The text is part of the investigative concerns from the authors with regard to the dialogue between literature and science teaching. It starts from several theoretical approaches around the general didactics, university or superior didactics, science’s didactics and for last, literature’s didactics. This is largely due to our search which is focused in articulate the university didactics with science and literature’s didactics, meanwhile, we pretend to answer to the questions ¿How are the specific didactics of science and literature going to (...) contribute to the university didactics and how is the last one going to contribute to these specific didactics? ¿Is it the dialogue between science and literature possible? The paper has been made in middle education, in Educative Institution José Miguel de Restrepo y Puerta, from Copacabana and also in university education, in the academic unities of Dietetics and Nutrition School, Agricultural Sciences and Medicine, from the University of Antioquia. Finally, the partial results indicate: i) the necessity of general Didactics as a discipline focused on teaching and learning processes to ask itself for its internal problems and establish relations with specific didactics. (shrink)

Desde que su mentor, Norberto Bobbio, le encargara la traducción de la segunda edición de la Teoría pura del derecho, la carrera de Mario G. Losano ha sido tan larga como polifacética. En esta entrevista, conversamos sobre su formación y sobre el contexto cultural que envolvió el inicio de su carrera académica en Italia. Posteriormente, nos centramos en dos de los principales temas de su producción académica. Por un lado, profundizamos en sus estudios kelsenianos, destacando el enfoque histórico que (...) caracteriza su aproximación a los problemas iusfilosóficos. Y, por otro lado, abordamos el asunto de los orígenes y el desarrollo de la informática jurídica, de la cual el profesor Losano ha sido un destacado precursor. (shrink)

Desde que su mentor, Norberto Bobbio, le encargara la traducción de la segunda edición de la Teoría pura del derecho, la carrera de Mario G. Losano ha sido tan larga como polifacética. En esta entrevista, conversamos sobre su formación y sobre el contexto cultural que envolvió el inicio de su carrera académica en Italia. Posteriormente, nos centramos en dos de los principales temas de su producción académica. Por un lado, profundizamos en sus estudios kelsenianos, destacando el enfoque histórico que (...) caracteriza su aproximación a los problemas iusfilosóficos. Y, por otro lado, abordamos el asunto de los orígenes y el desarrollo de la informática jurídica, de la cual el profesor Losano ha sido un destacado precursor. (shrink)

O presente trabalho tem por propósito demonstrar a defesa das liberdades, realizada porNorberto Bobbio, enquanto uma precondição salutar para o funcionamento das regras do jogodemocrático. Para tanto, será explicitado que o filósofo e jurista italiano parte, num primeiro momento, daanálise da democracia para, posteriormente, abordar as liberdades e a sua defesa. Em seu livro Il futurodella democrazia (1984), o pensador apresenta, em oposição aos regimes autocráticos, uma definiçãoprocedimental da democracia, concebida como regras do jogo. Essas regras configuram osprocedimentos, que devem (...) orientar as decisões políticas dos cidadãos chamados a decidir em umsistema democrático. Entretanto, segundo Bobbio, as regras do jogo só podem funcionar no âmbitopolítico se uma precondição for satisfeita: a defesa das liberdades individuais dos atores políticos. Porliberdades, o autor compreende as quatro liberdades da tradição liberal, sendo: a liberdade individual, aliberdade de imprensa e de opinião, a liberdade de reunião e a liberdade de associação. Nesse contexto,destaca-se que a defesa dessas liberdades está condicionada à estrutura de um Estado, que é, aomesmo tempo, liberal e de direito. Em outras palavras, somente um Estado de direito (em sentido forte),de cunho liberal, pode assegurar os direitos “invioláveis” dos cidadãos e, consequentemente, possibilitara participação política sem impedimentos. Como consequência desse pensamento, Bobbio analisa que oEstado liberal é o fundamento histórico e jurídico do Estado democrático e que, na contemporaneidade,o liberalismo e a democracia tendem a se aproximar a ponto de um defender a existência do outro. (shrink)

While lecturing on the philosophy of history at the University of Berlin, Hegel was asked by a student if the United States ought to be considered the country of the future. Obviously irritated, he answered: “As the country of the future, America does not concern me … Philosophy deals with the eternal, or with reason, and with that there is enough to do.” In his famous lecture on science as a vocation, addressed to students at the University of Munich at (...) the end of the First World War, Max Weber responded to insistent questions on his views as to the future of Germany: “The classroom is neither for demagogues nor for prophets.”. (shrink)

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to introduce the term Slow Tech as a way of describing information and communication technology that is good, clean and fair. These are technologies that are human centred, environmentally sustainable and socially desirable.Design/methodology/approach– The paper's approach is based on a qualitative discourse that justifies the introduction of Slow Tech as a new design paradigm.Findings– The limits of the human body, and the need to take into account human wellbeing, the limits of the planet (...) and stakeholders' interests in decision making, all suggest the need for a new paradigm, Slow Tech, in the design of ICT and ICT systems. Three scenarios are described as case studies.Practical implications– In order to prepare the next generation of researchers and computer professionals, many different actions need to be taken. Universities and colleges need to redesign education programmes for computer scientists and engineers by introducing subjects related to the social and ethical implications of computing, and computer professionals' associations need to introduce a code of ethics or ethical analysis into their members' career development. As a result, future computer professionals who are familiar with the Slow Tech approach will be able to collaborate much more easily across the kind of cross disciplinary teams suited to design human centred, sustainable and desirable technologies.Social implications– Rather than simply focusing on the role of computer professionals, all members of society are called to play a new role in the design of future ICT scenarios. Starting a societal dialogue that involves computer professionals, users, researchers, designers, ICT industrialists, and policy makers is very much needed.Originality/value– The value of this paper is in its call for reflection followed by action. Based on an holistic approach to the design of new ICT systems, the paper advocates a new starting point for systems design: it should be based on a long-term view of the desirability and social importance of technologies, their environmental impact and sustainability, and the fairness and equity of the conditions of workers involved in the computing manufacturing processes. (shrink)

In his autobiographical sketch, the author surveys sixty years of legal philosophy. He traces the major changes that have come about in the philosophy of law in the wake of the Second World War, and the gap which has been bridged between Continental and Anglo‐Saxon theories. The values of liberal democracy and the acknowledgement of human rights have helped to circumvent the gulf between natural law theories and legal positivist theories.

A theoretical framework for the reinforcement learning of aesthetic biases was recently proposed based on brain circuitries revealed by neuroimaging. A model grounded on that framework accounted for interesting features of human aesthetic biases. These features included individuality, cultural predispositions, stochastic dynamics of learning and aesthetic biases, and the peak-shift effect. However, despite the success in explaining these features, a potential weakness was the linearity of the value function used to predict reward. This linearity meant that the learning process employed (...) a value function that assumed a linear relationship between reward and sensory stimuli. Linearity is common in reinforcement learning in neuroscience. However, linearity can be problematic because neural mechanisms and the dependence of reward on sensory stimuli were typically nonlinear. Here, we analyze the learning performance with models including optimal nonlinear value functions. We also compare updating the free parameters of the value functions with the delta rule, which neuroscience models use frequently, vs. updating with a new Phi rule that considers the structure of the nonlinearities. Our computer simulations showed that optimal nonlinear value functions resulted in improvements of learning errors when the reward models were nonlinear. Similarly, the new Phi rule led to improvements in these errors. These improvements were accompanied by the straightening of the trajectories of the vector of free parameters in its phase space. This straightening meant that the process became more efficient in learning the prediction of reward. Surprisingly, however, this improved efficiency had a complex relationship with the rate of learning. Finally, the stochasticity arising from the probabilistic sampling of sensory stimuli, rewards, and motivations helped the learning process narrow the range of free parameters to nearly optimal outcomes. Therefore, we suggest that value functions and update rules optimized for social and ecological constraints are ideal for learning aesthetic biases. (shrink)

Based on the notion of bad faith, the article seeks to lay the foundations for a diagnosis of contemporaneity, having as an index, on the one hand, the lack of human determination and, on the other, the effectiveness of the world.

The problem of the relationship between “reason” and “law” has two different meanings depending on whether the first or the second of the two terms is considered to be the most important one. These two different meanings are revealed in the expressions “law of reason” and “legal reason,” respectively. In the first expression, “reason” is meant in its strong sense, that is, the faculty of grasping the essence of things, while in the second, “reason” is meant in a weak sense, (...) the ability to reason (calculate, infer, discuss). “Law of reason” and “legal reason” correspond to two different moments of the legal universe, the creation and, respectively, the application of law. Strong reason is that which discovers the rules to be obeyed, while weak reason is that which applies rules to an actual case. The first is legislating reason, while the second is judging reason. The main topic of the debate from the Greeks to Kant was that of legislating reason. Nowadays, instead, scholars in the field are interested in judging reason. Historicism and positivism mark the end of faith in the existence of rules which are objectively just, and which may be recognized by human reason. By now we have learned to do without the eternal truths in the knowledge of the world. However painful it may be, we are forced to resign ourselves to do without evident truths in ethics, as well. (shrink)

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine how Slow Tech can support the celebration of the 20-year series of ETHICOMP conferences, with its ethical and societal focus, building on earlier descriptions of Slow Tech. The paper takes Slow Tech’s ideas a step further to explore how a roadmap and concrete checklist of activities can be developed.Design/methodology/approach– The paper is a thought leadership or conceptual piece. Its approach is based on a normative, qualitative discourse. It, nevertheless, indicates a shift (...) towards concrete actions.Findings– Extracting from a brief historical overview, the paper lays out the means of building a Slow Tech roadmap and a Slow Tech checklist of actions. It also investigates a number of the challenges that might face Slow Tech in the future.Research limitations/implications– The paper has implications for stakeholder fields as far-ranging as corporations, computing professional associations, universities and research institutions and end-users.Originality/value– As with other investigations of Slow Tech, the value of this paper is in its call for reflection followed by action. It provides a useful complement and counterbalance to an earlier paper by the same authors: “Slow Tech: a quest for good, clean and fair ICT” published inJournal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society. (shrink)

Purpose– This paper aims to provide an overview of clean information and communication technology, including a brief review of recent developments in the field and a lengthy set of possible reading matter. The need to rethink the impact of ICTs on people’s lives and the survival of the planet is beginning to be addressed by a Slow Tech approach. Among Slow Tech’s main questions are these two: Is ICT sustainable in the long term? What should be done by computer ethics (...) scholars, computer professionals, policy makers and society in general to ensure that clean ICT can be produced, used and appropriately disposed of?Design/methodology/approach– The paper is based on a comprehensive review of clean tech-related literature and an investigation of progress made in the clean tech field.Findings– This opening paper of aJournal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Societyspecial session aims to provide an overview of clean ICT, including a brief review of recent developments in the field and a lengthy set of possible reading matter. As a result, it is anticipated that Slow Tech – and in this case, its second component of clean ICT – can provide a compass to steer research, development and the use and reuse of environmentally friendly, sustainable ICT.Originality/value– This conceptual paper emphasises that, until only recently, no one questioned the potential long-term sustainability of ICT. This issue is, however, now very much a matter that is on the research and teaching, and action, agenda. (shrink)

This article discusses the contribution to evolutionary theory of Leonard Darwin, the eighth child of Charles Darwin. By analysing the correspondence Leonard Darwin maintained with Ronald Aylmer Fisher in conjunction with an assessment of his books and other written works between the 1910s and 1930s, this article argues for a more prominent role played by him than the previously recognised in the literature as an informal mentor of Fisher. The paper discusses Leonard’s efforts to amalgamate Mendelism with both Eugenics and (...) Darwinism in order for the first to base their policies on new scientific developments and to help the second in finding a target for natural selection. Without a formal qualification in biological sciences and as such mistrusted by some “formal” scientists, Leonard Darwin engaged with key themes of Darwinism such as mimicry, the role of mutations on speciation and the process of genetic variability, arriving at important conclusions concerning the usefulness of Mendelian genetics for his father’s theory. (shrink)

Mexico faces a crisis of national sovereignty and independence as it struggles to establish a democracy amidst integration into the world market system and internal demands for social justice. U.S. involvement in Mexican affairs, providing military training and equipment for government troops, contributes to a state-sponsored war against civilians, namely indigenous groups and the middle and lower classes devastated by NAFTA. While resistance movements in Chiapas respond to capitalist practices and repression, Valdez argues the Mexican government minimizes them to displace (...) its indigenousgroups and facilitate their silent annihilation. U.S. policy, the Mexican state, indigenous issues, and free trade are interconnected with Mexico’s larger society. (shrink)

Mexico faces a crisis of national sovereignty and independence as it struggles to establish a democracy amidst integration into the world market system and internal demands for social justice. U.S. involvement in Mexican affairs, providing military training and equipment for government troops, contributes to a state-sponsored war against civilians, namely indigenous groups and the middle and lower classes devastated by NAFTA. While resistance movements in Chiapas respond to capitalist practices and repression, Valdez argues the Mexican government minimizes them to displace (...) its indigenousgroups and facilitate their silent annihilation. U.S. policy, the Mexican state, indigenous issues, and free trade are interconnected with Mexico’s larger society. (shrink)

Among the ancients, ethics was resolved largely through the treatment of virtues. Suffice it to recall Aristotle's Etica Nicomachea, which was for many centuries a prescribed text. In our times such a treatment has almost disappeared. Today moral philosophers discuss values and choices, on both analytical and propositional levels, and their major or minor rationality, as well as discussing rules or norms and consequently rights and duties. One of the last significant writings devoted to the classic subject of virtue was (...) the second part of Kant's Metaphysics of Morals (Die Metaphysik der Sitten), titled The Theory of Virtue (Die Tugendlehre), the first part of which discusses the Theory of Law (Die Rechtlehre). However, Kant's ethics is especially one of duty, and more specifically of inward as distinguished from outward duty, with which the theory of law is concerned. In the former, virtue is defined as the necessary willpower to accomplish one's duty, as the moral strength required by man to fight those defects which prevent or become an obstacle to the accomplishment of duty. Kant's theory of virtue is an integral part of the ethics of duty and, as explicitly and repeatedly declared, has nothing to do with Aristotelian ethics. (shrink)

Increasingly frequent discussions in our country over the last few years on the question of morals have roused the old theme of the relation between morals and politics. Although it is an old theme, it is nevertheless a theme that remains new, which explains why no moral question, regardless of the field in which it has been raised, has ever found a definitive answer. While the issue of the relation between politics and morals is the best known, due to the (...) length of the debate, the authority of the authors who took part, the variety of the arguments put forth and the importance of the subject, it is not that different from the issue of the relation between morals and all other human activity; thus the fact that we can readily speak of the ethics of economic relations or, as often the case over the last few years, of market ethics, or sexual ethics, medical ethics, the ethics of sports and still others. In all these diverse spheres of human activity, the same problem always arises: the distinction between what is morally licit and what is morally illicit. (shrink)