The main objective of this article is to provide a critique of the pandemic strategy suggested by the World Health Organization (WHO) and implemented by various countries from March 2020 onwards in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China. Based on the theories of Michel Foucault, this critique aims to show that, in the first instance, the pandemic may be understood in terms of the art of governing human beings at the point of interaction between politics and medicine; (...) secondly, in Foucauldian terminology, such interaction may be referred to as ‘noso-politics’, that is, a mechanism used to control the body of the population via authoritarian measures exercised in the name of the health of the population; thirdly, such a mechanism exercises its power by invoking a mechanistic truth about the SARS-CoV-2 virus which may be countered by an argument that takes a historical perspective on the virus; fourthly, the pandemic strategy may be opposed by a syndemic approach that takes into account interactions between emerging diseases such as COVID-19 and non-communicable illnesses, as well as the biological and socio-economic conditions that the well-being of the population depends on. In short, by providing a critique of the politics of truth about the pandemic, the virus, and health measures, the article aims to encourage a critical attitude that will challenge both the authorities and the truth they invoke to prevent the pandemic strategy being used as a mechanism for governing, given the predictions of the recurrent emergence of new viruses. (shrink)

El ensayo tiene el propósito de dilucidar la relación establecida por Michel Foucault entre el medio, los dispositivos de seguridad y la población. Elementos que pueden ser anexionados o circunscritos en el ejercicio del biopoder en la Modernidad. Al exponer la relación de estos elementos preguntamos por la existencia dada del organismo o del viviente en su medio, lo cual conlleva conocer la emergencia del concepto medio y, a su vez, saber cómo se dio su desbloqueo epistemológico en el tránsito (...) de la mecánica a la biología y a la literatura, para después situarse en la arquitectura. Una vez conocida la historia del concepto medio se discute la idea general de que el viviente, en este caso el humano, al identificarlo como homo faber, transforma su medio de manera unidireccional, ante lo cual se opone la tesis de que el humano al transformar su medio, haciéndolo artificial, termina siendo afectado por esa artificialidad misma. Por esta afectación del hombre sobre su medio y viceversa, se plantea la importancia de recurrir a una teoría del medio puesta en relación con los dispositivos de seguridad y, en todo caso, con el biopoder. The essay has the intention to explore the relation established by Michel Foucault between the milieu, the security apparatuses and the population. Elements that can be annexed or circumscribed in the biopower exercise of Modernity. To expose the relation of this elements we can ask for the existence of the organism or the living in his milieu, which involves knowing the emergence of milieu concept and, at the same time, knowing how occurs the epistemological unlocking in the transit from mechanics to biology and the literature, to be situated in architecture. Once known the milieu’s history can be discussed the general idea that the living, in this case the human, identified as homo faber, transforms his milieu in an unidirectional way, whereupon opposed the thesis that the human to transform his milieu, making artificial, is affected by this artificiality. For this affectation, the human over his milieu and vice versa, set the importance to draw upon a theory of the milieu in relation with the security apparatuses and with bio-power. (shrink)

Este texto recoge parte de las reflexiones y del desarrollo del capítulo 5 del libro La barbarie que no vimos: Fotografía y memoria en Colombia. Aquí algunas preguntas que se intentan responder en este ensayo: ¿son las tecnologías las únicas responsables de la imposibilidad de ejercer una contemplación activa frente al infortunio de los demás? A propósito de la Parábola del Buen Samaritano, ¿este habría sido reemplazado por el espectador distante o implicado? ¿Qué sucede cuando ese espectador, de tanto ver (...) naufragios, termina fatigado? ¿Y de tanta fatiga, se vuelve indiferente? ¿Qué significa ser espectadores de naufragios en una época en la que la catástrofe no es ocasionada exclusivamente por fuerzas naturales sino por los propios seres humanos? ¿Es posible hallar hoy alguna orilla segura para reconocernos distanciados y salvados de las catástrofes ajenas? (shrink)

The enthymeme is essential because it reflects what humans do when they think. It provides an effective pedagogical approach to the analysis and synthesis of ideas in the classroom. In this volume, such an approach is applied to various areas of content for the purpose of helping students prepare themselves for the challenges of modern life.

La Constitución dogmática Lumen gentium ha rescatado desde la tradición cristiana la expresión Iglesia doméstica para referirse a la familia. Dicha expresión posee en sí misma una riqueza incalculable al momento de descubrir el misterio de la esencia y misión de la familia cristiana, por lo que aporta elementos fundamentales para la elaboración de una teología de la familia. Es por este motivo que la presente investigación pretende levantar una propuesta de lectura eclesiológica de la Iglesia doméstica, a partir de (...) cuatro claves de lectura: cristológica, sacramental, pneumatológica y escatológica. The dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium has rescued from Christian tradition, the expression Domestic Church referred to the family. Such expression possess in itself an invaluable richness considering that discovers the essence and the mission of Christian family. That´s why it contributes with fundamental matters to the elaboration of a Theology of the Family. For this reason, this research pretends to raise a proposal of ecclesiological reading of Domestic Church, based in four key reading points: Christological, sacramental, pneumatological and eschatological. (shrink)

El propósito del artículo es profundizar el carácter absoluto de la auto-comunicación de Dios al hombre, lo cual entregará un aporte a la teología actual en lo que se refiere a la comprensión y utilización del concepto de auto-comunicación, y a la vez entender de un modo renovado el encuentro entre Dios y el hombre, lo que permitirá hallar nuevas pistas para la entrega del mensaje cristiano al hombre contemporáneo. El escrito aborda el tema en dos tópicos: el primero en (...) razón del Dios absoluto, como fundamento de la auto-comunicación y el segundo que trata el carácter trinitario de la auto-comunicación absoluta. (shrink)

Resumen En el siguiente artículo se pretende hacer una lectura teológica del poder siguiendo a Karl Rahner en su concepción del mismo como don, tarea y posibilidad. El poder es don divino para el ser humano el cual participa del poder de Dios, sin embargo, cuando lo ejerce puede corromperse y pierde la finalidad para lo que es entregado. De este modo, el mal ejercicio del poder tiene repercusiones tanto para la persona como para la sociedad, graves consecuencias, por eso (...) es necesario asumir la responsabilidad de cada acción. En este sentido, el ejercicio del poder es una tarea esencial para la vida en sociedad y, a la vez, es una posibilidad de construcción del Reino con alcances escatológicos. Abtracts The following article intends to make a theological reading of power following Karl Rahner in his conception of it as a gift, task and possibility. Power is a divine gift for the human being who participates in the power of God, however when exercised it can be corrupted and loses the purpose for what is delivered. In this way, the bad exercise of power has repercussions for both the person and society, serious consequences, that is why it is necessary to take responsibility for each action. In this sense, the exercise of power is an essential task for life in society and at the same time, it is a possibility of building the Kingdom with eschatological scope. (shrink)

Acquaintance with the name of argument against the vacuum, the present syllogism in René Descartes’ The Principles of Philosophy of 1644 must be extended to any form of continuum space. This article studies it from the point of view of Logic, with the purpose of revealing its petitio principii in relation with the analytical judgments. Hereby, as a result of review the foremost historic sources from where Kant obtains his famous division of the judgments in analytical and synthetic, we will (...) be able to understand the best method to discern about them and to demonstrate the subdivision that we need to establish inside the analytical judgments. (shrink)

The valence–space metaphor research area investigates the metaphorical mapping of valenced concepts onto space. Research findings from this area indicate that positive, neutral, and negative concepts are associated with upward, midward, and downward locations, respectively, in the vertical plane. The same research area has also indicated that such concepts seem to have no preferential location on the horizontal plane. The approach–avoidance effect consists in decreasing the distance between positive stimuli and the body and increasing the distance between negative stimuli and (...) the body. Thus, the valence–space metaphor accounts for the mapping of valenced concepts onto the vertical and horizontal planes, and the approach–avoidance effect accounts for the mapping of valenced concepts onto the “depth” plane. By using a cube conceived for the study of allocation of valenced concepts onto 3D space, we show in three studies that positive concepts are placed in upward locations and near the participants’ body, negative concepts are placed in downward locations and far from the participants’ body, and neutral concepts are placed in between these concepts in both planes. (shrink)

Sport is an emotional experience. Studies have shown that high emotional intelligence (EI) is associated with better sports performance, though different aspects of sports experience and their relationship with EI are still unclear. This study examined the possible relationships between sports experience and EI dimensions of undergraduate athletes. Likewise, according to the differences described in the literature between men and women, the secondary aim was to identify the possible relationship between EI and sports experience in both subgroups. A total of (...) 1784 [712 men (39.9%), 1072 women (60.1%); mean age = 21.3 years, SD = 4.2)] undergraduate athletes completed the Trait Meta Mood Scale and a sports experience questionnaire. Comparisons between groups were performed using Mann–Whitney-Uand H-Kruskal–Wallis tests and correlations between variables were analyzed using Spearman correlation. We found that the number of different sports practiced and the number of years practicing sports were positively associated with emotional repair (ER). However, the number of years practicing sports was negatively associated with emotional attention (EA). Male athletes who trained more and had a higher competitive level were more likely to show higher ER. In any case, it is necessary to take into account that all the associations were weak. Our study suggested that athletes tend to attend to and value their feelings and use positive thinking to repair their negative moods. (shrink)

"[N]o matter how much of a coalition space this is, it ain't nothing like the coalescing you've got to do tomorrow, and Tuesday and Wednesday."This essay is a critical reflection on the centrality of coalitional politics for decolonial feminist philosophy. Decolonial feminisms emerge from multisited struggles with colonization and, as a result, are rich and heterogeneous.1 Thus, the starting point for decolonial feminists must be one that centers on coalitional politics. Women of color have long emphasized the importance of coalition (...) to collective struggle against a matrix of systems of oppression.2 However, the work of forging coalitions is just that, work. Indeed, the work of coalition building, as Bernice... (shrink)

This is the first book-length study of Descartes's metaphysics to place it in its immediate historical context, the Late Scholastic philosophy of thinkers such as Suárez against which Descartes reacted. Jorge Secada views Cartesian philosophy as an 'essentialist' reply to the 'existentialism' of the School, and his discussion includes careful analyses and original interpretations of such central Cartesian themes as the role of scepticism, intentionality and the doctrine of the material falsity of ideas, universals and the relation between sense (...) and understanding, causation and the proofs of the existence of God, the theory of substance, and the dualism of mind and matter. His study offers a picture of Descartes's metaphysics that is both novel and philosophically illuminating. (shrink)

After examining Newman’s youthful ideas about poetry, this article shows how some of the poems Newman wrote during his Mediterranean voyage (1832–1833) provide an interesting window into his feelings and beliefs at the beginning of the Oxford Movement. In so doing, the article attempts to kindle interest in Newman’s largely undervalued talent as a poet.

During the last few years, burnout has gained more and more attention for its strong connection with job performance, absenteeism, and presenteeism. It is a psychological phenomenon that depends on occupation, also presenting differences between sexes. However, to properly compare the burnout levels of different groups, a psychometric instrument with adequate validity evidence should be selected (i.e., with measurement invariance). This paper aims to describe the psychometric properties of the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI) version adapted for workers from Brazil and (...) Portugal, and to compare burnout across countries and sexes. OLBI's validity evidence based on the internal structure (dimensionality, reliability, and measurement invariance), and validity evidence based on relationships with other variables (work engagement) are described. Additionally, it aims presents a revision of different OLBI's versions—since this is the first version of the instrument developed simultaneously for both countries—it is an important instrument for understanding burnout between sexes in organizations. Data were used from 1,172 employees across two independent samples, one from Portugal and the other from Brazil, 65 percent being female. Regarding the OLBI internal structure, a reduced version (15 items) was obtained. The high correlation between disengagement and exhaustion, suggested the existence of a second-order latent factor, burnout, which presented measurement invariance for country and sex. Confirmatory factor analysis of the Portuguese OLBI version presented good goodness-of-fit indices and good internal consistency values. No statistically significant differences were found in burnout between sexes or countries. OLBI also showed psychometric properties that make it a promising and freely available instrument to measure and compare burnout levels of Portuguese and Brazilian employees. (shrink)

Metacognition is the capacity to evaluate the success of one's own cognitive processes in various domains; for example, memory and perception. It remains controversial whether metacognition relies on a domain-general resource that is applied to different tasks or if self-evaluative processes are domain specific. Here, we investigated this issue directly by examining the neural substrates engaged when metacognitive judgments were made by human participants of both sexes during perceptual and memory tasks matched for stimulus and performance characteristics. By comparing patterns (...) of fMRI activity while subjects evaluated their performance, we revealed both domain-specific and domain-general metacognitive representations. Multivoxel activity patterns in anterior prefrontal cortex predicted levels of confidence in a domain-specific fashion, whereas domain-general signals predicting confidence and accuracy were found in a widespread network in the frontal and posterior midline. The demonstration of domain-specific metacognitive representations suggests the presence of a content-rich mechanism available to introspection and cognitive control. (shrink)

This article examines Aristotle's views concerning the possibility of friendship between human beings and nonhuman animals. The suggestion that he denies this possibility is rejected. I reassess the textual evidence adduced by scholars in support of this reading, while adding new material for discussion. Central to the traditional reading is the assumption that animals, in Aristotle's view, cannot be friends in virtue of their cognitive limitations. I argue that Aristotle's account of animal cognition is perfectly consistent with the possibility of (...) friendship between human beings and nonhuman animals. (shrink)

This research investigated the metacognitive underpinnings of moral judgment. Participants in two studies were asked to provide quick intuitive responses to moral dilemmas and to indicate their fee...

Workplace bullying has a well-established body of research internationally, but the United States has lagged behind the rest of the world in the identification and investigation of this phenomenon. This paper presents a managerial perspective on bullying in organizations. The lack of attention to the concept of workplace dignity in American organizational structures has supported and even encouraged both casual and more severe forms of harassment that our workplace laws do not currently cover. The demoralization victims suffer can create toxic (...) working environments and impair organizational productivity. Some methods of protecting your organization from this blight of bullying are proposed. Bullying has always been part of the human condition; history is rife with references to abuse of power and unnecessary or excessive force. The classic bully story is of Joseph and his brothers, a tale of envy and hostility. The refinement of bullying to include various forms of legally defined social harassment is a relatively late phenomenon, however, dating to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the United States, bullying is not illegal, whereas it is illegal in many other countries. Bullying is not about benign teasing, nor does it include the off-color jokes, racial slurs, or unwelcome advances that are the hallmarks of legally defined harassment. Workplace bullying is the pattern of destructive and generally deliberate demeaning of co-workers or subordinates that reminds us of the activities of the schoolyard bully. Unlike the schoolyard bully, however, the workplace bully is an adult, usually (but not always) aware of the impact of his or her behavior on others. Bullying in the workplace, often tacitly accepted by the organizational leadership, can create an environment of psychological threat that diminishes corporate productivity and inhibits individual and group commitment. The two examples that follow will help to clarify the difference between harassment and bullying. (shrink)

Implementing corporate social responsibility (CSR) in supply chains is not a trivial task. In fact, many firms in recent years have publicly proclaimed that in order to keep their CSR commitments, they had to reduce reliance on external suppliers by vertically integrating their operations. Our aim in this article is to examine whether there is truly a relationship between a firm’s CSR performance and its level of vertical integration. Drawing on a multi-industry sample of 2,715 firm-year observations, and after addressing (...) endogeneity concerns, we demonstrate that firms with higher CSR performance tend to vertically integrate more (or, outsource less). We also demonstrate that this tendency is weaker for firms that have higher degrees of asset specificity or international diversification. Our core conclusion is that CSR performance and outsourcing are at odds, but firms can reconcile this tension by deepening their collaborations with suppliers. (shrink)

Recent replication crises in psychology and other fields have led to intense reflection about the validity of common research practices. Much of this reflection has focussed on reporting standards, and how they may be related to the questionable research practices that could underlie a high proportion of irreproducible findings in the published record. As a developing field, it is particularly important for Experimental Philosophy to avoid some of the pitfalls that have beset other disciplines. To this end, here we provide (...) a detailed, comprehensive assessment of current reporting practices in Experimental Philosophy. We focus on the quality of statistical reporting and the disclosure of information about study methodology. We assess all the articles using quantitative methods that were published over the years 2013–2016 in 29 leading philosophy journals. We find that null hypothesis significance testing is the prevalent statistical practice in Experimental Philosophy, although relying solely on this approach has been criticised in the psychological literature. To augment this approach, various additional measures have become commonplace in other fields, but we find that Experimental Philosophy has adopted these only partially: 53% of the papers report an effect size, 28% confidence intervals, 1% examined prospective statistical power and 5% report observed statistical power. Importantly, we find no direct relation between an article’s reporting quality and its impact. We conclude with recommendations for authors, reviewers and editors in Experimental Philosophy, to facilitate making research statistically-transparent and reproducible. (shrink)

In this paper, it is argued that both the informer and the hearer in a testimonial situation deserve epistemic merit insofar as they contribute to the collaborative achievement of sharing knowledge. The paper introduces a distinction between the ideals of self-sufficiency and epistemic autonomy. The autonomous exercise of our epistemic agency is very often carried out under strong conditions of epistemic dependence. Testimony exhibits a kind of social dependence that does not threaten the autonomy of the subjects that need to (...) consider their own epistemic capacities. When involved in a testimonial situation, both speaker and hearer declare, at least implicitly, the standings they occupy in an epistemic space and are obliged to recognise certain epistemic requirements. (shrink)

To find the neural substrates of consciousness, researchers compare subjects’ neural activity when they are aware of stimuli against neural activity when they are not aware. Ideally, to guarantee that the neural substrates of consciousness—and nothing but the neural substrates of consciousness—are isolated, the only difference between these two contrast conditions should be conscious awareness. Nevertheless, in practice, it is quite challenging to eliminate confounds and irrelevant differences between conscious and unconscious conditions. In particular, there is an often-neglected confound that (...) is crucial to eliminate from neuroimaging studies: task performance. Unless subjects’ task performance is matched (and hence perceptual signal processing is matched), researchers risk finding the neural correlates of perception, rather than conscious perception. Here, we discuss the theoretical motivations for the performance matching framework and review empirical demonstrations of, and theoretical inferences derived from, obtaining differences in consciousness while controlling for task performance. We summarize signal detection theoretic modeling frameworks that explain how it is that we can derive performance-matched differences in consciousness without the effect being trivially driven by differences in criterion setting, and also provide principles for designing experimental paradigms that yield performance-matched differences in awareness. Finally, we address potential technical and theoretical issues that stem from matching performance across conditions of awareness, and we introduce the notion of “triangulation” for designing comprehensive experimental sets that can better reveal the neural substrates of consciousness. (shrink)

I argue for the view that the scientific model which Plato consistently had in mind when sharpening his main ethical theory was medicine. Moreover, I ascribe to Plato a “medical model of ethics”. A careful examination of this model reveals how Plato appropriates several medical concepts and ideas by employing two central methodological devices in his thought: dialectical transposition and analogical characterisation. In discussing them, I identify different kinds of medical references in the dialogues –not all medical references in Plato (...) have the same methodological status– and draw greater attention to the most recurrent medical analogies in them. More generally, the paper is also meant to provide a case study of the complex relationship between medicine and philosophy in Antiquity by examining in a new light the various ways in which the former served as an epistemological and ethical model for the latter. (shrink)

Biosemiotics argues that “sign” and “meaning” are two essential concepts for the explanation of life. Peircean biosemiotics, founded by Tomas Sebeok from Peirce’s semiotics and Jacob von Uexkül’s studies on animal communication, today makes up the mainstream of this discipline. Marcello Barbieri has developed an alternative account of meaning in biology based on the concept of code. Barbieri rejects Peircean biosemiotics on the grounds that this discipline opens the door to nonscientific approaches to biology through its use of the concept (...) of “interpretation.” In this article, it is noted that Barbieri does not adequately distinguish among Peirce’s semiotics, Peircean biosemiotics, and “interpretation-based” biosemiotics. Two key arguments of Barbieri are criticized: his limited view of science and his rejection of “interpretation-based” biosemiotics. My argument is based on tools taken from a different approach: Robert Rosen’s relational biology. Instead of “signs” and “meanings,” the study begins in this case from the “components” and “functions” of the organism. Rosen pursues a new definition of a law of nature, introduces the anticipatory nature of organisms, and defines the living being as a system closed to efficient cause. It is shown that Code Biosemiotics and Peircean biosemiotics can share a common field of study. Additionally, some proposals are suggested to carry out a reading of Rosen’s biology as a biosemiotic theory. (shrink)