In this essay, we explore the philosophical and theoretical resonances of the artwork Qatipana from the perspective of some key insights of Gilbert Simondon’s information processing system approach. Qatipana (Quechua word that means flow, sequence, transmission) is a hybrid ecosystem of information flow which, even though not the kind of dispositive systems theory was designed to read, offers some valuable empirical insights to test some key aspects of Simondon’s information processing systems. In particular, we are interested in observing how Simondon’s (...) becoming and individuation play out in an algorithmic cycle performed by the cognitive system of an Artificial Intelligence agent: how does mono-technology and computerization of cultural techniques influence the nature of knowing the affection of being with others (people, things, animals)? We contrast Simondon’s contributions with the work of Norbert Wiener and Stafford Beer on information in cybernetics and the cosmotechnics and Technodiversity of Chinese philosopher Yuk Hui. Furthermore, we offer a provisional assessment of the reach, limits, and possibilities this kind of symbiotic crossing of technologies and arts: it is a field filled with challenges and unresolved complexities that should encourage us to recognize the urgency that is implied in the disruptive (and creative) we can see unfolding in social and political life. The already pervasive (and growing) presence of computational systems has become both a tremendous risk and a vertiginous deployment of liberating opportunities. Latin America and elsewhere are desperately calling for an insightful and imaginative engagement. (shrink)

This article provides a strategic history of the role assigned by modern historians to visual representation in early modern science, an aspect of historiography that is largely ignored in the scholarly literature. Despite the current undervaluation of images and visual reasoning, historians in the 1940s and 1950s who established the 20th century concept of the Scientific Revolution, also assigned a conspicuous role to images, claiming 15th century art as a chapter in the history of science and identifying the first modern (...) scientists in artists such as Brunelleschi and Leonardo. My analysis of the writings that shaped the discourse on visual representation---by giants such as George Sarton, Herbert Butterfield, and Alexandre Koyré---shows that the handful of concepts introduced in these early discussions formed the foundations of the subsequent scholarly approach to early modern scientific images. However, close scrutiny during the 1970s defined these concepts as interesting but not as key elements for the emergence of modern science proposed earlier. The wave of social studies of science in the 1980s further diminished the importance of images, to the point that recent surveys of early modern science neither consider the role of visual representation nor include figures in their narratives. Several recent publications with suggestive titles such as The Power of Images in Early Modern Science promise to recover a significant role for images in the Scientific Revolution. The present inquiry into the earlier discourse seeks to clarify the historiographic framework into which these new efforts fit. (shrink)

It has often been asserted that burnout is primarily linked to occupational-context factors, and only secondarily to individual-level and non-work factors. We evaluated the validity of this view by examining the links between burnout and an array of 22 work-situated, work-unrelated, dispositional, and intersecting variables. The study involved schoolteachers from three different countries: France, Spain, and Switzerland. Burnout was assessed with the Maslach Burnout Inventory for Educators. Most of our predictors were assessed based on widely used measures. In order to (...) assess sentimental accomplishment and familial accomplishment, we created two self-reported measures, namely, the Sentimental Accomplishment Inventory and the Familial Accomplishment Inventory. The SAI and the FAI both showed strong reliability and high factorial validity. Exploratory structural equation modeling bifactor analysis and Mokken scaling suggested that both instruments could be considered essentially unidimensional. The study results showed that neuroticism, job strain, skill development, security in daily life, and work–non-work conflict were consistently associated with burnout across the three samples. Sample-specific predictors of burnout included sex, age, unreasonable work tasks, weekly working hours, job autonomy, support in work life, sentimental accomplishment, leisure activities, support in personal life, and non-work–work conflict. Relative weight analysis indicated that neuroticism was the best predictor of burnout in each sample. Our findings suggest that burnout’s nomological network may not be primarily job-related. We conclude that the tendency to de-emphasize individual-level and non-work factors in burnout research is unwise. This tendency may constitute a roadblock in the development of effective interventional strategies. The implications of our findings for burnout’s conceptual status are discussed. The neuroticism-burnout link should be further examined in longitudinal studies. (shrink)

Sustainability reporting and assurance of sustainability reports have been used by organizations in an attempt to provide accountability to their stakeholders. A better understanding of current practices is important to provide a base for comparative and trend analyses. This paper aims to consolidate and provide information on sustainability reporting, assurance of sustainability reports and types of assurance providers. Another aim of this paper is to provide a descriptive analysis of these practices for a global sample, comparing results with previous studies, (...) and suggesting opportunities for future research. To accomplish these objectives, a literature review was performed, an analysis of the organizations included in the Fortune Global 500 2010 was completed, and results were presented and consolidated by country. These results demonstrate that all organizations analysed provided some type of information in relation to their social or environmental performance in their official website. The percentage of organizations issuing a sustainability report has been increasing in the last few years. However, the percentage of organizations assuring their sustainability report has stagnated. Types of assurance engagements include those performed by accountants and non-accountants, and new practices have emerged, namely the “mixed approach” and the “stakeholder or specialist review”. The analysis also shows that the practices of issuing sustainability reports and having them assured have become a world-wide phenomenon, occurring in developed, and emerging economies around the world. (shrink)

A partir de la teoría de la enunciación y de sus adquisiciones actuales, el artículo propone considerar tres tipos de variaciones discursivas que se ponen de manifiesto en el relato literario contemporáneo: en primer lugar, variaciones que afectan a la sustancia expresiva, en segundo lugar, aquéllas que involucran la forma de articulación de enunciaciones correspondientes al propio texto y, finalmente, las que atienden a la convocación de enunciaciones ajenas al texto. El análisis de los distintos tipos de variaciones discursivas permite (...) sacar a la luz la tensión presente en la narración literaria entre el carácter singular del acto enunciativo y el universo plural de las prácticas discursivas ya consolidadas en la memoria cultural. (shrink)

This study addresses the question of normative analysis of the value‐based aspects of nursing. In our perspective, values in science may be distinguished into (i) epistemic when related to the goals of truth and objectivity and (ii) non‐epistemic when related to social, cultural or political aspects. Furthermore, values can be called constitutive when necessary for a scientific enterprise, or contextual when contingently associated with science. Analysis of the roles of the various forms of values and models of knowledge translation provides (...) the ground to understand the specific role of values in nursing. A conceptual framework has been built to classify some of the classical perspectives on nursing knowledge and to examine the relationships between values and different forms of knowledge in nursing. It follows that adopting a normative perspective in the analysis of nursing knowledge provides key elements to identify its proper dimension. (shrink)

Diagnostic frameworks are essential to many scientific and technological activities and clinical practice. This study examines the main fundamental aspects of such frameworks. The three components required for all diagnoses are identified and examined, i.e. their normative dimension, temporal nature and structure, and teleological perspective.The normative dimension of a diagnosis is based on (1) epistemic values when associated with Hempel's inductive risk concerning the balance between false‐positive and false‐negative outcomes, leading to probabilistic judgements; and (2) non‐epistemic values when related to (...) ideas such as well‐being, normality, illness, etc, as idealized norms or ideal points of reference.It should be noted that medical diagnoses match the three necessary components, while some essential diagnostic frameworks – the taxonomies of Gordon and NANDA – in nursing lack some components. The main lack is normative as the most popular frameworks in nursing diagnosis seem to be descriptions of observed reality rather than normative and value‐based judgements in which both epistemic and non‐epistemic values may coexist. (shrink)

This study addresses the question of normative analysis of the value‐based aspects of nursing. In our perspective, values in science may be distinguished into (i) epistemic when related to the goals of truth and objectivity and (ii) non‐epistemic when related to social, cultural or political aspects. Furthermore, values can be called constitutive when necessary for a scientific enterprise, or contextual when contingently associated with science. Analysis of the roles of the various forms of values and models of knowledge translation provides (...) the ground to understand the specific role of values in nursing. A conceptual framework has been built to classify some of the classical perspectives on nursing knowledge and to examine the relationships between values and different forms of knowledge in nursing. It follows that adopting a normative perspective in the analysis of nursing knowledge provides key elements to identify its proper dimension. (shrink)

Nursing knowledge stems from a dynamic interplay between population‐based scientific knowledge (the general) and specific clinical cases (the particular). We compared the ‘cascade model of knowledge translation’, also known as ‘classical biomedical model’ in clinical practice (in which knowledge gained at population level may be applied directly to a specific clinical context), with an emergentist model of knowledge translation. The structure and dynamics of nursing knowledge are outlined, adopting the distinction between epistemic and non‐epistemic values. Then, a (moderately) emergentist approach (...) to nursing knowledge is proposed, based on the assumption of a two‐way flow from the general to the particular and vice versa. The case of the ‘placebo effect’ is analysed as an example of emergentist knowledge. The placebo effect is usually considered difficult to be explained within the classical biomedical model, and we underscore its importance in shaping nursing knowledge. In fact, nurses are primarily responsible for administering placebo in the clinical setting and have an essential role in promoting the placebo effect and reducing the nocebo effect. The beliefs responsible for the placebo effect are as follows: (1) interactive, because they depend on the relationship between patients and health care professionals; (2) situated, because they occur in a given clinical context related to certain rituals; and (3) grounded on higher order beliefs concerning what an individual thinks about the beliefs of others. It is essential to know the clinical context and to understand other people's beliefs to make sense of the placebo effect. The placebo effect only works when the (higher order) beliefs of doctors, nurses and patients interact in a given setting. Finally, we argue for a close relationship between placebo effect and nursing knowledge. (shrink)

The beliefs involved in the placebo effect are often assumed to be self-fulfilling, that is, the truth of these beliefs would merely require the patient to hold them. Such a view is commonly shared in epistemology. Many epistemologists focused, in fact, on the self-fulfilling nature of these beliefs, which have been investigated because they raise some important counterexamples to Nozick’s “tracking theory of knowledge.” We challenge the self-fulfilling nature of placebo-based beliefs in multi-agent contexts, analyzing their deep epistemological nature and (...) the role of higher-order beliefs involved in the placebo effect. (shrink)

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La riflessione di Timothy Morton si muove all’interno di quel ripensamento del rapporto tra soggetto umano e ambiente – dunque anche dell’umano in generale - che la scienza ecologica è venuta imponendo con sempre maggiore urgenza. A partire da Hyperobjects, tuttavia, Morton si è inserito in quell’ampia ed eterogenea corrente, spesso definita «nuovo materialismo», che nel corso dell’ultimo decennio, sebbene in modi differenti, ha inteso tale ripensamento sempre più come una speculazione eminentemente ontologica: una rinnovata comprensione del modo d’essere dei (...) viventi e della loro interconnessione, in quest’ottica, appare come la via maestra per rimodellare «ecologicamente» la soggettività. In opposizione a questo approccio ontologico ed attingendo a quello critico-decostruttivo sviluppato nel precedente Ecology Without Nature, in questo articolo intendo sottolineare la necessità di riconoscere, anche nell’ambito del pensiero ecologico, il valore costitutivo delle mediazioni epistemiche, linguistiche e sociopolitiche distintive del soggetto umano, ma soprattutto della dimensione di storicità che di queste ultime è il denominatore comune. La frizione tra i due testi di Morton consente infatti di mettere a fuoco l’insufficienza di ogni eco-filosofia che pretenda di ripensare la costituzione del soggetto umano semplicemente tramite l’elaborazione di una differente ontologia dell’ambiente. (shrink)

Iberian repertorios de los tiempos stemmed from Medieval almanacs and calendars. During the sixteenth century significant editorial, conceptual and material changes in repertorios incorporated astronomy, geography, chronology and natural philosophy. From De Li’s Repertorio (1492) to Zamorano’s Cronología (1585), the genre evolved from simple almanacs to more complex cosmological works which circulated throughout the Iberian-American world. This article claims that repertorios are a form of syncretic knowledge rather than “popular science” by relying on the concept of “knowledge in transit”. Elaborating (...) on this perspective, I present how repertorios ended up delivering a worldview from existing materials, a fact so far unnoticed by scholarship. At the same time, repertorios should not be considered an exclusively Iberian phenomenon, but the full scope of their nature as a form of syncretic knowledge should include their networks with migrants, indigenous, mestizos, and criollos across the Atlantic. In this sense, I try to trace the paths connecting productions in the Americas with Iberian repertorios. (shrink)

En La Verdad de la Ficción, Mario Presas compila nueve artículos de su autoría que, aunque fueron escritos en distintos momentos de su carrera y sin una conexión sistemática, están estrechamente ligados entre sí por una misma problemática filosófica: la apertura, a través del arte, a un tipo de saber que es propio de la experiencia estética. La tesis central que atraviesa a todos los capítulos consiste en sostener que el arte habilita una vía de acceso a la realidad que (...) no puede subsumirse ni reducirse a otros tipos de saber, en particular, al conocimiento científico. El autor sostiene que el saber que brinda la experiencia estética es insustituible en relación a la ciencia, sin que por ello uno de los dos tenga primacía sobre el otro. (shrink)

The complex societal challenges of the twenty-first Century require scientific researchers and academically educated professionals capable of conducting scientific research in complex problem contexts. Our central claim is that educational approaches inspired by a traditional empiricist epistemology insufficiently foster the required deep conceptual understanding and higher-order thinking skills necessary for epistemic tasks in scientific research. Conversely, we argue that constructivist epistemologies provide better guidance to educational approaches to promote research skills. We also argue that teachers adopting a constructivist learning theory (...) do not necessarily embrace a constructivist epistemology. On the contrary, in educational practice, novel educational approaches that adopt constructivist learning theories often maintain traditional empiricist epistemologies. Philosophers of science can help develop educational designs focused on learning to conduct scientific research, combining constructivist learning theory with constructivist epistemology. We illustrate this by an example from a bachelor’s program in Biomedical Engineering, where we introduce conceptual models and modeling as an alternative to the traditional focus on hypothesis testing in conducting scientific research. This educational approach includes the so-called B&K method for constructing scientific models to scaffold teaching and learning conceptual modeling. (shrink)

In this article I criticize a theory of political obligation recently put forward by Christopher Wellman. Wellman's “samaritan theory” grounds both state legitimacy and political obligation in a natural duty to help people in need when this can be done at no unreasonable cost. I argue that this view is not able to account for some important features of the relation between state and citizens that Wellman himself seems to value. My conclusion is that the samaritan theory can only be (...) accepted if we are ready to give up either the traditional notion of political obligation as a prima facie duty valid for every citizen, or the current view of the relationships that should exist between states, citizens and foreigners (the view according to which states should have special concerns for their own citizens). (shrink)

Fierce debates surround the conceptualization and measurement of job-related distress in occupational health science. The use of burnout as an index of job-related distress, though commonplace, has increasingly been called into question. In this paper, we first highlight foundational problems that undermine the burnout construct and its legacy measure, the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Next, we report on advances in research on job-related distress that depart from the use of the burnout construct. Tracing the genesis of the burnout construct, we observe (...) that burnout’s definition was preestablished rather than derived from a rigorous research process and the MBI has little in the way of a theoretical or empirical foundation. Historical analysis suggests that the burnout construct was cobbled together from unchallenged personal impressions and anecdotal evidence before getting reified by the MBI. This state of affairs may account for many of the disconcerting problems encountered in burnout research. We close our paper by presenting the Occupational Depression Inventory, a recently developed instrument reflective of a renewed approach to job-related distress. The ODI has demonstrated robust psychometric and structural properties across countries, sexes, age groups, occupations, and languages. The instrument addresses job-related distress both dimensionally and categorically. A dimensional approach can be useful, for instance, in examining the dynamics of etiological processes and symptom development. A categorical approach can serve screening and diagnostic purposes and help clinicians and public health professionals in their decision-making. It is concluded that the ODI offers occupational health specialists a promising way forward. (shrink)

The paper deals with the relationship that can be assumed to hold between personality traits and creativity. What can be said to happen about personality preservation and change when personality traits evolve through an individual growth and ageing? And how will be that play among preservation and change brought to bear on creativity and art production? These issues are discussed with particular reference to Fellini’s artworks.

Recent descendants of David Lewis, such as Stephen Torre, Dilip Ninan, and Dirk Kindermann have utilized multi-centered propositions, which are roughly sets of possible worlds centered on a sequence of individuals, to characterize the content of attitudes. In an attempt to explain counterfactual attitudes such as wishing and imagining, Ninan (2012, 2013) developed a more fine-grained characterization of multi-centered propositions than others in the multi-centered camp. While Ninan provides a systematic explanation of the nature of de se attitudes (attitudes one (...) expresses with first-person pronouns like ‘I’ or ‘me’), the nature of other types of indexical attitudes (attitudes one expresses with indexical terms like ‘you,’ ‘today,’ ‘now,’) is not explored. This paper does two things. First, it demonstrates how we can account for indexical attitudes within Ninan’s framework. This, however, has the consequence of generating propositions of limited accessibility of sorts, which in turn conflict with a received and simple model of linguistic communication. According to this simple model, successful communication consists of the transmission of mental content from speaker to hearer. Second, in light of this conflict, the paper proposes an adjustment to Ninan’s theory in order to avoid commitment to propositions of limited accessibility, and thus preserve the shareability of attitudinal content from speaker to hearer. (shrink)

Using ethnographic data from rural Northeast Brazil, this article explores, firstly, how climate uncertainties are interconnected to processes of accountability and blame, and, secondly, how this connection affects the activity of climate forecasting. By framing climate events in ways that downplay the inherent uncertainties of the atmosphere, political discourses on various scales, as well as religious narratives, create a propitious context for the enactment of what I call accountability rituals. Forecasters seem to attract to themselves a great deal of the (...) collective anxieties related to climate, and are very often blamed for the negative impact of climate events. This blaming may take place in a variety of ways, and has a range of practical results: from real physical violence to attacks on the authority and legitimacy of forecasters, by way of ridicule and jokes. I conclude by suggesting that, on the one hand, the study of the social uses of climate-related uncertainties offers special opportunities for understanding how human societies deal with uncertainty and blame; and that, on the other hand, a better understanding of these issues is necessary to improve relations between climate forecasting and the societies where it takes place ? the latter being a key issue in the processes of understanding and adapting to climate change. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article interprets a recently recovered manuscript, Tratado de astronomía y la reformaçión del tiempo, composed by Antonio Sánchez in New Granada c.1696, in the context of the Spanish and Renaissance cosmographies. Sánchez’s Tratado proposes a spherical astronomy, in which celestial bodies – including comets — move in orbs containing pyramidal knots that explain the changing speed observed in the motion of planets. From this astronomy and following the peninsular style of repertorios, Sánchez derives two major conclusions: the corrected (...) length of the solar year and a revised birth date of Jesus. Taking as center of reference Vélez, where Sánchez was based, these claims led to conclusions in domains ranging from calendric astronomy to eschatology, including the incorporation of the indigenous peoples into salvation narrative and a demonstration of the arrangement of the celestial orbs at the Last Judgment. Sánchez’s Tratado constitutes an expansion of the Spanish mathematical cosmography that sheds light on the production of knowledge in the Spanish-American world and, at the same time, provides elements to reassess our understanding of the global circulation of Renaissance and early modern ideas. (shrink)

Erudition as a cultist topic and style, recreated in countless traditional sources, helps Colombian writer R. H. Moreno-Durán to establish a delicate equilibrium between the parodic forms of linguistics research and the recreational contents that reflect the thinking conscience of men and the dialogic sphere of their existence. All these elements are present in his novel, El toque de Diana (Diana’s touch) and are conjugated to the theoretical contribution of Mijail Bajtín, and they make it possible to explain the exploration (...) of a fictional legacy that depends on the willful language of its characters to metaphorize the unfinished and multifaceted character of a violent society, in continuous crisis, such as the Colombian society. (shrink)

ABSTRACTImmigrant origin children and youth are now, and will continue to be, a diverse and demographically important segment of all post-industrial nations’ populations. In order to realize their potential, receiving contexts will need to find effective ways to integrate them into the fabric of their society. Using an ethic of care approach, we must begin by taking a comprehensive perspective on integration, which incorporates both a risk and resilience framework and an ecological perspective. A number of practices have emerged that (...) have promise for positive implications for the schooling performance and educational integration of immigrant students These practices include 1 – short-term newcomer programs; 2 – specialized services for Students with Interrupted Formal Education; 3 – sustained services focused on new language development; 4 – services focused on heritage language development; 5 – providing explicit college pathway knowledge; 6 – summer and after-school academic enrichment programs; 7 – facilitating parental involvement ; and 8 – advisory groups, after-school academic supports, mentoring and health services, and postsecondary supports. Providing the kinds of ecologies of care outlined here will go a long way toward helping these children and youth thrive and become the kinds of contributing members to their new society that will serve our collective future well. (shrink)

Excelente iniciativa de publicar escritos éditos e inéditos de José Torres Orozco, uno de los últimos representantes del positivismo en México. Juan Hernández Luna presenta los aspectos biográficos del autor como su posición dentro del positivismo mexicano. Es de interés señalar que entre los escritos filosóficos hay varios dedicados a Nietzche. Entre los psicológicos, uno de 1922 se ocupa de Freud"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.