Múltiples estudios experimentales han iluminado el potencial papel que las alteraciones epigenéticas podrían jugar en el inicio y estabilización de las enfermedades. Estas investigaciones han motivado el surgimiento de una nueva disciplina conocida como epidemiología epigenética. Este artículo tiene dos objetivos fundamentales. Primero, analizar y clarificar las principales dificultades epistemológicas, ontológicas y metodológicas que enfrenta la articulación de esta nueva disciplina científica. Segundo, estructurar un marco filosófico alternativo e innovador basado en un pluralismo científico que permita, en último término, integrar (...) la epidemiología epigenética dentro de la actual práctica médica. (shrink)

The conceptual dilemma that species entail has divided, since its formulation, biologists and philosophers in two spheres: those who believe in the existence of a unified category of species and those who defend the unyielding plurality of equally legitimate concepts. The aim of this paper is to comprise the analysis of the problems that revolve around the species category with the only purpose being to determine the existence of only one univocal and unrestricted definition of species. For this reason, the (...) paper will be divided into two sections. The first section will analyse the extent to which essentialism amounts to an antithetical theory to the modern biological theory. In the second section a detailed critique will be carried out on existing attempts to devise a definition of species. Two conclusions can be drawn from the previous statements. First and due to the fall of essentialism, that there is not only one single category of species but an uncompromising plurality of concepts. Secondly and following previous assertion, it can be stated that the most consistent viewpoint in the evolutionary theory is the one in which an ontological pluralism is embraced and, consequently, a taxonomical pluralism. (shrink)

The conceptual dilemma that species entail has divided, since its formulation, biologists and philosophers in two spheres: those who believe in the existence of a unified category of species and those who defend the unyielding plurality of equally legitimate concepts. The aim of this paper is to comprise the analysis of the problems that revolve around the species category with the only purpose being to determine the existence of only one univocal and unrestricted definition of species. For this reason, the (...) paper will be divided into two sections. The first section will analyse the extent to which essentialism amounts to an antithetical theory to the modern biological theory. In the second section a detailed critique will be carried out on existing attempts to devise a definition of species. Two conclusions can be drawn from the previous statements. First and due to the fall of essentialism, that there is not only one single category of species but an uncompromising plurality of concepts. Secondly and following previous assertion, it can be stated that the most consistent viewpoint in the evolutionary theory is the one in which an ontological pluralism is embraced and, consequently, a taxonomical pluralism. (shrink)

Reseña Ruvituso, Clara. Diálogos existenciales. La filosofía alemana en la Argentina peronista (1946-1955). Madrid, Iberoamerica-Vervuert, 2015, 368 pp.

Este texto situa-se no domínio da História das Ideias e aborda como temática principal o pensamento de Oliveira Martins sobre o Homem negro e a escravatura. As fontes primárias privilegiadas foram os documentos escritos do pensador, escolhidos pela sua representatividade quanto ao ideário em causa, a par de historiografia sobre a temática visada, que é muito vasta em termos biográficos e parcelares. Para o estudo das ideias do autor utilizámos metodologias e técnicas de análise interdisciplinares. A contextualização histórica, como ponto (...) prévio à abordagem do tema central do trabalho, é delineada a partir de uma breve caracterização das diversas conjunturas económicas, políticas e sociais da época, uma vez que as ideias não têm validade absoluta, fora do tempo e do espaço em que são geradas. Procurou-se expor e analisar a coerência entre as ideias de Oliveira Martins acerca da História, da Sociedade, da Nação e do Estado e as suas concepções antropológicas e rácicas; por fim, os seus conceitos sobre a impossibilidade de “civilizar” o Homem negro e sobre a escravatura. (shrink)

The theoretical reliability of determinism. A review from the proposal of Mariano Artigas This article has two purposes. The first is to demonstrate that the theory of determinism, which claims to be based on the principles of experimental science, cannot be considered as an explanation compatible with such sciences. To do this, we use some ideas of Mariano Artigas on the explanatory power of scientific theories and their reliability from his book The Mind of the Universe. Through this (...) process we seek to achieve the second objective: to show the importance of the work of Artigas to dissolve complex contemporary debates, such as the current discussion about the existence of human freedom. (shrink)

This article re-evaluates the role of the manuscript tradition of the Historia Augusta in debates over the original contents and authorship of the text. Evidence for physical disruptions to the text before our oldest surviving manuscripts points to an earlier manuscript distributed across multiple codices. A multi-volume archetype eliminates critical arguments against the author's claims about lives missing before the Life of Hadrian as well as in the lacuna for the years a.d. 244–260. Other multi-volume codices of the eighth and (...) ninth centuries show that loss of an initial volume would have disrupted the textual tradition for the index, titles and authorial attributions. Comparison of our most complete early witness, Pal. lat. 899, to the independent branches of the textual tradition shows discrepancies between these paratextual elements as expected in a disrupted tradition. Ultimately, this article concludes that the current debates on authorship and the original scope of the Historia Augusta rest on paratextual elements from a single branch of the manuscript tradition, raising doubts about the centrality of these controversies to understanding the work. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Checklists have been used to improve quality in many industries, including healthcare. The use of checklists, however, has not been extensively evaluated in clinical ethics consultation. This article seeks to fill this gap by exploring the efficacy of using a checklist in ethics consultation, as tested by an empirical investigation of the use of the checklist at a large academic medical system (Cleveland Clinic). The specific aims of this project are as follows: (1) to improve the quality of ethics consultations (...) by providing reminders to ethics consultants about process steps that are important for most patient-centered ethics consultations, (2) to create consistency in the ethics consultation process across the medical system, and (3) to establish an effective educational tool for trainers and trainees in clinical ethics consultation. The checklist was developed after a thorough literature review and an iterative process of revising and testing by a group of experienced ethics consultants. To pilot test the checklist, it was distributed to 46 ethics consultants. After a six-month pilot period in which ethics professionals used the checklist during their clinical activities, a survey was distributed to all of those who used the checklist. The 10-item survey examined consultants’ perceptions regarding the three aims listed above. Of the 25 survey respondents, 11 self-reported as experts in ethics consultation, nine perceived themselves to have mid-level expertise, and five self-reported as novices. The majority (68 percent) of all respondents, regardless of expertise, believed that the checklist could be a “helpful” or “very helpful” tool in the consultation process generally. Novices were more likely than experts to believe that the checklist would be useful in conducting consultations. The limitations of this study include: reduced generalizability given that this project was conducted at one medical system, utilized a small sample size, and used self-reported quality outcome measures. Despite these limitations, to the authors’ knowledge this is the first investigatation of the use of a checklist systematically to improve quality in ethics consultation. Importantly, our findings shed light on ways this checklist can be used to improve ethics consultation, including its use as an educational tool. The authors hope to test the checklist with consultants in other healthcare systems to explore its usefulness in different healthcare environments. (shrink)

A physician and spokesman for the French Ideologues, Pierre-JeanGeorges Cabanis (1757-1808) stands at the crossroads of several influential developments in modern culture--Enlightenment optimism about human perfectibility, the clinical method in medicine, and the formation and adaptation of liberal social ideals in the French Revolution. This first major study of Cabanis in English traces the influences of these developments on his thought and career. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously (...) out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

For regular sets in Euclidean space, previous work has identified twelve ‘basic’ computability notions to which many previous notions considered in literature were shown to be equivalent. With respect to those basic notions we now investigate on the computability of natural operations on regular sets: union, intersection, complement, convex hull, image, and pre-image under suitable classes of functions. It turns out that only few of these notions are suitable in the sense of rendering all those operations uniformly computable.

We congratulate Fox and her colleagues (2007) for contributing to the published empirical literature on ethics consultation in United States hospitals. Their study demonstrates the continued wide v...

The vast majority of research in nursing ethics over the last decade indicates that nurses may not be fully prepared to ‘deliver the good’ for their patients, or to contribute appropriately in the wider current health care climate. When suitable research projects were evaluated for this article, one key question emerged: if nurses are educationally better prepared than ever before to exercise their ethical decision-making skills, why does research still indicate that the expected practice-based improvements remain elusive? Hence, a number (...) of ideas gleaned from recent research about the current nature of nursing ethics, and especially teaching nursing ethics to student nurses, are analysed and critiqued in this article, which concludes with a cluster of ideas and conclusions based on that analysis. It is hoped that such a review may serve as a catalyst for nurse educators to re-examine their teaching practices with a view to enhancing good nursing practice through educational means. (shrink)

The history of the Euclidean Steiner tree problem, which is the problem of constructing a shortest possible network interconnecting a set of given points in the Euclidean plane, goes back to Gergonne in the early nineteenth century. We present a detailed account of the mathematical contributions of some of the earliest papers on the Euclidean Steiner tree problem. Furthermore, we link these initial contributions with results from the recent literature on the problem.

Recognize the “philo- sophia ” as such, this side of Postmodernism, means, starting from the surprising studies of Heribert Boeder, see it as a thought epochally built on a Wisdom, that is, on a initial Knowledge about the Destiny of Man. For the philo-sophical thought of the so-called “German Idealism”, that Wisdom is neither that of the Muses, as in the First epoch, neither the “Christian sapientia”, as in the Middle epoch, but the “Civil Consciousness” about Duty and Freedom.

I propose a novel way to understand the stringency of Kant’s conception of beneficence. This novel understanding can ground our intuition that we do not have to forego (almost) all pursuit of our personal ends. I argue that we should understand the application of imperfect duties to specific cases according to the framework set by the adoption and promotion of ends. Agents have other ends than obligatory ones and they must weigh obligatory ends against these other ends. Obligatory ends are (...) special among ends only insofar as their adoption is not optional. My reading of the normative status of imperfect duties affords a way of thinking about beneficence modelled on the everyday ways in which agents pursue their personal projects and weigh different ends against each other. This establishes a middle-ground between an extremely demanding conception of beneficence and an overly latitudinarian one. Furthermore, it helps us understand why we do not have to be maximally beneficent and why there is a bias towards the near in our thinking about rescue cases. (shrink)