In February 2020, as covid-19 infections spread to more than fifty countries, public health officials needed to recommend how the public could protect themselves, balancing safety and urgency. But there was very little data since this novel virus had only been identified three months prior. How could public health officials decide with insufficient data? The multi-armed bandit problem of computer science offers adaptive decision-making procedures that can achieve both safety and urgency. These adaptive methods balance learning information (exploring) with using (...) information (exploiting), adjusting the balance toward learning when uncertainty is high (March 1991; Kaelbling et al. 1996). Related methods are already used in adaptive clinical trials for pharmaceuticals (Pallmann et al. 2018). But we still need to develop these methods for non-pharmaceutical interventions, as I will illustrate with a case study of public mask-wearing to reduce the spread of covid-19. Public health pronouncements impact future learning. (shrink)

El presente trabajo, en diálogo con la reflexión de Jean Baudrillard, intenta reconsiderar ontológicamente el no ser para que la oquedad del simulacro no se autoproclame más real que lo real debido a que, como la nada ha sido expropiada y vaciada, el intercambio del mundo y de la vida con ella es imposible. Solo un pensamiento trágico, animado por la agónica energía de su contradicción, puede volver a replantear la reversibilidad de la vida y la muerte.

This paper interprets Ortega y Gasset’s Meditations on Hunting (1972) through the concept of cognitive scaffolding in order to analyse the relationship between hunter and hunting dog as a form of inter-species distributed cognitive system. In recreational hunting, the hunter and the dog engage in a reciprocal process of mutual cognitive scaffolding that transforms both their capacities. It is further argued that this scaffolding also serves as a means of affective regulation, and that it is the affective rather than (...) the cognitive features of the system that point to the function of the scaffolding. Namely, the production of an affective state in the hunter. We detail the ways in which the cognitive and affective features of the scaffold operate and interrelate. We then explore the role of the game-animal in the affective functioning of the scaffold and consider that the hunter-dog system might represent a harmful form of scaffolding. (shrink)

Los autores conversan sobre la distinta relación que tienen con la filosofía las lenguas española y francesa, encontrando la explicación de esa diferencia principalmente en los “espíritus” que nos separan, no obstante nuestra considerable cercanía lingüística. Mientras que la Reforma y la Contrarreforma exigieron de Francia un “humanismo del saber objetivo, del individuo y del progreso”, la cultura española dio de sí “un paradójico humanismo de la fe, de la expansión y de los juegos de la apariencia”. El “espíritu de (...) la filosofía” (Descartes, el ancestro de Hegel) se desarrolló en el norte de Europa, y en la Europa mediterránea floreció más bien “el espíritu de la ficción” (el Cervantes de Unamuno, de Ortega, de Borges y de Kundera). La inquietud de un mundo que bien podría no ser sino sueño, o incluso locura –de la que terminará por resurgir, al lado del cervantino y del calderoniano, el cogito cartesiano–, es sin embargo una inquietud española en primer lugar, y eso es algo que amerita ser estudiado, y sobre todo pensado. Una clave muy importante para dicho estudio es la constatación, subrayada por Nancy en respuesta al problema de la calificación de nuestra filosofía como “mera literatura”, de la “pérdida de confianza en las aventuras del sentido” que ha caracterizado a la Modernidad (o al Occidente en su versión nórdica, ese “espíritu de la filosofía alemana” que tras el efecto del nazismo se mudó a Francia y a Estados Unidos). Ahí donde Unamuno señalaba la necesidad, antes que de europeizar a España, de “españolizar a Europa”, Jean-Luc Nancy reconoce que Occidente necesita atreverse, una vez más, a abrirse a la aventura, y al riesgo del pensamiento. (shrink)

Efforts to retrieve John Courtney Murray's thought must address two questions: What has changed in the quarter-century since Murray's death? What resources does his oeuvre offer for the present situation? In examining Murray's contribution to current policy debates about church-state relations, I will first review the historically conscious methodology he drew upon and the details of his argument in favor of religious liberty. However, in the years since Murray wrote, American religious communities have been severely eroded, with the consequence that (...) Murray's argument no longer has the same force. I therefore propose a reformulation of the basis for religious freedom in order to take into account the need to maintain the social conditions necessary for the exercise of religious freedom. Such a reformulation has significant implications with regard to the question of public funding for religiously affiliated private schools. (shrink)

In August 2006, after twenty years of armed conflict, the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army came to a ceasefire agreement. While the LRA has moved its activity into neighboring countries, there has been peace—or at least the absence of overt conflict—in Uganda. The ecumenical Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative was critical in mediating between the two parties in the months leading up to the talks. Archbishop John Baptist Odama has been Chairperson of ARLPI since 2002. Previous interviews (...) with him have been short and focused on only his external actions—the negotiations with the LRA, the acts of solidarity with displaced people, children in particular. In the present interview, however, Archbishop Odama discusses the spiritual formation, the devotional practices, and the deep theology that inform his actions on behalf of peace and justice. (shrink)

It is argued that while existentialists typically reject the notion of a "self-thing," they proceed to formulate process views of personal existence. The views of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Jaspers, Heidegger, Ortega y Gasset, Sartre, Marcel, and Merleau-Ponty are briefly reviewed. In the course of discussion, the relation of the phenomenological existentialists to the others is also considered. (It is argued that the latter group is no less philosophical or existential than the others.) I also touch on the relation of existentialism (...) to postmodernism. (shrink)

CHRISTIAN ETHICS IS VIRTUALLY DEVOID OF ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELDWORK. Many Christian ethicists practice "veranda ethics": They write from a vast social remove from the issues they address, like poverty and war, as observers. Fieldwork, as illustrated by casework in Northern Uganda, provides a way to overcome this remove.

In recent years, public discourse has largely embraced the idea that persons with addictions have a “brain disease,” and ought to be treated medically rather than judicially. This article first argues that this social shift is mostly the result of middle- and upper-class whites being among the addicted. The medical language is deployed so that such persons avoid the stigma of “deviance” commonly linked to addiction. Second, this article argues for a Christian “holy deviance,” whereby Christians become deviant by going (...) out to those who are already marked by society as deviant, letting the latter know in word and deed that they are loved. (shrink)

Unnamed sources have claimed that Michael Novak is "credited with considerable input" into John Paul II's encyclical, Centesimus annus, such that the former's thought "is said to be reflected in" the document. However, while John Paul II affirms economic rights, Novak rejects them. In addition, the Pope critiques the gap between rich and poor and the consumerism that drives it; Novak finds them to be morally irrelevant. Following Catholic teaching before him, John Paul places restrictions on the accumulation of private (...) property for one's own use, while Novak identifies no such limits. Finally, while the Pope rejects the affirmation of any one system as a form of "ideology," Novak argues, "We are all capitalists now, even the Pope." Such dramatic differences suggest that the claim that Novak has influenced John Paul's thought is unfounded and that the former's position may even be one of dissent. (shrink)

Whilst most academic analysis on sport and religion occurred through the lens of a specific religious tradition or saw sport as a form of civil religion, Daniel Grano’s work, The Eternal Present of...

This substantial volume is dedicated to furthering an “ecological understanding of the pre‐Columbian New World by creating evaluations of prehuman vegetation and then offering discussions as to how humans became involved in local ecosystems” . These topics are timely, since the last decade has seen a flowering of debate and reconsideration of previously held views of pre‐Columbian human environmental impacts in the Americas. The book contributes to those discussions by assembling examples of the current state of knowledge of pre‐Columbian ecologies (...) and of their human uses and modifications for a number of selected areas in the Americas.This somewhat eclectic book, edited by David Lentz, presents empirical evidence of human use of and change to local and regional ecologies in ten chapters. Additional chapters are devoted to useful inventories of pre‐Columbian vegetation patterns in North and Middle America and in the lowland tropics and tropical Andes, although the vegetation pattern theme is not uniformly addressed in the case studies. One chapter is devoted to climate change in the northern neotropics since the last Ice Age, yet this discussion applies to only a small part of the hemisphere discussed in the case studies.The case study chapters mostly address agricultural modifications. These include entries on pre‐Columbian anthropocentric food webs that are both general and specific to Mesoamerica; late precontact agricultural landscapes in the Valley of Mexico; the ancient water management systems for agriculture in central and southern Mexico and Venezuela; environmental impacts of ancient Maya deforestation and agricultural intensification in lowland areas of northern Guatemala, Belize, and the southern Yucatán peninsula; pre‐Columbian silviculture and management of neotropical forests; pre‐Columbian farming systems of the Mississippi River Valley; environmental impacts of ancient Hohokam irrigation and agriculture in the Sonoran desert; the built landscape in the Lake Titicaca basin; agricultural systems, modified landscapes, and cultural values in the pre‐Inca and Inca‐era central Andes and Peruvian coast; and impacts of pre‐Columbian agriculture and other land uses in riverine areas near the mouth of the Amazon River.Given its somewhat uneven case study approach and despite broader chapters on climate change and prehuman vegetation patterns, this book is not a systematic approach to or a comprehensive statement on pre‐Columbian landscape transformation. It does not address large regions of the Americas or all time frames; nor does it address all forms of modification . Nevertheless, this book's virtues outweigh its shortcomings, and themes emerging from these studies address major ongoing debates over the nature and scale of pre‐Columbian environmental impacts. The first is that large regions of the pre‐Columbian Americas were transformed in some way before European contact—thus these regions, encompassing much of the most populated New World, cannot be thought of as “pristine.” The second is that the nature of changes wrought to these regions are varied. Some were profound and easily seen, others subtle and visible only to expert eyes; some represented long‐term, relatively “sustainable” modifications, while others may have triggered degradation. Lastly, these transformations occurred over a very long time frame and regions that were heavily modified at some time may not have appeared so on the eve of European contact. (shrink)

In this article, the author examines different theories and approaches to mass movements in the historical process and their impact on the condition of Western culture. In the short introduction, the main historical, cultural and philosophical origins of the mass movements from antiquity to present time are described. This paper examines the question why the social and cultural influence of the man of mass is difficult to predict. To answer this question, the author demonstrates the continuing transition from the psychology (...) of the crowd to the structure of mass instinct and collective interaction. The first part exposes general psychological characteristics of the mob according to the ideas of Gustave Le Bon. Le Bon describes masses as emotional, irresponsible, uncritical and conservative, although marks heroism and sacrifice as their positive manifestations. In the second part, the author reflects upon the perspective of Gabriel Tard on this problem. Tard’s term “public opinion” deals with the representatives who – while living in separation – participate in the mass communication. In the third part, attestations of the mass such as humility, conformism and obsession are investigated based on the ideas of Sigmund Freud. The next point of the article is devoted to Jose Ortega y Gasset’s concept of the revolt of masses. Ortega captures the ambivalence of masses who express the power ambition and indifference to culture. From the point of view of Hannah Arendt, masses become terrible, self-satisfied, atomized, unstructured and anonymous. However, Elias Canetti defines masses as compressed and scattered, closed and open, fast and slow. Yet different parameters of the masses one can find in Siegfried Kracauer’s writing – namely aesthetics, technicism, ritual. Finally, in the last part, the author appeals to Jean Baudrillard’s approach to the problem who declares that masses became silent and indistinct. (shrink)

This collection of more than two dozen essays by philosophy scholars of international repute traces the profound impact exerted by Husserl’s Meisterwerk, known in its shortened title as Ideen, whose first book was released in 1913. Published to coincide with the centenary of its original appearance, and fifty years after the second book went to print in 1952, the contributors offer a comprehensive array of perspectives on the ways in which Husserl’s concept of phenomenology influenced leading figures and movements of (...) the last century, including, among others, Ortega y Gassett, Edith Stein, Martin Heidegger, Aron Gurwitsch, Ludwig Landgrebe, Dorion Cairns, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Derrida and Giles Deleuze. -/- In addition to its documentation and analysis of the historical reception of these works, this volume also illustrates the ongoing relevance of the Ideen, offering scholarly discussion of the issues raised by his ideas as well as by the figures who took part in critical phenomenological dialogue with them. Among the topics discussed are autism, empathy, the nature of the emotions, the method and practice of phenomenology, the foundations of ethics, naturalism, intentionality, and human rights, to name but a few. Taken together, these specially commissioned original essays offer an unrivaled overview of the reception of Husserl‘s Ideen, and the expanding phenomenological enterprise it initiated. They show that the critical discussion of issues by phenomenologists continues to be relevant for the 21st century. (shrink)