternatives. The findings indicate that the PIL has the potential to increase knowledge about how people conceive and experience their purpose in life in different countries. (shrink)

This book is a treasure house of Italian philosophy. Narrating and explaining the history of Italian philosophers from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, the author identifies the specificity, peculiarity, originality, and novelty of Italian philosophical thought in the men and women of the Renaissance. The vast intellectual output of the Renaissance can be traced back to a single philosophical stream beginning in Florence and fed by numerous converging human factors. This work offers historians and philosophers a vast survey (...) and penetrating analysis of an intellectual tradition which has heretofore remained virtually unknown to the Anglophonic world of scholarship.“Italy’s greatest historian of Renaissance culture, and at the same time its foremost living philosopher…” Charles Boer in American Philosophical Society Proceedings Vol. 151, 1 “… Garin reinvented Humanism.”Armando Torno in Corriere Della Sera, 30 December 2004“With his studies on the Renaissance, against the too many immanentist and antireligious oversimplifications that considered the Age of the Renaissance as a pure and simple reversed manifestation of the medieval religiosity, Garin saw and taught the continuity between the origin of the Modern Age, and of Science itself, and the inheritance of the late Middle Ages.”Gianna Vattimo in La Stampa, 30 December 2004 “In opposition to Paul Oskar Kristeller, Garin did not see in Humanism a mere literary and philological event, but a movement endowed with a true and peculiar philosophy, different from the one based on summulae and logic of the Schools, and characterized instead by its new interest in the historical. Moral, and scientific disciplines.”Il Tempo, 30 December 2004. (shrink)

v. 1. El tiempo histórico de Mario Hernández Sánchez-Barba -- v. 2. Generaciones y mentalidades. Estudios de teoría de la Historia.

Visiones antropológicas divergentes en artículos científicos de bioética en Brasil Divergent Anthropological Views in Scientific Articles on Bioethics in Brazil The aim of the study is to characterize Brazilian bioethics outputs anthropologically, specifically scientific articles. The guiding question of this research is: What is the anthropological characterization present in scientific articles on bioethics in Brazil? Prominent bioethical theories show restrictive anthropology indicators; i.e., dignity is given only to members of the human species that have certain attributes, including conscience and self-consciousness, (...) as opposed to comprehensive anthropology indicators in relation to human beings; i.e., dignity is equally assigned to all members of the Homo sapiens species. In conclusion, comprehensive anthropology indicators and theoretical divergence in relation to the origin of life, especially between utilitarianism and personalism, prevail. Para citar este artículo / To reference this article / Para citar este artigo Sanches MA, Monteiro TM. Visões antropológicas divergentes em artigos científicos de bioética no Brasil. Pers Bioet. 2019; 23: 64-83. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5294/pebi.2019.23.1.5 Recibido: 09/10/2018 Aceptado: 20/03/2019. (shrink)

In this essay, a brief analysis of the diplomatic efforts to achieve an accord in re- lation to the climatic change process is made. Particularly, it will analyze the two past Climate Summits (Copenhagen and Cancun). It emphasizes the growing social articulation of climatic politics. Finally, it aims to the birth of a new global responsibility of societies in relation to the human relation towards the planet. Also, it explores the impact of this responsibility on the environment global changes.

This book deals with the main promoters of the causal and descriptivist reference theories on natural kind terms. It alleges that the ostensive reference fixing and reference borrowing theories should be descriptive-causal and adduces that the relation of kind-identity depends on the views on kind-identity and thus involves descriptive elements.