My main concern in this paper is to develop some ideas within the Kantian ethical tradition. More precisely, my aim is to develop an ethical perspective that is grounded upon the Kantian ideas of autonomy and ideal of the person (Kant’s notion of humanity) as fundamental starting points for a coherent account of Kant’s ethics in contrast to the deontological duty-based interpretation of his moral philosophy, then sketch, subsequently, some suggestions to show why this reading has more philosophical import than (...) what a deontological reading may provide. I take no issue for the time being however, as to whether or not the perspective I have in mind leads to either a Kantian orthodoxy or a revisionist direction in Kant scholarships. (shrink)

This paper is an exploration of Habermas’ critical reconstructions of the problematic of rationality via critical theory’s critique of instrumental reason. It brings together several key ideas ranging from the dialectic of instrumental reason and how it leads to epistemological dissonance to the discursive redemption of the normativity of reason. It sketches, as a concluding reflection, whether or not his ideas may be situated within the larger methodological trajectory of Philippine social science research. The paper thus considers the concepts of (...) discourse, discourse ethics and normative validity as crucially important. (shrink)

A book review on: Essentials of logic by Irving M. Copi and Carl Cohen with Daniel E. Flage: 2nd Edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc., 2007, 452 pp.

In Descartes’s reformulation of natural philosophy, two aspects of what came to be known as the mechanical philosophy were intimately joined: mechanism as an ontology of nature, according to which all natural things had only ‘mechanical’ properties; and mechanism as a method of explanation. One could, and many philosophers did, adopt mechanism as a method of explanation without adopting a mechanistic ontology. I examine two successors of Descartes who did just that, and one who did not. Giovanni Alfonso Borelli in (...) his De motu animalium and Charles Perrault in his Mécanique de animaux propose and argue for a variety of mechanical accounts of the operations of animals, in particular of their muscles. They reject, however, the Cartesian reduction of animal souls to mechanical forces; the principle of animal motion for them remains a non-mechanical soul. Pierre Sylvain Régis in his Cours entier de philosophie follows Descartes in taking the ‘physical cause’ of motion in animals to be the fermentation of blood in the heart, and thus denies animal souls any role in his physiology. That he can do so while taking over, sometimes word for word, Perrault’s accounts of animal motion shows that mechanistic explanation and mechanistic ontology could easily part company. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Teacher and Student Divine Will, Eternal Truths, the Laws of Nature Ideas Matter and the Void.

This chapter contains section titled: Institutions, Forms, Authorities Body as Substance Change and Causes Art and Nature References and Further Reading.

This paper attempts to argue that a radically different notion of freedoms and rights that originates from the other, that is founded on the infinite responsibility for the other, and that demands an encounter with the other as pure alterity, could be a plausible starting point towards the conception and possible realization of a Levinasian society of neighbors. First, an explication is made on why a radical change in the area of freedoms and rights could be the starting point towards (...) a social, political, and moral philosophical framework based on the radical philosophy of Levinas as elaborated in his Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. Then, a discussion on conventional conceptions of freedoms and rights, particularly those based on liberalism, libertarianism, and utilitarianism, is presented as groundwork for a comparative analysis between these conventional conceptions and a radical notion that would be entailed by a conception of a Levinasian society of neighbors. Lastly, an attempt is made to characterize a radically different conception of freedoms and rights based on the philosophy of Levinas and to argue how it could be the starting point towards the conception and possible realization of a Levinasian society of neighbors. (shrink)

The triumph of the Sandinista Revolution on July 19, 1979 marked the beginning of a period of intensification of the struggle of the insurgent movements in El Salvador and Guatemala that, encouraged by the victory of their Sandinista comrades, tried to emulate the defeat of the oligarchy in their respective countries. Nicaragua acquired a relevant role as it had not had in the region until then, becoming one of the actors that would mark the course of the isthmus during the (...) eighties of the last century. One of the effects of this new role was the strengthening of relations between the Sandinista National Liberation Front and the Nicaraguan government with the guerrillas of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front of El Salvador and the National Revolutionary Unity. of Guatemala. The climate of revolutionary optimism that very graphically expressed this Central American vision of the revolution was summed up in the motto of the time: "If Nicaragua won, El Salvador will win and Guatemala will follow." The objective of this article is to describe and analyze the relationships that were forged between the FSLN, the FMLN and the URNG in the 1980s. (shrink)

This paper presents an argument synthesized from the works of Sen and Žižek on how the one-dimensional view of pathological subjective violence is a mystification of the idea of violence. First, the paper provides an elaboration of the concept of objective violence as opposed to (but nonetheless still in relation to) subjective violence. Second, the paper follows with a discussion of the dialectics of the colonized mind as an example of how the objective violence of past colonialism is linked to (...) the instigation of subjective violence even in recent times. Third, the paper provides a brief description of symbolic violence as another category of violence that is distinct from subjective violence. Lastly, the paper asserts its main argument on the mystification of subjective violence and proposes an alternative and more nuanced view of the mechanisms and causes of violence. (shrink)

BackgroundBrazil is among the sixteen countries that conducts the most clinical trials in the world. It has a system to review research ethics with human beings made up by the National Commission on Research Ethics and 779 Research Ethics Committees, in 2017. The RECs are supposed to follow the same rules regarding their membership, although the RECs that review Social Science and Humanities researches must respect Resolution 510/16. There are Brazilian RECs that review SSH and clinical trials. This study aimed (...) to analyze the academic professional profile of the members of the CONEP and Brazilian RECs, their adequacy to the norms, and the challenges faced by the REC’s Chairs to compose their membership. MethodsAll 779 Brazilian RECs’ chairs are invited to fill in a questionnaire informing academic and professional background of the RECs members, and 92 answered. However, eight were excluded for having sent an incomplete questionnaire, leaving a total of 84 participants. The variables were described by absolute and relative frequency. The Chi-square test and ANOVA was used to analyze regional differences related difficulties to compose the committee. The significance level was 95%. ResultsThe results showed a predominance of members from the biomedical area, while 33% were members of the Social Sciences and Humanities and 5.5% were community representatives. As for the academic degree, there were PhD and masters. The divergences in relation to the guidelines result from the difficulties of having participants in some areas and the little interest in the work carried out by the committees.ConclusionThe RECs are partially adequate to the norms and their performance may be compromised by the low participation of community representatives. The organization of REC’s specifics to review biomedical research could improve the ethical review process, ensuring a membership more qualified for these protocols. (shrink)

Reductionism, in the sense of the doctrine that theories on different levels of reality should exhibit strict and general relations of deducibility, faces well-known difficulties. Nevertheless, the idea that deeper layers of reality are responsible for what happens at higher levels is well-entrenched in scientific practice. We argue that the intuition behind this idea is adequately captured by the notion of supervenience: the physical state of the fundamental physical layers fixes the states of the higher levels. Supervenience is weaker than (...) traditional reductionism, but it is not a metaphysical doctrine: one can empirically support the existence of a supervenience relation by exhibiting concrete relations between the levels. Much actual scientific research is directed towards finding such inter-level relations. It seems to be quite generally held that the importance of such relations between different levels is that they are explanatory and give understanding: deeper levels provide deeper understanding, and this justifies the search for ever deeper levels. We shall argue, however, that although achieving understanding is an important aim of science, its correct analysis is not in terms of relations between higher and lower levels. Connections with deeper layers of reality do not generally provide for deeper understanding. Accordingly, the motivation for seeking deeper levels of reality does not come from the desire to find deeper understanding of phenomena, but should be seen as a consequence of the goal to formulate ever better, in the sense of more accurate and more-encompassing, empirical theories. (shrink)

The A to Z of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy includes a chronology, an introduction, a bibliography, and cross-reference dictionary entries Descartes's writings, concepts, and findings, as well as entries on those who supported him, those who criticized him, those who corrected him, and those who together formed one of the major movements in philosophy, Cartesianism.

Depois de ter estabelecido uma conexão geral entre a faculdade do juízo e o sentimento de prazer e desprazer na “Primeira introdução” à Crítica da faculdade do juízo, Kant, na “Introdução publicada”, restringe, gradativamente, essa conexão aos juízos estéticos e aos juízos que lidam com a sistematização da natureza. Essa restrição acaba por deixar os juízos teleológicos fora da conexão geral anteriormente estabelecida. O objetivo do artigo é propor os passos necessários para restabelecer a conexão entre os juízos teleológicos e (...) o sentimento de prazer e desprazer, pois se trata de uma conexão, a princípio, supostamente válida para todos os juízos reflexionantes. (shrink)

Achieving understanding of nature is one of the aims of science. In this paper we offer an analysis of the nature of scientific understanding that accords with actual scientific practice and accommodates the historical diversity of conceptions of understanding. Its core idea is a general criterion for the intelligibility of scientific theories that is essentially contextual: which theories conform to this criterion depends on contextual factors, and can change in the course of time. Our analysis provides a general account of (...) how understanding is provided by scientific explanations of diverse types. In this way, it reconciles conflicting views of explanatory understanding, such as the causal-mechanical and the unificationist conceptions. (shrink)

In their interesting paper, Susser and Cabrera (2024) apply the contextual integrity framework to brain data and mental privacy. This framework, developed by Nissenbaum (2009) and rooted in digital...

El desafío actual de la posverdad que amenaza el funcionamiento de la democracia surge desde los límitesde nuestro conocimiento y la interferencia de las emociones y los valores. Dos corrientes comunes, la ética del discurso, y la política agonista, son insuficientes para resolver este desafío. En la comprensión de la política de Aristóteles estos dos elementos ya estaban presentes. Él presenta a la política como un campo de saber determinado no exclusivamente por el saber, sino al mismo tiempo por los (...) límites del saber y por el cargo emotivo.El objetivo de este artículo es proponer una concepción contemporánea de un discurso político phronético,incorporando las características clave de una phronesis aristotélica. La hipótesis es que un discurso políticophronético contemporáneo no se puede fundar en el bien, ya que la pluralidad de las concepciones del bien es lo que separa la política moderna de los tiempos aristotélicos. En su lugar, y siguiendo a los debates en la ética neo-aristotélica, se debería buscar el fundamento en el desarrollo del carácter de los (futuros) participantes en dicho discurso. Por consiguiente, la educación es el punto de partida esencial para reforzar las capacidades y los hábitos de los participantes del discurso a fin de mejor manejar, en la medida de lo posible, las limitaciones de nuestro conocimiento y nuestro compromiso personal con el campo político. (shrink)

Background: A short version of the Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale comprising only re-experiencing symptom items has been recently validated on Japanese adults. This short-version-PDS had good psychometric properties among Japanese adults with and without posttraumatic stress disorder. The aim of this study was to translate and culturally validate the short-version-PDS for the Brazilian sociolinguistic context.Methods: A translation of the short-version-PDS was performed based on established guidelines. We enrolled 53 patients with PTSD as a potential comorbidity. The translation and cross-cultural adaptation of (...) the short-version-PDS included forward and back-translation by a Japanese Brazilian researcher and a certified translator; synthesis was achieved by consensus, backward translation, pilot test, and finalization. Content validity coefficient was used to assess quality of adaptation. Internal consistency was calculated using Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Spearman correlations were between the new short-version-PDS and the Brazilian version of the posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist for DSM-5, and a receiver operating characteristic curve was used to determine the best cut-off values for the short-version-PDS.Results: The short-version-PDS was well accepted by all subjects, none of the questions were experienced as inappropriate, and all questions of the 3 items were judged important. Item 1 presented CVCt = 0.92; item 2 had a CVCt = 0.87 and item 3 had a CVCt = 0.95. The internal consistency of the final version as measured by Cronbach's alpha was 0.78. The short-version-PDS scale correlated positively with the DSM-5 scale with a Spearman rho of 0.64 (95%CI [0.4-0.8], p 31.0 with sensitivity and specificity are 86.4 and 93.5%, respectively.Conclusions: This Brazilian Portuguese version of the short-version-PDS had good psychometric properties among Brazilian adults with and without PTSD. Transferability and generalizability of the cut-off scores should be further analyzed. (shrink)

Este estudo apresenta as principais ideias de Pierre Bourdieu referentes à análise sociológica da literatura, quando discute as seguintes questões: as relações entre a literatura e a ciência, as possibilidades de análise sociológica da literatura, a definição do campo literário, as relações do campo literário com o campo econômico e os demais campos do espaço social, as relações de oposição no interior do campo, a análise das obras literárias considerando as relações entre o código literário e os que se referem (...) à vida cotidiana, a proposição de um estudo histórico da literatura, a crítica à análise imanente da literatura. (shrink)

The aim of this research was to establish linear relations (association and prediction) and inferential relations between three constructs at different levels of psychological research –executive dysfunction(microanalysis),self-regulation(molecular level), andself-vs.external regulation(molar level), in the prediction of emotion regulation difficulties. We hypothesized that personal and contextual regulatory factors would be negatively related to levels of executive dysfunction and emotion regulation difficulties; by way of complement, non-regulatory and dysregulatory personal, and contextual factors would be positively related to these same difficulties. To establish relationships, (...) we used a retrospective,ex postfacto design, where 298 university students voluntarily participated by completing standardized self-reports. Linear and structural correlational, predictive analyses were performed, as well as inferential analyses. Results were consistent and validated the proposed hypotheses, for both association and prediction. The most important result refers to the discriminant value of the five-level combination heuristic for predicting Executive Function and External (contextual) Dys-Regulation. In conclusion: (1) both personal and contextual regulation factors must be analyzed in order to better understand the variation in executive functions and emotion regulation difficulties; (2) it is important to continue connecting the different levels of the constructs referring to self-regulation, given their complementary role in the behavioral analysis of regulation difficulties. (shrink)

The combination of student Self-Regulation (SR) and the context of Regulatory Teaching (RT), each in varying degree, has recently been demonstrated to have effects on achievement emotions, factors and symptoms of stress, and coping strategies. The aim of the present research study is to verify its possible further effects, on academic behavioral confidence and procrastination. A total of 1193 university students completed validated online questionnaires with regard to specific subjects in their degree program. Using an ex post facto design, multivariate (...) analyses and structural equation modeling (SEM) were carried out in order to test the relationships predicted by the model. SR and RT had a significant joint effect in determining the degree of academic behavioral confidence and of procrastination. Academic behavioral confidence also significantly predicted reasons for procrastinating, and these in turn predicted activities of procrastination. Conclusions are discussed, insisting on the combined weight of the two variables in determining academic behavioral confidence, reasons for procrastinating and activities subject to procrastination, in university students. Implications for guidance and educational support of university students and teachers are analyzed. (shrink)

This volume is the first edited collection of philosophy of astrophysics. In this introductory chapter, we provide a brief history of the rise of philosophy of astrophysics as a distinct subdiscipline in philosophy of science, brief summaries of the chapters in the volume and their interrelated themes, and a few suggestions for further work.

A obra pretende indicar a bipolaridade que constitui o objeto central da abordagem; por um lado, a problematização da funcionalidade do sistema penal e da expansão, sem precedentes, que experimenta na era da globalização; de outro, o problema dos déficits do conceito e da dimensão da cidadania, que experimentam ímpar minimização.

Environmental research has usually highlighted that the existence of slack resources in an organization helps allocate investment to innovative initiatives. However, the existing literature has paid very limited attention to how slack resources can influence the effects of focused and diversified innovations in different ways. Agency theory scholars claim that a manager’s first preference when confronted with discretionary resources will not generate positive investments for the firm, but their own opportunistic preferences. The differences between focused and diversified environmental innovations allow (...) us to gain a better understanding of the financial impact of being focused and how slack resources matter in this context. We analyze a longitudinal sample of 5845 environmental patents from the 75 largest companies in the electrical components and equipment industry worldwide. Our results show that high levels of slack resources reduce the existing positive relationship between focused environmental innovations and a firm’s financial performance. These results contribute to delineating the theoretical and empirical implications of focused versus diversified environmental innovations and extend the literature on ethical dilemmas concerning managers’ use of slack resources in the firm. (shrink)

. In aid of understanding mechanistic explanation and its limits in the 17th century, I examine the views of Pierre Sylvain Régis on generation. Régis departs from Descartes' theories on one key point. Living things, though they do not differ in nature from nonliving things, and are, as Descartes said, machines, are directly created by God, who forms the seeds of all living things at creation. Preformationism gives Régis not only a means of accounting for seeds and for specific differences (...) among living things, but also a basis for attributing purposes to them, and thus for defining health and disease in soulless creatures. (shrink)

Physiologia provides an accessible and comprehensive guide to late Aristotelian natural philosophy; with that context in hand, it offers new interpretations of major themes in Descartes’s natural philosophy.

From the topics discussed by Hattab and Menn, I examine two of special importance. The first is that of active powers: does the Cartesian natural world contain any, or is the apparent efficacy of natural agents always to be referred to God? In arguing that it is, I consider, following Hattab, Descartes' characterization of natural laws as "secondary causes." The second topic is that of ends. Menn argues, and I agree, that in late Aristotelianism Aristotle's own conception of an "art (...) in things" has been abandoned. The point is reinforced when one considers the general divine ends which must be invoked in cases of aborted action. In them no individual agent attains its end. Yet Nature as a whole continues to act toward ends. I suggest that those general ends, to which Suárez, for example, refers, may have served later philosophers, especially Malebranche, in combining the Cartesian notion of law with a teleological interpretation of nature that Descartes, for his part, rejected. (shrink)

Although the basis of modern biology is Cartesian, Descartes’s theories of biology have been more often ridiculed than studied. Yet, Dennis Des Chene demonstrates, the themes, arguments, and vocabulary of his mechanistic biology pervade the writings of many seventeenth-century authors. In his illuminating account of Cartesian physiology in its historical context, Des Chene focuses on the philosopher’s innovative reworking of that field, including the nature of life, the problem of generation, and the concepts of health and illness. Des Chene (...) begins by surveying works that Descartes would likely have encountered, from late Aristotelian theories of the soul to medical literature and treatises on machines. The Cartesian theory of vital operations is examined, with particular attention to the generation of animals. Des Chene also considers the role of the machine-model in furnishing a method in physiology, the ambiguities of the notion of machine, and of Descartes’s problem of simulation. Finally, he looks at,the various kinds of unity of the body, both in itself and in its union with the soul. Spirits and Clocks continues Des Chene’s highly regarded exploration -- begun in his previous book, Life’s Form -- of the scholastic and Cartesian sciences as well as the dialogue between these two worldviews. Introduction 1 Part One - Tales of the Bête-Machine [ 1 ] - Self-Movers 13 [ 2 ] - Where Do Machines Come From? 32 [ 3 ] - The Uses of Usus 53 Part Two - Machines, Mechanisms, Bodies, Organs [ 4 ] - Tools of Knowledge 71 [ 5 ] - Jeux D’Artifice 103 [ 6 ] - Unity of the Body 116 Conclusion 153 Bibliography 159 Index 177. (shrink)

'Holographic' relations between theories have become a main theme in quantum gravity research. These relations entail that a theory without gravity is equivalent to a gravitational theory with an extra spatial dimension. The idea of holography was first proposed in 1993 by Gerard 't Hooft on the basis of his studies of evaporating black holes. Soon afterwards the holographic 'AdS/CFT' duality was introduced, which since has been heavily studied in the string theory community and beyond. Recently, Erik Verlinde has proposed (...) that even Newton's law of gravitation can be related holographically to the thermodynamics of information on screens. We discuss inter-theoretical relations in these scenarios: what is the status of the holographic relation in them and in what sense is gravity, or spacetime, emergent? (shrink)

O termo cosmopolitismo que, até há bem pouco tempo, em decorrência das novas configurações da sociedade contemporânea, perdera espaço para noções como a de globalização, voltou ao primeiro plano, sendo retomado em diversos textos teóricos recentes. O artigo discute a ressignificação do conceito e suas implicações simbólicas no contexto latino-americano, tendo em vista os movimentos migratórios deste início do século XXI. Analisa-se também a presença crescente do tema da migração no campo da arte, focalizando a música popular e a ficção (...) literária e cinematográfica brasileiras. (shrink)