El presente artículo –ampliación de una ponencia de los autores- recorre la actual polémica sobre los efectos del eurocentrismo en el desarrollo y simultáneo ensanchamiento de la brecha entre los países del norte y del sur, y la responsabilidad que tienen los científicos de ocuparse en el estudio y análisis de las causas lo que viene ocurriendo en las sociedades y territorios del sur. Se cuestiona la validez de considerar universal el conocimiento científico originado en Europa y con mayor razón (...) las innovaciones o productos que de allí surgen. Postula la necesidad de construir paradigmas endógenos tomando en consideración las particularidades de un país tanto amazónico como andino con toda su complejidad, lo que requiere una búsqueda creativa. Postula finalmente la necesidad de una política científica propia que surja de una universidad participativa. (shrink)

Despite the emergence of computer games as a dominant cultural industry, we know little or nothing about the ethics of computer games. Considerations of the morality of computer games seldom go beyond intermittent portrayals of them in the mass media as training devices for teenage serial killers. In this first scholarly exploration of the subject, Miguel Sicart addresses broader issues about the ethics of games, the ethics of playing the games, and the ethical responsibilities of game designers. He argues (...) that computer games are ethical objects, that computer game players are ethical agents, and that the ethics of computer games should be seen as a complex network of responsibilities and moral duties. Players should not be considered passive amoral creatures; they reflect, relate, and create with ethical minds. The games they play are ethical systems, with rules that create gameworlds with values at play. Drawing on concepts from philosophy and game studies, Sicart proposes a framework for analyzing the ethics of computer games as both designed objects and player experiences. After presenting his core theoretical arguments and offering a general theory for understanding computer game ethics, Sicart offers case studies examining single-player games, multiplayer games, and online gameworlds from an ethical perspective. He explores issues raised by unethical content in computer games and its possible effect on players and offers a synthesis of design theory and ethics that could be used as both analytical tool and inspiration in the creation of ethical gameplay. (shrink)

Why computer games can be ethical, how players use their ethical values in gameplay, and the implications for game design.

Phenomenology in medicine’s main contribution is to present a first-person narrative of illness, in an effort to aid medicine in reaching an accurate disease diagnosis and establishing a personal relationship with patients whose lived experience changes dramatically when severe disease and disabling condition is confirmed. Once disease is diagnosed, the lived experience of illness is reconstructed into a living-with-disease narrative that medicine’s biological approach has widely neglected. Key concepts like health, sickness, illness, disease and the clinical encounter are being diversely (...) and ambiguously used, leading to distortions in socio-medical practices such as medicalization, pharmaceuticalization, emphasis on surveillance medicine. Current definitions of these concepts as employed in phenomenology of medicine are revised, concluding that more stringent semantics ought to reinforce an empirical phenomenological or postphenomenological approach. (shrink)

Using evidence from experimental psychology, some social psychologists, moral philosophers and organizational scholars claim that character traits do not exist and, hence, that the philosophical tradition of virtue ethics is empirically inadequate and should dispose of the notion of character to accommodate the empirical evidence. In this paper, I systematically address the debate between dispositionalists and situationists about the existence, status and properties of character traits and their manifestations in human behavior, with the ultimate goal of responding to the question (...) whether virtue ethicists need to abandon the very enterprise of building a character-based moral theory in business ethics and organizational behavior. In the course of this paper, I shall defend the claim that the situationist argument relies on a misinterpretation of the experimental evidence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:To have a virtue is to possess a certain kind of trait of character that is appropriate in pursuing the moral good at which the virtue aims. Human beings are assumed to be capable of attaining those traits. Yet, a number of scholars are skeptical about the very existence of such character traits. They claim a sizable amount of empirical evidence in their support. This article is concerned with the existence and explanatory power of character as a way to assess (...) the possibility of achieving moral virtue, with particular attention paid to business context. I aim to unsettle the so-called situationist challenge to virtue ethics. In the course of this article, I shall defend four claims, namely, that virtues are more than just behavioral dispositions, that at least some virtues may not be unitary traits, that psychologists cannot infer virtues from overt behavior, and that the situationist data do not account for the observational equivalence of traits. Since it rests on a misconception of what virtue is, the situationist objection remains unconvincing. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The language of virtue is gaining wider appreciation in the philosophical, psychological, and management literatures. Ethicists and social scientists aim to integrate normative and empirical approaches into a new “science of virtue.” But, I submit, they are talking past each other; they hold radically different notions of what a virtue is. In this paper, I shall examine two conflicting conceptions of virtue, what I call the reductive and the non-reductive accounts of virtue. I shall critically study them and argue that (...) the non-reductive view is the best philosophical account of virtue and the only one that can account for the way we talk about virtue in business and in everyday life. We can only understand what it means to act virtuously through the examination of the attitudes, beliefs, desires, and inclinations of the virtuous agent. I shall illustrate the differences between the reductive and non-reductive accounts by considering the virtue of gratitude. (shrink)

Exposición correspondiente al acto de defensa de la Tesis Doctoral del Dr. Bordas Prószynski, intitulada El pensamiento político de Josep Torras i Bages, en la que se recorre el marco histórico-cultural de la Cataluña de finales del siglo xix y de comienzos del xx, para apreciar la aportación de la persona y de la obra de Josep Torras i Bages, obispo de Vic durante los años 1899 a 1916. El resultado de la investigación ofrece una síntesis de su pensamiento (...) político, especialmente por lo que se refiere a su doctrina regionalista vindicando la tradición cristiana de Cataluña. (shrink)

How computer games can be designed to create ethically relevant experiences for players. Today's blockbuster video games—and their never-ending sequels, sagas, and reboots—provide plenty of excitement in high-resolution but for the most part fail to engage a player's moral imagination. In Beyond Choices, Miguel Sicart calls for a new generation of video and computer games that are ethically relevant by design. In the 1970s, mainstream films—including The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, Raging Bull, and Taxi Driver—filled theaters but also treated their (...) audiences as thinking beings. Why can't mainstream video games have the same moral and aesthetic impact? Sicart argues that it is time for games to claim their place in the cultural landscape as vehicles for ethical reflection. Sicart looks at games in many manifestations: toys, analog games, computer and video games, interactive fictions, commercial entertainments, and independent releases. Drawing on philosophy, design theory, literary studies, aesthetics, and interviews with game developers, Sicart provides a systematic account of how games can be designed to challenge and enrich our moral lives. After discussing such topics as definition of ethical gameplay and the structure of the game as a designed object, Sicart offers a theory of the design of ethical game play. He also analyzes the ethical aspects of game play in a number of current games, including Spec Ops: The Line, Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer, Fallout New Vegas, and Anna Anthropy's Dys4Ia. Games are designed to evoke specific emotions; games that engage players ethically, Sicart argues, enable us to explore and express our values through play. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Warming Up Seeking Early Solace Experience and Thought So Be It Against Lukewarmness Pragmatic Use of Belief.

Recent experimental studies indicate that epistemically irrelevant factors can skew our intuitions, and that some degree of scepticism about appealing to intuition in philosophy is warranted. In response, some have claimed that philosophers are experts in such a way as to vindicate their reliance on intuitions—this has become known as the ‘expertise defence’. This paper explores the viability of the expertise defence, and suggests that it can be partially vindicated. Arguing that extant discussion is problematically imprecise, we will finesse the (...) notion of ‘philosophical expertise’ in order to better reflect the complex reality of the different practices involved in philosophical inquiry. On this basis, we offer a new version of the expertise defence that allows for distinct types of philosophical expertise. The upshot of our approach is that wholesale vindications or rejections of the expertise defence are shown to be unwarranted; we must instead turn to local, piecemeal investigations of philosophical expertise. Lastly, in the spirit of taking our own advice, we exemplify how recent developments from experimental philosophy lend themselves to this approach, and can empirically support one instance of a successful expertise defence. (shrink)

Neglected diseases are severe conditions that mainly affect the world's poorest people. Those suffering from neglected diseases are mostly suffering from tropical infections that have failed to receive priority in pharmaceutical research and development programs, as well as in public health policies aimed at improving availability and access to preventive, diagnostic and curative medicine. The World Health Organization has issued a number of documents directing attention to the plight affecting one third of the world's population, assisted by active support from (...) private organizations, notably the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation, but the overall situation remains dismal. In the wake of major socioeconomic processes including globalization, steadily growing economic disparity, healthcare inequality, the instability created by rogue states and terrorism, as well as massive migration, and epidemic outbreaks, the features of neglected diseases have been changing. Neglected populations affected by tropical diseases are suffering increasingly from non-infectious degenerative conditions and disabilities due to untreated chronic maladies. Pockets of poverty and neglect can also be detected in high-income countries, contributing to the emergence of new diseases and the reemergence of infections believed to be disappearing such as tuberculosis and the measles. Included in the issues of neglect are rare diseases, mostly of genetic origin, affecting a small number of patients that suffer from multiple life-shortening functional impairment and organ defects. Effective medicines are extremely expensive, allegedly because research and development of appropriate drugs is resources and time consuming, requiring exorbitant prices to recoup investment from a small number of consumers. Bioethics has been tardy in addressing the suffering and destitution of neglected and rare diseases. Convinced that permanently repeated denunciations blunt the sensitivity towards suffering, whereas statistics are bloodless and unable to elicit commitment, this book attempts to explore a different strategy. In an upstream approach, bioethics needs to engage in ethnographic fieldwork that confronts and shares the context in which people suffer, vividly presenting what epidemiological research has blunted into statistical data. Additionally, a downstream approach is suggested, requiring bioethics to vigorously and openly denounce unethical biomedical and pharmaceutical research, misdeeds in registration and marketing of drugs, and misalignment of policies with the unmet healthcare needs of the destitute. More than being critical observers, bioethicists ought to shed lurking conflicts of interests and seek active participation in planning research and public healthcare practices aimed at improving the lives of medically neglected populations. (shrink)

Latin American countries have slowly enacted laws decriminalizing abortion in three circumstances: Life‐threatening risk for the pregnant woman, extra‐uterine non‐viability of malformed foetus, and pregnancy due to rape or incest. Chile is one of the last countries to adopt such a law, formulated in an increasingly restrictive format. Conservative politicians and Church‐related healthcare institutions promptly announced individual and institutional conscientious objection based on the right of private facilities to obey their ideology and personal moral integrity. Juridical consultations and Constitutional Court (...) rulings allowed private hospitals to uphold their objection even if contracted to provide some public health services. Under these conditions, only a few hundred women requested and obtained a legal abortion, while an estimated 100,000 continued to depend on unsafe procedures. Bioethical debate was silenced by the unfettered drive for conscientious objection that continues to limit women’s autonomy, and fails to ease the public health scourge of massive unsafe clandestine abortions. (shrink)

Concern about the rapid ageing of all societies reaches alarming proportions as healthcare inequities are steeply rising, prompting the elderly to live longer but subject to insufficient social protection and healthcare in the wake of dwindling public resources. The aged population of developing nations are facing additional hardships due to the growing gap between needs and the financial reductions of public institutions, retirement funds, and the trend towards privatization of essential services turned into commodities. Current approaches to allocation of insufficient (...) resources without ageist discrimination are briefly discussed: individual self‐care aimed at successful, active and healthy ageing based on resourcefulness of the privileged elderly; utilitarian approaches founded on QALY and fair innings, and human rights focused on the plights of the elderly. These approaches cannot apply to resources poor nations, who need to engage in context‐bound bioethics dealing with the realities of their exposed ageing population. A developing world bioethics is needed to face the plights of the elderly in countries with low and middle‐income and insufficient social capital. Suggested are: 1) a phenomenological approach based on the interaction of bioethics and ethnology, furthering grass‐roots input from the elderly; 2) Create small communities –campus‐like boroughs– to simplify accessibility to social services and healthcare facilities, as an alternative to the high‐cost WHO proposal of age‐friendly large cities. (shrink)

The multidisciplinary provenance of bioethics leads to a variety of discursive styles and ways of reasoning, making the discipline vulnerable to criticism and unwieldy to the setting of solid theoretical foundations. Applied ethics belongs to a group of disciplines that resort to deliberation rather than formal argumentation, therefore employing both factual and value propositions, as well as emotions, intuitions and other non logical elements. Deliberation is thus enriched to the point where ethical discourse becomes substantial rather than purely analytical. Caution (...) must be exercised to avoid this formal permissiveness from accepting empty and incorrigible statements that are but flatus voci since they can neither be supported nor falsified. It is therefore suggested that deliberation in bioethics should comply with three sets of conditions: (1) Be understandable, truthful, honest and pertinent, as suggested by communicative ethics; (2) Allow for second order, thick judgements as suggested by pragmatism; (3) Abide by additional criteria as here proposed: Doxastic propositions should be bolstered by a cognitive element; statements should be specific and proportional to the issue at hand, and they should be arguable and coherent. (shrink)

The increased prevalence of advanced‐stage chronic diseases has augmented the need for palliative care teams. In Colombia, although the legislation promotes palliative care development, people still die without receiving management from a palliative care team. In addition, judiciary regulations regarding euthanasia have generated public confusion and ethical conflicts among members of the palliative care teams. Therefore, this study aimed to perform a bioethical reflection on the relationship between palliative care and euthanasia supported by data on euthanasia requests in a palliative (...) care program. This reflection is based on retrospective and descriptive observational data, collected in two highly complex hospitals in Bogotá, Colombia. A total of 50 euthanasia requests were identified, of which 62% met the defined criteria, 16% did not, and 22% were not considered by the interdisciplinary committee for the right to die with dignity due to early death. All patients were treated and followed up by a palliative care team until their death. This study considered that palliative care could be a complement management for patients requesting euthanasia based on their experience by supporting the decision‐making, alleviating suffering, and providing emotional support in the last days of life. (shrink)

This paper aims to analyse how the discourse of CEO letters and other factors influence community involvement and Social Licence to Operate (SLO) in the mining industry. The analysis is based on qualitative information disclosed in sustainability reports and CEO letters from 32 mining firms. Content analysis was undertaken to obtain data for the study, and then a regression analysis and a multiple correspondence analysis were used to test the hypotheses defined in the study. The results indicate that the CEO (...) discourse influences how a firm expresses the importance of gaining its SLO, the philanthropic activities in which companies become involved and the destinations of the investments in the communities in which they operate. The results also show changes in the discourse between 2011 and 2015, which are, in part, explained by the difficult situation experienced by the sector during this period. The paper contributes to the Corporate Social Responsibility literature by integrating different theories from this field into the SLO framework. The analysis carried out and the results obtained are useful for both CEOs and Sustainability Managers, especially in managing their relationships with the communities where they operate or intend to operate. (shrink)

Digital COVID certificates are a novel public health policy to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. These immunity certificates aim to incentivize vaccination and to deny international travel or access to essential spaces to those who are unable to prove that they are not infectious. In this article, we start by describing immunity certificates and highlighting their differences from vaccination certificates. Then, we focus on the ethical, legal, and social issues involved in their use, namely autonomy and consent, data protection, equity, and (...) international mobility from a global fairness perspective. The main conclusion of our analysis is that digital COVID certificates are only acceptable if they meet certain conditions: that they should not process personal data beyond what is strictly necessary for the aimed goals, that equal access to them should be guaranteed, and that they should not restrict people’s autonomy to access places where contagion is unlikely. We conclude that, if such conditions are guaranteed, digital COVID certificates could contribute to mitigating some of the most severe socioeconomic consequences of the pandemic. (shrink)

Identifies immanence as the original impetus and the driving force behind Deleuze's philosophy In 5 chapters dealing with the status of thought itself, ontology, logic, ethics and aesthetics, de Beistegui reveals how immanence is realised in each of these classical domains of philosophy. Ultimately, he argues, immanence is an infinite task, and transcendence the opposition with which philosophy will always need to reckon.

Resumen: Este artículo pretende abordar aspectos esenciales del pensamiento de Henri Bergson en la dimensión de las prácticas políticas. Específicamente, esta indagación se centrará en un análisis del sentido de la democracia en Les Deux Sources de la morale et de la religion, en las escuetas, pero decisivas porciones de texto donde esta es abordada. Bajo este objetivo, se podrá extender una discusión de fondo, de carácter ontológico, en torno al rendimiento de una noción de Acontecimiento que pretende servir de (...) reflexión basal en torno al dominio de un concepto de lo político atribuible a este filósofo francés.: This article aims to address essential aspects of Henri Bergson’s thought in the dimension of political practices. Specifically, this inquiry will focus on an analysis of the meaning of democracy in Les Deux Sources de la morale et de la religion, in the succinct, but decisive portions of the text where it is focussed. Under this point, it will be possible to extend a substantive discussion, of an ontological nature, around the performance of a notion of Event that aims to serve as a basal reflection on the domain of a concept of the political attributable to this French philosopher. (shrink)

This paper aims to analyse how the discourse of CEO letters and other factors influence community involvement and Social Licence to Operate (SLO) in the mining industry. The analysis is based on qualitative information disclosed in sustainability reports and CEO letters from 32 mining firms. Content analysis was undertaken to obtain data for the study, and then a regression analysis and a multiple correspondence analysis were used to test the hypotheses defined in the study. The results indicate that the CEO (...) discourse influences how a firm expresses the importance of gaining its SLO, the philanthropic activities in which companies become involved and the destinations of the investments in the communities in which they operate. The results also show changes in the discourse between 2011 and 2015, which are, in part, explained by the difficult situation experienced by the sector during this period. The paper contributes to the Corporate Social Responsibility literature by integrating different theories from this field into the SLO framework. The analysis carried out and the results obtained are useful for both CEOs and Sustainability Managers, especially in managing their relationships with the communities where they operate or intend to operate. (shrink)

El libro de María González Navarro se presenta a sí mismo como una “nueva hermenéutica” (23). La novedad involucra dos aspectos: uno que llamaremos metateórico y otro hermenéutico en propiedad. Hablando metateóricamente, el libro presenta una hermenéutica gadameriana vigorizada y robustecida por las teorías pragma-dialécticas de la argumentación. Desde el punto de vista hermenéutico propiamente dicho, la novedad reposa en que se considera que la interpretación correcta está indesligablemente vinculada a la argumentación abductiva.

As the contemporary heirs of popular music or cinema, computer games are gradually taking over the mar-kets of entertainment. Much like cinema and music, computer games are taking the spotlight in another front – that which blames them for encouraging unethical behaviors. Apparently, computer games turn their users into blood thirsty zombies with a computer game learnt ability of aiming with deadly precision. The goal of this paper is to pay attention to the ethical nature of computer games, in order (...) to understand better the ways we can evaluate their morality in western cultures providing a framework to understand some of these concerns. This paper poses questions about the ontology of games and their ethical meaning, in an attempt to give ethical theory a word in the analysis of computer games. (shrink)

In their recent article, Brown et al analyse several ethical aspects around immunity passports and put forward some recommendations for implementing them. Although they offer a comprehensive perspective, they overlook two essential aspects. First, while the authors consider the possibility that immunological passports may appear to discriminate against those who do not possess them, the opposite viewpoint of immune people is underdeveloped. We argue that if a person has been tested positive for and recovered from COVID-19, becoming immune to it, (...) she cannot be considered a hazard to public health and, therefore, the curtailment of her fundamental rights is not legitimate. Second, they omit that vaccine distribution will create similar problems related to immunity-based licenses. Vaccine certificates will de facto generate a sort of immunity passport. In the next phases of the pandemic, different immunity statuses will be at stake, because the need to identify who can spread COVID-19 is unavoidable. If a person does not pose a threat to public health because she cannot spread the infection, then her right to freedom of movement should be respected, regardless of how she acquired that immunity. (shrink)

In having an experience one is aware of having it. Having an experience requires some form of access to one's own state, which distinguishes phenomenally conscious mental states from other kinds of mental states. Until very recently, Higher-Order (HO) theories were the only game in town aiming at offering a full-fledged account of this form of awareness within the analytical tradition. Independently of any objections that HO theories face, First/Same-Order (F/SO) theorists need to offer an account of such access to (...) become a plausible alternative. My aim in this paper is twofold. In the first place, I wish to widen the logical space of the discussion among theories of consciousness by offering a distinction, orthogonal to that between F/SO and HO theories, between what I will call 'Self-Involving' (SI) and 'Mental-State-Involving' (MSI) theories and argue in favor of the former one. In the second place, I will present the basics of a characterization of such a Self-Involving theory in Same-Order terms. (shrink)

This essay offers only a broad description of a possible comparison between 'savage democracy' in the terms of Claude Lefort and the 'principle of anarchy' according to Reiner Schurmann. First, I shall try to define savage democracy. Then, in a second move, after having clarified Schurmann's principle of anarchy, I shall outline the terms for a possible confrontation of their respective views. The point here is to show the extent to which the contextualization of democracy with anarchy, considered as principle, (...) is of a nature to bring out democracy's most 'savage' characteristics - but without for all that concealing the difficulties that this perspective provokes or reveals. Indeed, it is precisely by returning to and excavating the gap between anarchy and principle that one most closely approaches the 'savage essence' of democracy. Key Words: anarchy • democracy • domination • Heidegger • Lefort • Machiavelli • politics • savage democracy • Schurmann • totalitarianism. (shrink)