The world's population is currently overcoming one of the worst pandemics, and the psychological and social effects of this are becoming more apparent. We will present an analysis of the psychosocial effects of COVID-19: first, a cross-sectional study in an Ecuadorian sample and second, a comparative study between two samples from the Ecuadorian and Spanish populations. Participants completed an online survey to describe how they felt before and after confinement; analyze which emotional and behavioral variables predict depressive symptoms, anxiety, and (...) stress perceived after the confinement; carry out a comparative study in a sample of Ecuadorian and Spanish surveys. Results indicate, first, that Ecuadorians experience significantly more depressive symptoms, anxiety, and stress after confinement. Second, variables which predict depressive symptoms and anxiety are greater public prosocial tendency, less stress as a challenge, and greater stress as a threat, as well as an empathetic tendency that implies greater emotional regulation. Experienced stress after confinement was predicted by a greater public prosocial tendency, as well as an empathetic tendency. Finally, scores for depression, anxiety, and stress are higher after confinement in both countries. However, results reveal the similarity of the psychosocial effects that are being experienced, regardless of the country, and the differences in the variables that can help explain these effects. This can contribute to the constitution of intervention plans which aim to soften and alleviate the effects produced by a situation such as that experienced with COVID-19. (shrink)

There is increasing attention to the centrality of idealization in science. One common view is that models and other idealized representations are important to science, but that they fall short in one or more ways. On this view, there must be an intermediary step between idealized representation and the traditional aims of science, including truth, explanation, and prediction. Here I develop an alternative interpretation of the relationship between idealized representation and the aims of science. In my view, continuing, widespread idealization (...) calls into question the idea that science aims for truth. I argue that understanding must replace truth as the ultimate epistemic aim of science. Additionally, science has a wide variety aims, epistemic and non-epistemic, and these aims motivate different kinds of scientific products. Finally, I show how these diverse aims---all rather distant from truth---result in the expanded influence of social values on science. (shrink)

An historically important conception of the unity of science is explanatory reductionism, according to which the unity of science is achieved by explaining all laws of science in terms of their connection to microphysical law. There is, however, a separate tradition that advocates the unity of science. According to that tradition, the unity of science consists of the coordination of diverse fields of science, none of which is taken to have privileged epistemic status. This alternate conception has roots in Otto (...) Neurath’s notion of unified science. In this paper, I develop a version of the coordination approach to unity that is inspired by Neurath’s views. The resulting conception of the unity of science achieves aims similar to those of explanatory reductionism, but does so in a radically different way. As a result, it is immune to the criticisms facing explanatory reductionism. This conception of unity is also importantly different from the view that science is disunified, and I conclude by demonstrating how it accords better with scientific practice than do conceptions of the disunity of science. (shrink)

It is a common thought that mathematics can be not only true but also beautiful, and many of the greatest mathematicians have attached central importance to the aesthetic merit of their theorems, proofs and theories. But how, exactly, should we conceive of the character of beauty in mathematics? In this paper I suggest that Kant's philosophy provides the resources for a compelling answer to this question. Focusing on §62 of the ‘Critique of Aesthetic Judgment’, I argue against the common view (...) that Kant's aesthetics leaves no room for beauty in mathematics. More specifically, I show that on the Kantian account beauty in mathematics is a non-conceptual response felt in light of our own creative activities involved in the process of mathematical reasoning. The Kantian proposal I thus develop provides a promising alternative to Platonist accounts of beauty widespread among mathematicians. While on the Platonist conception the experience of mathematical beauty consists in an intellectual insight into the fundamental structures of the universe, according to the Kantian proposal the experience of beauty in mathematics is grounded in our felt awareness of the imaginative processes that lead to mathematical knowledge. The Kantian account I develop thus offers to elucidate the connection between aesthetic reflection, creative imagination and mathematical cognition. (shrink)

(1993). Why Olympic Athletes Should Avoid the Use and Seek the Elimination of Performance-Enhancing Substances and Practices From the Olympic Games. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport: Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 64-81. doi: 10.1080/00948705.1993.9714504.

This article analyzes process management and its financial impact on industrial companies in Ecuador and Latin America. Through a literature review and case analysis, process management practices, their benefits and challenges, and how these practices influence the financial results of companies are explored. It highlights the key aspects that contribute to improving operational efficiency and profitability, providing recommendations for successfully implementing process management in the industrial sector.

The proposal of the ‘Anthropocene’ as a new geological epoch where humans represent the dominant natural force has renewed artistic interest in the ‘geopoetic’, which is mobilized by cultural producers to incite changes in personal and collective participation in planetary life and politics. This article draws attention to prior engagements with the geophysical and the political: the work of Simone Weil and of the editors of the Martinican cultural journal Tropiques, Suzanne and Aimé Césaire. Synthesizing the political and scientific shifts (...) in human-world relationships of their time, both projects are set against oppressive or narcissistic materialisms and experiment with the image of the ‘cosmic’ to cultivate a preoccupation not (only) with a tangible materialism but with an intangible one that emphasizes process and connectivity across wide spatial and temporal scales. The writers’ movement between poetics and politics will be used to enquire what kind of socio-political work a contemporary geopoetic could potentially do. (shrink)

When game theory was introduced to biology, the components of classic game theory models were replaced with elements more befitting evolutionary phenomena. The actions of intelligent agents are replaced by phenotypic traits; utility is replaced by fitness; rational deliberation is replaced by natural selection. In this paper, I argue that this classic conception of comprehensive reapplication is misleading, for it overemphasizes the discontinuity between human behavior and evolved traits. Explicitly considering the representational roles of evolutionary game theory brings to attention (...) neglected areas of overlap, as well as a range of evolutionary possibilities that are often overlooked. The clarifications this analysis provides are well-illustrated by—and particularly valuable for—game theoretic treatments of the evolution of social behavior. (shrink)

Main description: Angesichts der zunehmenden Zerstörung der Natur durch den Menschen und der technischen Fortschritte in den Biowissenschaften ist die Frage nach dem Verhältnis des Menschen zu seiner natürlichen Umwelt von höchster Aktualität. Ausgehend von der Philosophie Kants, nach der die Betrachtung der Natur wesentlich in einer Analogie mit der Vernunft des Menschen gründet, entwickelt Angela Breitenbach einen Ansatz zu einer modernen Umweltphilosophie, die einen wichtigen Beitrag zu aktuellen Debatten in der Umweltethik und der Philosophie der Biologie liefert.

The topic of Women’s sport has engendered increasing scholarship across differing disciplines in recent years; however, in the philosophy of sport literature, it has not been as abundant as it migh...

The coronavirus pandemic has impacted health care, economies and societies in ways that are still being measured across the world. To control the spread of the virus, governments continue to appeal to citizens to alter their behaviours and act in the interests of the collective public good so as to protect the vulnerable. Demonstrations of collective solidarity are being consistently sought to control the spread of the virus. Catchphrases, soundbites and hashtags such as ‘we’re all in this together’, ‘stronger together’ (...) and other messages of unity are employed, invoking the sense of a collective struggle. However, this approach is fundamentally challenged as collectivist attitudes run contrary to the individualism of neoliberal ideology, to which citizens have been subjected. This paper argues that attempting to employ the concept of solidarity is inherently challenged by the deep impact of neoliberalism in health policies and draws on the work of Durkheim to examine the concept in a context in which health care has become established as an individual responsibility. The paper will argue that a dominant private-responsibility model and an underfunded public system have eroded solidarity weakening its effectiveness in generating concerns for the collective. (shrink)

FEATURED IN EVENTAL AESTHETICS RETROSPECTIVE 1. LOOKING BACK AT 10 ISSUES OF EVENTAL AESTHETICS. In this article I ask: how to rescue “magical thinking” (a notion I inherit from Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno) in and from Hegel and imagine its possibilities for posthuman society, ethics, and aesthetics? To address this question, I read Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit through Horkheimer and Adorno, who argue that Enlightenment’s program is “the disenchantment of the world”: with the end of magical thinking and the (...) beginning of enlightened thinking came chasm and disparity between subject and object and, for Horkheimer and Adorno, the onset of barbarism. Hegel himself speaks directly to the danger of failed recognition between two consciousnesses, a failure followed by a duel to the death, in which the two figures leave each other indifferently, like things. After reading a distinctly “magical thinking” into the shape of Hegel’s dialectic, I show how contemporary posthumanism and ecopoetics make use of Hegel’s thought in order to reimagine subject-object relations in and as response to ecological crisis. I discuss how Donna Haraway, following in the traditions of Hegel and Adorno, magically thinks her way toward new models for relating more ethically (to borrow Haraway’s own terminology) to human and other-than-human others in the new century. Then, I look at how such models are being adapted in and by aesthetic practice — specifically, in the experimental ecopoetics of contemporary poet Brenda Hillman. In the end, I argue that contemporary posthumanisms and ecopoetics in fact need magical thinking in order to begin reimagining the social and the ecological and resuscitate a devastatingly enlightened world. (shrink)

Natural law contains much social thought that predates sociology and related disciplines, and can be seen as part of the prehistory of the human sciences. Key concerns of natural law thinkers include the achievement of social life and society, and the individual’s place therein. However, there is an enduring tendency within sociology to dismiss the ahistoricism and universalism of natural law, and therefore to reject natural law thought in its entirety. This article proposes an approach that rescues the sociological relevance (...) of natural law. It draws on the respective methods of Chris Thornhill and Gary Wickham, who each seek to recover the importance of natural law for sociology. Thornhill treats natural law as a valid sociological object by focusing on its functions within society rather than engaging with its ahistorical concepts. His focus on the external functions of natural law, however, leads to a neglect of the internal conceptualisations of the social world in natural law thought. This in turn leads to a misinterpretation of Hobbes and voluntarist natural law. Wickham, on the other hand, explores in detail Hobbesian conceptions of society and the individual that Wickham argues can be utilised within contemporary sociology. This article revises Thornhill’s methodological framework in order to secure a space for the recovery of natural law as social thought. This approach allows for the recognition of natural law as an important piece of the epistemological background against which contemporary understandings of the human and society emerged. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 6, Page 55-57, June 2011.

Avant 1812, l'actuelle République de Moldavie, partie intégrante de la région roumaine appelée Moldavie, avait comme modèle et débouché culturel la France. Après cette date, rattachée à l'Empire Russe, elle a dû rentrer, sous le nom de Bessarabie dans un tout autre giron culturel, à la frontière des civilisations. Aujourd'hui, le discours relatif à la culture et à l'identité est-il double ou dédoublé ? Certains Moldaves plaident pour leur identité roumaine, d'autres pour leur identité moldave et ceci sur un fond (...) à nombreuses touches multiculturelles. Un représentant du quartier général d'une organisation internationale a demandé à un collaborateur moldave son avis quant à la nationalité qu'il faudrait indiquer sur la liste des employés. Puisqu'au moment où, pour les ressortissants de la République de Moldavie, il a été écrit «moldave», le représentant roumain a objecté que cette nationalité n'existe pas. Si vous étiez le représentant moldave, que répondriez-vous?Before 1812, the current Republic of Moldova, then a territory of the Rumanian region called Moldova, chose France as a cultural model and outlet. After this date, the territory became part of the Russian Empire under the name of Basarabia and thus entered a completely different cultural space at the border of civilizations. Nowadays, is the discourse related to culture and identity doubled or divided? Some Moldavans opt for a Rumanian identity and others a Moldovan one in a context with many multicultural aspects. A representative of the headquarters of an international organization asked a Moldavian colleague under which nationality he should be put down on a list of employees. “Moldavian” was chosen for citizens of the Republique of Moldova only for the Rumanian representative to object that this nationality did not in fact exist. What would have been your answer to this question had you been the Moldovan representative? (shrink)

Like many corporations, the Catholic Church in the United States and Ireland has tried to move beyond scandal. In this case, the scandal was the failure of church leaders to protect minors from clergy sexual abuse, particularly in Boston and Dublin. Like corporate leaders, church leaders have faced the challenge of restoring trust after scandal. Influenced by corporate trends toward codes of conduct, the archdioceses of both Boston and Dublin provide codes of conduct, but the differences between them are worth (...) noting. In 2015, the Catholic Church in both the United States and Ireland highlighted the need for a culture of accountability that does not succumb to complacency, and in the United States the bishops have once again been encouraged to learn from business. This paper will demonstrate that the Catholic Church is in dialogue with and learns from codes of conduct and cultural practices in business. At the same time, it will highlight that the Catholic Church must also be attentive to its own mission since a simple adoption of other corporations’ practices can be detrimental to sharing the Gospel. The appropriation of codes of conduct and cultural practices from business reflects the church’s attentiveness to the signs of the times, and this appropriation needs to be evaluated in the light of the church’s mission to share the Gospel with the world. (shrink)

This article explores some of the key dynamics of the UK fashion sector as an example of a post-industrial, urban based, cultural economy comprising of a largely youthful female workforce. It argues that the small scale, independent activities which formed the backbone of the success of British fashion design as an internationally recognized phenomenon from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s, represented a form of female self-generated work giving rise to collaborative possibilities and co-operation. However without an effective lobby (...) or association (despite the expansion of the fashion media) and under conditions of rapid individualization and in an increasingly harsh climate of neo-liberalization, this creative economy has been overtaken and virtually demolished by the joint forces of a re-vitalized high street fashion culture and the aggressive presence of corporate fashion (‘Prada-ization’). While the UK government celebrates the growth of the cultural economy, it also overlooks the processes making the livelihoods of its predominantly female workforce either untenable or else requiring de-specialization and ‘multi-tasking’. (shrink)

Generative AI has captured the public imagination as a tool that promises access to expertise beyond the technical jargon and expense that traditionally characterize such infospheres as those of medicine and law. Largely absent from the current literature, however, are interrogations of generative AI’s abilities to deal in culturally responsive communication, or the expertise interwoven with culturally aware, socially responsible, and personally sensitive communication best practices. To interrogate the possibilities of cultural responsiveness in generative AI, we examine the patterns of (...) response that characterize ChatGPT-3.5’s advice for coming out. Specifically, we submitted 100 prompts soliciting coming out advice to GPT-3.5, variegating each of those prompts slightly to account for intersectional identities. From the analysis, we find that, while the responses are largely in-line with best practices, there are also instances that might represent problematics concerning the interpellation of the user or the persons to whom one is coming out. (shrink)

In the context of economics, the distinction between ‘the public’ and ‘the private’ has been paralleled with the distinction of ‘public policy’ on the one hand and the ‘private market’ on the other...

Il brano del "Fedro" (269el-270c5) in cui è menzionato Ippocrate e il suo metodo è uno dei più controversi dell'opera platonica. Alcuni studiosi si sono serviti degli scolî antichi al dialogo, tramandati sotto il nome del neoplatonico Ermia (V sec. d. C.), per sostenere che il metodo in questione non implica un'indagine preliminare dell'universo. È tuttavia utile (oltreché finora intentato) ripercorrere quanto l'esegeta neoplatonico dice a proposito dell'intero brano in questione per constatare come egli, al contrario, ne fornisca un'interpretazione cosmologica, (...) sulla base della significazione tecnica di ἡ ὅλη ψυχή come "anima dell'universo". In ogni caso l'esegesi di Ermia risulta essere non una semplice parafrasi grammaticale del testo platonico, ma anche una sua riformulazione filosofica nei termini della dottrina neoplatonica, la quale è estremamente complessa anche nel caso dell'anima umana. (shrink)

This essay seeks to establish that Catholic community pharmacists should refuse to verify, dispense, and counsel on hormonal medications used for contraception on the grounds of professional and personal beliefs as these services constitute immoral immediate material cooperation. In this controversial area of patient care, pharmacists are more frequently being called upon to facilitate medication use for contraceptive purposes. Contraceptive acts are believed by some healthcare providers to be morally harmful to a patient’s well-being. Pharmacists who hold beliefs that contraception (...) does not promote positive patient outcomes are professionally bound to refuse immediate cooperation through providing pharmaceutical services related to contraception. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to deal with E. Husserl’s and E. Stein’s analyses on the anthropological and metaphysical questions. To perform this task it is necessary to explain the meaning of the phenomenological method, first of all in Husserl and then in E. Stein, underscoring the novelty of their approach to the knowledge of human being, world and God. The essay is divided in four parts; two are dedicated to Husserl’s and Stein’s investigation on the human being and (...) two to their development of metaphysical themes. Regarding the first topic we discover a significant connection between the two thinkers, regarding the second one we notice that it is possible to find a metaphysical approach to reality even in Husserl and an original development of the theme in Stein’s analysis linked up with the medieval philosophy and theology. (shrink)

En esta contribución mía en ocasión de los cien años de la adhesión de Edith Stein a la Iglesia católica, deseo volver a proponer extractos de mi último libro que le he dedicado a ella: Assonanze e dissonanze. Dal Diario di Edith Stein (Mimesis, Milán, 2021), en el que vuelvo a recorrer toda su existencia humana e intelectual, imaginando haber encontrado un diario suyo, que en realidad he reconstruido partiendo de su historia de una familia judía, su epistolario, en particular (...) el que sostiene con Roman Ingarden y de sus obras. Ya que el libro ha sido escrito durante el periodo de la pandemia en la que en Italia estuvimos obligados a permanecer en casa desde marzo hasta mayo de 2020, entrelacé mi diario de esos largos días con el de Edith Stein. Muestro aquí algunas páginas extraídas del capítulo V dedicado a su conversión y muestro paralelamente su camino espiritual e intelectual: qué sucedía en su alma y cómo eso se reflejaba en sus libros, en particular, el «escrito secreto» sobre la religión, Libertad y gracia, y su Introducción a la filosofía. (shrink)