Este volumen trata de temas que en el mundo se debaten desde diversas perspectivas: la cuestion del embrion, el asesoramiento genetico y diagnostico prenatal, el aborto, la clonacion y celulas troncales, trasplante de organos, investigacion medica en seres humanos, eutanasia, neuroetica, eugenesia, etc. Ademas, el primer capitulo nos introduce al surgimiento del concepto de etica, y de ahi al nacimiento de la bioetica. Los autores exponen con seriedad e imparcialidad los puntos de vista contrarios a los que ellos mismos sostienen, (...) lo cual confiere a sus textos la probidad intelectual indispensable para una obra de esta naturaleza. (shrink)

Ruy Perez Tamayo, Rubén Lisker, and Ricardo Tapia, La Construcción de la Bioética, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2007, reviewed by Arleen L. F. Salles.

En este estudio se revisa la situación que enfrentarán las ciudades del mundo en las próximas décadas como consecuencia del calentamiento antropogénico de la atmósfera. Se propone incorporarlas al movimiento de las comunidades de transición y, de tal manera, convertirlas en entidades resilientes al cambio climático.

El aborto, la reproducci n asistida, la eutanasia, el genoma humano y la clonaci n artificial son temas que han hecho de la tica m dica una disciplina vigente. En este libro, el doctor P rez Tamayo los aborda partiendo de una revisi n hist rica de la tica, propone un c digo basado nicamente en funciones de la medicina y deslinda la tica m dica de la tica general y de la tica religiosa. Este libro, adem s, es (...) un grato viaje por la historia de la medicina, desde que fue vista como una pr ctica m gico-religiosa hasta nuestros d as, considerada una disciplina cient fica altamente tecnificada. (shrink)

Introducción: Los cambios biológicos, sicológicos, económicos y sociales que se observan durante el envejecimiento conllevan a pensar que en los ancianos existe una serie de factores que favorecen la aparición de una depresión. Objetivo: evaluar la efectividad de una intervención sicológica para disminuir la depresión en adultos mayores de la Casa de abuelos "Dr. Diego Tamayo Figueredo", de Puerto Padre, en el período de noviembre de 2013 - mayo de 2014. Material y métodos: se realizó un estudio de intervención (...) sicológica en una muestra de 12 adultos mayores de la casa de abuelos. Se aplicó un programa de intervención sicológica, así como la Escala de Depresión Geriátrica para realizar la valoración antes y después de la intervención. Se empleó el modelo Cognitivo- Conductual de Beck. Los datos fueron tratados según la estadística descriptiva. Resultados: el porciento más elevado de pacientes correspondió al grupo de ancianos con edades entre los 60 y 90 años de edad. Respecto al sexo, el más frecuente es el masculino. El asma bronquial, la hipertensión arterial y la diabetes Mellitus representaron el mayor porciento de antecedentes patológicos personales. Conclusión: la intervención sicológica resultó efectiva pues se logró disminuir a leve los niveles iniciales de depresión establecida y los considerados con leve a no depresión, por lo tanto se afirma que con su aplicación fue modificado el estado emocional de los adultos mayores que se implicaron en la muestra. Introduction: Biological, psychological, financial and social changes observed during aging lead to think that there is a series of factors that favor the appearance of depression in senior citizens. Objective: Assessing the effectiveness of a psychological intervention in order to reduce depression in senior citizens from "Dr. Diego Tamayo Figueredo" Senior Citizens' House, Puerto Padre, from November 2013 to May 2014. Material and methods: A psychological intervention study was conducted on a sample of 12 senior citizens from the house. A psychological intervention program as well as the Geriatrics Depression Scale were applied before and after the intervention in order to make the assessment. The Beck's cognitive-behavior model was used. Data was processed according to descriptive statistics. Results: The highest percentage of patients corresponded to a group of seniors between 60 and 90 years of age. Regarding sex, males are more common. Bronchial asthma, arterial hypertension and diabetes mellitus represented the highest percentage of personal pathological history. Conclusion: The psychological intervention proved to be effective since initial established depression levels were reduced to minor and those considered as minor were reduced to no depression ; therefore, it is stated that its application modified the state of mind of the senior citizens involved in the sample. (shrink)

In this paper I will put forward a simple case of a dynamical system which can exhibit both the indeterminism linked to escape to infinity and that linked to self-excitation. The case depends neither on the gravitational interaction between particles nor on their mutual collisions, and thus reveals the existence of a new kind of constraint that Newton's laws lay on the predictive power of classical dynamics.

In this short note I argue that, using the type of configurations put forward in a recent paper by Laraudogoitia in this same journal, new paradoxes of infinity of a completely different nature can be formulated.

Originally motivated by a sophism, Pardo's discussion about the unity of mental propositions allows him to elaborate on his ideas about the nature of propositions. His option for a non-composite character of mental propositions is grounded in an original view about syncategorems: propositions have a syncategorematic signification, which allows them to signify aliquid aliqualiter, just by virtue of the mental copula, without the need of any added categorematic element. Pardo's general claim about the simplicity of mental propositions is developed into (...) several specific thesis about mental propositions: a) it is not judgement which gives its unity to mental propositions, but judicative acts always follow some previous apprehensive act that is simple in its own right; b) this simplicity is compatible with a certain kind of complexity, that can be explained in terms of the "causal history" of the acts of knowing; c) traditional conceptions about subject and predicate must be recast, while keeping their usual explicative power concerning logical properties; d) of course, the traditional conception about the copula has been modified, giving rise to a fully innovative conception of the nature of mental propositions. Nevertheless, this innovative conception of mental language seems still infected by certain "common sense" prejudices, which lead Pardo to propose also a provocative conception of vocal language, which I consider unnecessary. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is rather modest: we do not intend to reconstruct Aristotle’s theory of truth (although we are convinced that there is such a thing), and we will not try to settle the issue concerning Bivalence in Aristotle. We merely want, on the one hand, to argue for the consistency between the main Aristotelian texts on truth and a possible rejection of Bivalence; and on the other hand, to investigate the conditions of a possible counterexample to Bivalence. (...) The motivation for this research is also very specific. We are interested in the apparent violation of Bivalence introduced by vague predicates, and in particular we want to respond to a family of arguments put forward by T. Williamson in support of the idea that allowing for exceptions to Bivalence would be incoherent. We have focused on these arguments for two reasons. On the one hand, what is allegedly threatened by a denial of Bivalence is no less than the very “nature of truth or falsity”. On the other hand, Aristotle is explicitly mentioned as one of the defendants of this “natural” conception of truth, and we are reminded about the connection between Aristotle’s theory and Tarski’s semantic conception. These arguments, therefore, give us an occasion to explore Aristotle’s analysis of the nature of truth and falsity, and to examine its connection with the Tarskian conception of truth. In particular, we would like to question the assumption, which has become a commonplace in the field of analytical philosophy, that Aristotle’s notion of truth can be encoded in the pair of disquotational biconditionals that derive from Tarski’s “T schema”. (shrink)

This paper shows that the general homogeneous solution to equations of evolution for some infinite systems of particles subject to mutual binary collisions does not depend on a single arbitrary constant but on a potentially infinite number of such constants. This is because, as I demonstrate, a single self-excitation of a system of particles can depend on a potentially infinite number of parameters. The recent homogeneous solution obtained by Atkinson and Johnson, which depends on a single arbitrary constant, is only (...) a particular case. (shrink)

En el tercer milenio, en medio de una conciencia generalizada de crisis como resultado de los espectaculares cambios habidos en las dinámicas sociales, en las formas de relacionarse, en los perfiles de las ideologías y hasta en la disposición del hecho religioso, no es extraño que se asuma la vivencia de vacío abierto y lábil. Se han disociado las grandes "certezas" que han dirigido el desarrollo de la humanidad durante los últimos siglos -"la verdad os hará libres" se está transformando (...) en "la libertad os hará la verdad"-, se han disipado los límites y las referencias guía. Son las dinámicas emergentes, encriptadas y por lo general confusas las que vienen a ocupar ese vacío imponiendo sus propios códigos y reglas. Dinámicas que pueden generar desarrollo personal y scial, o, por el contrario, propiciar sufrimiento y vacío existencial. (shrink)

En este trabajo presento dos líneas de argumentación que desembo-can en la tesis eliminativista, una proveniente de consideraciones relativas a la re-lación entre nuestra psicología de sentido común y la ciencia psicológi-ca/neurociencia madura, y otra proveniente de consideraciones metafísicas acerca de la naturaleza de los fenómenos mentales y su interacción causal con el mundo físico, y trato de mostrar la inadecuación de ambas líneas argumentativas. En se-gundo lugar, menciono tres líneas de crítica a los intentos eliminativistas, mos-trando sus debilidades. Finalmente, (...) ofrezco una línea argumentativa alternativa para sostener la implausibilidad del eliminativismo basada en consideraciones acerca de los alcances de un posible cambio conceptual radical en nuestros con-ceptos mentalistas ordinarios que el eliminativismo parece suponer.In this paper I outline two lines of argumentation which lead to the eliminativist thesis, one of them based on a peculiar understanding of the rela-tionship between common sense and scientific knowledge, and the other one based on metaphysical ideas about the nature of mental phenomena and their causal interaction with the physical world. I try to show the inadequacy of both kinds of arguments. In the second place, I review three critics to the eliminativist thesis, showing their flaws. Finally, I offer my own reasons for rejecting elimina-tivism considering the difficulties that a radical conceptual change of our mental-istic concepts like the one supposed by the eliminativist pose. (shrink)

In this paper I shall offer a reconsideration of three main arguments in the current debate on the mind-body problem, on the light of a peculiar way of conceiving mental concepts: I shall defend the view that mental concepts have to be considered as natural kind concepts. In the first part, I shall develop this proposal and in the second part I shall examine Kripke´s arguments against the identity theory, the zombi´s argument against functionalism and Churchland´s argument for eliminativism. I (...) conclude the paper with an sketchy answer to the mind-body problem, in the middle of the road between functionalism and the identity theory. (shrink)

This paper sketches an analysis of the resemblances and differences between Fichte's notion of "idea" and Humboldt's and Ranke's notions of the "historical ideas". In an appendix it extends the analysis to the relationship between Droysen's hegelian notion of "ideas" and Humboldt's one.