In our globalized world, differing conceptions of human nature and human values raise questions as to whether universal and partisan claims and perspectives can be reconciled, whether interreligious and intercultural conversations can help build human community, and whether a pluralistic ethos can transcend uncompromising notions as to what is true, good, and just. In this volume, world-class scholars from religious studies, the humanities, and the social sciences explore what it means to be human through a multiplicity of lives in time (...) and place as different as fourth-century BCE China and the world of an Alzheimer patient today. Refusing the binary, these essays go beyond description to theories of aging and acceptance, ethics in caregiving, and the role of ritual in healing the inevitable divide between the human and the ideal. (shrink)

New concepts may prove necessary to profit from the avalanche of sequence data on the genome, transcriptome, proteome and interactome and to relate this information to cell physiology. Here, we focus on the concept of large activity-based structures, or hyperstructures, in which a variety of types of molecules are brought together to perform a function. We review the evidence for the existence of hyperstructures responsible for the initiation of DNA replication, the sequestration of newly replicated origins of replication, cell division (...) and for metabolism. The processes responsible for hyperstructure formation include changes in enzyme affinities due to metabolite-induction, lipid-protein affinities, elevated local concentrations of proteins and their binding sites on DNA and RNA, and transertion. Experimental techniques exist that can be used to study hyperstructures and we review some of the ones less familiar to biologists. Finally, we speculate on how a variety of in silico approaches involving cellular automata and multi-agent systems could be combined to develop new concepts in the form of an Integrated cell (I-cell) which would undergo selection for growth and survival in a world of artificial microbiology. (shrink)

According to some recent empirical studies revealing that creativity is linked to sensorimotor components, the current research was aimed at evaluating whether sensory afferences could modulate originality in drawing of children and adolescents. Sixty-nine children from 1st, 3rd, 6th, and 8th grades were required to produce a man who exists and a man who doesn’t exist with fingers or stylus on a tablet and with a pen on paper. Drawings were assessed with an originality scale comparing original drawings to unoriginal (...) ones. Since, in comparison to drawings made on paper with a pen, drawing with fingers enhances proprioceptive information, this condition was expected, according to cognitive load theory, to favor originality in drawing by reducing cognitive resources devoted to motor control of the graphic gesture. On the contrary, since the use of a stylus involves a proprioceptive loss of information, which enhances intrinsic load by increasing cognitive resources devoted to motor control, it was expected that drawing with a stylus on the tablet would lead to the least original drawings. Results only partially confirmed these hypotheses. While the use of fingers on the tablet led to the highest original scores, using a stylus on the tablet did not impair originality in drawing of children and adolescents. On the opposite, the use of a stylus led 3rd–8th graders to perform better than with pen on paper. This modulation of the tool on originality does not confirm the hypotheses formulated in accordance with the cognitive load framework. However, it could be explained according to an embodied perspective of creativity considering the creative process as relying on a sensorimotor prediction process in which sensory afferences are central to generating and evaluate creative ideas. This research opens new avenues on creativity and proposes to consider the development of predictive motor control as a significant part of creativity development. (shrink)

A principios de los años 80 se desató en Francia una polémica conocida como «el silencio de los intelectuales». En este texto abordaremos la singular postura de Michel Foucault al respecto. Para ello realizaremos una doble operación. Por un lado, planteamos la hipótesis siguiente: se pueden encontrar los fundamentos que sostienen su posición en los análisis que realizó sobre la parrhesía a partir de los años 80. En segundo lugar, realizaremos un recorrido por autores como Lyotard y Blanchot, quienes intervinieron (...) en dicha polémica con conocidos escritos, para mostrar las particularidades de la apuesta de Foucault. De esta manera, pretendemos, no solamente mostrar su original aportación al problema, sino señalar los desplazamientos respecto a la crítica del intelectual que había elaborado durante los años 70. (shrink)

Na presente investigação, objetivou-se analisar, a partir do referencial teórico e metodológico pós-estruturalista, os conceitos de Ciência, Tecnologia e Sociedade na trama com a educação e o ensino de Ciências. Como substrato teórico são utilizadas obras de Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze e Felix Guattari, ofertando pistas para ampliar a discussão destes conceitos. Na reunião dos saberes investigados, afirma-se um pensamento científico que desenvolve a produção de sentidos para a educação. Diante do exposto, pensa-se em um ensino, que crie estratégias de (...) existências, que reivindique a trama de teorias e práticas, operando os conteúdos científicos na Sociedade. (shrink)

La Ilustración es un gran torrente que marcó un hito en la Historia del mundo, por sus implicaciones po-líticas, sociales, culturales y económicas. Este fenómeno es conocido popularmente desde Kant como la en-trada en la mayoría de edad de la sociedad: abandonar viejos fanatismos y tener valor de servirse del propio entendimiento. El objetivo de este artículo es mostrar las interpretaciones dominantes de este fenómeno his-tórico que han marcado su recepción en la academia y mostrar la singular aproximación del filósofo (...) francés Michel Foucault. (shrink)

This article is the result of a critical exercise that is, reading the novels of Mauricio Wacquez understanding them as a rupture and writing project. For this, our proposal takes as its starting point the methodology of stratigraphic cuts proposed by Michel Houellebecq, applying in turn the theoretical dimension of François Meyronnis contained in L’ Axe du Néant, specifically, the concept of division in writing.

This book addresses central issues in the philosophy and metaphysics of science, namely the nature of scientific theories, their partial truth, and the necessity of scientific laws within a moderate realist and empiricist perspective. Accordingly, good arguments in favour of the existence of unobservable entities postulated by our best theories, such as electrons, must be inductively grounded on perceptual experience and not their explanatory power as most defenders of scientific realism claim. Similarly, belief in the reality of dispositions such as (...) causal powers which ground the natural necessity of scientific laws must be based on experience. Hence, this book offers a synthetic presentation of an original metaphysics of science, namely a metaphysics of properties, both categorical and dispositional, while at the same time opposing strong versions of necessitarism according to which laws are true in all possible worlds. The main theses and arguments are clearly presented in a non-technical way. Thus, on top of being of interest to the specialists of the topics discussed, it is also useful as a textbook in courses for third year and more advanced university students. (shrink)

"Next to Sartre's Search for a Method and in direct opposition to it, Foucault's work is the most noteworthy effort at a theory of history in the last 50 years." -- Library Journal.

The work of Emmanuel Levinas has been both abundantly recognized and criticized in moral philosophy. This Janus-faced attitude is also present in ecological theories, which find fertile ground in Levinas’ thought without being able to explain its apparent anthropocentrism. Opposing hermeneutical paths tend to focus either on otherness as an absolute alterity, implying a potentially unlimited responsibility for all alterities, or on otherness as a re-foundation of humanism, leading to the conclusion that responsibility is unlimited only among humans. Here I (...) seek to disentangle Levinas from these two extreme interpretations, first by reviewing ecological readings of his philosophy, in both the Francophone and Anglophone spheres, and second by analyzing specific Levinasian terms that might be particularly helpful for a non-anthropocentric or deep ecology. The main results of this investigation are a distinction between the ethics of responsibility and the ethics of vulnerability, an explanation of Levinasian compulsory or methodological humanism, and a schematic model of sensibility as enjoyment/vulnerability capable of supporting deep ecology without the traditional notions of free will, rights, or values. (shrink)

En este texto se trata de pensar el proyecto que Foucault inició con el análisis de la parrhesía. Se aborda ese problema en relación a otros dos elementos de su obra: la reflexión sobre la función de los intelectuales y sus escritos sobre la noción de crítica. Desde esa perspectiva trataré de mostrar que las investigaciones sobre la parrhesía reflejan el intento de pensar una nueva política de la verdad.

The Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) provides that “an individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead.” We show that the UDDA contains two conflicting interpretations of the phrase “cessation of functions.” By one interpretation, what matters for the determination of death is the cessation of spontaneous functions only, regardless of their generation by artificial means. By the (...) other, what matters is the cessation of both spontaneous and artificially supported functions. Because each UDDA criterion uses a different interpretation, the law is conceptually inconsistent. A single consistent interpretation would lead to the conclusion that conscious individuals whose respiratory and circulatory functions are artificially supported are actually dead, or that individuals whose brain is entirely and irreversibly destroyed may be alive. We explore solutions to mitigate the inconsistency. (shrink)

Requiring family authorization for apnea testing subtracts health professionals control over death determination, a procedure that has traditionally been considered a matter of clinical expertise alone. In this commentary, we first provide evidence showing that health professionals’ (HPs) disposition to act on death determination without family’s prior consent could be much lower than that referred to by Berkowitz and Garrett (2020). We hypothesize that HPs may have reservations about their own expertise as regards death, and may thus hesitate to impose (...) their views on patients’ families. We then address the theoretical question of clinical expertise in death determination by distinguishing judgments about facts (e.g., the presence or absence of spontaneous breathing) from interpretations given of these facts (i.e., their meaning for the vital status of an individual). We argue that, while clinicians may claim some expert authority on the former, they hold no particular authority on the latter. (shrink)

Alireza Bagheri supports a policy on organ procurement where individuals could choose their own definition of death between two or more socially accepted alternatives. First, we claim that such a policy, without any criterion to distinguish accepted from acceptable definitions, easily leads to the slippery slope that Bagheri tries to avoid. Second, we suggest that a public discussion about the circumstances under which the dead donor rule could be violated is more productive of social trust than constantly moving the line (...) between life and death. (shrink)

La contribution de Michel Troper à la théorie générale du droit et à la théorie constitutionnelle est aujourd'hui reconnue et célébrée un peu partout dans le monde. Un talent d'architecte se tient à l'origine de cette audience rarement égalée dans la sphère francophone : celui qu'il faut pour accommoder toutes les exigences, quel que soit l'ordre de valeur dans lequel on les trouve : originalité, rigueur, souci de la fonction, esthétisme, solidité, adaptation, intelligence, inquiétude, esprit critique, renoncement, réalisme... A ces (...) mérites, on ajoutera une curiosité insatiable, un goût prononcé pour l'échange et le débat, un refus distingué de l'académisme, un sens exigeant de l'amitié et une méfiance profônde pour les adjectifs... C'est cet édifice de qualités que les élèves, collègues et amis de Michel Troper sont heureux de célébrer en lui offrant ces Mélanges. (shrink)

En el presente ensayo se propone una lectura de la obra Taberna y otros lugares (1969) de Roque Dalton. Se considera que es oportuno pensar la figura del poeta salvadoreño a la luz, no simplemente de los exilios políticos, sino también de la privación (en términos genéricos) de la figura del poeta de sus antiguas funciones en –lo que Ángel Rama denominó– la ciudad letrada. La ciudad modernizada (Rama, 1984) expulsó al poeta de su lugar privilegiado, lo que provoca un (...) trauma y una búsqueda novedosa. En ese contexto, el poeta redefine su voz y la literatura sufre una reterritorialización, es decir, redefine sus márgenes. En América Latina, el problema fue abordado por José Martí que incluso propuso nuevos desafíos a la disciplina (como el problema de la identidad latinoamericana). Se cree que Taberna y otros lugares (1969) retoma estas búsquedas y se arriesga la hipótesis ue, al redefinir su campo, la obra de Dalton puede ser leída no solo en clave literaria, sino también historiográfica desde una mirada benjaminiana. (shrink)

La expansión de las actividades informales de feriantes en el conurbano bonaerense constituye una de las manifestaciones del fenómeno de la heterogeneidad no regulada del aprovisionamiento de bienes de consumo, que a su vez, emergen como intermediarios económicos que atienden a necesidades y demandas de consumidores territorialmente segregados y no articulados a los mercados formales, en su mayoría.Es en ese sentido que el presente artículo quiere rescatar y señalar los componentes centrales que asoman en un proceso que parte con el (...) supuesto de que la confianza constituye un elemento central cuando otras formas que actuarían como garante de las interacciones aparecen débiles, ausentes o no primordiales como garantía de las interacciones sociales, como es el caso de la feria de Solano. (shrink)

El estudio examina mediante una revisión sistemática la literatura científica. La metodología se basó en la aplicación de los principios de la declaración PRISMA. Los resultados indicaron que la mayor producción de estudios fue en 2021, con predominancia de idioma inglés, España como el mayor productor, Reino Unido con el mayor número de revistas y el uso de realidad aumentada como la estrategia más estudiada. La producción científica en educación, y más particularmente en metodologías aplicada a la educación, ha generado (...) una serie de estudios bibliométricos, los cuales han demostrado la evolución de las mismas en lapsos de tiempo diversos. (shrink)

This paper examines two influential theoretical frameworks, set forth by Russell Barkley (1997) and Thomas Brown (2005), and argues that important headway in understanding attention deficit hyperactivity disorder can be made if we acknowledge the way in which human cognition and action are essentially embodied and enactive. The way in which we actively make sense of the world is structured by our bodily dynamics and our sensorimotor engagement with our surroundings. These bodily dynamics are linked to an individual's concerns and (...) felt needs, so that what she attends to in perception, decision-making, and action is partially constituted by her cares and concerns. What I call ?affective framing? engages the whole living body, and ordinarily contributes to attentional focusing, working memory, goal-formulation, and action-monitoring. However, due to affective framing deficits, subjects with ADHD find it difficult to focus their attention, kindle their motivation, and systematically simplify cognitive procedures according to considerations of relevance, salience, and context. Thus, what is impaired in ADHD is not simply a set of executive brain functions, but rather a range of bodily dynamics through which subjects engage with their world. For this reason, intensive behavioral intervention that engages the whole living body may be the most effective, lasting treatment for ADHD. (shrink)

The second volume in an unprecedented publishing event: the complete College de France lectures of one of the most influential thinkers of the last century Michel Foucault remains among the towering intellectual figures of postmodern philosophy. His works on sexuality, madness, the prison, and medicine are classics his example continues to challenge and inspire. From 1971 until his death in 1984, Foucault gave public lectures at the world-famous College de France. These lectures were seminal events. Attended by thousands, they created (...) benchmarks for contemporary critical inquiry. The lectures comprising Abnormal begin by examining the role of psychiatry in modern criminal justice, and its method of categorizing individuals who "resemble their crime before they commit it." Building on the themes of societal self-defense in the first volume of this series, Foucault shows how and why defining "abnormality" and "normality" were prerogatives of power in the nineteenth century, shaping the institutions--from the prison system to the family--meant to deal in particular with “monstrosity,” whether sexual, phsyical, or spiritual. The College de France lectures add immeasurably to our appreciation of Foucault's thought, and offer a unique window on his singular worldview. (shrink)

Desde la ruptura con la visión liberal decimonónica del fenómeno nacionalista, los autores emprenden la difícil tarea de reconstruir, aunque sólo programáticamente, el sentimiento nacionalista desde un punto de vista emancipatorio. Este es el único camino posible para enlazar con los nuevos movimientos sociales que, como el texto señala, generalmente rechazan el fenómeno nacionalista. En efecto, existe ya un nuevo nacionalismo, con un fuerte potencial emancipatorio y que está llamado a caminar junto a la idea de Ecología politica. La ruptura (...) con el nacionalismo decimonónico tiene lugar cuando los nuevos nacionalismos aparecen como un acto de disidencia contra el concepto de Estado-Nación. Este concepto cada vez más afectado por su crisis constitutiva y crónica-crisis de la participación política reducida a"democracia virtual", crisis de eficiencia y crisis cultural-, es el objetivo a combatir por parte de los nuevos nacionalismos. Aquí tiene lugar el encuentro con la Ecología política, en la disidencia del progreso, en la búsqueda de caminos de reconstrucción de identidades destruidas por el mercado. Incluso, la Etnopolítica y la Ecología política coinciden en el mismo campo -el de la disidencia, el de las vías alternativas, el de la emancipación-, con los mismos significados -pluralismo, urgencia vital, necesidad-; finalmente, buscan alcanzar objetivos en los que se coincide: seguridad ontológica y reconstrucción conjunta de las formas de vida ecológicas. (shrink)

En este artículo se presenta un abordaje general de la teoría de la justicia social de John Rawls. Revisamos algunas críticas desde diversos frentes teóricos. Consideramos que la justicia social permite enjuiciar las consecuencias regresivas para la humanidad del capitalismo en su fase neoliberal y comenzar a imaginar otros mundos posibles.

An examination of the relation between war and politics, by one of the twentieth century’s most influential thinkers From 1971 until 1984 at the College de France, Michel Foucault gave a series of lectures ranging freely and conversationally over the range of his research. In Society Must Be Defended , Foucault deals with the emergence in the early seventeenth century of a new understanding of war as the permanent basis of all institutions of power, a hidden presence within society that (...) could be deciphered by an historical analysis. Tracing this development, Foucault outlines the genealogy of power and knowledge that had become his dominant concern. (shrink)

The rise of mathematical developments in the theories of consciousness has led to new measures to detect consciousness in a system. The Integrated Information Theory is one of the best mathematical rooted attempts to quantify the level of consciousness in a system with Φ as the effective information generated in a system above its parts. Recently, the IIT has inspired the Perturbational Complexity Index to detect conscious states in patients with disorders of consciousness, and it has shown to have almost (...) perfect classification accuracy. In this study, we explore the statistical correspondence between the theoretical Φ and the experimental PCI through a neurocomputational model of coupled oscillators that can be artificially perturbed, which mainly focuses on the dynamics of collective synchronization between subsets of brain areas. Our results reveal that both measures are statistically related but, in principle, this relationship is far to be perfect. These results are discussed in the context of the model of coupled oscillators, which mainly focuses on the dynamics of collective synchronization between subsets of brain areas. (shrink)

Whether the prefrontal cortex is part of the neural substrates of consciousness is currently debated. Against prefrontal theories of consciousness, many have argued that neural activity in the prefrontal cortex does not correlate with consciousness but with subjective reports. We defend prefrontal theories of consciousness against this argument. We surmise that the requirement for reports is not a satisfying explanation of the difference in neural activity between conscious and unconscious trials, and that prefrontal theories of consciousness come out of this (...) debate unscathed. (shrink)

Dying serves so often within the narratives of Western popular culture, as an exercise in self-improvement both to the individual dying and to those looking on. It enlightens, ennobles and renders exceptional all those affected by it. Though mainstream cinema's “grammar of dying” is mired in similar myths, film has the potential to do dying differently: it can, instead, connect us, ethically, to the vulnerability of others. The aim of this article is to pursue this potential of film. Using the (...) mainstream grammar of dying as a starting point, I will consider how the moving image, and this ethical potential, is harnessed within two hybrid-media pieces about a loved-one's decline and death: George Saxon's art installation, “A Record of Undying” (2014) and photographer Briony Campbell's short film The Dad Project (2009). While these works will be located within the traditions and transformations of moving image practice, the primary concern here is with how such emotionally resonant pieces navigate our relation to, and responsibility for, our own and others' harsh realities. In this way, the question of ethics is grounded not in the solipsistic circuits of affective modes – whether as the catharsis or betterment of mainstream myths, or what Jane Stadler privileges as the ethical effects of empathy – but in something more inherently, more inevitably, political. (shrink)

Within the Neoplatonic tradition, the absolute transcendence of the First Principle—the One-Good, from which the whole reality in its various articulations derives—plays a crucial role. This philosophical perspective implies, particularly in Plotinus and Proclus, some fundamental philosophical consequences, above all the transcendence of the Principle with respect to being and thought as well. This necessarily implies that the One-Good must be conceived of as beyond the intelligible Beauty itself. In this paper I aim to examine the theoretical implications and consequences (...) of this perspective with specific reference to the conception of God’s absolute transcendence outlined within two texts of the Corpus Areopagiticum, overall characterized by the reworking of some fundamental Neoplatonic concepts in the context of Christian theology: the De divinis nominibus and the De mystica theologia. Indeed, in the De divinis nominibus it is shown that the names/predicates attributed to God in the Sacred Scriptures must be understood only in an allegorical-symbolic meaning, because God is above any possible definition. Not even the character of Beauty can be attributed to him, since he radically transcends it: in fact, God constitutes the absolute foundation and the very first source of Beauty itself. Therefore, God must be understood as ἀκαλλής, that is, “devoid of the connotation of Beauty”, precisely because he completely transcends it. In line with this theological and theoretical perspective, in the De mystica theologia a form of radical and absolute apophatism is developed, which in turn must ultimately lead to its own overcoming for the sake of the henosis, the mystical union with God. (shrink)

El artículo contextualiza e investiga los detalles del «Mes de Reflexión Episcopal» organizado por el Departamento de Pastoral de Conjunto del Celam en julio de 1971, que reunió providencialmente varios obispos, algunos de los cuales no estuvieron en la II Conferencia General tres años antes, y que darían testimonio del espíritu de Medellín hasta el martirio o hasta una muerte trágica en cumplimiento de su misión: Oscar Arnulfo Romero, Juan Gerardi Conedera, Gerardo Valencia Cano y Raúl Zambrano Camader. El encuentro (...) se describe a partir de la revisión documental de las actas y de los pocos informes impresos. La tesis central del artículo es que el diálogo informal entre obispos, teólogos y otros expertos en el «Mes de Reflexión Episcopal» es fuente de propuestas novedosas para una Pastoral de Conjunto, contra la clericalización y el autoritarismo en la Iglesia latinoamericana. Desafortunadamente, no hay una reunión posterior similar debido a una controversia con la Congregación romana para los obispos. (shrink)

The Habermasian concept of ‘interest’ has had a profound effect on the characterization of scientific disciplines. Going beyond issues unrelated to the theory itself, intra‐theoretical interest characterizes the specific ways of approaching any science‐related discipline, defining research topics and methodologies. This approach was developed by Jürgen Habermas in relation to empirical–analytical sciences, historical–hermeneutics sciences, and critical sciences; however, he did not make any specific references to health sciences. This article aims to contribute to shaping a general epistemological framework for health (...) sciences, as well as its specific implications for the medical and nursing areas, via an analysis of the basic knowledge interests developed by Habermas. (shrink)

A part of the “return to religion” now evident in European philosophy, this book represents the culmination of the career of a leading phenomenological thinker whose earlier works trace a trajectory from Marx through a genealogy of psychoanalysis that interprets Descartes’s “I think, I am” as “I feel myself thinking, I am.” In this book, Henry does not ask whether Christianity is “true” or “false.” Rather, what is in question here is what Christianity considers as truth, what kind of truth (...) it offers to people, what it endeavors to communicate to them, not as a theoretical and indifferent truth, but as the essential truth that by some mysterious affinity is suitable for them, to the point that it alone is capable of ensuring them salvation. In the process, Henry inevitably argues against the concept of truth that dominates modern thought and determines, in its multiple implications, the world in which we live. Henry argues that Christ undoes “the truth of the world,” that He is an access to the infinity of self-love, to a radical subjectivity that admits no outside, to the immanence of affective life found beyond the despair fatally attached to all objectifying thought. The Kingdom of God accomplishes itself in the here and now through the love of Christ in what Henry calls “the auto-affection of Life.” In this condition, he argues, all problems of lack, ambivalence, and false projection are resolved. (shrink)

First published: 2010; Previous edition: 2012..

Phillips argues that blindsight is due to response criterion artefacts under degraded conscious vision. His view provides alternative explanations for some studies, but may not work well when one considers several key findings in conjunction. Empirically, not all criterion effects are decidedly non-perceptual. Awareness is not completely abolished for some stimuli, in some patients. But in other cases, it was clearly impaired relative to the corresponding visual sensitivity. This relative dissociation is what makes blindsight so important and interesting.

In his influential article ‘Essence and Modality’, Fine proposes a definition of necessity in terms of the primitive essentialist notion ‘true in virtue of the nature of’. Fine’s proposal is suggestive, but it admits of different interpretations, leaving it unsettled what the precise formulation of an Essentialist definition of necessity should be. In this paper, four different versions of the definition are discussed: a singular, a plural reading, and an existential variant of Fine’s original suggestion and an alternative version proposed (...) by Correia which is not based on Fine’s primitive essentialist notion. The first main point of the paper is that the singular reading is untenable. The second that given plausible background assumptions, the remaining three definitions are extensionally equivalent. The third is that, this equivalence notwithstanding, Essentialists should adopt Correia’s version of the definition, since both the existential variant, which has de facto been adopted as the standard version of the definition in the literature, and the plural reading suffer from problems connected to Fine’s primitive essentialist notion. (shrink)