Recent research in philosophy of science has shown that scientists rely on a plurality of strategies to develop successful explanations of different types of phenomena. In the case of biology, most of these strategies go far beyond the traditional and reductionistic models of scientific explanation that have proven so successful in the fundamental sciences. Concretely, in the last two decades, philosophers of science have discovered the existence of at least two different types of scientific explanation at work in the biological (...) sciences, namely: mechanistic and structural explanations. Despite the growing evidence about the radically different nature of these two types of explanation, no inquiry has been conducted to date to determine the ontological reasons that might underlie these differences, nor the way in which these types of explanations can be systematically related with each other. Here, we aim to cover this gap by connecting this plurality of research strategies with the existence of emergent levels of reality. We argue that the existence of these different—and apparently incompatible—explanatory strategies to account for biological phenomena derives from the existence of “ontological jumps” in nature, which generate different regimes of causation that in turn demand the development of different explanatory frameworks. We identify two of these strategies—mechanistic modelling and network modelling—and connect them to the existence of two ontological regimes of causation. Finally, we relate them with each other in a systematic way. In this vein, our paper provides an ontological justification for the plurality of explanatory strategies that we see in the life sciences. (shrink)

This article assesses an assumption pervasive in one strain of arguments in favor of stringent immigration controls. The assumption affirms that—for the case of regular admissions—to a certain extent states are permitted to prioritize the interests of their citizens and residents by issuing exclusionary immigration policies (call this the priority assumption). Using the normative methodology of applied international ethics, I suggest some broad constraints to this priority assumption that have a bearing on justifications for current practical immigration policy in Europe, (...) North America, and beyond. I do so by redefining borders as domestic-international institutions that open up borders not only to (internal) standards of justice but also to standards of international legitimacy. (shrink)

In June 2005, Italy held a referendum on repealing the law on medically assisted fertilization , which limits access to artificial reproduction to infertile couples, and prohibits the donation of gametes, the cryopreservation of embryos, preimplantation genetic diagnosis , and research on human embryos. The referendum was invalidated, and the law remained unchanged. The Italian political e bioethical debate on assisted reproduction was manipulated by the Catholic Church, which distorted scientific data and issues at stake with the help of Catholic (...) politicians and bioethicists. What happened in Italy shows that some perverse socio-cultural e political mechanisms are spreading the absurd and anti-historical view that scientific and technological advancements are threatening democracy and personal freedom. Scientists should not only contrast the political attempts at limiting freedom of scientific research, but also tell politicians, humanists and citizens that the invention of Western science with its view of scientific community as an “open society”, contributed and still contributes, through scientific education, to the construction and maintaining of the moral and political values underlying Western democracies. (shrink)

The debate about justice in immigration seems somehow stagnated given that it seems justice requires both further exclusion and more porous borders. In the face of this, I propose to take a step back and to realize that the general problem of borders—to determine what kind of borders liberal democracies ought to have—gives rise to two particular problems: first, to justify exclusive control over the administration of borders (the problem of legitimacy of borders) and, second, to specify how this control (...) ought to be exercised (the problem of justice of borders). The literature has explored the second but ignored the first. Therefore, I propose a different approach to the ethics of immigration by focusing on concerns of legitimacy in a three-step framework: first, identifying the kind of authority or power that immigration controls exercise; second, redefining borders as international and domestic institutions that issue that kind of power; and finally, considering supranational institutions that redistribute the right to exclude among legitimate borders. (shrink)

This paper’s main contention is that some basically methodological developments in science which are apparently distant and unrelated can be seen as part of a sequential story. Focusing on general inferential and epistemological matters, the paper links occurrences separated by both in time and space, by formal and representational issues rather than social or disciplinary links. It focuses on a few limited aspects of several cognitive practices in medical and biological contexts separated by geography, disciplines and decades, but connected by (...) long term transdisciplinary representational and inferential structures and constraints. The paper intends to show a given set of knowledge claims based on organizing statistically empirical data can be seen to have been underpinned by a previous, more familiar, and probably more natural, narrative handling of similar evidence. To achieve that this paper moves from medicine in France in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century to the second half of the nineteenth century in England among gentleman naturalists, following its subject: the shift from narrative depiction of hereditary transmission of physical peculiarities to posterior statistical articulations of the same phenomena. Some early defenders of heredity as an important causal presence in the understanding of life adopted singular narratives, in the form of case stories from medical and natural history traditions, to flesh out a special kind of causality peculiar to heredity. This work tries to reconstruct historically the rationale that drove the use of such narratives. It then shows that when this rationale was methodologically challenged, its basic narrative and probabilistic underpinings were transferred to the statistical quantificational tools that took their place. (shrink)

The debate over ape personhood is of great social and moral importance. For more than twenty-five years, attorney Steven Wise has been arguing that animals who have cognitive complexities similar to humans should be legally granted basic rights of au- tonomy. In my view, granting personhood status and other rights to great apes are at- tainable goals. But how should we go about it?

Em tempos de aceleração, de competição consigo mesmo e de uma linguagem instrumental e pragmática para se falar da educação, qual seria o valor de uma justificativa estética da existência em se tratando da formação de professores? Tendo tal problemática como motivadora, objetivamos, com este estudo, levantar a discussão acerca da relação entre literatura e docência, procurando aproximá-las de modo não utilitário, mas com vistas à estética da existência. Como um modo de resistência, optamos por perguntar pela formação de professores (...) pautada pelo exercício do pensamento, pela problematização dos valores e pelo cuidado consigo e com os demais. A partir disso, utilizamo-nos da pesquisa com inspiração arquegenealógica em Foucault, nos debruçando sobre autores que abordam ou a literatura ou a docência como possibilidades de entendimentos outros que não os conteudistas. Assim, tomamos a literatura, com inspiração nos estudos foucaultianos para problematizar a constituição docente. Mais especificamente, buscamos, nos estudos sobre a genealogia da subjetivação, a leitura, e a escrita tomadas como práticas possíveis do cuidado de si, quando da investigação de Foucault na Antiguidade greco-romana, especialmente nos primeiros séculos da nossa era. Todavia, não se trata de uma aplicação conceitual anacrônica, mas de tomarmos esse ferramental para pensar o que estamos nos tornando no presente, quais são os modos contemporâneos de dominação e quais são as possibilidades, em brechas, de criação de uma estilística da existência. Sendo um ensaio teórico, operamos com a literatura como possibilidade de dobra na linguagem tida como verdade, que poderia funcionar não fora da linguagem, mas fora da ordem do discurso. Seguindo essa perspectiva, entendemos que ela pode não ter apenas a função de revelar outra verdade, ser um passatempo, informar ou transmitir um saber, mas pode funcionar como uma prática de si num exercício de pensamento que problematiza o que estamos fazendo com nossa vida e com a vida dos demais no presente. Palavras-chave: Literatura. Docência. Práticas de si. Foucault. (shrink)

La condición “líquida” de la ciudad contemporánea, en la que asistimos a un eclipse de la experiencia individual y colectiva y a una pérdida de los marcos de referencia social, no es más que la instancia última de un proceso histórico de desposesión hegemónica de las formas de existencia autónomas de la multitud, operado mediante una revolución permanente del espacio-tiempo social. En dicho proceso la ordenación del territorio y la planificación urbana han jugado un papel protagonista. El presente artículo analiza (...) los motivos y dimensiones de esta dinámica en una perspectiva teórica, identifica su evolución histórica a través de una serie de casos y esboza el escenario de conflicto que se abre ante una multitud postfordista que quiera reapropiarse de manera autónoma del espacio-tiempo social y el territorio. (shrink)

This article examines fashion models as gender myths and cultural iconsthrough a cultural history of modelling. It reveals the construction of models’ personas by the successive addition of meaningful signs:physique, manner, attitude, nationality, class, race, salary, chameleonism, slenderness and so on. On the basis of empirical material on models’ experiences gathered from interviews, secondary oral sources and autobiographical material, the author approaches models’ bodies, identities and public personas as artefacts performed through the reiteration of collectively defined gender standards and practices. (...) This approach overcomes the contrast cast in fashion discourse between visibility/invisibility, private/public, real/unreal while disclosing the hegemonic beauty standards as fiction. (shrink)

Since Darwin, Biology has been framed on the idea of evolution by natural selection, which has profoundly influenced the scientific and philosophical comprehension of biological phenomena and of our place in Nature. This book argues that contemporary biology should progress towards and revolve around an even more fundamental idea, that of autonomy. Biological autonomy describes living organisms as organised systems, which are able to self-produce and self-maintain as integrated entities, to establish their own goals and norms, and to promote the (...) conditions of their existence through their interactions with the environment. Topics covered in this book include organisation and biological emergence, organisms, agency, levels of autonomy, cognition, and a look at the historical dimension of autonomy. The current development of scientific investigations on autonomous organisation calls for a theoretical and philosophical analysis. This can contribute to the elaboration of an original understanding of life - including human life - on Earth, opening new perspectives and enabling fecund interactions with other existing theories and approaches. This book takes up the challenge. (shrink)

Título: ¿Cómo investigar en Didáctica de las Ciencias Sociales? Fundamentos metodológicos, técnicas e instrumentos de investigación Editor: Delfín Ortega Sánchez Editorial: Octaedro Lugar de edición: Barcelona Año: 2023 ISBN: 978-84-19690-20-3 Páginas: 238.

Many moral philosophers have criticized intensive animal farming because it can be harmful to the environment, it causes pain and misery to a large number of animals, and furthermore eating meat and animal-based products can be unhealthful. The issue of industrially farmed animals has become one of the most pressing ethical questions of our time. On the one hand, utilitarians have argued that we should become vegetarians or vegans because the practices of raising animals for food are immoral since they (...) minimize the overall happiness. Deontologists, on the other hand, have argued that the practices of raising animals for food are immoral because animals have certain rights and we have duties toward them. Some virtue ethicists remain unconvinced of deontic and consequentialist arguments against the exploitation of animals and suggest that a virtue-based approach is better equipped to show what is immoral about raising and using animals for food, and what is virtuous about ethical veganism. (shrink)

Many conservatives endorse a defence of closed borders grounded in basic liberal rights such as the basic right of association. Some conservatives also endorse libertarian principles of legitimacy. It is not clear though that this sort of defence of closed borders is somehow coherent with these libertarian ideals. I argue that conservative libertarians of this kind must reject this defence of closed borders because either it collapses into a form of statism incoherent with libertarian principles of legitimacy, or into an (...) ideal precept without appeal regarding reality in the here and now that could only be applied to changing the very nature of the societies we know. As a result, at least conservative libertarians need to find a different source of justification for closed borders. (shrink)

La utilización de la radio de manera planificada e intencionada en el proceso educativo contribuye a que los jóvenes adquieran una amplia gama de conocimientos referidos a diversos temas académicos, científicos y humanísticos, de una manera interactiva y vivencial. Partiendo de esta premisa es posible inferir que la radio constituye un recurso útil y valioso para consolidar competencias para la convivencia social en los estudiantes de educación media. Es por ello que el objetivo de este estudio es proponer el uso (...) de la radio como un recurso tecnológico pertinente para la asimilación de competencias para la convivencia social. Para alcanzar el objetivo propuesto el trabajo se enmarca en una investigación de tipo documental. Los resultados del estudio evidencian que la incorporación de la radio a la dinámica de trabajo pedagógico es potencialmente útil en la estimulación de competencias para la convivencia social, fortaleciendo significativamente aptitudes afectivas y morales como la igualdad, el respeto, el trabajo colaborativo y en equipo, la solidaridad, entre otros, además de propiciar en el estudiante el mejoramiento de sus habilidades para la expresión oral y escrita. (shrink)

Der englische Erkenntnis- und Wissenschaftstheoretiker William Whewell (1794-1866) geht davon aus, daß das Phänomen der Entdeckung, Entstehung, Formulierung, Verbesserung und Verwerfung wissenschaftlicher Theorien weder mit dem Instrumentarium des Empirismus noch mit dem des Rationalismus erklärbar ist. Mit der Annahme eines kritischen Realismus, im Anschluß an Kants theoretische Philosophie und manche Aspekte des kritischen Rationalismus von Popper vorwegnehmend, stellt Whewell erneut die Frage nach der Möglichkeit nicht-analytischer, allgemeiner und doch notwendig geltender Aussagen über die Welt auf. Whewell lehnt aber die Lösung (...) Kants einer transzendentalen Deduktion der Verstandesbegriffe ab und bietet eine moderne Antwort an, ohne die historizistischen Züge des Nachkantischen Idealismus anzunehmen. (shrink)

The project of growing meat artificially represents for some the next best thing to humanity. If successful, it could be the solution to several problems, such as feed- ing a growing global population while reducing the environmental impact of raising animals for food and, of course, reducing the amount and degree of animal cruelty and suffering that is involved in animal farming. In this paper, I argue that the issue of the morality of such a project has been framed only (...) in terms of the best conse- quences for the environment, animals, and humans, or in terms of deontic princi- ples. I argue that to appreciate how deep and difficult this issue is, it is necessary to consider it in terms of a virtue-oriented approach. Such an approach will reveal aspects that are not apparent, not contemplated by typical approaches, but are essen- tial to our understanding of the morality of lab-grown meat. As I argue, evaluating the issue from a virtue-oriented perspective suggests that the project of in vitro meat should not be supported because it stems from unvirtuous motivations. (shrink)

En la genealogía del cuidado de sí, Foucault afirma que la filosofía cartesiana propina a esta tradición el golpe definitivo que la condena al olvido. A partir de entonces, el sujeto ya no debe practicar sobre su ser de sujeto ninguna transformación para acceder a la verdad, basta con el empleo correcto de sus facultades cognoscitivas. En este artículo se defiende que en Descartes la cuestión del cuidado no es olvidada, sino que precisamente la empresa de la reconstrucción del edificio (...) del conocimiento para la búsqueda de la verdad es abordada como fruto de una decisión moral sobre la forma de vida. (shrink)

Automatic public malware analysis services provide controlled, isolated and virtual environments to analyse malicious software samples. Unfortunately, malware is currently incorporating techniques to recognize execution onto a virtual or sandbox environment; when an analysis environment is detected, malware behaves as a benign application or even shows no activity. In this work, we present an empirical study and characterization of automatic PMAS, considering 26 different services. We also show a set of features that allow to easily fingerprint these services as analysis (...) environments; the lower the unlikeability of these features, the easier for us to fingerprint the analysis service they belong to. Finally, we propose a method for these analysis services to counter or at least mitigate our proposal. (shrink)

While other theorists have turned to Arendt’s analysis of statelessness and superfluity to consider questions of immigration, “illegality,” and the status of noncitizens, this essay argues that Arendt’s account of labor and her nonconsequentialist account of action offer a richer optic for considering the undocumented in the United States. To explore this claim, this essay constructs an alternate account of the nationwide demonstrations for immigrant rights that occurred in 2006. Rather than defining “success” in terms of replicability or immediate legislative (...) results, the author’s analysis of the 2006 protests emphasizes the significance of noncitizens laying claim to the public realm. Considering Michael Warner’s concept of counterpublics, the author argues that the demonstrations can be best understood as a moment of initiation and an inaugural performance of the political. Rereading Arendt’s notion of animal laborans, the essay concludes by exploring the limitations of noncitizens invoking labor as a way to gain civic standing. (shrink)

The first form of the inside-outside dichotomy appears as a self-encapsulated system with an active border. These systems are based on two complementary but asymmetric processes: constructive and interactive. The former physically constitute the system as a recursive network of component production, defining an inside. The maintenance of the constructive processes implies that the internal organization also constrains certain flows of matter and energy across the border of the system, generating interactive processes. These interactive processes ensure the maintenance of the (...) constructive processes thus specifying a meaningful outside. Upon this basic form of identity formation, the evolutionary and historical domain is open for the emergence of a whole hierarchy and ecology of insides and outsides. These which mutually subsume and collaborate in the maintenance of the essential inside-outside dichotomy that defines the conditions of possibility of the subjects and the worlds they generate. (shrink)

Marcus William Hunt argues that when co-parents disagree over whether to raise their child (or children) as a vegan, they should reach a compromise as a gift given by one parent to the other out of respect for his or her authority. Josh Millburn contends that Hunt’s proposal of parental compromise over veganism is unacceptable on the ground that it overlooks respect for animal rights, which bars compromising. However, he contemplates the possibility of parental compromise over ‘unusual eating,’ of animal-based (...) foods obtained without the violation of animal rights. I argue for zero parental compromise, rejecting a rights-oriented approach, and propose a policy that an ethical vegan parent and a non-vegan co-parent should follow to determine how to raise their children. (shrink)

Ethical veganism is the view that raising animals for food is an immoral practice that must be stopped because of the harm it causes to the animals, the environment, and our health. Carlo Alvaro argues the only way to stop that harm is to acquire the virtues that enable us to act justly and benevolently toward animals.

This paper argues that our modern concept of biological heredity was first clearly introduced in a theoretical and practical setting by the generation of French physicians that were active between 1810 and 1830. It describes how from a traditional focus on hereditary transmission of disease, influential French medical men like Esquirol, Fodéré, Piorry, Lévy, moved towards considering heredity a central concept for the conception of the human bodily frame, and its set of physical and moral dispositions. The notion of heredity (...) as a natural force, with a wide ranging capabilities of transmitting differentially both fundamental and accidental characters was generalized by that generation of physicians with the help of contemporary naturalists and physiologists. By 1830 the term hérédité was widespread, and it shared the explanatory and semantic qualities of traditional medical concepts like constitution and temperament. An analysis is given of the main developments that led to the conception of biological (including human) bodies as consisting of a layered, hierarchical organization of characters, differentially affected by the laws of conservation (Heredity) and change (Inneity, Variation). The mid-century work of the French physician Prosper Lucas, Traité Philosophique et Physiologique de L'Hérédité Naturelle, is shown to be the culmination of the efforts of several generations of French physicians towards having a feasible, complexly structured notion of how heredity works. (shrink)

This paper aims to enhance security in IoT device networks through a visual tool that utilizes three projection techniques, including Beta Hebbian Learning (BHL), t-distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE) and ISOMAP, in order to facilitate the identification of network attacks by human experts. This work research begins with the creation of a testing environment with IoT devices and web clients, simulating attacks over Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) for recording all relevant traffic information. The unsupervised algorithms chosen provide a set (...) of projections that enable human experts to visually identify most attacks in real-time, making it a powerful tool that can be implemented in IoT environments easily. (shrink)

Para elaborar sua filosofia civil, Thomas Hobbes preliminarmente se dedicou ao exame daquilo que constitui a república: o homem. Em sua análise da dinâmica afetivo-cognitiva humana, tecida a partir dos conceitos de sensação, imagem, linguagem e paixão, o conceito de imaginação é apresentado como um resíduo da experiência sensível no corpo. Como tal, uma imagem estará sujeita a se eclipsar sob a luz de imagens mais fortes ou mais recentes, que podem apagá-la da mente tomando o seu lugar. O ato (...) ou faculdade de imaginar, a imaginação — para Hobbes “sensação em declínio” —, é memória, que exprime no presente a sensação passada. Lançada ao futuro, a imagem mantém-se na expressão do medo ou da esperança, paixões que impelem aos homens serem credores de certo esquema de poder. A imaginação dá a forma da expectativa, que projeta passado e presente ao futuro, como uma profecia autorrealizável, garantido a estabilidade do poder e da riqueza. (shrink)

The project of growing meat artificially represents for some the next best thing to humanity. If successful, it could be the solution to several problems, such as feeding a growing global population while reducing the environmental impact of raising animals for food and, of course, reducing the amount and degree of animal cruelty and suffering that is involved in animal farming. In this paper, I argue that the issue of the morality of such a project has been framed only in (...) terms of the best consequences for the environment, animals, and humans, or in terms of deontic principles. I argue that to appreciate how deep and difficult this issue is, it is necessary to consider it in terms of a virtue-oriented approach. Such an approach will reveal aspects that are not apparent, not contemplated by typical approaches, but are essential to our understanding of the morality of lab-grown meat. As I argue, evaluating the issue from a virtue-oriented perspective suggests that the project of in vitro meat should not be supported because it stems from unvirtuous motivations. (shrink)

In our research group on the philosophy of biology (www.ehu.es/ias-research), we are developing an understanding of autonomy as the maintenance of an identity over time by means of interaction with...

Human beings are getting fatter and sicker. As we question what we eat and why we eat it, this book argues that living well involves consuming a raw vegan diet. With eating healthfully and eating ethically being simpler said than done, this book argues that the best solution to health, environmental, and ethical problems concerning animals is raw veganism―the human diet. The human diet is what humans are naturally designed to eat, and that is, a raw vegan diet of fruit, (...) tender leafy greens, and occasionally nuts and seeds. While veganism raises challenging questions over the ethics of consuming animal products, while also considering the environmental impact of the agriculture industry, raw veganism goes a step further and argues that consuming cooked food is also detrimental to our health and the environment. Cooking foods allows us to eat food that is not otherwise fit for human consumption and in an age that promotes eating foods in ‘moderation’ and having ‘balanced’ diets, this raises the question of why we are eating foods that should only be consumed in moderation at all, as moderation clearly implies they aren’t good for us. In addition, from an environmental perspective, the use of stoves, ovens and microwaves for cooking contributes significantly to energy consumption and cooking in general generates excessive waste of food and resources. Thus, this book maintains that living well and living a noble life, that is, good physical and moral health, requires consuming a raw vegan diet. Exploring the scientific and philosophical aspects of raw veganism, this novel book is essential reading for all interested in promoting ethical, healthful, and sustainable diets. (shrink)

Dynamicism has provided cognitive science with important tools to understand some aspects of “how cognitive agents work” but the issue of “what makes something cognitive” has not been sufficiently addressed yet, and, we argue, the former will never be complete without the later. Behavioristic characterizations of cognitive properties are criticized in favor of an organizational approach focused on the internal dynamic relationships that constitute cognitive systems. A definition of cognition as adaptive-autonomy in the embodied and situated neurodynamic domain is provided: (...) the compensatory regulation of a web of stability dependencies between sensorimotor structures, is created and preserved during a historical/developmental process. We highlight the functional role of emotional embodiment: internal bioregulatory processes coupled to the formation and adaptive regulation of neurodynamic autonomy. Finally, we discuss a “minimally cognitive behavior program” in evolutionary simulation modelling suggesting that much is to be learned from a complementary “minimally cognitive organization program”. (shrink)

With millions of animals brought into existence and raised for food every year, their negative impact upon the environment and the staggering growth in the number of chronic diseases caused by meat and dairy diets make a global move toward ethical veganism imperative. Typi-cally, utilitarians and deontologists have led this discussion. The purpose of this paper is to pro-pose a virtuous approach to ethical veganism. Virtue ethics can be used to construct a defense of ethical veganism by relying on the (...) virtues of compassion and fairness. Exercising these values in our relations with animals involves acknowledging their moral value, thus seeing that they are not our property or our food. It is important to emphasize that this argument applies only to well-developed societies that need not rely upon animals as sources of food, clothing, and various by-products. (shrink)

In this paper I respond to Marcus William Hunt’s argument that vegan parents have pro tanto reasons for not raising their children on a vegan diet because such a diet is potentially harmful to children’s physical and social well-being. In my rebuttal, first I show that in practice all vegan diets, with the exception of wacky diets, are beneficial to children’s well-being ; and that all animal-based diets are potentially unhealthful. Second, I show that vegan children are no more socially (...) outcast than any other group. In other words, veganism does not harm the lives of children. Having considered several studies, I show that the moral reasons that vegan parents may have for raising their children on a vegan diet significantly outweigh the reasons for raising their children on an animal-based diet. Thus, I conclude that parents have a moral obligation to raise their children on a vegan diet. (shrink)

Título: Didáctica de geografía e historia en educación primaria Autor: Laura Arias Ferrer y Alejandro Egea Vivancos Edición: Editorial Síntesis Lugar de publicación: Madrid Año: 2022 Idioma: Español ISBN: 978-84-1357-231-4 Páginas: 198.

This article analyzes the possibility of finding an approach favorable to religious tolerance in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan. With this aim, I will first establish a contrast between two interpretative groups that have guided the discussion on the subject, focusing mainly on Leviathan. On the one side, there are more “traditional” commentators of Hobbes’s works, to whom the idea of religious tolerance in Hobbes’s texts makes little or no sense; on the other hand, there are academics who defend a “revisionist” reading, (...) maintaining that Hobbes was completely favorable to religious tolerance. Second, I propose a reading of the text from the Hobbesian concept of religion, reconstructing this concept with the characterizations present in Leviathan. Finally, the two lines of interpretation are contrasted with this Hobbesian concept of religion, determining in what sense it is possible to understand Hobbes’s work as favorable to religious tolerance. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 5, Page 869-885, September 2022.