Comparative study of the knowledge of IVF in medical students of universities with different ethical and humanistic valuesEstudo comparativo do conhecimento das técnicas de reprodução assistida em estudantes de Medicina de universidades com diferentes ideários éticos e humanísticosIn vitro fertilization continues to be presented as a relatively simple solution to produce a pregnancy without exposing the medical and ethical problems that this represents. This project consisted of conducting a survey to medical students from three medical schools in Mexico City with (...) different ethical and humanistic ideas with the aim of evaluating knowledge about IVF techniques and their ethical implications. The survey was applied to 404 medical students. Students in schools with personalistic ethics had a greater recognition of the bioethical principles involved in the use of these techniques. Knowledge of the technique and ethical issues involved in assisted reproduction could improve the sensitivity of medical students to ethical dilemmas that arise in their professional practice.Para citar este artículo / To reference this article / Para citar este artigoCantú-Quintanilla G, Vidal-Sentíes C, Marcó-Bach FJ, Camargo-Prieto F, Aguiñaga-Chiñas N, Contreras-Estrada D. Estudio comparativo del conocimiento de las técnicas de reproducción asistida en estudiantes de medicina de universidades con diferentes idearios éticos y humanísticos. Pers Bioet. 2020;24:166-176. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5294/pebi.2020.24.2.4Recibido: 04/09/2019Aceptado: 05/08/2020Publicado: 27/11/2020. (shrink)

This paper attempts to combat the false narrative about the Spanish transition to democracy that some sectors are trying to impose. To this end, the role played by Spanish society stands out, which was the one that drove the change, which could materialize thanks to a political class that knew how to channel what the citizens wanted. Two of the main milestones of the transition are analysed in detail: the drafting of the Political Reform Act of 1976 and the configuration (...) of the electoral system, both in that Law and in the 1977 Decree-Law on Electoral Regulations. The true memory of the transition is claimed, which must not be excluded from the democratic memory of the Spanish nation. (shrink)

El genoma humano contiene un importante número de retrovirus endógenos (HERVs), es decir, secuencias derivadas de pasadas infecciones retrovirales insertadas de forma permanente; y secuencias similares se pueden observar en prácticamente todos los organismos eucariontes. Muchos de estos HERVs se transcriben y traducen en condiciones fisiológicas normales, llegando a formar partículas virales completas, y participando en procesos tan complejos como la placentación. Por su capacidad de retrotransposición y recombinación entre ellos son una fuente importante de remodelación genómica y, junto con (...) otros retroelementos, participan en la generación de retrogenes y retropseudogenes, que suponen un sustrato de variabilidad informacional fundamental para la aparición de nuevas estructuras y funciones. Puesto que su actividad responde también a las condiciones ambientales, los cambios genómicos generados por ellos no son graduales, sino que aparecen en oleadas, de modo que se puede producir una variedad fenotípica muy extensa en momentos evolutivos concretos, coincidiendo con situaciones ambientales críticas. La consideración de los HERVs como parte integral y consustancial de nuestro genoma obliga a replantearse la utilización de vectores retrovirales en protocolos de terapia génica, así como la utilización de órganos animales -con sus propios retrovirus endógenos- para xenotrasplantes. (shrink)

This book traces the origins and evolution of cybersemiotics, beginning with the integration of semiotics into the theoretical framework of cybernetics and information theory. The book opens with chapters that situate the roots of cybersemiotics in Peircean semiotics, describe the advent of the Information Age and cybernetics, and lay out the proposition that notions of system, communication, self-reference, information, meaning, form, autopoiesis, and self-control are of equal topical interest to semiotics and systems theory. Subsequent chapters introduce a cybersemiotic viewpoint on (...) the capacity of arts and other practices for knowing. This suggests pathways for developing Practice as Research and practice-led research, and prompts the reader to view this new configuration in cybersemiotic terms. Other contributors discuss cultural and perceptual shifts that lead to interaction with hybrid environments such as Alexa. The relationship of storytelling and cybersemiotics is covered at chapter length, and another chapter describes an individual-collectivity dialectics, in which the latter constrains the former, but the former fuels the latter. The concluding chapter begins with the observation that digital technologies have infiltrated every corner of the metropolis - homes, workplaces, and places of leisure - to the extent that cities and bodies have transformed into interconnected interfaces. The book challenges the reader to participate in a broader discussion of the potential, limitations, alternatives, and criticisms of cybersemiotics. (shrink)

The primary objective of this paper is to review the notions of Umwelt and Functional Cycle from semiophilosophical and cybersemiotic perspectives and to propose new ways of reading these concepts. We consider that Umwelt theory is framed within “cryptosemiotics” as a field of knowledge, since it establishes an explanatory field capable of putting new paths for research on the table while allowing the elaboration of theoretical foundations for the understanding of semiosis. In addition, it is possible to establish a cybernetic (...) view on the idea of the functional cycle as a pre-requisite for meaning and communication, which entails a cybersemiotics point of view of meaning emergence. Then, in this paper, we propose a philosophical, cybernetic, and cybersemiotics reading of von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory. (shrink)

Ernst Bloch formulated problems of enormous philosophical and human relevance. He held that in our contemporary situation we have but two questions concerning the fundamental direction of our lives and history: we must choose, first, between hopeless nihilism and transcendent hope; and, second, between transcendent hope with transcendence and transcendent hope without transcendence. Bloch opted for the transcendent hope without transcendence and formulated a hard critique of hope with transcendence. Josef Pieper and Bernard Schumacher have offered a competent response to (...) Bloch from the Catholic perspective. However, we offer here a little explored aspect of the problem by demonstrating that Bloch’s metaphysical arguments do not consider that (a) a material reality necessarily has the concrete potentiality of dissolving, and (b) therefore, left to itself, it will dissolve necessarily in infinite time; and that (c) no effect can have a reality disproportionate to its cause, which is the reason why (d) no immortal reality can proceed from mortal reality without the intervention of a higher cause. (shrink)

El gran zoo (1984), del poeta cubano Nicolás Guillén, ofrece distintas representaciones sobre el Caribe. El artículo argumenta que el texto de Nicolás Guillén se inscribe dentro del movimiento literario hispanoamericano de la neovanguardia. Luego, se examinan algunas características formales del texto, tomando como ejemplo los poemas “El sueño” y “Guitarra”. Otro poema que se estudia con más detenimiento es “El tenor”, el cual parodia la división entre la alta cultura y la cultura popular. Por último, se analizan varias alusiones (...) del poemario al contexto histórico de la Guerra Fría y la Carrera Espacial. (shrink)

La publicación en abierto de los artículos conlleva unos gastos conocidos como cargos por procesamiento de artículos. El objetivo de este trabajo es determinar el coste de los artículos publicados en abierto mediante APC de autoría española en cinco categorías temáticas de las ciencias sociales: Humanities, Sociology, Information Science & Library Science, Education & Educational Research y Communication de la Colección Principal de la Web of Science durante el periodo 2012-2019. Se han identificado las revistas, las instituciones financiadoras y los (...) modelos de publicación más frecuentes. El estudio indica que de las 223 revistas que publicaron artículos con APC las que más lo hicieron fueron Communication & Society, Comunicar y el Profesional de la Información. El gasto total en APC fue de 481.120,4 € y el coste medio de 1.129 €. Las revistas con mayor coste fueron Computers & Education, Scientometrics y IEEE Transactions on Learnig Technologies. Los modelos de publicación más frecuentes fueron DOAJ Gold, Green Published y Green Accepted. En el 53% de los artículos constaba que la financiación procedía del gobierno de España, en el 25% de gobiernos autonómicos, en el 21% de la Unión Europea y en el 20% de las universidades. El coste medio de los APC de las publicaciones estudiadas está dentro de las cantidades habituales a nivel mundial, siendo más caros los APC en revistas con impacto más alto y en las áreas Information Science & Library Science y Sociology. Conocer los APC puede orientar las políticas y el apoyo institucional al acceso abierto y mejorar de los recursos académicos. (shrink)

Desde seu início, em 2020, a pandemia da Covid-19 acarretou diversos desafios no cotidiano. No campo da educação não foi diferente, pois os educadores precisaram repensar concepções mais amplas da formação continuada. Nesse contexto, o estudo procura analisar os desafios e as possibilidades para a formação continuada de profissionais da educação na perspectiva da autorreflexão colaborativo-crítica. Para isso, fundamenta-se na teoria de Jürgen Habermas por meio de duas concepções: a racionalidade comunicativa e a mediação teoria e práxis. Nesse processo, tomamos (...) os argumentos dos profissionais participantes de grupo de estudo-reflexão a partir de suas demandas, dos processos de aprendizagem e das ações de mudanças. Ações e análises dialogam e sustentam-se entre os referenciais teórico-metodológicos embasando os processos, contemplando a aplicação da espiral autorreflexiva de observação, planejamento, ação e reflexão e o delineamento e teorização das funções mediadoras na relação teoria e prática, quais sejam: elaboração/formação dos teoremas críticos; organização dos processos de conscientização e aprendizagem; e a condução da luta política, seleção das estratégias apropriadas e solução de questões táticas, sendo essas categorias o modo como se organizaram os dados. Como resultados observamos novas possibilidades para formação continuada abarcando mais formandos e ampliando a colaboração entre pesquisadores, além da intenção dos formandos/cursistas de mudar ou transformar suas práticas em ações efetivas em seus lócus de atuação. (shrink)

O texto tem como objetivo discutir acerca de uma estratégia metodológica para análise de dados em estudos de pesquisa-ação fundamentada na teoria de Jürgen Habermas, denominada por Círculos Argumentativos. Concebe-se a pesquisa-ação para além de uma abordagem metodológica, que tem como pressupostos centrais a relação entre pesquisador e participante, e da ação para a mudança. Assim, a pesquisa-ação, em virtude de sua processualidade, necessita de um método de análise capaz de explorar, em conjunto com os autores-pesquisadores, os distintos movimentos do (...) fazer a pesquisa, tendo a ação como condutora desse processo. Dessa forma, a ação comunicativa de Habermas apresenta fundamentos teóricos que permitem essa construção, considerando os conceitos de pretensões de validade, argumento, entendimento mútuo e a busca por consensos provisórios. Assim os Círculos Argumentativos, concebidos como espaço de debate para que os enunciados do mundo social na pesquisa educacional sejam problematizados e as pretensões de validade sejam desafiadas, se organizam enquanto espaços de retomada dos momentos para escuta do outro, buscando o diálogo com os autores-pesquisadores seja por meio de argumentos escritos ou pelos argumentos ditos. As contribuições deste estudo apontam que os Círculos Argumentativos não apenas permitem uma análise crítica dos dados, como também, promovem a autorreflexão dos autores e atores envolvidos. Portanto, o processo comunicativo, centrado na racionalidade comunicativa, oferece uma via metodológica robusta para superar as limitações da racionalidade instrumental predominante na pesquisa científica, especialmente em áreas como a educação. (shrink)

Esta investigación da cuenta de cómo ha sido expresada, interpretada y fundada poéticamente la ciudad colombiana durante el siglo XX en las obras de los poetas colombianos Luis Vidales (Suenan Timbres), Rogelio Echavarría (El Transeúnte) y Juan Manuel Roca (Luna de ciegos y Los ladrones nocturnos). Indaga cómo estos tres poetas colombianos han fundado ciudades como textos escriturales y levantado cartografías simbólicas citadinas; realiza una interpretación de los universos de sus poéticas, de las constelaciones simbólicas que asume el poema como (...) universo del lenguaje, el cual construye topologías imaginarias sobre la ciudad, revelando arquetipos fundamentales, presentes en la poesía urbana colombiana. (shrink)

This paper presents a human-robot closely collaborative solution to cooperatively perform surface treatment tasks such as polishing, grinding, finishing, deburring, etc. The proposed scheme is based on task priority and non-conventional sliding mode control. Furthermore, the proposal includes two force sensors attached to the manipulator end-effector and tool: one sensor is used to properly accomplish the surface treatment task, while the second one is used by the operator to guide the robot tool. The applicability and feasibility of the proposed collaborative (...) solution for robotic surface treatment are substantiated by experimental results using a redundant 7R manipulator: the Sawyer collaborative robot. (shrink)

The main intention of this scientific article was to review the technical skills and social skills achieved with digital literacy in students of the San Isidro Rural Educational Institution in Santa Rosa de Osos, Antioquia, Colombia. It was sheltered under the theoretical postulates of Area, Gutiérrez and Vidal (2012), Cornachione (2006), Fonseca (2011), among other experts in the area that is developed; The study on digital literacy is framed in positivist thinking, since the variable was measured to compute derivations, (...) then it was verified by descriptive statistics in which sequelae were compared with the assumptions and then, to outline the offer that aims to convert what is shown in the present article. The population of this study was eighty-two (82) individuals, including pedagogues and schoolchildren from the San Isidro Rural Educational Institution in Santa Rosa de Osos, Antioquia, Colombia. Specifically, the essence of the dissertation is that, once the corresponding digital literacy has been carried out in the students by the educational students, the progress of teaching skills is achieved through the diligence of actions using the Chamilo virtual medium, cognitive learning issues will be optimized, as well as educational progress in the educational entity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:138 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY entier sans en ~tre l'eselave; toujours menace, mais toujours supdrieur. Le p~ch~ est alors d$truit par la vertu; il n'y a plus de conflit int~rieur. La puret~ du coeur est de vouloir une seule chose. Et c'est alors une mani~re d'immortalit~ par le Jugement. Une derni~re remarque de G. Price: les hommes d'aujourd'hui ont changd &attitude i~ l'~gard de Dieu. La question serait maintenant: Dieu (...) est-il pour ou contre les hommes? Et quel est le sons de l'Etre humain? Telle serait donc la valeur r~elle du probl~me kierkegaardien. Sans doute, G. Price pose l'Un, l'Individuel, en dehors de toute Eglise humaine; mais ainsi se comprend la querelle incessante entre Kierkegaard et l'Eglise de son temps. L'Homme-Dieu a souvent ~t~ consid~rd avec quelque m~fiance par le Dieu trop humanis~ et celui-ci, peut-r est touj ours vu et senti comme trop engag4 dans les structures soeiales du temps present. ANDRE LOUIS LEROY Sorbonne, Paris Cinquant'anni di esperienza idealistica in Italia. By Augusto Guzzo. (Padova: Cedam, 1964.) Con la delicata finezza di tocco che egli ~ propria, Augusto Guzzo, uno dei pifi impegnati protagonisti nel superamento dell'idealismo d'antico stampo, ha sobriamente tratteggiato (in cinque succose lezioni tenure, coli~invitato da Marino Gentile e dall'intera Facolti~ di Lettere e Filosfia presso l'Universit~ di Padova) lo sviluppo della cultura filosofica italiana nella prima met~ del nostro secolo. Assai opportunamente le sue magistrali lezioni sono state test~ pubblicare nella raccolta di Opuscoli Accademici edita dall'Ateneo patavino col titolo suggestivo: Cinquant'anni di espcrienza idealistica in Italia. Quel che eolpisee anzitutto ~ la calda umanit~ del tono, l'alto affiato morale che anima la parola dell'illustre Maestro. Questi, pur trattando dei pifi ardui problemi metafisici e gnoseologici, mai non cade nell'astruso e nell'astratto. Sa cogliere, inveee, con fine introspezione psicologica la genesi delle idee pifi ardue dalla personalit~ di coloro ehe le eoncepirono e eh'Egli individua con sottile discernimento e con artistica vivacitY. Ed alla base della sun intelligente eomprensione e della perspicace sua ermeneutiea psicologia ~ una disposizione morale che vorremmo dire di affettuosa indulgenza e di calore meridionale, anzi schiettamente napoletano, se non fosse pi5 giusto dirla apertura eristiana al colloquio tra le anime e quindi fra gli intelletti. E'questo che ineanta nella nitida prosa del Guzzo, che non ~ mai arcigno e sprezzante, non mai amaro e caustico, bensl sempre si sforza di comprendere e di giustificare. In lui rivive in effetti l'alta ispirazione della perennis philosophia di quel Leibniz che soleva ripetere con quella bonti~ ed umanitk propria solo agli ingegni sublimi: "So debbo ingannarmi, preferisco farlo piuttosto a favore che a svantaggio delle persone. Provo la stessa propensione leggendo gli seritti altrui eh~ mi sforzo di scoprire non quel ehe potrei critieare, bensl quanto merita d'essere approvato e di cui posso approfittare." D'altro canto l'apertura mentale del Guzzo non ~insidiata da quel pericoloso indifferentismo etico ed inttellettuale che, sotto la veste della comprensione e dell'indulgenza, lascia passar tutto, anche le tesi pifl pericolose, attraverso un facile contrabbando. Quella del Guzzo ~una intelligenza aperta e comprensiva, ma che non smarrisce in un sincretismo venato di scetticismo il discrimen trail vero ed il falso, la gerarchia dei valori intellettuali e morali. Egli tratteggia in un arguto viaggio immaginario lo stato dell'Italia aecademica ai principi del secolo, illustrando i fermenti complessi e molteplici che s'agitavano in quella che si suol rappresentare come una eultura positivistica piatta ed informe. Comunque eceo emergere in polemica battagliera e mordace contro di essa la figura dl Benedetto Croce, che le contrappone un hegelismo interpretato alquanto unilateralmente. I1 Guzzo sagacemente lumeggia la grande opera di rinnovamento culturale operata dal grande meridionale e tenta di illuminarne lo spirito profondo riportandosi alla testimonianza, --ch'~ poi un'interpretazione-- di uno dei mlgliori discepoli: Carlo Antoni. Secondo quest'ul- BOOK REVIEWS 139 timo Croce avrebbe avuto coscienza dell'abissale differenza tra lo Spirito universale e l'uomo transeunte. "Croce lo sapeva quando-secondo la testimonianza di Antoni--intendeva lo Spirito come... (shrink)

Postmodernism may seem a particularly inappropriate term when used in conjunction with a region that is usually thought of as having only recently, and then unevenly, acceded to modernity. Yet in the last several years the concept has risen to the top of the agenda of cultural and political debate in Latin America. This collection explores the Latin American engagement with postmodernism, less to present a regional variant of the concept than to situate it in a transnational framework. Recognizing that (...) postmodernism in Latin America can only inaccurately be thought of as having traveled from an advanced capitalist "center" to arrive at a still dependent neocolonial "periphery," the contributors share the assumption that postmodernism is itself about the dynamics of interaction between local and metropolitan cultures in a global system in which the center-periphery model has begun to break down. These essays examine the ways in which postmodernism not only designates the effects of this transnationalism in Latin America, but also registers the cultural and political impact on an increasingly simultaneous global culture of a Latin America struggling with its own set of postcolonial contingencies, particularly the crisis of its political left, the dominance of neoliberal economic models, and the new challenges and possibilities opened by democratization. With new essays on the dynamics of Brazilian culture, the relationship between postmodernism and Latin American feminism, postmodernism and imperialism, and the implications of postmodernist theory for social policy, as well as the text of the Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle of the Zapatatista National Liberation Army, this expanded edition of boundary 2 will interest not only Latin Americanists, but scholars in all disciplines concerned with theories of the postmodern. Contributors. Xavier Albó, José Joaquín Brunner, Fernando Calderón, Enrique Dussel, Néstor García Canclini, Martín Hopenhayn, Neil Larsen, the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group, Norbert Lechner, María Milagros López, Raquel Olea, Aníbal Quijano, Nelly Richard, Carlos Rincón, Silviano Santiago, Beatriz Sarlo, Roberto Schwarz, and Hernán Vidal. (shrink)

Biologists, historians, lawyers, art historians, and literary critics all voice arguments in the critical dialogue about what constitutes evidence in research and scholarship. They examine not only the constitution and "blurring" of disciplinary boundaries, but also the configuration of the fact-evidence distinctions made in different disciplines and historical moments the relative function of such concepts as "self-evidence," "experience," "test," "testimony," and "textuality" in varied academic discourses and the way "rules of evidence" are themselves products of historical developments. The essays and (...) rejoinders are by Terry Castle, Lorraine Daston, Carlo Ginzburg, Ian Hacking, Mark Kelman, R. C. Lewontin, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Mary Poovey, Donald Preziosi, Simon Schaffer, Joan W. Scott, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Barbara Herrnstein Smith. The critical responses are by Lauren Berlant, James Chandler, Jean Comaroff, Arnold I. Davidson, Harry D. harootunian, Elizabeth Helsinger, Thomas C. Holt, Francoise Meltzer, Robert J. Richards, Lawrence Rothfield, Joel Snyder, Cass R. Sunstein, and William Wimsatt. (shrink)

To begin with -- Genealogy of the cerebral subject -- Disciplines of the neuro -- Cerebralizing distress -- Brains on screen and paper -- Up for grabs.

If personhood is the quality or condition of being an individual person, brainhood could name the quality or condition of being a brain. This ontological quality would define the `cerebral subject' that has, at least in industrialized and highly medicalized societies, gained numerous social inscriptions since the mid-20th century. This article explores the historical development of brainhood. It suggests that the brain is necessarily the location of the `modern self', and that, consequently, the cerebral subject is the anthropological figure inherent (...) to modernity (at least insofar as modernity gives supreme value to the individual as autonomous agent of choice and initiative). It further argues that the ideology of brainhood impelled neuroscientific investigation much more than it resulted from it, and sketches how an expanding constellation of neurocultural discourses and practices embodies and sustains that ideology. (shrink)

Philosophy lacks criteria to evaluate its philosophical theories. To fill this gap, this essay introduces nine criteria to compare worldviews, classified in three broad categories: objective criteria (objective consistency, scientificity, scope), subjective criteria (subjective consistency, personal utility, emotionality), and intersubjective criteria (intersubjective consistency, collective utility, narrativity). The essay first defines what a worldview is and exposes the heuristic used in the quest for criteria. After describing each criterion individually, it shows what happens when each of them is violated. From the (...) criteria, it derives assessment tests to compare and improve different worldviews. These include the is-ought, ought-act, and is-act first-order tests; the critical and dialectical second-order tests; the mixed-questions and first-second-order third-order tests; and the we-I, we-it, and it-I tests. The essay then applies these criteria and tests to a concrete example, comparing the Flying Spaghetti Monster deity with Intelligent Design. For another application, it draws more general fruitful suggestions for the dialogue between science and religion. (shrink)

There is no systematic knowledge about how individuals with Locked-in Syndrome experience their situation. A phenomenology of LIS, in the sense of a description of subjective experience as lived by the ill persons themselves, does not yet exist as an organized endeavor. The present article takes a step in that direction by reviewing various materials and making some suggestions. First-person narratives provide the most important sources, but very few have been discussed. LIS barely appears in bioethics and neuroethics. Research on (...) Quality of Life provides relevant information, one questionnaire study explores the sense of personal continuity in LIS patients, and LIS has been used as a test case of theories in “embodied cognition” and to explore issues in the phenomenology of illness and communication. A systematic phenomenology of LIS would draw on these different areas: while some deal directly with subjective experience, others throw light on its psychological, sociocultural and materials conditions. Such an undertaking can contribute to the improvement of care and QOL, and help inform philosophical questions, such as those concerning the properties that define persons, the conditions of their identity and continuity, or the dynamics of embodiment and intersubjectivity. (shrink)

Since its emergence in the early 2000s, neuroethics has become a recognized, institutionalized and professionalized field. A central strategy for its successful development has been the claim that it must be an autonomous discipline, distinct in particular from bioethics. Such claim has been justified by the conviction, sustained since the 1990s by the capabilities attributed to neuroimaging technologies, that somehow ‘the mind is the brain’, that the brain sciences can illuminate the full range of human experience and behavior, and that (...) neuroscientific knowledge will have dramatic implications for views of the human, and challenge supposedly established beliefs and practices in domains ranging from self and personhood to the political organization of society. This article examines how that conviction functions as neuroethics’ ideological condition of possibility. (shrink)

In this philosophical paper, we explore computational and biological analogies to address the fine-tuning problem in cosmology. We first clarify what it means for physical constants or initial conditions to be fine-tuned. We review important distinctions such as the dimensionless and dimensional physical constants, and the classification of constants proposed by Lévy-Leblond. Then we explore how two great analogies, computational and biological, can give new insights into our problem. This paper includes a preliminary study to examine the two analogies. Importantly, (...) analogies are both useful and fundamental cognitive tools, but can also be misused or misinterpreted. The idea that our universe might be modelled as a computational entity is analysed, and we discuss the distinction between physical laws and initial conditions using algorithmic information theory. Smolin introduced the theory of "cosmological natural selection" with a biological analogy in mind. We examine an extension of. (shrink)

Despite tremendous advances in neuroscience, the topic “brain, sex and gender” remains a matter of misleading interpretations, that go well beyond the bounds of science. In the 19th century, the difference in brain sizes was a major argument to explain the hierarchy between men and women, and was supposed to reflect innate differences in mental capacity. Nowadays, our understanding of the human brain has progressed dramatically with the demonstration of cerebral plasticity. The new brain imaging techniques have revealed the role (...) of the environment in continually re-shaping our brain all along our lifetimes as it goes through new experiences and acquires new knowledge. However, the idea that biology is a major determining factor for cognition and behavioral gender differentiation, is still very much alive. The media are far from being the only guilty party. Some scientific circles actively promote the idea of an innate origin of a gender difference in mental capacities. Experimental data from brain imaging, cognitive tests or genetics are often distorted to serve deterministic ideas. Such abuse of “scientific discourses” have to be counteracted by effective communication of clear and unbiased information to the citizens. This paper presents a critical analysis of selected examples which emphasize sex differences in three fields e.g. skills in language and mathematics, testosterone and financial risk-taking behavior, moral cognition. To shed light on the data and the methods used in some papers, we can now—with today’s knowledge on cerebral plasticity—challenge even more strongly, many false interpretations. Our goal here is double: we want to provide evidence against archaic beliefs about the biological determinism of sex differences but also promote a positive image of scientific research. (shrink)

En este artículo me propongo abordar el problema del tiempo en las sociedades contemporáneas desde un diálogo entre las construcciones teóricas de Moishe Postone y Hartmut Rosa y el trabajo de Michel Foucault. Los dos primeros se han centrado en explicar cómo la temporalidad se ha convertido en un tipo de dominación abstracta, impersonal y cuasiobjetiva a partir de conceptos como la densificación temporal, la aceleración o la hibridación. Foucault, en cambio, concibe el tiempo bajo el prisma de la racionalidad (...) política neoliberal, por la cual el tiempo pasa a ser un recurso que debe gestionarse por los sujetos en términos empresariales y que termina por configurar una ética neoliberal de la administración del tiempo. Este diálogo ejemplifica de manera privilegiada la tensión entre la coacción o la presión temporal y la administración estratégica del tiempo propia de las sociedades contemporáneas. (shrink)

Vidal intertwines fond recollections of films savored in the movie palaces of his Washington, D.C., boyhood with strands of autobiography and trenchant observations about American politics. Never before has the renowned author revealed so much about his own life or written with such immediacy about the forces shaping America. 26 halftones.

This article focuses on defective conditionals ? namely indicative conditionals whose antecedents are false and whose truth-values therefore cannot be determined. The problem is to decide which formal connective can adequately represent this usage. Classical logic renders defective conditionals true whereas traditional mathematics dismisses them as irrelevant. This difference in treatment entails that, at the propositional level, classical logic validates some sentences that are intuitively false in plane geometry. With two proofs, I show that the same flaw is shared by (...) a family of trivalent logics. I go on to examine the strict conditional and its derivatives. This family is the only one to avoid the faulty inference but it does so without addressing the status of the truth-value assigned to defective conditionals. (shrink)

ArgumentSeeing a prodigious cure happen and then testifying about it certainly differs from attending an air pump experiment in order to bear witness to it. Yet early-modern saint-making and the “new” or “experimental philosophy” shared juridical roots, and thereby an understanding of the role of testimony for the establishment of “matters of fact” and for the production of legitimate knowledge. The reforms carried out after the Council of Trent, especially during Urban VIII's pontificate, of the juridical procedures for saint-making in (...) the Catholic Church implied a new attitude towards the examination of proposed miracles. Most of these miracles were healings. While the appeal to medical expertise had long been common, and skepticism had often manifested itself regarding cures or extraordinary bodily phenomena, both were now given formal status. Miracle inquests henceforth leaned towards refuting miraculousness by means of natural explanations. The procedure was systematized in a treatise published in the 1730s by Prospero Lambertini. The combination of Lambertini's work with the canonization causes in which he acted as the “devil's advocate” in charge of disputing arguments favorable to a sainthood candidate allows for a reconstruction of the interplay between the juridical and scientific economies of saint-making, and of the role of testimony in the production of trust and evidence. (shrink)

AbstractIn this article, I examine the pedagogical practices of La Red de Semillas Libres de Colombia, a grassroots national organization that works towards the construction of seed sovereignty. Using participant observation and interviews, I show the epistemic, territorial, and gender dimensions of these practices. I draw from extant scholarship on seed struggles, decolonial feminism, and feminist political ecology to analyze two specific practices: experimentation and demonstration and, visual technology creation, including drawings. I demonstrate how these practices organize territories through collective (...) epistemic gendered labor around seeds. These territories are spaces for community-based power creation that have the potential to advance agrarian and environmental agendas from below. However, they also reflect and embody the enduring character of patriarchy and the challenges it presents to achieve systemic transformations in the Colombian countryside. (shrink)

Both scientific evidence and folklore have suggested that madness is associated with creativity, especially in the arts. Recently, more rigorous studies have confirmed to some extent these previous observations. The current view is that it is not severe and acute insanity that is related to heightened creativity, but the personality roots and soft manifestations of both schizophrenic and bipolar psychoses. The affective and cognitive peculiarities associated with schizotypic and hypomanic personalities may be preferentially related to different kinds of creative endeavours, (...) such as the sciences and arts, respectively. The connection between personality traits and creativity is produced because they share some biological-cognitive-personality features, such as cognitive disinhibition. Additionally, it has been shown that the genetic liability for both bipolar and schizophrenic psychoses is related to creativity. A prevailing hypothesis is that creativity may be one type of 'compensatory advantage' for those carrying the genes for psychosis. (shrink)

One of the defining features of the classical gene was its position. In molecular genetics, positions are defined instead as nucleotide numbers and there is no clear correspondence with its classical counterpart. However, the classical gene position did not simply disappear with the development of the molecular approach, but survived in the lab associated to different genetic practices. The survival of classical gene position would illustrate Waters’ view about the practical persistence of the genetic approach beyond reductionism and anti-reductionist claims. (...) We show instead that at the level of laboratory practices there are also reductive processes, operating through the rise and fall of different techniques. Molecular markers made the concept of classical gene position practically dispensable, leading us to rethink whether it had any causal role or was just a mere heuristic. (shrink)

In this work we study the decidability of a class of global modal logics arising from Kripke frames evaluated over certain residuated lattices, known in the literature as modal many-valued logics. We exhibit a large family of these modal logics which are undecidable, in contrast with classical modal logic and propositional logics defined over the same classes of algebras. This family includes the global modal logics arising from Kripke frames evaluated over the standard Łukasiewicz and Product algebras. We later refine (...) the previous result, and prove that global modal Łukasiewicz and Product logics are not even recursively axiomatizable. We conclude by closing negatively the open question of whether each global modal logic coincides with its local modal logic closed under the unrestricted necessitation rule. (shrink)

O artigo ten como obxectivo facer un percorrido por tres momentos da escritura filosófica no que o fenómeno do límite ou fronteira do pensamento se pon claramente de manifesto no discurso. En primeiro lugar, Kant, como artífice da produtiva noción dunha “fronteira [Grenze]” da razón como condición e límite do pensamento; en segundo lugar, Hegel, como o seu máximo crítico na “asunción [Aufhebung]” da negación da fronteira kantiana; e, finalmente, Kierkegaard, cuxa contribución á discusión dos seus predecesores consiste no “pathos (...) [Lidenskab]” do límite que Kant demarca e Hegel supera, pois no caso do pensador dinamarqués o límite da filosofía é ao mesmo tempo paradoxo, é dicir, algo que non pode ser coñecido senón tan só re-coñecido pola razón e que pon xustamente a razón no seu límite. (shrink)

I discuss some of the speculations proposed by Stewart ( 2010a ). These include the following propositions: the cooperation at larger and larger scales, the existence of larger scale processes, the enhancement of the tuning as the universe cycle repeats, the transmission between universes and the motivations to produce a new universe.

Science in film, and usual equivalents such asscience on filmorscience on screen, refer to the cinematographic representation, staging, and enactment of actors, information, and processes involved in any aspect or dimension of science and its history. Of course, boundaries are blurry, and films shot as research tools or documentation also display science on screen. Nonetheless, they generally count asscientific film, andscience inandon filmorscreentend to designate productions whose purpose is entertainment and education. Moreover, these two purposes are often combined, and inherently (...) concern empirical, methodological, and conceptual challenges associated withpopularization,science communication, and thepublic understanding of science. It is in these areas that the notion of thedeficit modelemerged to designate a point of view and a mode of understanding, as well as a set of practical and theoretical problems about the relationship between science and the public. (shrink)

Jan Greben criticized fine-tuning by taking seriously the idea that “nature is quantum mechanical”. I argue that this quantum view is limited, and that fine-tuning is real, in the sense that our current physical models require fine-tuning. Second, I examine and clarify many difficult and fundamental issues raised by Rüdiger Vaas’ comments on Cosmological Artificial Selection.

In this fascinating journey to the edge of science, Vidal takes on big philosophical questions: Does our universe have a beginning and an end or is it cyclic? Are we alone in the universe? What is the role of intelligent life, if any, in cosmic evolution? Grounded in science and committed to philosophical rigor, this book presents an evolutionary worldview where the rise of intelligent life is not an accident, but may well be the key to unlocking the universe's (...) deepest mysteries. Vidal shows how the fine-tuning controversy can be advanced with computer simulations. He also explores whether natural or artificial selection could hold on a cosmic scale. In perhaps his boldest hypothesis, he argues that signs of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations are already present in our astrophysical data. His conclusions invite us to see the meaning of life, evolution and intelligence from a novel cosmological framework that should stir debate for years to come. (shrink)

Two thousand five hundred years ago, in 507–506 B.C.E., the institutions of Athen were rocked by the reforms of Cleisthenes. Although the word did not yet exist, here was the foundation of democracy. First published in French in 1964, Cleisthenes the Athenian has become the classic study of the philosophical, political, and aesthetic background and significance of these reforms. The book has influenced a generation of scholars in anthropology, sociology, urban planning, political science, philosophy, and classical studies. This English translation (...) contains the complete text of the original essay and is supplemented by a discussion among Vidal-Naquet, Leveque, and the philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis on the invention of democracy, as well as a new authors' introduction. (shrink)

I will not dwell overlong on the “meaning” of this story. But let me make two essential points. Plato tells us this story as though it were true: it is “a tale which, though passing strange, is yet wholly true.” Those words were to be translated into every language in the world and used to justify the most realistic fantasies. That is quite understandable, for Plato’s story started something new. With a perversity that was to ensure him great success, Plato (...) had laid the foundations for the historical novel, that is to say, the novel set in a particular place and a particular time. We are now quite accustomed to historical novels, and we also know that in every detective story there comes a moment when the detective declares that real life is not much like what happens in detective stories; it is far more complicated. But that was not the case in the fourth century B.C. Plat’s words were taken seriously, not by everyone, but by many, down through the centuries. And it is not too hard to see that some people continue to take them seriously today.As for the “meaning,” following others and together with others, I have tried elsewhere to show that essentially it is quite clear: the Athens and Atlantis of ancient lore represent the two faces of Plato’s own Athens. The former, the old primordial Athens, is what Plato would have liked the city of which he was a citizen to be; the latter is what Athens was in the age of Pericles and Cleon, an imperialistic power whose very existence constituted a threat to other Greek cities. Pierre Vidal-Naquet is director of the Centre Louis Gernet de Recherches Comparées sure les Sociétés Anciennes at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. His most recent publications are the second volume of Les Juifs, la mémoire et le present , La Grèce ancienne 1: Du mythe à la raison, with Jean-Pierre Vernant , and La Démocratie grecque vue d’ailleurs . Among his works to have appeared in English are Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, with Jean-Pierre Vernant , and The Black Hunter: Forms of Thought and Forms of Society in the Greek World . Janet Lloyd is a supervisor for a number of colleges in Cambridge University, where she gives classes in French language and literature. Among her more recent translations are Yves Mény’s Government and Politics in Western Europe: Britain, France, Italy, West Germany and Marie-Claire Bergère’s Golden Age of the Chinese Bourgeoisie, 1911-1937 . In progress are translations of works on Shakespeare, Pericles’ Athens, and a historical geography of France. (shrink)

In Anthropology in the Making, Laurent Vidal takes the reader into the world of research in the fields of health and development, providing a fresh and provocative perspective on the practice of anthropology. This volume investigates the "science of otherness" across four multi-disciplinary research projects in Africa, examining the practices of health workers, the behaviors of patients, and the organization and management of health systems struggling with AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. Balancing epistemological considerations with the practical concerns thrown up (...) by real-life situations, Vidal explores the researcher's choices - of method, objective, and terrain. (shrink)

Le programme de recherche que l'on trouvera ci-dessous nous semble particulièrement original et utile d'un point de vue rythmanalytique – et cela à double titre. D'une part, alors que la vitesse, l'accélération et l'urgence sont, depuis quelques années, les objets d'une littérature pléthorique et désormais assez répétitive, Laurent Vidal et les chercheurs regroupés dans l'ANR TERRIAT s'intéressent, quant à eux, à la « lenteur » et à l'« attente ». De l'autre, ils orientent leur attention vers la question du (...) « (...) - 4. Rythmes du social – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Le programme de recherche que l'on trouvera ci-dessous nous semble particulièrement original et utile d'un point de vue rythmanalytique – et cela à double titre. Alors que la vitesse, l'accélération et l'urgence sont, depuis quelques années, les objets d'une littérature pléthorique et désormais assez répétitive, Laurent Vidal et les chercheurs regroupés dans l'ANR TERRIAT s'intéressent, quant à eux, à la « lenteur » et à l'« attente ». Second point fort, ils orientent leur attention vers la question des « (...) (...) - 4. Rythmes du social – Nouvel article. (shrink)