Stakeholder engagement is central to organizations’ social impact. Engagement activities rely on mechanisms whose complexity increases for multinational corporations. This study explores the boundary conditions of our Western/Northern-based knowledge of stakeholder engagement mechanisms through the examination of such practices in multinational companies founded in Latin America. Based on previous studies on the identification of organizational stakeholders in the region, we aim to understand the specific engagement mechanisms MLs use. To this end, we analyze qualitatively 28 corporate sustainability reports by relevant (...) firms. Our findings show that the community includes silent stakeholders composed of subgroups not listed as organizational stakeholders but mentioned in the report as engaged by the company or a subsidiary. MLs in our sample use four main mechanisms to engage these subgroups: strong, visible commitments to local social organizations; continuous dialogue with members of the community; networks of volunteers to help perform the social activities of the companies; and creation of social infrastructure institutions. We end by detailing the theoretical implications for stakeholder engagement among emerging economies multinational companies and for MNCs in general. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Elvira Panaiotidi, “The Nature of Paradigms and Paradigm Shifts in Music Education”Carlos Xavier RodriguezElvira Panaiotidi has delivered a very useful and appealing paper on the topic of how the music education community decides it is time to change the way it thinks and acts. Her primary focus is whether the concept of "paradigms" proposed by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions reasonably explains (...) how change occurs in music education theory and practice and, if not, whether it can be modified so that it does. Following Peter Abbs' account of paradigm shifts in arts education, she proposes that paradigm shifts occur when methods of inquiry change even if what is being analyzed does not change. More specifically, paradigm shifts involve gradual transformations such that certain principles and terminology are carried over from the previous paradigm to the new one, and change at a slower rate than the methodologies adopted to make sense of them. Such discrepancy creates the kind of communicative discord she alludes to in her introduction: the aesthetic/praxial debate. Her further analysis of Abbs' argument leads her to conclude that the paradigm shifts he describes in arts education are different in kind from those intended by Kuhn. They apparently lack conceptual modification, or "conversion experience," and seem motivated by the need for increasingly comprehensive explanations of artistic behavior and thinking.Panaiotidi's synopsis of Kuhn's original criteria for paradigms reminded me [End Page 108] that his Structure of Scientific Revolutions as my first college textbook, exerted a powerful influence on me by its power to explain how humans formulate and react to new and better ideas. Panaiotidi seems to share this feeling, and scrutinizes Kuhn's original intention to use paradigms as a way of delineating the natural sciences from the humanities. Kuhn himself cautioned that his characterization of change and progress in science is not readily applicable to the arts and, more importantly, that interpretive frameworks for understanding art are not paradigms because paradigms are not theories, a distinction he echoed throughout his career. I argue that Kuhn would not consider the aesthetic and praxial approaches to music education paradigms at all; rather they are more a search for "a more inclusive theory" as Panaiotidi states. However, the ready applicability of Kuhn's criteria for paradigms to the work of music education philosophers is apparent. Their writings have been "sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity." They have become associated with new methodological strategies because their writings are "sufficiently open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to solve."There is, however, quite a difference in the way that science and art communities function. As Ted Gracyk writes in his book, I Wanna Be Me: Rock Music and the Politics of Identity:Where a scientific community singles out one paradigm as the foundation for further research, artistic communities do not. Once Newtonian mechanics was accepted as a scientific paradigm, no other approach to mechanics counted as a rational basis for mechanics. "Unlike art," Kuhn observes, "science destroys its past." The artworld can admire multiple paradigms, representing different periods in art history, without risking incoherence: Picasso's success did not lead museums to put their Rembrandts into storage."1Perhaps, then, the discord noted by Panaiotidi between "aestheticians" and "praxialists" arises not from a shortcoming of music education theory to provide what she calls "tenacious theoretical footing which could help settle the dispute," but from a too-literal interpretation of Kuhn's original criterion that applies to the natural sciences: new paradigms must necessarily refute those that have preceded them. Indeed, the music education research community has grappled with this very issue in its polarized views of acceptable research practice, which is perhaps more fundamentally a misunderstanding regarding the nature of the sciences versus the nature of the humanities. We in arts education have long admired scientific inquiry for its relative stability, what Kuhn calls a "normal" versus "revolutionary" mode of activity. However, as Panaiotidi explains, "Normal science [End Page 109] is characterized by a broad consensus of the specialists and is not by its nature... (shrink)

La novela Elvira (1940), de Moisés Vincenzi, y su adaptación cinematográfica (1955), producida por Carlos Alfaro McAdam, ofrecen, a través del protagonista de ambos relatos, Alberto Manara Bassi, un símbolo del intelectual costarricense de mediados del siglo XX. Estas representaciones, una anterior y otra posterior al establecimiento de la Segunda República en 1949, incluyen posiciones respecto a la patria, la etnia, las clases sociales y el género que pueden ser vinculadas al momento histórico de su producción. Por otra (...) parte, el juego especular por el que coinciden las ideas y escritos del sujeto literario Manara Bassi (quien toma el nombre de Mariano González) y el autor Vincenzi, conocido principalmente por su obra filosófica, convierten la novela y el filme en una vía para examinar las aspiraciones, inquietudes y contradicciones de un sector de la intelectualidad nacional del período. (shrink)

Drawing from Goffman’s original observations on stigma and the consequences of interactions between the stigmatized and supportive or stigmatizing audiences, we conduct a 20-year review of the diverse literature on stigma to revisit the collective nature of stigmatization processes. We find that studies on stigma’s origins, responses, processes, and outcomes have diverged from Goffman’s relational view of stigma as they have overlooked important relational mechanisms explaining the processes of (de)stigmatization. We draw from those conclusions to justify the need to study (...) stigma as a collective phenomenon. We develop a relational perspective on stigma based on understanding how attributes are stigmatized (or not) by audiences in their interactions. We argue that to advance stigma research, it is necessary to build on Goffman’s theory to include the stigmatizers (i.e., the normal) and supporters (i.e., the wise); how they create, sustain, or remove stigma; and how they relate to the stigmatized (i.e., the targets). Accordingly, we provide a research agenda on stigma as a collective phenomenon that theorizes a relational perspective, proposes a typology of how audiences relate to stigmatization, and identifies patterns of relations between audiences. We thus offer a missing piece to existing accounts of stigma by focusing on the key role of audiences (i.e., stigmatizers or supporters of the stigmatized) rather than on the targets of stigma (i.e., the own). (shrink)

The recent “turn to matter” evident in material feminist theories of the more‐than‐human world offers distinct posthuman understandings of the world as continuously relationally entangled, emergent or materializing. In this paper, I consider how these premises both trouble conventional understandings of matter and/or materials, but likewise potentially revise and revitalize understandings of the political for health and inequalities, and for nursing. This is both timely and much needed given contemporary contexts of austerity‐driven neoliberalism in health care and the unprecedented growth (...) in disparities of wealth and well‐being. I wish to explore whether material feminisms allow us to retheorize connections between abstract theory and material concerns like health and inequalities, differently. This is not theory in opposition to practice or activism, but theory conceptualized as sets of entangled emergent practices, but also what constitutes the political, as more fully relational to and in praxis with health‐related activism. I will argue these theories further justify how practitioners can visibly care for and care more about social and health inequalities. Drawing mainly on the work of material feminist, Karen Barad, and her bringing together of queer and feminist theory, as well as feminist new materialisms and understandings of posthumanism, I discuss how this turn to matter together with meaning might transform understandings of health and inequalities. (shrink)

This essay develops Kant’s theory of reform to theorize racial justice reform. I assess the function of Kant’s philosophy of race as part of his nonideal theory of justice, which offers a racist pragmatic anthropology that uses the concept of race to determine the practical effectiveness of legislative reason. His philosophy of race defends a teleological account of the natural history of the human species to fulfill the requirements of justice and assumes that certain racial groups have failed to develop (...) their innate capacity for legislative reason. I show that we need an alternative Kantian nonideal theory of justice that demonstrates how legislative reason actualizes practical freedom. Rather than appeal to anthropology, I expand Kant’s model of public reason to advance racial justice reform under the conditions of partial compliance to the requirements of justice in a profoundly nonideal republic such as the U.S. I then showcase the promise—and limits—of the a priori ideals of citizenship and publicity for racial justice reform and introduce the ideal of interracial civic fellowship to guide the public use of reason in nonideal circumstances. (shrink)

Considering recent theoretical discussions about the concept of moral legitimacy, this study advances our understanding of its performance consequences. Specifically, it uncovers the mediating role of moral legitimacy in the relationship between regulations and industry performance. Our analysis of the U.S. state-level data on regulations in a controversial industry between 1994 and 2010 yields four significant findings. The results show that regulations not only decrease performance but also negatively impact moral legitimacy. Moreover, this study provides empirical evidence that moral legitimacy (...) is positively related to industry performance, providing much-needed direct support for this premise. Importantly, the results indicate that moral legitimacy mediates the effect of regulations on performance, but only when regulations are aligned with moral values. Overall, this study extends our understanding of how regulations influence moral legitimacy, and in turn impact industry performance. (shrink)

This essay argues that a black radical Kantianism proposes a Kantian theory of justice in the circumstances of injustice. First, I describe BRK’s method of political critique and explain how it builds on Kant’s republicanism. Second, I argue that Kant’s original account of public right is incomplete because it neglects that a situated citizenry’s adoption of an ideal contributes to its refinement. Lastly, with the aid of W.E.B. Du Bois’s analysis of American Reconstruction and his proposal of an “abolition democracy,” (...) I offer my refined universalizable standard for political critique. Du Bois reconceptualizes the requirements of justice to protect the political liberties and productive powers of black freedmen and the working poor. While originating with the political demands of black freedmen during the Reconstruction era, the universal protection of political liberties and productive powers offers a novel public standard for political judgment that should still anchor deliberation today. (shrink)

This article applies Charles W. Mills’ notion of the domination contract to develop a Kantian theory of justice. The concept of domination underlying the domination contract is best understood as structural domination, which unjustifiably authorizes institutions and labour practices to weaken vulnerable groups’ public standing as free, equal and independent citizens. Though Kant’s theory of justice captures why structural domination of any kind contradicts the requirements of justice, it neglects to condemn exploitive gender- and race-based labour relations. Because the ideal (...) of civic equality must position all persons as co-legislators of the terms of political rule, the state must dismantle exploitive race- and gender-based labour relations for all persons to command political power as civic equals. (shrink)

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)

This chapter introduces W.E.B. Du Bois’s original political thought and his strategies for political advocacy. It is limited to explaining the pressure he puts on the liberal social contract tradition, which prioritizes the public values of freedom and equality for establishing fair and inclusive terms of political membership. However, unlike most liberal theorists, Du Bois’s political thought concentrates on the politics of race, colonialism, gender, and labor, among other themes, in order to redefine how political theorists and activists should build (...) a democratic polity that is truly free and equal for all. Additionally, this chapter defines some key concepts Du Bois developed to scrutinize a white-controlled world that does not welcome black and brown persons as moral equals. These trailblazing concepts include: the doctrine of racialism, double consciousness, and Pan-Africanism. Finally, this chapter defends Du Bois’s contributions to black feminist thought and American labor politics, which inspired major social justice movements in the twentieth century, in which he played a notable role. (shrink)

In this essay I develop W.E.B. Du Bois’s concept of double consciousness to demonstrate the limitations of Kant’s and Rawls’s models of self-respect. I argue that neither Kant nor Rawls can explain what self-respect and resistance to oppression warrants under the conditions of violent and systematic racial exclusion. I defend Du Bois’s proposal of voluntary black self-segregation during the Jim Crow era and explain why Du Bois believes that the black American community has a moral right to assert its self-respect (...) by mitigating exposure to racial violence and animus in a white-controlled polity. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to present a critique of the current view that reduces cancer to a cellular problem caused by specific gene mutations and to propose, instead, that such a problem might become more intelligible, if it is understood as a phenomenon that results from the breakdown of the morphological plan or Gestalt of the organism. Such and organism, in Aristotelian terms, is characterized for presenting a specific morphe or logos (form) and for having a telos (end) (...) to fulfill. A malignant tumor represents an entity separated from both the organic logos and the organic telos. According to the basic postulates of Semiophysics – a blend of Aristotelian physics and Catastrophe Theory developed by René Thom – an organism is a source (original) form individuated by a dominant pregnance that corresponds to its morphogenetic field. Here it is suggested that cancer in aged individuals might result from the progressive exhaustion of developmental constraints that regulate the process of ontogeny, that it is expected to go from the fertilized non-differentiated zygote to the mature fully developed organism, because there is no further point ahead in the developmental pathway past the reproductive age. Cancer in young individuals (before their reproductive maturity) may then be consequence of the premature derangement of such fundamental developmental constraints. In all cases the result is the loss of morphological coherence within the organism. Thus representing a conflict between an organized morphology (the organism) and a part of such a morphology that drifts towards an amorphous state (the tumor). (shrink)

La pregunta sobre la esencia de la tecnología no atañe sólo a la filosofía, sino que tiene un alcance más vasto y una repercusión más general; transforma cualitativamente la relación entre el hombre y la tecnología al añadir un elemento fundamental: la libertad.

W.E.B. Du Bois’s socialism has provoked debate for decades. His democratic theory and critique of political economy supports democratic socialism. In this article, I offer a philosophical reconstruction of the normative foundation of his democratic socialism in three steps. First, I argue that his philosophy of the modern democratic state supports the people’s advance of the principle of free and equal citizenship or civic equality. Next, I present his critique of the modern American welfare state, which asserts the fair value (...) of political liberty and democratic control over productive activities. Finally, I introduce the method of the excluded groups from Darkwater as an ideal procedure for guiding democratic deliberation in a profoundly nonideal public sphere. The method foregrounds the voices of excluded groups to correct asymmetrical relations of practical power and to infuse democratic reason with practical intelligence, namely, new content and values that can lead to the development of a democratic socialist state. (shrink)

The current mainstream in cancer research favours the idea that malignant tumour initiation is the result of a genetic mutation. Tumour development and progression is then explained as a sort of micro-evolutionary process, whereby an initial genetic alteration leads to abnormal proliferation of a single cell that leads to a population of clonally derived cells. It is widely claimed that tumour progression is driven by natural selection, based on the assumption that the initial tumour cells acquire some properties that endow (...) such cells with a selective advantage over the normal cells from which the tumour cells are derived. The standard view assumes that the transformed bodily cell somehow acquires "responsiveness" to natural selection independently of the whole organism to which the cell belongs. Yet, it is never explained where such an acquired capacity to respond to natural selection by the individual bodily cell comes from. This situation poses many difficult questions that so far have been left unanswered. For example, there is no explanation why some cells belonging to an organised whole and as such having no independent capacity for survival, apparently become 'independent' entities, able to respond to selective pressures in an autonomous fashion and then to be evaluated by natural selection. Hereunder it is argued that such a qualitative change cannot be the consequence of specific genetic mutations. Moreover, it is shown that natural selection is unlikely to be acting within the organism during tumour development and progression and that tumour evolution is a random, non-adaptive process, driven by no fundamental biological principle. Thus, mutations in the so-called oncogenes and tumour suppressor genes observed in epithelial cancers (that constitute more than 90% of all cancers) are not the result of selection for better cellular growth or survival under restrictive conditions. Instead, here it is suggested that they are the consequence of genetic drift acting upon gene functions that become non-relevant, either for the individual or the species fitness, once the organism is past its reproductive prime and as such, they also become superfluous for cell survival in the short term. It is proposed that the origin of cancer is epigenetic and it is a consequence of the need for a continued turnover of the individuals that constitute a species. (shrink)

David Hume's famous riddle of induction implies a second problem related to the question of whether the laws and principles of nature might change in the course of time. Claims have been made that modern developments in physics and astrophysics corroborate the translational invariance of the laws of physics in time. However, the appearance of a new general principle of nature, which might not be derivable from the known laws of physics, or that might actually be a non-physical one (this (...) means completely independent of physical science) supports the notion that the course of nature can change in time. Here it is argued that natural selection satisfies the criteria that identify a general principle of nature which so far, appears to be non-derivable from the known laws of physics and therefore, it is likely that it arose in the course of time, thus leaving open again the quest for a true solution to Hume's second problem. (shrink)

In this article, I defend the pragmatic relevance of race in history. Kant and Hegel's racist development thesis assumes that nonwhite, non-European racial groups are defective practical agents. In response, philosophers have opted to drop race from a theory of history and progress. They posit that denying its pragmatic relevance amounts to anti-racist egalitarianism. I dub this tactic “colorblind cosmopolitanism” and offer grounds for its rejection. Following Du Bois, I ascribe, instead, a pragmatic role to race in history. Namely, Du (...) Bois argues that race is an “instrument of progress” that advances emancipatory struggle. He appeals to the writing of history—or historiography—to cultivate group consciousness of historical memory in order to strengthen intragroup bonds among the racially oppressed, especially black Americans, and create intergroup bonds that reconstruct the republic on the basis of universal ideals. I detail Du Bois's defense of the black struggle for freedom in the wake of the U.S. Civil War to provide a concrete illustration of “spirit” in American history. (shrink)

La Constitución Nacional del año 1994 incorporó el derecho a la salud. Antes dela reforma de 1994, el derecho a la vida no estaba contemplado en el texto constitucional.Esto implica que cualquier persona que perciba que sus derechos fueronvulnerados puede disponer de un inmediato recurso de amparo para que cese tal acciónsobre él. Desde 1994 en adelante, los tratados adquieren carácter supralegal, enel sentido de que ocupan un lugar debajo de la Constitución, pero por encima de lasleyes y resto del (...) derecho interno. Es así, como consecuencia, que Argentina adhiereal Pacto de San José de Costa Rica, que en su artículo 25 establece el derecho de losindividuos a recursos que lo amparen contra cualquier tipo de acto que viole o lesionesus derechos fundamentales reconocidos por la Constitución, la ley o esa mismaconvención. El propósito de este trabajo es abordar la problemática que se presentaen la modalidad de acceso a prestaciones de alto precio a través de la judicializaciónen Argentina, reseñando un breve comentario acerca de las políticas de acceso queposeen otros países a los fines de reflexionar y poder conocer otras alternativasque contribuyan a la sustentabilidad de un sistema de salud. (shrink)

The challenges posed by postmodern and poststructural theories profoundly disrupt the certainties of feminist and nursing research, yet at the same time offer possibilities for developing new epistemologies. While there are an increasing number of accounts discussing the theoretical implications of these ideas for nursing research, I wish to discuss the practical and the methodological implications of using postmodern feminist theories within empirical research. In particular, I identify the challenges I encountered through an examination of specific aspects of the research (...) process and through examples drawn from empirical research. I conclude that using postmodern feminist theories requires a continuous engagement with, and interrogation of, the modern epistemological and ontological assumptions of qualitative, feminist nursing research and, in so doing, presents the possibility for nurse scholars to begin to develop a ‘passionately interested’ methodological approach to nursing inquiry. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to define a partial Propositional Type Theory. Our system is partial in a double sense: the hierarchy of (propositional) types contains partial functions and some expressions of the language, including formulas, may be undefined. The specific interpretation we give to the undefined value is that of Kleene’s strong logic of indeterminacy. We present a semantics for the new system and prove that every element of any domain of the hierarchy has a name in the (...) object language. Finally, we provide a proof system and a (constructive) proof of completeness. (shrink)

This chapter explores the conceptual relation of facts about racial injustice to two key aspects of Rawls’s ideal theory. First, it explains why Rawls excludes race from his representation of a well-ordered society and why he believes this exclusion does not mean that justice as fairness cannot support racial justice. Second, it considers three recent accounts of the justificatory role of facts about racial injustice in justice as fairness, focusing on the methods of the Original Position and Reflective Equilibrium. It (...) concludes with a reinterpretation of the method of Reflective Equilibrium that shows why it provides a promising pathway for showcasing the explicit role of facts about racial realities in ideal theory. Namely, their consideration can add justification to the idea of justice as fairness. (shrink)

The unit of selection is the concept of that ‘something’ to which biologists refer when they speak of an adaptation as being ‘for the good of’ something. Darwin identified the organism as the unit of selection because for him the ‘struggle for existence’ was an issue among individuals. Later on it was suggested that, in order to understand the evolution of social behavior, it is necessary to argue that groups, and not individuals, are the units of selection. The last addition (...) to this debate was the formulation by Dawkins, in 1976, that the genes themselves are the units of selection while organisms are merely the temporary receptacles and vehicles for such genes. Thus, the preposterous dissolution of the organism into genes and the proteins coded by such genes has been introduced in the evolutionary discourse by neglecting that the explanations for biological phenomena can be either synchronic or diachronic, depending on the phenomenon to be explained. Therefore explanations in molecular biology are synchronic while evolutionary biology needs diachronic explanations. Nevertheless, for ultra-Darwinians such as Dawkins, efficient replication is all that biology is about. Here I develop an argument in order to show that there is nothing in molecular and cell biology that might support such a contention and that the idea of the gene as the unit of selection is incompatible with the evident evolution of biological complexity. (shrink)

Chance and necessity are mainstays of explanation in current biology, dominated by the neo-Darwinian outlook, a blend of the theory of evolution by natural selection with the basic tenets of population genetics. In such a framework the form of living organisms is somehow a side effect of highly contingent, historical accidents. Thus, at a difference of other sciences, biology apparently lacks theoretical principles that in a law-like fashion may explain the emergence and persistence of the characteristic forms of living organisms (...) that paradoxically, given the current importance attributed to chance, can be grouped into organized structural typologies. Nevertheless, the present essay shows that since its origins in Aristotelian natural history, biology aimed at achieving rational, non-accidental, explanations for the wide variety of living forms endowed with characteristic behaviors that constitute the landscape of biological species. (shrink)

This note discusses the importance of Natural History (biology) in the development of Aristotle philosophy and scientific outlook, and so the importance of considering Aristotle's philosophy as a necessary and useful background for contemporary biology.

This text answers the question, posed by the editor, on the philosophical and social issues resulting from the synthetic assembly of a modified bacterial genome that was introduced in an existing bacterial species (M.mycoides)and so it was claimed to represent the first ever kind of synthetic life produced by human manipulation.

Postmodern thought has focused itself on the critique of modern epistemology that was founded on a clear distinction between the knowing subject and the object of knowledge. For postmodern thought such a distinction is non-existent or dubious at best. Postmodernism has carried to its logical conclusion the postulates of structuralism; therefore, for postmodern thought there is no general intrinsic meaning in a fact of thing, but there are only particular ways for attributing meaning to such facts and things. Hereunder, we (...) attempt to trace the genealogy of postmodern thought on the history and philosophy of science, because science, traditionally regarded as the summit of knowledge and rationality by modern epistemology, has not been immune to the wholesale critique practiced by this new school of philosophical cynicism that we call postmodernism. (shrink)

Considerar un evento como descubrimiento científico es tarea compleja que, casi siempre, se ve influida por la sistematización de las investigaciones, la publicación de los hallazgos, o las ideas sobre la realidad del contexto donde se presenta.

En este artículo se analizan la nueva concepción en la apreciación de la ciencia y la crisis de racionalidad que provocó la obra de Thomas Kuhn, enmarcadas en el proceso que la filosofía de la ciencia ha seguido a lo largo de la historia.

The wealthiest nations in the World have a knowledge-based economy that depends on continued innovation based on research and development sustained by a pool of problem-solvers able to tackle the most diverse challenges. The Research University is the current gold standard for higher education and the research professors working in such an environment are the key figures responsible of fostering the new generations of problem-solvers.

Notwithstanding the potential danger to security and privacy, sharing and publishing data has become usual in Data Science. To preserve privacy, de-identification methodologies guided by risk estimation have been designed. Two issues associated with classical risk metrics are, on the one hand, the adequacy of the metric and, on the other hand, its static nature. In this paper, we present metrics for estimating risk based on the emerging semantics provided by Formal Concept Analysis. The metrics are designed to estimate the (...) a priori risk of compromised data deletion. Furthermore, by applying specialized variable forgetting methods for association rules, it is shown how to reflect the effect of deleting attributes belonging to potentially dangerous quasi-identifier sets. Additionally, a study of the role of the risk metric in confidence-based reasoning for re-identification is presented. (shrink)

Los editores de la revista han planteado dos preguntas: ¿Están los ciudadanos en condiciones de incorporar el espíritu científico en sus deliberaciones públicas? ¿Es esto requisito necesario para la democracia? Así, este artículo pretende ofrecer una respuesta que va más allá de tales preguntas.

Existen inconsistencias fundamentales entre el paradigma de la biología molecular y el paradigma de la física contemporánea y, por lo tanto, el marco conceptual vigente en la biología molecular resulta insuficiente para abordar las cuestiones del origen y desarrollo de la forma y organización biológicas.

In this tour-de-force, Elvira Basevich examines this paradox by tracing the development of W.E.B. Du Bois's life and thought and the relevance of his legacy to our troubled age. She adroitly analyzes the main concepts that inform Du Bois’s critique of American democracy, such as the color line and double consciousness, before examining how these concepts might inform our understanding of contemporary struggles, from Black Lives Matter to the campaign for reparations for slavery. She stresses the continuity in Du (...) Bois’s thought, from his early writings to his later embrace of self-segregation and Pan-Africanism, while not shying away from assessing the challenging implications of his later work.This wonderful book vindicates the power of Du Bois’s thought to help transform a stubbornly unjust world. It is essential reading for racial justice activists as well as students of African American philosophy and political thought. (shrink)

Since Aristotle the central question in biology was the origin of organic form; a question put in the backyard by neo-Darwinism that considers organic form as a side effect of the interactions between genes and their products. On the other hand, the fashionable notion of self-organization also fails to provide a true causal explanation for organic form. For Aristotle form is both a cause and the principle of intelligibility and this coupled to the classical concepts of potentiality and actuality provides (...) a rational framework,currently embodied in the contemporary concept of ‘attractor’, for understanding the origin of organic form. (shrink)

Molecular biology is a relatively new and very successful branch of science but currently it faces challenges posed by very complex issues that cannot be addressed by a traditional reductionist approach. However, despite its origins in the providential shift of some theoretical physicists to biology, currently molecular biology is immersed in a blind trend in which high-throughput technology, able to generate trillions of data, is becoming the leading edge of a discipline that has traded rational and critical thinking for computer (...) power, data crunching and statistics in hope of finding, once more, its way. However, the complex questions facing MB may only be solved by a paradigm shift in the causal way of thinking, so that complex, emergent, non-linear phenomena may be effectively understood in top-down and not in bottom-up terms. (shrink)

Two hundred years after Darwin’s birth, the evolution of living systems is an accepted fact but there is scope for controversy on the mechanisms involved in such a process. Mainstream neo-Darwinism champions the role of natural selection (NS) as the fundamental cause of the evolutionary process as well as of random, contingent events at the genetic level as the main source of variation upon which NS performs its causal role. Thus, according to neo-Darwinism the course of biological evolution is quite (...) unpredictable and the past can only be partially reconstructed by means of a historical narrative.This second-class status for biology within the natural sciences as a merely descriptive, historical science results from the chronic neglect of biological form in the neo-Darwinian discourse. Hereunder I discuss the need for reintroducing form as the central object of biology, aiming at the identification of the general and fundamental principles of biological form. Such a formal biology may go beyond simple historical description achieving a complete, rational explanation of how previous and current morphologies corresponding to identifiable species were established, and so providing a rational foundation for predicting the possible outcomes of future biological evolution on earth and perhaps elsewhere in the universe. (shrink)

For some the gene-centered reductionism that permeates contemporary neo-Darwinism is an obstacle for finding a common explanatory framework for both biological and cultural evolution. Thus social scientists are tempted to find new concepts that might bridge the divide between biology and sociology. Yet since Aristotle we know that the level of explanation must be commensurate with the particular question to be answered. In modern natural science there are many instances where a reductionist approach has failed to provide the right answer (...) to the corresponding question. Thus social scientists risk becoming non-relevant when mimicking some features of the natural sciences (such as hard or soft reductionism) just for the sake of it, instead of finding autonomous explanations commensurate with the level of phenomena studied by social science. (shrink)

In his Doppelvortrag, Edmund Husserl introduced two concepts of “definiteness” which have been interpreted as a vindication of his role in the history of completeness. Some commentators defended that the meaning of these notions should be understood as categoricity, while other scholars believed that it is closer to syntactic completeness. A detailed study of the early twentieth-century axiomatics and Husserl’s Doppelvortrag shows, however, that many concepts of completeness were conflated as equivalent. Although “absolute definiteness” was principally an attempt to characterize (...) non-extendible manifolds and axiom systems, an absolutely definite theory has a unique model and, thus, it is non-forkable and semantically complete. Non-forkability and decidability were formally delimited by Fraenkel and Carnap almost three decades later and, in fact, they mentioned Husserl as precursor of the latter. Therefore, this paper contributes to a reassessment of Husserl’s place in the history of logic. (shrink)

En los procesos de identificación social muchas veces la valoración del pasado resulta fundamental. La existencia objetiva de esa valoración ha propiciado que distintos actores sociales, en diferentes momentos históricos, hayan hecho uso del pasado en la estructuración de las ideologías que sustentan los procesos de identificación y, en consecuencia, sus propios proyectos políticos. Es decir, los mitos políticos están compuestos manifiestamente de dos componentes básicos. Por un lado, consisten en la así llamada política simbólica y por el otro lado, (...) son parte de la memoria colectiva. Es por esto que los mitos se enfrentan con las bases mismas del proyecto de modernidad, quizás la razón por la cual sea la politología la disciplina de las ciencias sociales que menos los ha estudiado. La utopía andina, el mahdi o el doceavo imán, el emperador alemán oculto y dormido y el bolivarianismo, constituyen algunos estos mitos políticos. (shrink)

This volume presents the first complete edition of Oxford, MS Marsh 539, a hitherto unpublished philosophy reader compiled anonymously in the eastern Islamic world in the eleventh century. The compilation consists of texts on metaphysics, physiology and ethics, providing excerpts from Arabic versions of Greek philosophical works and works by Arabic authors. It preserves fragments of Greek-Arabic translations lost today, including Galen's On My Own Opinions, the Summa Alexandrinorum, and Themistius on Aristotle's Book Lambda. The philosophy reader provides a unique (...) insight into philosophical activity of the place and time of the well-known philosopher Miskawayh, showing us which works had entered the mainstream and were considered necessary for philosophers to know. Elvira Wakelnig's volume includes a new facing-page English translation and a rich commentary which identifies the source texts and examines the historical and philosophical context of each passage. (shrink)