An analysis of the evolution of the overlapping histories of human rights and development, and an exploration of the alternatives, through the lens of indigenous and other southern theories and epistemologies.

An analysis of the evolution of the overlapping histories of human rights and development, and an exploration of the alternatives, through the lens of indigenous and other southern theories and epistemologies.

El objetivo fundamental por el cual las sociedades establecen arreglos institucionales es el de abaratar los costos de transacción. Para alcanzar dicha meta se han ensayado diferentes métodos de diseño que colocan el énfasis principalmente en los sistemas de incentivos dirigidos a estimular un comportamiento de obediencia de las reglas institucionales. Mostraremos por una parte que el punto de vista interno asumido por los usuarios en relación con las instituciones contribuye a bajar los costos de transacción, y por la otra (...) que el mensaje valorativo de la autoridad normativa cumple un papel decisivo en la construcción de tal punto de vista. (shrink)

Si apoyándonos en la evidencia histórica y empírica aceptamos que las bases éticas de una sociedad son el producto de una serie de transacciones consolidadas, y a su vez dichas bases están dirigidas a regular transacciones sociales, debemos dirigir nuestra atención a caracterizar cuáles son las transacciones que han resultado más exitosas en la tarea de desarrollar un entramado ético fuerte y estable.

El objetivo fundamental por el cual las sociedades establecen arreglos institucionales es el de abaratar los costos de transacción. Para alcanzar dicha meta se han ensayado diferentes métodos de diseño que colocan el énfasis principalmente en los sistemas de incentivos dirigidos a estimular un comportamiento de obediencia de las reglas institucionales. Mostraremos por una parte que el punto de vista interno asumido por los usuarios en relación con las instituciones contribuye a bajar los costos de transacción, y por la otra (...) que el mensaje valorativo de la autoridad normativa cumple un papel decisivo en la construcción de tal punto de vista. (shrink)

A fin de superar los efectos de la paradoja de la autoridad se hace necesario desplegar razones que sean capaces de justificar por qué las decisiones normativas deben ser obedecidas por los sujetos subordinados. Si consideramos que las razones del derecho sólo tienden a promover en los sujetos una actitud externa hacía las normas, una respuesta basada en sanciones puede ser considerada como una buena razón. Pero si creemos que las razones dadas por la autoridad normativa deben promover una actitud (...) interna, debemos desarrollar criterios independientes a fin de evaluar la capacidad de la decisión normativa para superar la paradoja de la autoridad. (shrink)

The thesis proposes an account of the means of scientific representation focused on similarity, or more specifically, on the notion of “creative similarity”. I first distinguish between two different questions regarding the problem of representation: the question about the constituents and the question about the means of representation (following Suárez 2003; van Fraassen 2008). I argue that, although similarity is not a good candidate for constituent of representation, it can satisfactorily answer the question about the means of representation if (...) adequately characterized. To motivate this position, I dispute the main arguments offered against similarity as means of representation, namely the arguments from variety, vagueness, and misrepresentation, and contend that similarity plays a central epistemic role in practices of representing in science. The study of the role of similarity in scientific practice, I argue, requires the analysis of the uses of judgments of similarity in the construction of scientific models. I examine the cases of the Mississippi Basin Model and the San Francisco Bay Model to illustrate how judgments of similarity are directly involved in the production of epistemically fruitful models. Informed by the practical investigation developed throughout the thesis, I finally outline what I call the creative similarity account of the means of representation. The notion of “creative similarity” helps to capture the way in which similarity, as means of representation, intervenes in actual practices of representing, namely, in the form of a productive interplay of judgments of similarity and distortions (i.e. idealizations, abstractions, simplifications), which is employed by resourceful agents with the aim of understanding aspects of the natural world. (shrink)

Resumen: En este artículo reviso la interpretación de Eduardo Nicol de la teoría de la propiedad de Francisco Suárez. Para ello, presento la posición de Suárez acerca de la propiedad y la propiedad privada atendiendo dos cuestiones fundamentales. La primera es si la propiedad y la propiedad privada son derechos; la segunda es si ambos pertenecen a la naturaleza humana o no. Al final, argumento que la lectura de Nicol es insostenible, pues difícilmente puede admitirse que Suárez (...) defendió algún tipo de comunismo.: In this paper I revisit Eduardo Nicol’s interpretation of Suarez’s theory of property. To this purpose, I present Suárez’s account of property and private property focusing on two main aspects. The first is whether property and private property are rights; the second is whether they belong to the human nature or not. Finally, I argue that Nicol’s reading of Suárez is untenable for it can hardly be accepted that Suárez defended some kind of communism. (shrink)

Scientific representation is a currently booming topic, both in analytical philosophy and in history and philosophy of science. The analytical inquiry attempts to come to terms with the relation between theory and world; while historians and philosophers of science aim to develop an account of the practice of model building in the sciences. This article provides a review of recent work within both traditions, and ultimately argues for a practice-based account of the means employed by scientists to effectively achieve representation (...) in the modelling sciences. (shrink)

Scientific representation is a booming field nowadays within the philosophy of science, with many papers published regularly on the topic every year, and several yearly conferences and workshops held on related topics. Historically, the topic originates in two different strands in 20th-century philosophy of science. One strand begins in the 1950s, with philosophical interest in the nature of scientific theories. As the received or “syntactic” view gave way to a “semantic” or “structural” conception, representation progressively gained the center stage. Yet, (...) there is another, older, strand that links representation to fin de siècle modeling debates, particularly in the emerging Bildtheorie of Boltzmann and Hertz, and to the ensuing discussion among philosophers thereafter. Both strands feed into present-day philosophical work on scientific representation. There are a number of different orthogonal questions that philosophers ask regarding representation. One set of questions concerns the nature of the representational relation between theories or models, on the one hand, and the real-world systems they purportedly represent. Such questions lie at the more metaphysical and abstract end of the spectrum—and they are often addressed with the abstract tools of the analytical metaphysician. They constitute what we may refer to as the “analytical inquiry” into representation. On the other hand there are questions regarding the use that scientists put some representations to in practice—these are questions that are best addressed by means of some of the favorite tools of the philosopher of science, including descriptive analysis, illustration by means of case studies, induction, exemplification, inference from practice, etc., and are best referred to as the “practical inquiry” into representation. The notion of representation invoked in such inquiries may be “deflationary” or “substantive”—depending on whether it construes representation as a primitive notion, or as susceptible to further reduction or analysis in terms of something else. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed an escalation in corporate social reporting (CSR) by UK companies (Gray, Kouhy and Lavers 1995). Whilst some elements of CSR reporting are required by law, much of it represents voluntary reporting. By investigating the non‐mandatory reporting of two aspects of social responsibility, corporate community involvement (CCI) and environmental impact, this paper seeks to explore why companies choose to make such disclosures. It specifically asks whether companies are primarily motivated by the strategic need to manage their reputation (...) and legitimacy rather than by the recognition of their ethical accountability, which is the stated purpose of reports produced by cutting edge companies (Clarke 1998). (shrink)

Sharply in focus in the United States right now is the disproportionate COVID‐19 infection, hospitalization, and mortality rates of Black, Indigenous, Hispanic, and Pacific Islanders living in the United States in contrast to White people. These COVID‐19 disparities are but one example of how systemic racism filters into health outcomes for many Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC). With these issues front and center, more attention is being given to the ways that White medical professionals contribute to these (...) disparities, including their socialization to ignore or deny inequities. As such, the present study sought to understand how educating White health‐care pre‐professionals about systemic racism might influence their understanding of and responsibility for disrupting White supremacy. Data were drawn from 49 White‐identified nursing students who participated in a mapping project that uncovered instantiations of systemic racism in the United States. Participant written reflections were analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings revealed that mapping projects can develop White people's knowledge and understanding of systemic racism. We introduce the construct, transformative dissonant encounters, to describe how this project precipitated shifts in world view necessary for White people to confront systemic racism. Implications for nursing educators, psychological researchers, and antiracist activists are discussed. (shrink)

The COPE Inventory is the most frequently used measure of coping; yet previous studies examining its factor structure yielded mixed results. The purpose of the current study, therefore, was to validate the factor structure of the COPE Inventory in a representative sample of over 2,000 adults in Slovakia. Our second goal was to evaluate the external validity of the COPE inventory, which has not been done before. Firstly, we performed the exploratory factor analysis with half of the sample. Subsequently, we (...) performed the confirmatory factor analysis with the second half of the sample. Both factor analyses with 15 factor solutions showed excellent fit with the data. Additionally, we performed a hierarchical factor analysis with fifteen first-order factors and three second-order factors which showed good fit with the data. Moreover, the COPE Inventory’s external validity was evaluated using consensual qualitative research analysis on data collected by in-depth interviews. Categories of coping created using CQR corresponded with all COPE first-order factors. Moreover, we identified two additional first-order factors that were not present in the COPE Inventory: self-care and care for others. Our study shows that the Slovak translation of the COPE Inventory is a reliable, externally valid, and well-structured instrument for measuring coping in the Slovak population. (shrink)

If you can vote, you are morally obligated to do so. As political theorist Julia Maskivker argues, voting in order to improve our fellow citizens' lot is a duty of justice. It does not matter that individual votes may rarely tilt elections: the act of voting is a valuable contribution to a collective activity whose outcome is good governance, and we must do it in order to protect the rights and interests of our fellow citizens.

While the use of archives is common as a research methodology in the history and philosophy of science, training in archival methods is more often encountered as part of graduate-level training than in the undergraduate curriculum. Because many HPS instructors are likely to have encountered archival methods during their own research training, they are uniquely positioned to make effective pedagogical use of archives in classes comprised of undergraduate science students. Further, because doing this may require changing the way HPS instructors (...) think about the aims and varieties of archival research, archivists themselves can be valuable resources in developing archives-based learning activities for science students in HPS classrooms. In this article, we describe an archives-based learning activity developed for a population of primarily pre-medical students in a healthcare ethics class and discuss the pedagogical benefits of this activity. This activity was developed via a collaboration between an HPS instructor and an education archivist. Our hope is that this discussion may serve both as a proof of concept for the use of archives-based learning activities as tools for teaching HPS to science students, and as an argument for the unique benefits that archival engagement can impart to science students. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer niederländische Tierpsychologe Frederik J. J. Buytendijk (1887–1974) entwickelte in seinen Forschungen der 1920er und 1930er Jahre in Abgrenzung zum Behaviorismus eine antireduktionistische Zugangsweise auf Verhaltensexperimente. So bezog er in seinen Experimentalpraktiken explizit die subjektive Erfahrung des Versuchsleiters mit ein. Damit entwarf Buytendijk eine Wissenschaftstheorie, die methodologisch auf die Phänomenologie, Hermeneutik wie auf gestalttheoretische Ganzheitskonzepte zurückgriff, quantitative Datenerhebungen aber dennoch nicht aufgab. Vielmehr untersuchte Buytendijk auf der Grundlage des Biotheoretikers Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944) in seinem physiologischen Institut in Groningen konkret (...) die These einer „Tier-Umwelt-Einheit“. Der vorliegende Beitrag ermittelt anhand der institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen und zweier Experimente (1924 und 1931), inwiefern Buytendijk seine Aussage, dass das Tier „mit und in seiner Umwelt geboren [ist]“, die zugleich sein wissenschaftsphilosophisches Konzept stützte, zu verifizieren wusste. Dass die Umwelt dem Tier ein Organ ist, ist bei Buytendijk dementsprechend nicht nur metaphorisch, sondern ganz real zu verstehen. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article aims to investigate the imperial element in the poetry of Joseph Brodsky through the lenses of post-colonial studies. Its ambiguity, informed by Brodsky’s experience as a poet in exile, as well as his personal cultural frame, echoes that of his poetic precursors. Thus, we briefly trace the history of the connection between Russian poetry and the imperial narrative, which began with the inception of the Russian Empire itself in the 18th century. Then, we explore the nuance of (...) the concept of empire in Brodsky’s works through the analysis of the poems Post aetatem nostram (1970), Torso (1972) and On the Independence of Ukraine (1991). As we understand it, both the chauvinistic content of the latter poem and the positive and nostalgic aspect of empire to Brodsky reveal the longevity and the strength of the Russian imperial narrative in the country’s national literature. (shrink)

This article provides a state of the art review of the philosophical literature on scientific representation. It first argues that the topic emerges historically mainly out of what may be called the modelling tradition. It then introduces a number of helpful analytical distinctions, and goes on to divide contemporary approaches to scientific representation into two distinct kinds, substantive and deflationary. Analogies with related discussions of artistic representation in aesthetics, and of the nature of truth in metaphysics are pursued. It is (...) finally urged that the most promising approaches - and the ones most likely to feature prominently in future developments - are deflationary. In particular, a defence is provided of a genuinely inferential conception of representation. (shrink)

Peter Singer is well known as an ethicist who has contributed much to current debates in ethics and public policy. He has published on topics ranging from vegetarianism to famine relief to bioethics, always with something interesting to say, and often with something provocative as well. How Are We to Live? adds to Singer’s work in the area of applied, or practical, ethics. This book is not as deeply challenging as some of Singer’s earlier work. However, it is not intended (...) for an audience composed exclusively of professional philosophers. It is written for people who feel that ethics doesn’t speak to the concern of living a full and fruitful life, who believe that ethics, at best, is too narrow to guide us in a wide spectrum of decisions, and, at worst, is for “suckers.” This sentiment is one that professional ethicists encounter all too frequently. Singer’s book does a splendid job of addressing these sorts of concerns. He does so with a light touch, without being too moralistic. It is easy to read, engaging, and will appeal to a wide audience. Thus, the book accomplishes its goals admirably. (shrink)

This paper argues that a crucial skill needed to empathize with others cannot be trained by reading fiction: the skill of reading the evidence for the other person’s state of mind and, thus, empath...

I analyse critically what I regard as the most accomplished empiricist account of propensities, namely the long run propensity theory developed by Donald Gillies . Empiricist accounts are distinguished by their commitment to the ‘identity thesis’: the identification of propensities and objective probabilities. These theories are intended, in the tradition of Karl Popper’s influential proposal, to provide an interpretation of probability that renders probability statements directly testable by experiment. I argue that the commitment to the identity thesis leaves empiricist theories, (...) including Gillies’ version, vulnerable to a variant of what is known as Humphreys’ paradox. I suggest that the tension may be resolved only by abandoning the identity thesis, and by adopting instead an understanding of propensities as explanatory properties of chancy objects. (shrink)

Habitat dioramas depicting ecological relations between organisms and their natural environments have become the preferred mode of museum display in most natural history museums in North America and Europe. Dioramas emerged in the late nineteenth century as an alternative mode of museum installation from taxonomically arranged cases. We suggest that this change was closely connected to the emergence of a biogeographical framework rooted in evolutionary theory and positing the existence of distinct biogeographical zones. We tie the history of dioramas to (...) earlier visual resources such as the thematic images that Wallace introduced to illustrate his 1876 Geographical Distribution of Animals. These images were unique in their time because each of them simultaneously depicted animals from several different taxa, rather than only one, as well as the ecological relations between animals and their habitats. Both, visually and with respect to their function within biogeography, these images presaged the habitat dioramas that came shortly afterwards. Not coincidentally, Wallace explicitly advocated the use of dioramas for museum display in ongoing debates on museum reform. Wallace 's suggestions were put into practice by committed evolutionists such as Gottlieb von Koch who pioneered the diorama installation in the Grand Ducal Museum in Darmstadt in 1906. As in Wallace 's illustrations, Koch's dioramas were designed to respresent biogeographical zones. This paper explores the function of these visual displays of biogeographical relations. It argues that, in both the scientific and public realms, biogeogaphical zones were defined and constructed by visual means; recourse to visual representation was more than a method of communication. (shrink)

God and supernature -- Communication of the divine-communication with the divine -- About miracles -- The Darwinian red herring.

This chapter focuses on sentimentalism – the view that morality is based on sentiment – in particular, the sentiment of sympathy. Sentimentalism was historically articulated in opposition to two positions: Hobbesian egoism, in which morality is based on self-interest; and Moral Rationalism, which held that morality is based on reason alone. The Sentimentalists challenged both views, arguing that there is more to what motivates human beings than simple self-interest and that reason alone is insufficient to motivate our actions, including our (...) moral actions. The philosophies of Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and Adam Smith are considered. The discussion then turns to sympathy, moral realism, moral virtue, and psychological realism. (shrink)