¿El conflicto armado ha transformado los roles de la mujer en Colombia? En este artículo se quiere evaluar la diversidad de escenarios y roles que las mujeres adquirieron durante el conflicto armado en Colombia. Para dirigir el rumbo de esta investigación y la posibilidad de evaluar alguno escenarios de posacuerdo, este texto se propone: realizar una consideración epistemológica por parte del feminismo latinoamericano que tenga en cuenta la pluralidad de relatos violentos en Latinoamérica analizar relatos de mujeres partícipes en la (...) guerra que permitan evaluar el rol de la mujer más allá de su simple victimización; examinar la situación de la mujer dentro de los conflictos bélicos colombianos y presentar cómo se diferencia de las situaciones de guerra ocurridas en Europa. Todos estos puntos permiten evaluar cómo la guerra en Colombia ha sido fundamental para contemplar los roles de las mujeres más allá del de víctima, como, por ejemplo, las mujeres activistas que han participado en la reconciliación y el ejercicio de memoria histórica durante el acuerdo de paz y el posacuerdo. Dicho logro promueve un porvenir del feminismo que abre nuevos espacios de acción para la mujer, los cuales, debido a la limitación de este trabajo, quedan aún por explorar. (shrink)

Addressing biases in natural-language processing (NLP) systems presents an underappreciated ethical dilemma, which we think underlies recent debates about bias in NLP models. In brief, even if we could eliminate bias from language models or their outputs, we would thereby often withhold descriptively or ethically useful information, despite avoiding perpetuating or amplifying bias. Yet if we do not debias, we can perpetuate or amplify bias, even if we retain relevant descriptively or ethically useful information. Understanding this dilemma provides for a (...) useful way of rethinking the ethics of algorithmic bias in NLP. (shrink)

Social groups—like teams, committees, gender groups, and racial groups—play a central role in our lives and in philosophical inquiry. Here I develop and motivate a structuralist ontology of social groups centered on social structures (i.e., networks of relations that are constitutively dependent on social factors). The view delivers a picture that encompasses a diverse range of social groups, while maintaining important metaphysical and normative distinctions between groups of different kinds. It also meets the constraint that not every arbitrary collection of (...) people is a social group. In addition, the framework provides resources for developing a broader structuralist view in social ontology. (shrink)

This study examines whether character strengths predict resilience (operationalized as stable or higher mental health and subjective well-being despite an adverse event) over a period of approximately one month during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in Spain. Using a longitudinal design, participants (N = 348 adults) completed online measures of sociodemographic data, information regarding their situation in relation to the COVID-19, character strengths, general mental health, life satisfaction, positive affect and negative affect. All variables were measured at Time 1 and Time (...) 2, except for sociodemographic and most COVID-related information (Time 1 only). Time 1 data collection was conducted between March 21, 2020 and April 2, 2020, i.e., approximately the second week of lockdown in Spain. Time 2 data collection was conducted between April 24, 2020 and May 18, 2020, after the Spanish government announced ita intention to progressively release the lockdown. A principal component analysis of character strengths was conducted. Five character strength factors were extracted: fortitude, goodness, intellectual, interpersonal, and restraint. Factor structures at Times 1 and 2 were highly consistent. All character strength factors at Time 1 correlated positively with life satisfaction and positive affect, and negatively with negative affect and mental health at T2 (higher scores in the mental health measure indicate poorer mental health). Fortitude strengths showed the highest correlations. We conducted a series of regression analyses with strength factors at Time 1 as predictors, and mental health, life satisfaction, and positive and negative affect as dependent variables, controlling for their baseline levels. To test the directionality of the relationship between strengths and the dependent variables, all analyses were reversed. All character strength factors predicted an increase in mental health. They also predicted positive affect, with the exception of strengths of restraint. Fortitude, intellectual and interpersonal strengths predicted an increase in life satisfaction. Finally, fortitude strengths, interpersonal strengths, and strengths of restraint, predicted a decrease in negative affect. None of the reversed analyses yielded significant effects. Limitations, implications, and possible character strengths-based interventions aimed at promoting mental health in the COVID-19 pandemic are discussed. (shrink)

Although the principle of fair subject selection is a widely recognized requirement of ethical clinical research, it often yields conflicting imperatives, thus raising major ethical dilemmas regarding participant selection. In this paper, we diagnose the source of this problem, arguing that the principle of fair subject selection is best understood as a bundle of four distinct sub-principles, each with normative force and each yielding distinct imperatives: (1) fair inclusion; (2) fair burden sharing; (3) fair opportunity; and (4) fair distribution of (...) third-party risks. We first map out these distinct sub-principles, and then identify the ways in which they yield conflicting imperatives for the design of inclusion and exclusion criteria, and the recruitment of participants. We then offer guidance for how decision makers should navigate these conflicting imperatives to ensure that participants are selected fairly. (shrink)

Recently several philosophers have argued that racial, gender, and other social generic generalizations should be avoided given their propensity to promote essentialist thinking, obscure the social nature of categories, and contribute to oppression. Here I argue that a general prohibition against social generics goes too far. Given that the truth of many generics require regularities or systematic rather than mere accidental correlations, they are our best means for describing structural forms of violence and discrimination. Moreover, their accuracy, their persistence in (...) the face of counterexamples, and features of the contemporary socio-political context make generics useful linguistic tools in social justice projects. (shrink)

Fear generalisation is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when fear that is elicited in response to a frightening stimulus spreads to similar or related stimuli. The practical harms of pathological fear generalisation related to trauma are well-documented, but little or no attention has been given so far to its epistemic harms. This paper fills this gap in the literature. It shows how the psychological phenomenon, when it becomes pathological, substantially curbs the epistemic agency of those who experience the fear that (...) generalizes, limiting their ability to respond to evidence, and substantially limiting their epistemic horizons. It is argued that when these epistemic harms are caused by wrongful actions and decisions of individuals or institutions, because the fear is elicited in response to a traumatic experience inflicted by them, the harms should be considered epistemic wrongs. The epistemic wrongs are closely akin to agential epistemic injustice, a variety of distributive epistemic injustice, and sometimes also involve epistemic exclusion. The paper thereby identifies a previously underexplored psychological mechanism that can be a vehicle through which both individuals and institutions can epistemically wrong others. The argument has implications for how both epistemic wrongs and epistemic injustice should be conceived, suggesting that both can occur without being caused by primarily epistemic flaws or errors, or a bad epistemic character. Finally, it highlights the advantage of taking a victim-centred approach to understanding epistemic harm. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Is it good to form positive beliefs about those you have faith in, such as God or a religious community? Doxastic partialists say that it is. Some hold that it is good, from the viewpoint of faith, to form positive beliefs about the object of your faith even when your evidence favours negative ones. Others try to maintain respect for evidence by appealing to a highly permissive epistemology. I argue against both forms of doxastic partiality, on the grounds that (...) they foster an epistemically problematic noetic entrenchment. I instead defend evidentialism—the view that it is good to strive for true beliefs about the object of your faith, be they positive or negative, given relatively stringent evidential norms. I address the objection that evidentialism fosters disloyalty to the other party, not least because it risks losing your faith altogether. What emerges are not just epistemic norms for beliefs about religious matters, but an evidentialist account of what makes for good faith itself. (shrink)

AI-developers face a challenge when seeking to use models that aim to be culturally sensitive. While we agree that culture is an emergent reality, there is always the risk of creating algorithms that treat culture as objective to account for various facets of the social realm. As a result, culture becomes prepackaged and autonomous. Nonetheless, culture is not only emergent but dialogically and socially invented. In this article, the point is to advance the discussion about culture by addressing a crucial (...) philosophical issue and proposing some practical themes on how to avoid culturalism in AI development. (shrink)

This original article outlines a theoretical path and posterior critical analysis regarding two relevant matters in modern nursing: patterns of knowing in nursing and commodification contexts in contemporary health systems. The aim of our manuscript is to examine the development of basic and contextual nursing knowledge in commodified contexts. For this purpose, we outline a discussion and reflexive dialogue based on a literature search and our clinical experience. To lay the foundation for an informed discussion, we conducted a literature search (...) and selected relevant articles in English, Spanish, and Portuguese that included contents on patterns of knowing, commodification, and nursing published from 1978 to 2017. Globalization, commodification, and austerity measures seem to have negative effects on nursing. Work conditions are worsening, deteriorating nurse–patient relationships, and limiting reflection on practice. Nurses must develop knowledge to challenge and participate in institutional organization and public health policies. Development of nursing knowledge may be difficult to achieve in commodified environments. Consequently, therapeutic care relationships, healthcare services, and nurses' own health are compromised. However, by obtaining organizational, sociopolitical, and emancipatory knowledge, nurses can use strategies to adapt to or resist commodified contexts while constructing basic knowledge. (shrink)

Ontology is the philosophical discipline which aims to understand how things in the world are divided into categories and how these categories are related together. This is exactly what information scientists aim for in creating structured, automated representations, called 'ontologies,' for managing information in fields such as science, government, industry, and healthcare. Currently, these systems are designed in a variety of different ways, so they cannot share data with one another. They are often idiosyncratically structured, accessible only to those who (...) created them, and unable to serve as inputs for automated reasoning. This volume shows, in a nontechnical way and using examples from medicine and biology, how the rigorous application of theories and insights from philosophical ontology can improve the ontologies upon which information management depends. (shrink)

Easy Ontologists, most notably Thomasson (2015), argue that ontological questions are shallow. They think that these questions can either be answered by using our ordinary conceptual competence—of course tables exist!—or are meaningless, or else should be answered through conceptual re-engineering. Ontology thus is “easy”, requiring no distinctively metaphysical investigation. This paper raises a two-stage objection to Easy Ontology. We first argue that questions concerning which entities exist are inextricably bound up with “ontological category questions”, which are questions concerning the identity (...) of and differences between kinds of entities. We then argue that ontological category questions do not have trivial answers, are meaningful, and cannot be answered through conceptual re-engineering. Easy Ontology hence does not constitute a comprehensive ontological methodology. While some of ontology might be easy, category questions form a central part of ontology and are not answered easily. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between pragmatic encroachment and epistemic permissiveness. If the suggestion that all epistemic notions are interest-relative is viable , then it seems that a certain species of epistemic permissivism must be viable as well. For, if all epistemic notions are interest relative then, sometimes, parties in paradigmatic cases of shared evidence can be maximally rational in forming competing basic doxastic attitudes towards the same proposition. However, I argue that this total pragmatic encroachment is not tenable, and, (...) thus, epistemic permissivism cannot be vindicated in this way. (shrink)

Appeals to intersectionality serve to remind us that social categories like race and gender cannot be adequately understood independently from each other. But what, exactly, is the intersectional thesis a thesis about? Answers to this question are remarkably diverse. Intersectionality is variously understood as a claim about the nature of social kinds, oppression, or experience ; about the limits of antidiscrimination law or identity politics ; or about the importance of fuzzy sets, multifactor analysis, or causal modeling in social science.

Social groups seem to be entities that are dependent on us. Given their apparent dependence, one might adopt Social Creationism—the thesis that all social groups are social objects created through (some specific types of) thoughts, intentions, agreements, habits, patterns of interaction, and practices. Here I argue that not all social groups come to be in the same way. This is due, in part, to social groups failing to share a uniform nature. I argue that some groups (e.g., racial and gender (...) groups) are social kinds. They either falsify Social Creationism or are created as mere byproducts of property instantiation. In contrast, I argue that other groups (e.g., teams and committees) are social objects. When restricted to groups like these, Social Creationism holds. The conclusions have more than just metaphysical import. The differences between groups and how they come to be help to explain why some groups appear to be natural, why some fail to rely on intentions, and why certain sorts of groups are widespread and persistent. (shrink)

Partiendo del reconocimiento de la alteridad y heterogeneidad como parte constitutiva de la sociedad, se encuentra en la educación inclusiva una manera de construir condiciones para hacer posible la integración de lo diverso. El aprendizaje de la filosofía no escapa a este gran reto, adquiriendo relevancia la pregunta por sus sentidos y dinámicas en un caso con una persona con una deficiencia cognitiva como el Alzheimer, en el que se toma el contexto familiar como un espacio pedagógico desde el que (...) se proponen estrategias que respondan a las necesidades de inclusión. Se utiliza entonces la fotografía como estrategia hermenéutica para comprender la perspectiva del “otro” e interpretarla por medio de la creación de obra. Este proceso de apropiación lleva a una reflexividad y autocomprensión que termina por transformar, tanto la relación cuidadora-adulto mayor, como los conceptos de los sujetos implicados, volviendo, efectivamente, toda esta experiencia en general, una oportunidad de aprendizaje filosófico. (shrink)

Este artículo muestra los resultados de un estudio de caso centrado en la puesta en marcha de un programa didáctico en un centro de primaria. El programa constó de dos actuaciones didácticas distintas en dos períodos de prácticum de magisterio. La primera se realizó con 2 grupos de 6º durante 5 sesiones y la segunda con 2 grupos de 5º durante 4 sesiones. Participaron 53 estudiantes. El tema escogido fue la Guerra Civil. Se combinaron conocimientos y emociones. De las observaciones (...) de la docente en prácticas, así como del análisis temático realizado sobre las intervenciones y producciones del alumnado, se evidencia cómo la simbiosis entre una educación patrimonial crítica, asentada sobre la memoria como forma de entender el paisaje, y la realización de salidas contextualizadas al entorno, refuerzan en el alumnado destrezas cívico-sociales. (shrink)

Multimodal prehabilitation is increasingly recognized as an important component of the pre-operative pathway in oncology. It aims to optimize physical and psychological health through delivery of a series of tailored interventions including exercise, nutrition, and psychological support. At the core of this prescription is a need for considerable health behavior change, to ensure that patients are engaged with and adhere to these interventions and experience the associated benefits. To date the prehabilitation literature has focused on testing the efficacy of devised (...) exercise and nutritional interventions with a primary focus on physiological and mechanistic outcomes with little consideration for the role of behavioral science, supporting individual behavior change or optimizing patient engagement. Changing health behavior is complex and to maximize success, prehabilitation programs should draw on latest insights from the field of behavioral science. Behavioral science offers extensive knowledge on theories and models of health behavior change to further advance intervention effectiveness. Similarly, interventions developed with a person-centered approach, taking into consideration individual needs and preferences will increase engagement. In this article, we will provide an overview of the extent to which the existing prehabilitation literature incorporates behavioral science, as well as studies that have explored patient's attitudes toward prehabilitation. We will go on to describe and critique ongoing trials in a variety of contexts within oncology prehabilitation and discuss how current scientific knowledge may be enhanced from a behavioral science perspective. We will also consider the role of “surgery schools” and detail practical recommendations that can be embedded in existing or emerging clinical settings. (shrink)

Offers a systematic account of the doctrine of grace of Bonaventure (1221-1274) across his speculative-academic, mystical, hagiographical, and pastoral texts, paying particular attention to his use of the term "hierarchy" in reference to Francis of Assisi and the human soul in general.

Inconsistency toleration is the phenomenon of working with inconsistent information without threatening one’s rationality. Here I address the role that ignorance plays for the tolerance of contradictions in the empirical sciences. In particular, I contend that there are two types of ignorance that, when present, can make epistemic agents to be rationally inclined to tolerate a contradiction. The first is factual ignorance, understood as temporary undecidability of the truth values of the conflicting propositions. The second is what I call “ignorance (...) of theoretical structure”, which is lack of knowledge of relevant inference patterns within a specific theory. I argue that these two types of ignorance can be explanatory of the scientists’ rational disposition to be tolerant towards contradictions, and I illustrate this with a case study from neutrino physics. (shrink)

In this article, I introduce a semiosic translation of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The theoretical framework is Semiosic Translation, a theory that combines Peirce’s interpretive semiotics and Wittgenstein’s notions of rule-following and complex-fact. I seek to show that this approach is particularly adroit at the task of making the sometimes cryptic philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein accessible to readers. To support this assertion, I compare and analyze several canonical translations of the Tractatus with possible semiosic translations. The results show that Wittgenstein’s work (...) throughout its different phases displays a continuity that reaches a genuine abductive peak in the Philosophical Investigations. This abductive, usage-based turn is, nonetheless, announced in the Tractatus in terms of a quest for semiotic accuracy. (shrink)

El proceso educativo sufrió un drástico cambio debido a la pandemia que padecimos a nivel mundial, tuvimos que aprender a usar las herramientas tecnológicas en la enseñanza y en el aprendizaje. Por lo que siguiendo esta tendencia planteamos la utilización de la aplicación “Física M-Lab” en su primera versión para la enseñanza de la cinemática.Como estamos en el campo de las ciencias sociales, utilizamos el diseño cuasiexperimental que nos permitió concluir en que los aprendizajes mejoraron significativamente.

Récurrente sous différentes formes dans le domaine de la lexicométrie, l’analyse cooccurrentielle vise à dévoiler les attractions lexicales qui opèrent dans un texte en restituant un état intermédiaire entre la séquence textuelle et l’inventaire lexical, état qui doit combiner l’explicitation syntagmatique de l’une avec la hiérarchisation statistique de l’autre. Pour dépasser les résultats des méthodes de cooccurrence classiques et identifier des systèmes cooccurrentiels plus complexes à l’oeuvre dans le texte, il s’avère nécessaire de substituer à l’approche analytique des associations lexicales (...) une vue synthétique de ces attractions prééminentes en contexte. (shrink)

Esta ponencia presenta un avance parcial de la investigación sobre la democracia en los municipios colombianos desde la adopción de la elección popular de los alcaldes. A partir de una conceptualización básica y operacional de la democracia se determinan sus principales dimensiones y se presentan los resultados obtenidos para algunas variables significativas que se han procesado, aplicando técnicas de análisis multivariado. El objetivo final (aún en elaboración) es generar un índice de calidad democrática que permita comparar y explicar los avances (...) y retrocesos de la democracia en los muy diversos municipios colombianos. (shrink)

RESUMENLas clases naturales tienen un importante valor heurístico que no ha sido explorado a nivel epistémico. Una revisión crítica del concepto de “clase natural” sugerido por la teoría del Cúmulo de Propiedades Homeostáticas (HPC), desde la complejidad y la causalidad, muestra que es incompatible con las prácticas científicas, en especial las de la biología. Debido a los múltiples problemas que presenta en ese ámbito científico el concepto de ‘clase natural’ debería ser reconfigurado con el fin de estar acorde con las (...) inferencias explicativas y predictivas de la biología. Esto tendría como consecuencia un mejor entendimiento filosófico de los procesos y entidades naturales a la vez que ayudaría a resolver algunos problemas filosóficos y científicos.PALABRAS CLAVECLASE NATURAL, CAUSALIDAD, COMPLEJIDAD, PRACTICAS CIENTÍFICAS, ESPACIOS DE POSIBILIDAD EPISTÉMICOSABSTRACTNatural kinds have an important epistemic value that has not been studied due to the fact that the philosophical research has been focused on both semantics and logical aspects. I propose a critical review from causality and complexity to the concept of «natural kind» advanced by Homeostatic Properties Cluster Theory (HPC) in order to demonstrate that the kinds in the HPC style s are not supported by scientific practices such as biology. I think that a different concept of “natural kind” should be based on scientific practices in order to obtain a better philosophical understanding compared to HPC of both, natural processes and obtaining successful inferences. I hold that this epistemic approach provides us a new characterization of “natural kind” that will be useful as a unifying concept of natural phenomena, as well as for generating new spaces of epistemic possibilityKEY WORDSNATURAL KINDS, CAUSALITY, COMPLEXITY, SCIENTIFIC PRACTICES, EPISTEMIC POSSIBILITY SPACES. (shrink)

RESUMENEn este artículo vamos a tratar la complejidad de la noción de cultura. La cultura ha sido tratada por muchos movimientos y por muchos pensadores. Nos centraremos en algunos de ellos y sobre todo en García Morente. La cultura es el ámbito en que se mueve todo y de modo especial el lenguaje; el marco ineludible y el mayor reto de la traducción.PALABRAS CLAVECULTURA – CIVILIZACION – TRADUCCION ABSTRACTThe complex notion of culture is the main subject of this article. It (...) has been studied by many movements and scholars, notably by García Morente, whose thesis on culture will be discussed. Everything, as well as language, in its own special way, comes under the scope of culture. Thus culture bound lexical items and concepts being the greatest challenge for the translator.KEYWORDSCULTURE – CIVILIZATION - TRANSLATION. (shrink)

Para Eugenio d’Ors, la vida humana no se define por su relación con la muerte, sino como principio creador de formas que se afirma a sí mismo. En cambio, la muerte sí se define como lo radicalmente opuesto a la vida, un principio de negación y destrucción, de fatalidad y resistencia. De este modo se establece entre ambos principios una relación dialéctica, una tensión de antagonistas que hace que la vida sea una permanente lucha contra la muerte. Por ello el (...) planteamiento de d’Ors acerca de la muerte adquiere un fuerte sentido ético y beligerante, afirmando la necesidad de vivir en actitud alerta y combativa. (shrink)

La constitución dogmática sobre la Iglesia del concilio Vaticano II profundiza en las relaciones entre la Tercera Persona de la Santísima Trinidad y la Virgen María. La santidad original de la Virgen, formada por el Espíritu Santo como nueva criatura, requerirá de ella una actitud activa y consciente, como colaboradora única en su obra. De este modo, la Madre de Dios aparece con las notas de “Casa de Dios”, “Theotokos” y “Madre de la Iglesia”. La obra de H. Mühlen se (...) convierte en referencia canónica obligada para la recta comprensión de esa relación pneumatológica. (shrink)

El fracaso político de la Revolución francesa deja un regusto amargo de que el problema del ser humano se encuentra en la Modernidad y, concretamente, en la escisión radical que abre la conciencia. Los ideales del Bien y la Verdad son señaladas como formas muertas, carentes de potencia erótica, inservibles para movilizar al ser y, por tanto, anacrónicos para una época que quiere despertar bajo el signo de la Belleza. Un joven Schelling escribe bajo este sol naciente una obra en (...) la que el arte aparece como una praxis capaz de suturar aquella herida que abre la conciencia. La imaginación y la síntesis poética son elementos ineludibles en el transitar por una vida humana que busca su plenitud en el retorno a la unidad originaria con lo Absoluto. El gesto del genio artístico será el privilegiado para este tránsito al origen. (shrink)

Adam Ferguson, lecturer of moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh , was one of the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. His published works, however, have sometimes been dismissed as derivative and viewed as less important than some of his contemporaries, because of his reliance on ancient Stoic philosophy. An analysis of Ferguson's lecture notes, conversely, demonstrates Stoicism's pedagogical function. Rather than adopting Stoic principles, Ferguson used their terminology to teach philosophical concepts. Ferguson's nuanced discussion of ancient philosophy in (...) his lectures demonstrated his critiques of the ancient schools and his purpose for employing their language throughout his texts. (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)

I argue that faith is a type of trust. It is also part of a relationship in which both parties are called on to be faithful, where faithfulness is a type of trustworthiness. What distinguishes faith relationships from trust relationships is that both parties value the faith relationship intrinsically. I discuss how faith on this account can, and cannot, be rational when it goes beyond a person’s evidence. It turns out that faith has the same rationality conditions as trust, differing (...) from it only in the cases that fix our intuitions. (shrink)

In philosophy of science, abstraction tends to be subsumed under representation, often being described as the omission of a target’s features when it is represented. This approach to abstraction sidesteps cognitive aspects of abstraction processes. However, cognitive aspects of abstraction are important in understanding the role of historically grounded epistemic criteria supporting modeling in science. Drawing on recent work on the relation between metaphor and abstraction, we introduce the concept of paths of abstraction, and use historical and contemporary examples to (...) point to their role in guiding the development of relevance criteria which support modeling strategies in science. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 3, Page 273-297, September 2022.

After two decades in the 21st Century, and despite all the advances in the area, some very important names from past centuries still do not have the recognition they deserve in the global history of library and information science and, specifically, of knowledge organization. Although acknowledged in British librarianship, the name of James Duff Brown still does not have a proper recognition on a global scale. His contributions to a free and more democratic library had a prominent place in the (...) works and projects he developed during his time at the libraries of Clerkenwell and Islington in London. Free access to the library shelves, an architecture centered on books and people, and classifications that are more dynamic were dreams fulfilled by Brown. With this biographical article, we hope to live up to his legacy and pay homage to a true librarian and an advocate of the public library and subject classification. (shrink)

When reasoning about dependence relations, philosophers often rely on gradualist assumptions, according to which abrupt changes in a phenomenon of interest can result only from abrupt changes in the low-level phenomena on which it depends. These assumptions, while strictly correct if the dependence relation in question can be expressed by continuous dynamical equations, should be handled with care: very often the descriptively relevant property of a dynamical system connecting high- and low-level phenomena is not its instantaneous behaviour but its stable (...) fixed points (those in the vicinity of which it spends most of the time, after comparatively short transitory periods), and stable fixed points can change abruptly as a result of infinitesimal changes of the low-level phenomenon. We illustrate this potential gradualist trap by showing that Chalmers’ fading qualia argument falls into it. (shrink)

This paper responds to comments on the paper "True Faith: Against Doxastic Partiality about Faith (in God and Religious Communities) and in Defense of Evidentialism" (Australasian Philosophical Review). I begin with some clarifications on faith and its normativity (section 1). I then zero in on doxastic normativity (section 2), where an ideological rift emerges between evidentialism and partialist critiques (section 3). I then discuss evidentialist reason and its relationship to objectivity (section 4), and the sort of norms at issue (section (...) 5). (shrink)

_Defensione delle donne_, de Agostino Strozzi, es una de las obras filóginas más significativas en lengua italiana compuesta a finales del siglo XV. Nos consta la existencia de dos versiones recogidas en dos manuscritos que presentan contrastes significativos entre ambas. Una de ellas más extensa y, sobre todo, más radical en sus argumentos en defensa de las virtudes femeninas, está dedicada a su prima Margherita Cantelmo. En esta comunicación se describe y profundiza en los contrastes presentes en ambas versiones o, (...) dicho con otras palabras, en lo que podemos considerar como dos misteriosos manuscritos. (shrink)

Despite the increase in global research on health inequalities, more needs to be done to strengthen efforts to inform local interventions. In this article, we ask what determines the local capacity to engage in research on health inequalities. A bibliometric analysis identified Spain as the 10th highest global contributor to this research field (1966–2015), yet a significant proportion of this production was affiliated to just a few institutions in Barcelona. How and why has the city produced so much health inequalities (...) research over four decades? A realist explanatory case study was conducted to test and refine six causal mechanisms, and identify the contextual conditions that might have activated them to generate this outcome. Data was triangulated from 10 semi-structured interviews, and scientific and grey literature. Our findings confirmed that several of our proposed mechanisms - functioning under certain conditions over time - explain the large volume of health inequalities research in Barcelona. Based on these findings, key lessons from the city's experience are suggested. Further research is needed on this topic. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In cases of apparent moral dilemmas, the feeling of regret reminds us that there were competing, morally significant options. Because Kant denies the existence of genuine conflicts of obligation [1996c. “The Metaphysics of Morals.” In Practical Philosophy, edited and translated by Mary J. Gregor, 353–604. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511813306.013, 6:224], he cannot explain the propriety and phenomenology of regret, or so it is traditionally argued [Williams, Bernard. 1965. “Symposium: Ethical (...) Consistency.” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 39: 103–138]. I argue that regret can be modelled as a painful and in-part retrospective version of what Kant calls ‘moral feeling’. Different moral feelings arise in different contexts of moral thought and represent our duties in ways that reflect our normative situations. Regret represents the relation between a past action and a general duty that we imagined fulfilling in a certain way but did not. For beings like us, moral feeling is a subjective condition on our being put under obligation at all. Absence of regret therefore suggests that an agent may no longer be, or perhaps never was, sincerely moved by the moral law. (shrink)

Ignorance can excuse otherwise blameworthy action, but only if the ignorance itself is blameless. One way to avoid culpable ignorance is to pay attention when epistemic peers disagree. Expressed disagreements place an obligation on the agent to pay attention when an interlocutor disagrees, or risk culpable ignorance for which they might later be found blameworthy. Silence, on the other hand, is typically taken as assent. But in cases of suppressed disagreement, the silenced interlocutor has information that could save the agent (...) from ignorance in scenarios where that ignorance might lead to harmful action, and silence does not actually indicate assent. The problem is further complicated because the agent might not be aware of the fact that a silenced interlocutor has information that could prevent ignorance, and consequent harmful action. In this paper, I provide a new account of excuses from ignorance in situations of suppressed disagreement. I do this in the context of two cases; Kelly’s hypothetical case of the Tyrannical Dictator, and the real-world case of former South African President Thabo Mbeki and his AIDS denialist policies in the late 1990s and early 2000s. (shrink)

This paper discusses the discourse contrasts that arise in connection to direct evidentiality in Southern Aymara (henceforth, Aymara), an understudied Andean language. Aymara has two direct evidentials, the enclitic _=wa_ and the covert morpheme _-_∅, which are used whenever the speaker has the best possible grounds for some proposition. I make the novel observation that a sentence with _=wa_ can be felicitously uttered if the speaker attempts to update the common ground by addressing an issue on the table. In fact, (...) the sentence with _=wa_ that is uttered must be congruent with prior discourse; I tie this to the claim that _=wa_ is a (presentational) focus marker (Proulx in Language Sciences 9(1):91–102, 1987 ). This paper thus claims that _=wa_ is a marker that combines evidentiality and focus. In contrast, uttering a sentence with _-_∅ entails that the speaker’s contribution is already in the common ground, which likens this evidential to common ground management operators—there is no congruence requirement in this case. I identify which construction can be used in different discourse settings (conversation openers and telling anecdotes). I implement a formal analysis based on Farkas and Bruce (Journal of Semantics 27:81–118, 2010 ) and Faller (Semantics and Pragmatics 12(8):1–53, 2019 ) that links evidentiality and discourse. (shrink)

Resumen: Pierre Bourdieu es uno de esos autores que siempre es posible “redescubrir” dependiendo de los intereses científicos que el lector tenga, y eso por la maestría con la que practicó la ciencia de forma crítica. Para él la epistemología, más que una metaciencia discursiva, es una práctica para todo sociólogo que ejerce el oficio de la investigación científica, y su mismo legado científico lo evidencia. De ahí que su “sociología reflexiva” no sea sino una epistemología práctica que permite a (...) la vez la más variada construcción de objetos científicos con el apoyo de un capital teórico amasado a través de toda su trayectoria intelectual en la fórmula [ ] + campo = práctica cuyos conceptos abordados de forma abierta lo permiten. Así como se pueden aprender lecciones teóricas y metodológicas, este artículo presenta dos lecciones directas de la obra del sociólogo francés, una epistemológica y otra sobre la construcción del objeto de estudio, y una indirecta en las conclusiones sobre las ventajas de estar ante una propuesta abierta e inacabada como la de Pierre Bourdieu para la investigación científica.: Pierre Bourdieu is one of those authors that it is always possible to “rediscover” depending on the scientific interests that the reader has, and that because of the mastery with which he practiced science critically. For him, epistemology, more than a discursive meta-science, is a practice for every sociologist who exerts the office of scientific research, and his very scientific legacy evidences it. Hence, his “reflexive sociology” is nothing more than a practical epistemology that allows at the same time the most varied construction of scientific objects with the support of a theoretical capital amassed throughout his intellectual career in the formula [ ] + field = practice whose openly addressed concepts allow it. Just as it can be learned theoretical and methodological lessons, this article presents two direct lessons from the work of the French sociologist, one epistemological and another about the construction of the object of study, and an indirect one in the conclusions about the advantages of being faced with an open and unfinished proposal like Pierre Bourdieu's for scientific research. (shrink)

Following Galileo's trial of 1633, the Jesuit theologian Melchior Inchofer, author of the most negative reports used by the Roman Inquisition against Galileo, repudiated the Copernicans for the ‘heresy’ of the soul of the world (anima mundi), in an unpublished manuscript. I show that Inchofer's arguments applied far more to the beliefs of Giordano Bruno than to those of Galileo. Since antiquity, various Christian authorities had repudiated several beliefs about the anima mundi as ‘heretical’, hence I review their critiques against (...) Pythagoras, Origen, and Peter Abelard, for allegedly asserting animistic beliefs about the Earth, or a universal spirit, or that souls move the heavenly bodies. Still, in the Renaissance such beliefs were defended by several advocates of Copernicus, including Bruno, William Gilbert, Johannes Kepler, and Philips Lansbergen, who all claimed that Earth moves because it has a soul. By comparing Inchofer's works and some of the Roman Inquisition's earlier censures against Bruno, I argue that the repudiation by many prominent Catholic theologians of pagan notions of the anima mundi as heretical contributed partly to the later theological opposition to the Copernicans. (shrink)