Exploramos las actitudes de los españoles hacia las herramientas digitales propuestas por los actores políticos durante las elecciones generales españolas de 2008. Analizamos seis grupos de discusión organizados según las dimensiones de edad, identificación ideológica y nivel de institucionalización a la hora de participar en política. Exploramos hasta qué punto la brecha digital generacional de los usuarios de Internet, la auto-ubicación ideológica o la pertenencia a partidos políticos y movimientos sociales influye en la percepción de la ciberpolítica. Los resultados son (...) complejos. La ciudadanía percibió como la igualdad de las prácticas digitales no se correspondía con las potencialidades de una ciberdemocracia distorsionada. (shrink)

La oveja (Ovis aries) es el primer animal domesticado para consumo en un hito histórico que marca el inicio de la sedentarización de las comunidades humanas al comienzo del Neolítico. Durante milenios, fueron semejantes al muflón asiático (Ovis orientalis), su ancestro salvaje. Las razas primitivas supervivientes en el norte de Europa son oscuras, mudan el pelo estacionalmente, tienen cuernos en ambos sexos y apenas producen lana. Los ancestros de las modernas surgieron hace unos 3.500 años. Se seleccionaron para producir lana (...) blanca, que crece indefinidamente y se colecta anualmente. Este proceso coincide con la invención de las tijeras de esquilar y con el descubrimiento de tintes como la púrpura. Solo la lana blanca puede teñirse de cualquier color, permitiendo trasladar al tejido las mismas señales que quizá antes nos pintábamos con ocre sobre el cuerpo. La oveja, un herbívoro social muy manejable, sumaba al suministro de alimento el de una fibra abrigada y modificable en su color distintiva de quienes la visten. Un lienzo en blanco donde trasponer las expresiones estéticas antes restringidas al cuerpo, al arte rupestre y al mobiliar. De ahí que diversas mitologías contemplen una relación simbólica especial con ellas. La revolución estética propiciada por las ovejas blancas zozobra en el siglo XX con la aparición de nuevas fibras y el abaratamiento de otras. Hoy, los arquetípicos y blancos rebaños característicos de la iconografía occidental tienden a una coloración mixta al devaluarse la lana. Otras especies domésticas con fibras que solo recientemente se han apreciado comercialmente, como las cabras de angora (Capra hircus) o las llamas (Lama glama), siguen un proceso idéntico al emprendido con las ovejas hace milenios para tornarse blancas. Presentamos las implicaciones estéticas que han estimulado la selección artificial de ovejas con lanas blancas desde un punto de vista transdisciplinar. Siguiendo la corriente bioevolutiva, que entiende nuestra conducta estética y sus manifestaciones como parte de nuestra etología, veremos cómo ese largo proceso estuvo incentivado por nuestro deseo de teñir los tejidos para expresar un fenotipo extendido creando una nueva señal social. Esa nueva señalización, operante en el plano de la selección sexual, se va complicando al desarrollarse nuestras capacidades simbólicas y tecnológicas, siendo sintomática del entorno causal en el que se produce. (shrink)

En este número se aborda el tema de los retos actuales de la educación inclusiva. La forma de enfocarlos es diversa: vínculo con la comunidad, neuropedagogía, evaluación, discapacidad, vulnerabilidad, etc. Veamos algunos de estos planteamientos.

This chapter critically examines various proposals for liability of a person to defensive harm. Drawing on the idea that there is an important relationship between a person’s liability to be harmed and the enforceable duties that she incurs as a result of posing a threat to others, it demonstrates that no simple account of liability will be successful. As there are many considerations that bear on the duties that a person has, there are many considerations which bear on a person’s (...) liability to be harmed. This general claim is supported through a demonstration both that culpability without causation can ground liability, and that causal contribution without culpability can ground liability. (shrink)

An approach to music as an instrument of philosophical inquiry, seeking not so much a philosophy of music as a philosophy through music.

This book charts the development and character of the political forms that grew out of the age of Greek immigration into the Aegean, and establishes the forms which in the course of history were decisive. It also examines the impact which the various forms of state exerted on Greek civilization and in so doing strengthens the bridge between political history and the history of civilization. This volume encompasses many disciplines: political, social history, and religious history, law, administration and geography.

In this article I consider the problematic that creation ex nihilo presents for Christian metaphysicans’ speculation regarding possible being. I explore Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of possibility and show that, while he attempts to remain faithful to a metaphysics of creation, encounters a metaphysical difficult when presenting his account in terms of imitation. Suárez, I argue, is mindful of this difficulty and offers a corrective that unites the approaches of Thomas Aquinas as well as that of Duns Scotus. In the end, (...) Suárez offers an original account of possible being that is faithful to the demands of a creation ex nihilo. (shrink)

part self-help guide, part college lecture, part confessional, part time travel adventure, On Purpose" uses a beautiful fantasy-filled graphic novel format to tell a story of self- discovery and personal growth that you'll never forget.

Recent philosophical and empirical contributions strongly suggest that perception attributes determinable properties to its objects. But a characterisation of determinability via attributed properties is restricted to the level of content and does not capture the difference between perceptual belief and perception on this score. In this paper, I propose a formal way of cashing out the difference between determinable belief and perception. On the view presented here, determinability in perception distinctively involves homogeneous representation or representation that exhibits special sorts of (...) formal type variability. This formal characterisation, I suggest, goes beyond traditional approaches to analog representation and parallels a baseline notion of analog computation. (shrink)

The book outlines the contribution of passivity to the constitution of phenomena as diverse as temporal syntheses, perceptual associations, memory fulfillment and cross-cultural communication.

Cohen’s (2023) mapping exercise of possible bioethical issues emerging from the use of ChatGPT in medicine provides an informative, useful, and thought-provoking trigger for discussions of AI ethic...

The concept of vulnerability is widely used in bioethics, particularly in research ethics and public health ethics. The traditional approach construes vulnerability as inherent in individuals or the groups to which they belong and views vulnerability as requiring special protections. Florencia Luna and other bioethicists continue to challenge traditional ways of conceptualizing and applying the term. Luna began proposing a layered approach to this concept and recently extended this proposal to offer two new concepts to analyze the concept of vulnerability, (...) namely understanding external conditions that trigger vulnerability and layers of vulnerability with cascading effects. Luna's conception of vulnerability is useful, which we demonstrate by applying her layered view and the new analyses in multiple contexts. We begin by outlining Luna's view and we use vignettes from healthcare involving transgender patients, the care of patients in psychiatric contexts, and research involving prisoners to illustrate how each part of Luna's concept elucidates important moral issues. (shrink)

This article explores the moral significance of consent in an unjust world by developing the view that the validity of consent depends on its causes. It defends the view that the causes of consent make it valid or invalid. It then shows how this idea helps us to distinguish different ways in which consent might matter morally where it has problematic causes. Finally, it uses this analysis to explore the moral significance of a range of problematic causes of consent, including (...) objectification, arranged marriage, and third-party threats of violence. (shrink)

Este artigo investiga quais são os principais conceitos de poder propostos pela teoria feminista da segunda onda, de modo a sustentar que nessa são identificáveis dois conceitos fundamentais que são opostos mas complementários. Para tanto, propõe-se um percurso pelas principais ideias do feminismo acerca do poder surgidas a partir da década de 1960, nas quais esse aparece relacionado, principalmente, aos conceitos de dominação e opressão, mas também às visões sobre empoderamento, recurso, cuidado e liberdade. Com base no mapeamento teórico realizado, (...) argumenta-se que para a análise das relações de poder estabelecidas entre homens e mulheres é necessário retomar tanto o conceito de poder como dominação quanto como empoderamento. (shrink)

A normative power is a power to alter rights and duties directly. This paper explores what it means to alter rights and duties directly. In the light of that, it examines the kind of argument that might support the existence of normative powers. Both simple and complex instrumentalist accounts of such powers are rejected, as is an approach to normative powers that is based on the existence of normative interests. An alternative is sketched, where normative powers arise based on the (...) appropriateness of a person responding to a decision by limiting their freedom. (shrink)

Parsa-Parsi et al systematically discuss and elucidate contentious and non-controversial ethical issues that emerged during the ICoME (International Code of Medical Ethics) revision process and the consensus they achieved. The ethical issues discussed include the physician’s duty to act in the best interests of patients and to ensure they are protected from the unjustifiable risk of harm, respect for patient autonomy and the duties of physicians during emergencies, among others. This paper examines paragraph 26, which requires doctors to provide only (...) medically justified remote treatment, ensure patients offer informed consent and adequately protect their confidentiality.1 At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries in Europe and America implemented remote-by-default healthcare policies. At that time, the policy aimed to ensure that patients enjoyed continued access to care while protecting healthcare professionals’ health and well-being. After the COVID-19 pandemic, this policy remained in place. Regardless of the nature of their ailment, patients have consistently preferred in-person care out of concern that their health issues might not be accurately diagnosed and that they may not receive quality care …. (shrink)

A core tenet of metanormative non-naturalism is that genuine or robust normativity—i.e., the kind of normativity that is characteristic of moral requirements, and perhaps also of prudential, epistemic and even aesthetic requirements—is metaphysically special in a way that rules out naturalist analyses or reductions; on the non-naturalist view, the normative is sui generis and metaphysically discontinuous with the natural. Non-naturalists agree, however, that the normative is modally as well as explanatorily dependent on the natural. These two commitments—discontinuity and dependence—at least (...) initially pull in opposite directions, and one of the central challenges to non-naturalism is how to reconcile them. In this paper I spell out the most pressing version of this discontinuity problem, as I propose to call it, and I go on to offer a novel solution. Drawing on the ideology of reasons-firstism, I formulate an account of normative explanation which reconciles the two commitments, and I argue that competing accounts either do not solve the problem or are implausible on independent grounds. (shrink)

Planning of effective responses to the recent resurgence of tuberculosis in the United States, and particularly in New York City, requires review of our knowledge of the factors that led to the decline of tuberculosis in the U.S. and other countries during the nineteenth and the first three-quarters of the twentieth century, and the recent changes in these same factors and the rise of new factors that have contributed to its resurgence. Because the analysis of the impact of all of (...) these factors in both the remote and the recent past is controversial, it is important to use a well-defined framework to organize the analysis. The framework we will use is shown in Table 1. To the classic epidemiologic triad of Agent, Host and Environment it adds the category of Health Services. In this paper we redefine both the classic and new categories using current disciplines and concepts applicable to tuberculosis. (shrink)

Recent results from engineered and natural samples show that the starkly different lipids of archaea and bacteria can form stable hybrid membranes. But if the two types can mix, why don't they? That is, why do most bacteria and all eukaryotes have only typically bacterial lipids, and archaea archaeal lipids? It is suggested here that the reason may lie on the other main component of cellular membranes: membrane proteins, and their close adaptation to the lipids. Archaeal lipids in modern bacteria (...) could suggest that the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) had both lipid types. However, this would imply a rather elaborate evolutionary scenario, while negating simpler alternatives. In light of widespread horizontal gene transfer across the prokaryotic domains, hybrid membranes reveal that the lipid divide did not just occur once at the divergence of archaea and bacteria from LUCA. Instead, it continues to occur actively to this day. Also see the video abstract here https://youtu.be/TdKjxoDAtsg. (shrink)

The Wadge hierarchy was originally defined and studied only in the Baire space. Here we extend the Wadge hierarchy of Borel sets to arbitrary topological spaces by providing a set-theoretic definition of all its levels. We show that our extension behaves well in second countable spaces and especially in quasi-Polish spaces. In particular, all levels are preserved by continuous open surjections between second countable spaces which implies e.g., several Hausdorff–Kuratowski -type theorems in quasi-Polish spaces. In fact, many results hold not (...) only for the Wadge hierarchy of sets but also for its extension to Borel functions from a space to a countable better quasiorder Q. (shrink)

This essay is a response to the excellent contributions to the double special issue of Law and Philosophy on my book The Ends of Harm. I further defend the Duty View of punishment outlined in the book, responding to criticisms of that view. I also challenge the plausibility of retributivist accounts offered in response to the challenges to that view developed in The Ends of Harm.

Concept-individuating reference rules offer a well-known route for the explanation of immunity to error through misidentification in judgments involving first person or de se thought. However, the ‘outright’ version of this account—one that sanctions a one-to-one correspondence between the reference-fixing rule and immunity—cannot do justice to the unassailable ground-relativity of the target phenomenon. In this paper, I outline a version of the reference-rule account that circumvents this problem. I state a reference rule for the de se concept that makes space (...) for different non-reference-fixing ways of thinking or perspectives, yielding different grounds for judgment. The proposal and its ramifications, I argue, shed light on the variety of ways in which this kind of immunity has been proved to be present—and indeed absent—in de se thought. (shrink)

This essay argues that culpability and responsibility are independent notions, even though some of the same facts make us both responsible and culpable. Responsibility for one’s conduct is grounded in the strength of the agential connection between oneself and one’s conduct. Culpability for one’s conduct is the vices that give rise to that conduct. It then argues that responsibility and culpability for causing a threat are each grounds of liability to defensive harm independent of the other.

Recent philosophical developments on personal indexicals reveal a disagreement between those who defend and those who deny the existence of a distinctive class of second person thoughts. In this piece, I tackle this controversy by highlighting two crucial constraints based on paradigmatic felicitous singular uses of the second person pronoun. On the one hand, the Addressing Constraint is brought out by the awareness and action capabilities displayed in successfully addressing another. On the other hand, the Merging Constraint arises, among other (...) things, from the fact that ‘I’/‘you’-exchanges ground intersubjective disagreement. Once these constraints are fully in view, I go on to show that they pose a challenging dilemma for any account of the second person and that the chasm between friends and foes of the distinctness of second person thought is better seen as endorsements of one of the horns of the dilemma. In reaction to this, I outline a way of accommodating both constraints in terms of ‘perspectives’, i.e. ways of thinking of a reference that do not individuate a thought. On the recommended approach, the second person perspective is cognitively distinctive but does not itself signal the existence of a distinctive second person type of thought. By contrast, a single type of thought about selves expressible with personal indexicals—the self-thought type—can be shown to comprise the third, the second and, perhaps surprisingly, the first person perspective. Unlike other perspectival approaches, the here proposed analysis relies on an elucidation of perspectives in terms of specific information on which a thinker draws made available by a concept-individuating reference rule. (shrink)

The current COVID-19 crisis may have an impact on the mental health of professionals working on the frontline, especially healthcare workers due to the increase of occupational psychosocial risks, such as emotional exhaustion and secondary traumatic stress. This study explored job demands and resources during the COVID-19 crisis in predicting emotional exhaustion and STS among health professionals. The present study is a descriptive and correlational cross-sectional design, conducted in different hospitals and health centers in Spain. The sample consisted of 221 (...) health professionals with direct involvement in treating COVID-19. An online survey was created and distributed nationwide from March 20 to April 15 which assessed: sociodemographic and occupational data, fear of contagion, contact with death/suffering, lack of material and human protection resources, challenge, emotional exhaustion, and STS. Descriptive findings show high levels of workload, contact with death/suffering, lack of MHPR and challenge, and are moderately high for fear of contagion, emotional exhaustion, and STS. We found an indirect significant effect of lack of MHPR on predicting emotional exhaustion through the workload and on STS through fear of contagion, contact with death/suffering, and workload. To conclude, this study examines the immediate consequences of the crisis on health professionals' well-being in Spain, emphasizing the job demands related to COVID-19 that health professionals are facing, and the resources available in these health contexts. These findings may boost follow-up of this crisis among health professionals to prevent them from long-term consequences. (shrink)

At its core, nonideal theory is an attempt not only to address issues of justice, but it also provides us a lens through which we can articulate our limitations as knowers and reasoners, the ways in which we are relational in our autonomy needs, and the ways in which we are deeply dependent upon institutions and social supports for our agency and identities. Bringing this lens into bioethics means shifting our orientation in our scholarship and our practice. This shift will (...) have implications in how bioethical evaluations are taken up and played out in policies, institutional structures that inform the clinical encounter, and avenues for protection and redress for marginalized and vulnerable populations. It will also allow theorists and researchers to interrogate the status quo, revealing how many standard policies and practices are embedded in social and institutional arrangements that privilege the few or are built on exclusionary norms. The path forward, and the aim of this volume, is to extend the scholarship of nonideal approaches to bioethics. The volume is divided into two main parts. The first is focused on philosophically unpacking nonideal theory as an approach in bioethics. The second offers applications of nonideal theory in environmental ethics, healthcare ethics, public heath ethics, and genetic ethics. Our collective aim is to expand what has been considered nonideal bioethics. The history of nonideal theory has as its point of reference a turn away from Rawlsian justice, but the future of nonideal theory is ripe with possibilities. (shrink)

In the paper below the authors describe three super-tasks. They show that although the abstract notion of a super-task may be, as Benacerraf suggested, a conceptual mismatch, the completion of the three super-tasks involved can be defined rather naturally, without leading to inconsistency, by means of a particular kinematical interpretation combined with a principle of continuity.

In the light of partial understanding, we examine the thesis that concepts are individuated in terms of possession conditions and show that adherents face a fatal dilemma: Either concept-individuating possession conditions include cases of partially understood concepts or not. If yes, possession conditions do not individuate concepts. If no, the thesis is too restricted and lacks a minimally satisfactory level of generalization.

Anti-abortion proponents argue that a fetus holds the status of a person akin to healthy adult human beings. The fetus possesses inherent dignity and a fundamental right to life, which must be resp...

This is a response to the four essays on Wrongs and Crimes.

Husserl's two notions of "definiteness" enabled him to clarify the problem of imaginary numbers. The exact meaning of these notions is a topic of much controversy. A "definite" axiom system has been interpreted as a syntactically complete theory, and also as a categorical one. I discuss whether and how far these readings manage to capture Husserl's goal of elucidating the problem of imaginary numbers, raising objections to both positions. Then, I suggest an interpretation of "absolute definiteness" as semantic completeness and (...) argue that this notion does not suffice to explain Husserl's solution to the problem of imaginary numbers. (shrink)

According to a family of metasemantics for demonstratives called intentionalism, the intentions of speakers determine the reference of demonstratives. And according to a sub-family I call proximal intentions (PI) intentionalism, the intention that determines reference is one that occupies a certain place—the proximal one—in a structure of intentions. PI intentionalism is thought to make correct predictions about reference where less sophisticated forms of intentionalism make the wrong predictions. In this article I argue that this is an illusion: PI intentionalism also (...) suffers from predictive inadequacy. In Sect. 1, I present the problem of predictive inadequacy for intentionalism and an ad hoc response to it. In Sect. 2, I sketch a version of PI intentionalism that aims to provide the most principled response to this problem. In Sect. 3, I explain why PI intentionalism cannot solve the problem after all. In Sect. 4, I indicate where I think metasemanticists should go next. (shrink)