Modern biology has not yet come to terms with the presence of many organic codes in Nature, despite the fact that we can prove their existence. As a result, it has not yet accepted the idea that the great events of macroevolution were associated with the origin of new organic codes, despite the fact that this is the most parsimonious and logical explanation of those events. This is probably due to the fact that the existence of organic codes in all (...) fundamental processes of life, and in all major transitions in the history of life, has enormous theoretical implications. It requires nothing less than a new theoretical framework, and that kind of change is inevitably slow. There are too many facts to reconsider, too many bits of history to weave together in a new mosaic. But this is what science is about, and the purpose of the present paper is to show that it can be done. More precisely, it is shown that the whole natural history of the brain can be revisited in the light of the organic codes. What is described here is only a bird’s-eye view of brain macroevolution, but it is hoped that the extraordinary potential of the organic codes can nevertheless come through. The paper contains also another message. The organic codes prove that life is based on semiosis, and are in fact the components of organic semiosis, the first and the most diffused form of semiosis on Earth, but not the only one. It will be shown that the evolution of the brain was accompanied by the development of two new types of sign processes. More precisely, it gave origin first to interpretive semiosis, mostly in vertebrates, and then to cultural semiosis, in our species. (shrink)

How can we determine what are just boundaries or just criteria for inclusion or exclusion in contemporary states, nations, peoples, or other 'communities of justice'? As Barbieri demonstrates, recent theories of justice have failed to grapple squarely with this fundamental problem, either wholly ignoring it, or approaching it, inadequately, in terms of distributive or commutative justice, or simply declaring the problem insoluble. Developing a clear understanding of the peculiarities of constitutive justice, Barbieri contends, is a task that has (...) important implications for political philosophy as it bears on topics such as citizenship, migration, multiculturalism, self-determination, and the drafting of new constitutions. To this end, Constitutive Justice critically discusses some present approaches that promise to shed light on constitutive questions involving inclusion and the ethics of boundaries; provides an analysis of some of the central topics that plausible normative theories of constitutive justice will need to address; and develops the author's own constructive account. (shrink)

La epistemologia. Ciencia del conocimiento; Aplicacion del metodo dubidativo; Algunos rasgos fundamentales del conocimiento; Estados de la inteligencia en relacion con sus objetos; La posibilidad del conocimiento como tal; La experiencia consciente del juicio; Idealismo y realismo; El conocimiento del yo; El conocimiento del mundo corporeo; Caracter intuitivo del conocimiento sensible; El conocimiento intelectual; La verdad y el error.

Principles of biological psychology -- Criminology -- Toward an ethic without doctrines -- Moral forces -- Mediocre man.

The genetic code appeared on Earth at the origin of life, and the codes of culture arrived almost four billion years later. For a long time it has been assumed that these are the only codes that exist in Nature, and if that were true we would have to conclude that codes are extraordinary exceptions that appeared only at the beginning and at the end of the history of life. In reality, various other organic codes have been discovered in the (...) past few decades and it is likely that more will come to light in the future. The existence of many organic codes in Nature is therefore an experimental fact, but also more than that. It is one of those facts that have extraordinary implications. In this book it is shown that the genetic code was a precondition for the origin of the first cells, the signal transduction codes divided the first cells into three primary kingdoms (Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya), the splicing codes were instrumental to the origin of the eukaryotic nucleus, the histone code provided a new regulation system in eukaryotic genomes, and the cytoskeleton codes allowed the Eukarya to perform internal movements, including those of mitosis and meiosis. It is shown, furthermore, that organic codes had a key role in multicellular life, in particular in the origin of animals, the origin of mind and the origin of language. The great events of macroevolution, in other words, were associated with the appearance of new organic codes, and we can easily understand why. The reason is that a new code brings into existence something that has never existed before because it creates arbitrary associations, relationships that are not determined by physical necessity. Another outstanding implication is the fact that codes involve meaning and we need therefore to introduce in biology, with the standard methods of science, not only the concept of biological information but also that of biological meaning. The research on biological codes, in conclusion, is bringing to light new mechanisms in evolution and new fundamental concepts in science. This research is the field of Code Biology, the study of all codes of life, from the genetic code to the codes of culture, from the origin of life to the origin of man. (shrink)

One of the central methodological issues for contemporary practitioners of comparative ethics is how to conceptualize and relate to the "other" encountered in cross-cultural studies. A valuable resource for reflection on this problem is the work of the French historian and cultural theorist Michel de Certeau, whose diverse opus coheres around his notion of heterology--a "science of the other." In this article I explore perspectives on the cultural "other" emerging from Certeau's analyses of a series of "travel narratives" documenting the (...) European encounter with the peoples of the New World. Certeau's meditations on the metaphor of the voyage, the interplay of orality and literacy, the politics of ethnography, and the semiotics of the "return of the repressed" offer, I suggest, important insights for comparative ethicists. (shrink)

One of the most pleasurable aspects of video games is their ability to induce immersive experiences. However, there appears to be a tentative conceptualization of what an immersive experience is. In this short review, we specifically focus on the terms of flow and immersion, as they are the most widely used and applied definitions in the video game literature, whilst their differences remain disputable. We critically review the concepts separately and proceed with a comparison on their proposed differences. We conclude (...) that immersion and flow do not substantially differ in current studies and that more evidence is needed to justify their separation. (shrink)

It is shown that information and meaning can be defined by operative procedures, and that we need to recognize them as new types of natural entities. They are not quantities (neither fundamental nor derived) because they cannot be measured, and they are not qualities because they are not subjective features. Here it is proposed to call them nominable entities, i.e., entities which can be specified only by naming their components in their natural order.

Frente a la teoría de la pena, con sus sutiles matices y fines comunicativos, encontramos una realidad que diverge sustancialmente de aquella. Donde, con frecuencia, la denominada prevención general no acontece, porque la resolución no llega a esta, a la generalidad a la que se apela como fundamento del castigo. Pero, en particular, cuando tal comunicación acontece, tiene lugar en un inquietante marco discursivo que va dando nombre a nuestro tiempo: la era de la posverdad. Se revela aquí un contexto (...) comunicativo hostil al discurso experto y a los hechos, que se ven desplazados por su valoración, donde los interlocutores se alejan del modelo del ciudadano racional sobre el que se teoriza en Derecho, y donde actores políticos desarrollan estrategias comunicativas propagandistas, de modo que, en ocasiones, se termina comunicando un mensaje contrario a lo que enuncia literalmente la resolución judicial. (shrink)

The high levels of land use, inputs, and investment, along with the specific forms of organization and management that characterized Cuba's state extensive growth model during the 1980s, could not overcome the challenges posed by the integrated care required by the sugarcane crop and corresponding industrial activities. Starting in 1993, large state farms have been converted into Basic Units of Cooperative Production with some degree of autonomy. Although first-year production results are not satisfactory, it is too early to evaluate their (...) performance. Their establishment, however, is a step in the right direction to alleviate the problems that the previous forms of organization and management inherent to the state extensive growth model were unable to solve. (shrink)

Dubljević et al. (2022) argue that neuroethics has a socio-political role that can “(1) serve to clarify and resolve conflicts, (2) orient the public with regards to the moral status of neurotechno...

Cooperative learning encourages the development of interpersonal skills and motivates students to participate more actively in the teaching and learning process. This study explores the impact of cooperative learning on the academic goals influencing university students’ behavior and leading to the attainment of a series of academic objectives. To this end, a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design was used, with a sample of 509 university students from Preschool, Primary and Social Education undergraduate degree courses. Using the Academic Goals Questionnaire, pretest (...) and posttest measures were taken via self-reports to evaluate three types of academic goals: learning goals, social reinforcement goals and achievement goals. The results show that cooperative learning is an effective tool for encouraging university students to develop academic goals that motivate them to fully engage with the tasks they are set in order to acquire knowledge and skills. In addition, when students are asked to work as part of a team on an autonomous basis without the structure and supervision necessary to ensure a minimum standard of cooperation, they display a greater tendency toward social reinforcement goals than toward learning and achievement goals. These findings contribute new knowledge to the conceptual framework on cooperative learning. Goals may be considered one of the most important variables influencing students’ learning and the use of cooperative learning techniques in university classrooms creates the necessary conditions for encouraging students to develop goals oriented toward learning. (shrink)

The genetic code appeared on Earth with the first cells. The codes of cultural evolution arrived almost four billion years later. These are the only codes that are recognized by modern biology. In this book, however, Marcello Barbieri explains that there are many more organic codes in nature, and their appearance not only took place throughout the history of life but marked the major steps of that history. A code establishes a correspondence between two independent 'worlds', and the codemaker (...) is a third party between those 'worlds'. Therefore the cell can be thought of as a trinity of genotype, phenotype and ribotype. The ancestral ribotypes were the agents which gave rise to the first cells. The book goes on to explain how organic codes and organic memories can be used to shed new light on the problems encountered in cell signalling, epigenesis, embryonic development, and the evolution of language. (shrink)

More than a century ago, Edward W. Nelson and Edward A. Goldman spent 14 years traveling across much of Mexico in one of the most critical biological expeditions ever undertaken by two naturalists. This long-term survey was a cornerstone in Mexican mammalogy development; however, their specific role in discovering taxa that were practically unknown before the expedition is not yet necessarily recognized. In a time when the historical aspect of knowledge on mammals is being ignored for the new generations of (...) mammalogists, a detailed analysis of the legacy of the survey is essential. Here I focus on shrews to analyze how the fieldwork and the specimens they collected have contributed to the current knowledge of shrews in the country. Nelson and Goldman collected 474 specimens of shrews, representing 31 of the 40 species that have currently been recognized. This collection has been key to building taxonomic, evolutionary, and biogeographic knowledge of shrews in the country. The success of the expedition was primarily due to the epistemic role of novel methods and approaches in natural history research at the time. The collection also offers the opportunity to document the loss of species and ecological interactions as indirect consequences of human activities, especially in montane regions. I argue that the value of this expedition can still increase with the use of modern biodiversity study tools and the digitization and access of ancient material such as photographs, field notes, and correspondence. (shrink)

This article analyzes a panel of 550 international firms, for the period 2004 to 2010, to compare the role of female directors in family and non-family firms in promoting responsible practices. Many studies have associated the presence of women on the board with a higher degree of socially responsible commitment. However, we found that this is much less so in family firms than in non-family firms. In family firms, corporate social responsibility commitment does not vary significantly with the presence of (...) female directors, as the latter tend to behave in accordance with the family orientation toward CSR. This orientation depends on the stakeholders being addressed, with greater social responsibility shown toward external stakeholders than internal ones. (shrink)

In this article, we sketch how theoretical neuroethics can clarify the concept of autonomy. We hope that this can both serve as a model for the conceptual clarification of other components of PIAAAS and contribute to the development of the empirical measures that Gilbert and colleagues [1] propose.

In this article, we sketch how theoretical neuroethics can clarify the concept of autonomy. We hope that this can both serve as a model for the conceptual clarification of other components of PIAAAS and contribute to the development of the empirical measures that Gilbert and colleagues [1] propose.

How do Goya's representations of the body disrupt the Enlightenment's configurations of the corporeal? If for eighteenth-century aesthetics the body is both the site of ideal beauty and the limit of what can and may be represented, then Goya's panoply of monsters provides a way of understanding other modes of reason, other ways of representing the body and its functions within culture. In his work there is a recuperation of those elements that seem to lie outside the ken of the (...) Enlightenment project: physicality, animality, hybridity, the grotesque, the popular; a recognition of the animal nature of the body and the products of bodily impulses and forces. A rethinking of the body would incorporate an understanding of its role as a physical and social phenomenon in the constitution of the subject. Following on from Paul Ilie's concept of counter-rational Reason, which he defines as the opposite of a uniform centre of rationality in representative thought, the first half of my paper will consider Goya's problematization of representation. My analysis of a selection of drawings from the collection Los Caprichos will focus not just on the representation of bodies in the painter's work but on his exploration of bodies in their material variety—configurations of modes of constructing the body. This examination of Goya's prolific pictorial negotiations and adaptations of flesh and world will draw upon contemporary approaches to theorizing the body, namely the theories of Julia Kristeva and Elizabeth Grosz. (shrink)

Intentaremos mostrar en este estudio qué significa la expresión “hermenéutica en san Buenaventura”. Esto significa que no pretendemos hacer una lectura hermenéutica del pensamiento bonaventuriano y que situados desde una perspectiva de historia del pensamiento nos preguntaremos si realiza lo que podría señalarse en términos modernos una “teología hermenéutica” o más bien una “hermenéutica teológica”, es decir, una aproximación y lectura teológico-filosófica como herramienta para conseguir un fin teológico determinado. Para ello realizaremos una lectura del Prólogo del Breviloquium, sin duda, (...) el texto que mejor muestra la “hermenéutica en Buenaventura” como instrumento privilegiado para presentar la ciencia teológica como camino de comprensión de la Sagrada Escritura. (shrink)

The relevance of social norms for understanding appropriate behaviour in context has taken central stage in politeness research in recent years, and particularly in studies of workplace interaction. As an example of this research, this paper explores the way in which a group of nurses interacting with their colleagues negotiates complaints. The data were collected in a ward of a public healthcare institution in New Zealand and consist of audio and video recordings of four roster meetings involving nurses and nurse (...) managers. Instances of nurses’ complaints are explored from an interactional sociolinguistic point of view, allowing the researcher to investigate emergent facework. The findings suggest that multiple ingroup and outgroup memberships, achieved through the dynamic use of personal pronouns, enact preferred politic behaviour for both, transactional and relational goals. In addition, nurses’ convergence in their display of socio-pragmatic norms governing their complaining practices suggests that this group of nurses belongs to the same workplace community. Finally, strong emphasis is placed on the role that complaining plays in the positive presentation of nurses’ identities. (shrink)

(2009). A Review of “War and the Soul: Healing Our Nation's Veterans from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder”. World Futures: Vol. 65, Creativity@Science/Society/Arts, pp. 620-625.

O presente trabalho traz um estudo do perfil dos 417 prefeitos eleitos no estado da Bahia nas eleições de 2016 pelos critérios de cor/raça e gênero. A partir desta definição, busca compreender qual o compromisso que os partidos políticos vitoriosos têm com a agenda antirracista e de igualdade de gênero de modo a compreender se mulheres e homens negros têm à disposição conteúdo propositivo dos partidos que apoiem pautas defendidas pelo movimento Negro e Feminista. A análise dos dados revela que (...) a Bahia é governada majoritariamente por homens, e brancos lideram a corrida de forma desproporcional já que sequer correspondem a 20% da população do estado. Por outro lado, a participação de mulheres e homens negros, apesar de representarem maioria dos eleitos, não significa corresponder automaticamente a uma associação objetiva da pauta antirracista e de igualdade de gênero dada às vinculações partidárias que escolheram. (shrink)

This study investigates the possible effects of pre-term births and low birth weight on infant mortality rates (IMRs) over a 15-year period in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil, based on surveys carried out in 1978/79 and 1994. The 1978/79 survey included 6750 births over a 12-month period and the 1994 survey 2846 births over a 4-month period. Infant deaths were retrieved monthly from the city register. Infant mortality rate decreased from 36·6 to 16·9 deaths per 1000 over 15 years. The decrease in (...) IMR was larger in the 25000·63); it increased to 0·57 (95% CI 0·350·97) when adjusted for length of gestation and other variables. The increase in pre-term births and low birth weight may have had, at most, a marginal effect on the IMR. Progress in the care of newborns may have decreased the mortality risk, but even mild pre-term birth still has an impact on infant mortality. There is room for further improvement in IMR by tackling the high rates of pre-term birth. (shrink)