In their paper titled “Proposed Principles for International Bioethics Conferencing: Anti-Discriminatory, Global, and Inclusive,” Jecker et al. eloquently present essential principles for Internati...

Se ha dicho que para entender una literatura lo mejor es leer sus obras, y no lo que sobre ella se ha dicho o escrito. Este artículo, en cuatro partes, es un intento de estudiar las nuwashshahat y sus kharjas, basado solamente, dentro de lo posible, en los textos con los que contamos. El artículo llega a tres conclusiones, no del todo nuevas para mis lectores: 1. Si bien las nuwashshahat fueron producto de la tradición literaria clásica árabe, su desarrollo (...) se enlaza inevitablemente con factores específicos, políticos y sociales, del medio andalusí. 2. La kharja es una salida de 'ingenio' o 'ingeniosa', zarf o hazl, al final de la nuwashshahat. Sea cual fuere su propósito de haber existido antes de las nuwashshahat, las kharjas de voz femenina en lengua romance, al igual que sus equivalentes árabes, tenían como función suministrar el mismo requisito de zarf al final de la nuwashshahat la. 3. La reacción de Ibn Saná al-Mulk bacía la kharja fue en gran medida una reacción psicológica, y no una respuesta literaria bien ponderada. La mejor manera de saber lo que Ibn Saná al-Mulk pensaba de las nuwashshahat es leer las que él mismo compuso, y no lo que opinó sobre la kharja. (shrink)

Basado enteramente en pruebas internas, este estudio se propone mostrar que el manuscrito único del Dīwān de Ibn Quzmān, publicado en edición facsímil por David de Gunzburg en 1896, es una copia dictada. Se indica también que el copista, a quien con frecuencia se ha culpado de introducir en el texto popular andaluz correcciones o clasicismos, no estaba bien equipado para desempeñar tal papel. Si bien era un calígrafo de primera categoría, se aducen pruebas de que su conocimiento del árabe (...) no estaba a la altura de la calidad de su caligrafía. El estudio muestra que él fue el responsable de una amplia gama de problemas textuales que ha dejado perplejos a sucesivos editores del Dīwān. En marcado contraste, se muestra que Ibn Quzmān poseía un dominio magistral de la lengua árabe y de las tradiciones-árabes clásicas. Al parecer también había adquirido un alto grado de 'aculturación' en la lengua romance. Además de ofrecer las pruebas en que se basan estos asertos, el estudio constituye un ejemplo ilustrativo de cómo estas pruebas pueden ayudar a una mejor lectura e interpretación del Dīwān de Ibn Quzmān. (shrink)

Mediante el presente trabajo, se pretende hacer hincapié en aspectos más o menos subjetivos, más o menos arbitrarios, que de alguna manera determinaron la visión general y generalizada que tenía, y en parte sigue teniendo, Occidente, Nosotros, sobre Oriente, Ellos, los árabes. Esta visión, imagen más bien ficticia y creada no siempre de forma inocente, será la que configure las posturas y relaciones que hoy en día rigen el acercamiento entre las diferentes culturas. Un aspecto fundamental e imprescindible de esta (...) interacción cultural vendría de la mano de la traducción, disciplina que, por su propia esencia, será la que reproduzca al Otro según su universo conceptual y sus intereses, en definitiva, según su ideología. En las últimas décadas, la recepción de la literatura árabe por medio de la traducción se ha visto muy menguada, lo que se debe esencialmente a la imagen negativa que en Occidente se tiene de la misma. Debido a los estereotipos de antaño, en muchos casos exagerados todavía más, la literatura árabe no es tenida en cuenta como lo que es, Literatura, sino más bien como un corpus de estudios e informes técnicos sobre la sociedad del otro. La idea de que el árabe no tiene nada que ofrecer a nivel intelectual, está totalmente arraigada, tanto que todo acercamiento, toda traducción, debe tenerlo muy en cuenta y actuar en consecuencia. (shrink)

The article by Bowman-Smart et al. (2023) argues that there are inconsistencies in our ethical frameworks regarding the use of noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) and polygenic scores for identifyi...

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo analizar la recepción argentina de los governmentality studies , particularmente con los denominados anglofoucauldians . En esta dirección, nos referimos, inicialmente a los “deslizamientos” y “sobreentendidos” implicados en la traducción local de la perspectiva que examinamos. En segundo lugar, en un nivel más teórico y general, abordamos las limitaciones que supone la analítica del gobierno entendida en términos de la descripción de unas racionalidades políticas. En este punto, proponemos un modo alternativo, aunque complementario, de (...) reflexión sobre las prácticas discursivas de gobierno. Para ello, nos nutrimos de las elaboraciones provenientes del análisis materialista del discurso. Finalmente, en las conclusiones reflexionamos acerca del Sur como posición enunciativa desde la cual contribuir al debate teórico-conceptual sobre el problema del gobierno y la gubernamentalidad. (shrink)

The history of Iraq in the twentieth century, and perhaps the Middle East more broadly, is punctuated by an intellectual shift that has, for the most part, escaped the attention of scholars. It might be characterized as a shift from a problem of representation introduced by the rise of left-wing politics, to a problem of experience created by its failure. This shift registers in the work of writers and artists, where the depiction of the social world gave way to an (...) exploration of states of being. The paradigm for that turn inward in modern art was set by the artist Kadhim Haidar, in a series of paintings exhibited at the National Museum of Modern Art in Baghdad, in 1965, under the title The Epic of the Martyr [Malḥamat al-shahīd]. The paintings reconstructed imagery from the mourning processions that annually commemorate the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, al-Husayn. This paper argues that the ritual imagery contains a grammar of experience, forged in the early history of Islam, that linked justice to a state of being, and that the transposition of the imagery into painting activated that grammar in the artwork. (shrink)

Medical sciences have developed in India from time immemorial. This paper presents a detailed outlook of the development of these techniques in medieval India and Indo-Central Asia. The different authors, works and techniques of that time are recalled and compared in order to provide an overall view of this barely known tradition.

We envisage a black hole perturbed by a force-free magnetic field outside and attempt to determine its structure. We suppose the metric that describes this black hole is of the static spherical type, that is Schwarzschild, and the energy–momentum tensor emanating from an FFMF source perturbs this background metric, in this regard one can imagine a magnetic accretion disk around the black hole. By solving the equations for such a configuration, we will show that in addition to modifying the diagonal (...) elements of the background metric, we will also see the non-zeroing of the off-diagonal elements of the general metric, one of the immediate consequences of which will be a static to stationary transition. (shrink)

A graph’s entropy is a functional one, based on both the graph itself and the distribution of probability on its vertex set. In the theory of information, graph entropy has its origins. Hex-derived networks have a variety of important applications in medication store, hardware, and system administration. In this article, we discuss hex-derived network of type 1 and 2, written as HDN 1 n and HDN 2 n, respectively of order n. We also compute some degree-based entropies such as Randić, (...) ABC, and G A entropy of HDN 1 n and HDN 2 n. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

Cho and Martinez-Martin (2023) provide a thoughtful analysis of the epistemological and ethical implications of digital twin (DT) technology in biomedical research. However, they overlook the profo...

ABSTRACT We have several objectives in this article. Firstly, we return to the category of semiosphere due to its dialectical and polysemic character, but we also introduce some reflections in order to analyze more complex cultural productions. In this same sense, the category of internal and external semiotic border allows us to present the cultural, intercultural, and transcultural translation problems that are articulated with the dynamic changes of every culture. Secondly, we examine the category of culture and articulate it with (...) the no-culture, with the anti-culture, which would lead to propose three types of semiosphere: cultural semiosphere, noncultural semiosphere, and anti-cultural semiosphere, which introduce controversial aspects that must be considered. Thirdly, we study Iuri Lotman’s latest approaches on the unpredictable in cultural processes, assuming assumptions of complexity and transdisciplinarity that are present in all his work. (shrink)

This article deals mainly with problems of cultural/transcultural translation between the Quechua and Spanish cultures, analysing these on the basis of some ideas by Juri Lotman and Peeter Torop. The process of translation implies considering the Quechua semiosphere’s internal borders as well as the external borders related to the cultures that existed at the time of Tahuantin Suyo, and all changes that have come from the Spanish conquest of Latin America. In the case of the Quechua culture, the problems are (...) numerous and conflicting in several dimensions. First of all, Quechua is an agglutinating language that creates problems for translation into a flexional language such as Spanish. Secondly, and more importantly, there exists a mythopoetical model of the world that has been built in this culture, which does not use concepts of rational logic, but poetic images integrated into mythical thinking: it represents a different cognitive pattern. Thirdly, the presence of the logic of the concrete in Quechua culture, articulated with the mythopoetical model, makes translation from Western abstract formal logic difficult. Reflections on these issues provide new analytical possibilities. (shrink)

This article deals mainly with problems of cultural/transcultural translation between the Quechua and Spanish cultures, analysing these on the basis of some ideas by Juri Lotman and Peeter Torop. The process of translation implies considering the Quechua semiosphere’s internal borders as well as the external borders related to the cultures that existed at the time of Tahuantin Suyo, and all changes that have come from the Spanish conquest of Latin America. In the case of the Quechua culture, the problems are (...) numerous and conflicting in several dimensions. First of all, Quechua is an agglutinating language that creates problems for translation into a flexional language such as Spanish. Secondly, and more importantly, there exists a mythopoetical model of the world that has been built in this culture, which does not use concepts of rational logic, but poetic images integrated into mythical thinking: it represents a different cognitive pattern. Thirdly, the presence of the logic of the concrete in Quechua culture, articulated with the mythopoetical model, makes translation from Western abstract formal logic difficult. Reflections on these issues provide new analytical possibilities. (shrink)

This paper asks how perception becomes racializing and seeks the means for its critical interruption. My aim is not only to understand the recalcitrant and limitative temporal structure of racializing habits of seeing, but also to uncover the possibilities within perception for a critical awareness and destabilization of this structure. Reading Henri Bergson and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in dialogue with Frantz Fanon, Iris Marion Young and race-critical feminism, I locate in hesitation the phenomenological moment where habits of seeing can be internally (...) fractured. Hesitation, I claim, makes visible the exclusionary logic of racializing and objectifying perception, countering its affective closure and opening it to critical transformation. (shrink)

This article deals mainly with problems of cultural/transcultural translation between the Quechua and Spanish cultures, analysing these on the basis of some ideas by Juri Lotman and Peeter Torop. The process of translation implies considering the Quechua semiosphere’s internal borders as well as the external borders related to the cultures that existed at the time of Tahuantin Suyo, and all changes that have come from the Spanish conquest of Latin America. In the case of the Quechua culture, the problems are (...) numerous and conflicting in several dimensions. First of all, Quechua is an agglutinating language that creates problems for translation into a flexional language such as Spanish. Secondly, and more importantly, there exists a mythopoetical model of the world that has been built in this culture, which does not use concepts of rational logic, but poetic images integrated into mythical thinking: it represents a different cognitive pattern. Thirdly, the presence of the logic of the concrete in Quechua culture, articulated with the mythopoetical model, makes translation from Western abstract formal logic difficult. Reflections on these issues provide new analytical possibilities. (shrink)

Background Noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) provides important benefits yet raises ethical concerns. We surveyed Canadian pregnant women and their partners to explore their views regarding pressure to test and terminate a pregnancy, as well as other societal impacts that may result from the routinization of NIPT.Methods A questionnaire was offered (March 2015 to July 2016) to pregnant women and their partners at five healthcare facilities in four Canadian provinces.Results 882 pregnant women and 395 partners completed the survey. 64% of women (...) anticipated feeling no pressure to take the test if it were offered routinely, and 39% were not concerned about routinization leading to increased pressure to terminate a pregnancy of a fetus with Down Syndrome. Regarding other social concerns possibly resulting from routinization, pregnant women were most concerned regarding a reduction in resources available for people with Down Syndrome and their families and least concerned regarding a decrease in the population of people with Down Syndrome.Conclusions Our findings reflect the concerns expressed by pregnant women and their partners, both personal (pressure to test, pressure to terminate) and societal (e.g., regarding potential negative impact on people with disabilities and their families). Even if most women were not concerned about feeling pressured to test due to NIPT routinization, a large minority express concerns that should not be taken lightly. Moreover, a majority of respondents were concerned regarding pressure to terminate pregnancies due to NIPT routinization as well as regarding most societal impacts they were queried on, especially the possible future reduction in resources available for people with DS and their families. Canadian policy-makers should consider these potential negative ramifications of NIPT and ensure that appropriate social policies accompany its implementation. (shrink)

Islamic ethics; Muslims; conduct of life.

Faylasū al-ʻArab: al-Kindī -- al-Muʻallim al-thānī: al-Fārābī -- al-Shāʻir al-ḥakīm: al-Mutanabbī -- Baṭalīmūs al-ʻArab: Ibn al-Haytham -- Shaykh al-Islām: Ibn Taymīyah.

Prophets, Pre-Islamic; conduct of life; early works to 1800.

BackgroundThe clinical introduction of non-invasive prenatal testing for fetal aneuploidies is currently transforming the landscape of prenatal screening in many countries. Since it is noninvasive, safe and allows the early detection of abnormalities, NIPT expanded rapidly and the test is currently commercially available in most of the world. As NIPT is being introduced globally, its clinical implementation should consider various challenges, including the role of the surrounding social and cultural contexts. We conducted a qualitative study with healthcare professionals in Lebanon (...) and Quebec as case studies, to highlight the relevance of cultural contexts and to explore the concerns that should be taken into account for an ethical implementation of NIPT.MethodsWe conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 healthcare professionals (HCPs), 10 from each country, practicing in the field of prenatal screening and follow up diagnostic testing, including obstetricians and gynecologists, nurses, medical geneticists and, genetic counselors. We aimed to 1) explore HCPs’ perceptions and views regarding issues raised by NIPT and 2) to shed light on ways in which the introduction of the same technology (NIPT) in two different contexts (Lebanon and Quebec) raises common and different challenges that are influenced by the cultural norms and legal policies in place.ResultsWe identified challenges to the ethical implementation of NIPT. Some are common to both contexts, including financial/economic, social, and organizational/ educational challenges. Others are specific to each context. For example, challenges for Lebanon include abortion policy and financial profit, and in Quebec challenges include lobbying by Disability rights associations and geographical access to NIPT.ConclusionsOur findings highlight the need to consider specific issues related to various cultural contexts when developing frameworks that can guide an ethically sound implementation of NIPT. Further, they show that healthcare professional education and training remain paramount in order to provide NIPT counseling in a way that supports pregnant women and couples’ choice. (shrink)

International Institute of Islamic Thought; Islam; essence, genius, nature; history.

As emphasised in Islamic sources, justice is one of the most important issues covered in the religion of Islam. In fact, justice is a central theme in Islam and has a special value in this regard. Conversation about justice and its nature, as well as its realisation in human communities, has been thus far a necessity in human life. Actually, the establishment and implementation of justice in all areas are crucial for the utopia. Given the importance of this subject, the (...) present study aims to determine and explain the components of the justice-oriented Islamic community based on the teachings of Nahj al-Balaghah. Therefore, the components that introduce justice orientation in the Islamic community are extracted from the sermons, letters and wise sayings (viz. narrations) of Nahj al-Balaghah. Afterward, the extracted components are classified based on the similarity of the themes and concepts. In the end, five classifications are introduced, including distributive justice, procedural justice, interactional justice, social justice and fairness.Contribution: Based on the determined indices, the model of justice-oriented Islamic community is developed. It is thus recommended to pay more attention to the realisation of a justice-oriented Islamic community by researchers and leaders. This is mainly because of the fact that the opposite of a justice-oriented community is one with injustice, where oppression and disrespect for the rights of others occur, divine blessings change, divine wrath and anger are provoked and destruction approaches. (shrink)