Geroscience and philosophy of aging have tended to focus their analyses on the biological and chronological dimensions of aging. Namely, one ages with the passage of time and by experiencing the cellular-molecular deterioration that accompanies this process. However, our concept of aging depends decisively on the social valuations held about it. In this article, we will argue that, if we study social aging in the contemporary world, a novel phenomenon can be identified: the paradox of aging in the digital era. (...) If the social understanding of aging today is linked to unproductivity and obsolescence; then there is a possibility that, given the pace of change of digital technologies, we become obsolete at an early chronological and biological age, and therefore, feel old at a younger age. First, we will present the social dimension of aging based on Rowe and Kahn's model of successful aging. We will also show that their notion of social aging hardly considers structural aspects and weakens their approach. Second, departing from social aging in its structural sense, we will develop the paradox of aging in the digital era. On the one hand, we will explain how the institutionalization of aging has occurred in modern societies and how it is anchored in the concepts of obsolescence and productivity. On the other hand, we will state the kind of obsolescence that digitalization produces and argue that it can make cohorts of biologically and chronologically young individuals obsolete, and thus they would be personally and socially perceived as old. (shrink)

India and its religion played an important role in the assault on Christian orthodoxy during the late Enlightenment. However, the late-seventeenth century transition from antiquarian apologetics to libertinism is harder to explain, and yet historically more crucial. This chapter maps this process with particular reference to the interpretation of the remarkable range of materials concerning Hinduism that appeared in the illustrated encyclopedia of world religions Cérémonies et coutumes de tots les peuples du monde. Its editor, Jean-Fréderic Bernard, went well beyond (...) the mere task of compilation and publication, and his interpretative choices, colored by a rationalist form of Deism, often departed from the differing agendas present in his sources. On the basis of considering these differences, this chapter seeks to elucidate how exactly the shift from comparative antiquarian apologetics to a comparative libertine anthropology of religion took place and analyzes its implications for the religious culture of the Enlightenment. (shrink)

We analyze a model of conflict with endogenous choice of effort, where subsets of the contenders may force the resolution to be sequential: First the alliance fights it out with the rest and – in case they win – later they fight it out among themselves. For three-player games, we find that it will not be in the interest of any two of them to form an alliance. We obtain this result under two different scenarios: equidistant preferences with varying relative (...) strengths, and varying vicinity of preferences with equal distribution of power. We conclude that the commonly made assumption of super-additive coalitional worth is suspect. (shrink)

YOUNG L, and WHARF HIGGINS J.Nursing Inquiry2010;17: 346–358 Using participatory research to challenge the status quo for women’s cardiovascular healthCardiovascular health research has been dominated by medical and patriarchal paradigms, minimizing a broader perspective of causes of disease. Socioeconomic status as a risk for cardiovascular disease is well established by research, yet these findings have had little influence. Participatory research (PR) that frames mixed method research has potential to bring contextualized clinically relevant findings into program planning and policy‐making arenas toward (...) developing meaningful health and social policies relevant to primary prevention. In this article we provide an overview of a PR program that included two quantitative and one qualitative studies and then we discuss lessons learned. The PR process we found was empowering for lone mothers, and transformative for lone mothers and researchers. Further, PR as an approach to research opened spaces in practice and policy‐making arenas to raise upstream issues relevant to the health of low income lone mothers. We conclude that while PR is an effective approach to social determinants research, as a time‐intensive endeavor, and one that does not easily align with research tradition, researchers must consider the strengths and drawbacks of PR when planning to implement such an approach. (shrink)

The UK Medical Research Council, in order to further its mission of maintaining and improving human health, supports a substantial number of clinical trials on a wide variety of medical questions; some of these trials involve the use of placebos as controls or to maintain blinding. Before providing support, proposed trials are carefully reviewed to assess scientific quality, and to determine whether a placebo is required and is ethical — in addition to ethics review by independent Research Ethics Committees. Some (...) questions such as the choice of placebos in trials in developing countries, in surgical trials and those involving alternative medicine require consideration of additional, specific issues. Involvement of consumers in MRC work has been increasing and includes the establishment of a Consumer Liaison Group; members of this group comment on patient information leaflets for clinical trials, helping to improve patient understanding of trials and ensuring topics like placebo use are explained clearly. Views differ on the value of placebos in clinical care and on their mechanism of action; continuing research is helping to clarify the issues. (shrink)

The specific type of torture to which Abu Ghraib prisoners were submitted was predicated on the assumption that hejab, or the islamic system of modest, makes Muslims especially vulnerable to shame. This paper investigates this supposed link between hejab and the affect of shame through an analysis of the philosophical and psychoanalytic literature on shame and the films of the iranian filmmaker, Abbas Kiarostami. Beginning with a discussion of the massive impact of hejab regulations on Iranian cinema, the author shows (...) how Kiarostami’s critique of these regulations becomes a powerful argument for shame as against the modesty system. (shrink)

-- 3. Escrits d'economia i finances, 1925 / pròleg de Francesc Roca.

The logics RŁ, RP, and RG have been obtained by expanding Łukasiewicz logic Ł, product logic P, and Gödel–Dummett logic G with rational constants. We study the lattices of extensions and structural completeness of these three expansions, obtaining results that stand in contrast to the known situation in Ł, P, and G. Namely, RŁ is hereditarily structurally complete. RP is algebraized by the variety of rational product algebras that we show to be Q-universal. We provide a base of admissible rules (...) in RP, show their decidability, and characterize passive structural completeness for extensions of RP. Furthermore, structural completeness, hereditary structural completeness, and active structural completeness coincide for extensions of RP, and this is also the case for extensions of RG, where in turn passive structural completeness is characterized by the equivalent algebraic semantics having the joint embedding property. For nontrivial axiomatic extensions of RG, we provide a base of admissible rules. We leave the problem open whether the variety of rational Gödel algebras is Q-universal. (shrink)

We address Steel’s Programme to identify a ‘preferred’ universe of set theory and the best axioms extending $\mathsf {ZFC}$ by using his multiverse axioms $\mathsf {MV}$ and the ‘core hypothesis’. In the first part, we examine the evidential framework for $\mathsf {MV}$, in particular the use of large cardinals and of ‘worlds’ obtained through forcing to ‘represent’ alternative extensions of $\mathsf {ZFC}$. In the second part, we address the existence and the possible features of the core of $\mathsf {MV}_T$ (where (...) T is $\mathsf {ZFC}$ +Large Cardinals). In the last part, we discuss the hypothesis that the core is Ultimate-L, and examine whether and how, based on this fact, the Core Universist can justify V=Ultimate-L as the best (and ultimate) extension of $\mathsf {ZFC}$. To this end, we take into account several strategies, and assess their prospects in the light of $\mathsf {MV}$ ’s evidential framework. (shrink)

Advance care planning (ACP) is a process that seeks to elicit patients’ goals, values, and preferences for future medical care. While most commonly employed in adult patients, pediatric ACP is becoming a standard of practice for adolescent and young adult patients with potentially life-limiting illnesses. The majority of research has focused on patients and their families; little attention has been paid to the perspectives of healthcare providers (HCPs) regarding their perspectives on the process and its potential benefits and limitations. Focus (...) groups were conducted with 15 physicians as part of a larger study of adolescent and young adult ACP in hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) patients. This study identified two categories important to the utility of ACP in pediatric HSCT patients; (1) the temporal context of ACP and decision making and (2) the limitations of pediatric ACP, with subcategories identified as (a) embodied and witnessed knowing, (b) the impact of clinical cascades—when the treatment of one organ system creates complications in another system that needs to be treated—and a creation of a “new normal” following complications of illness and its treatment in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), (c) the balancing of adolescents’ autonomy with their capacity to make informed medical decisions, and (d) the epistemological frames that differ between HCP and patients and their families. These findings support ACP in adolescent and young adult HSCT patients, with a number of implications for practice as this process becomes more common. (shrink)

El objetivo del presente análisis es ofrecer una interpretación delMaquiavelo republicano de los Discuros en relación con la cuestión del mantenimiento interno de la república a través de treslíneas claves: la lucha contra los enemigos internos de la república,el sentido de contingencia y fragilidad en el ámbito de lo político,y la necesidad de la energía constructiva de la virtù. En lasegunda parte se exponen algunos aspectos atractivos del republicanismoneo-maquiaveliano, relacionados especialmente con ladimensión de la ciudadanía, y sus puntos de contacto (...) con la tradición liberal. El acento se pone en la necesidad de una ciudadaníaque cultive las habilidades necesarias para mantener el poder político bajo control y garantizar así la calidad de la república. (shrink)

El artículo tiene su origen en una conferencia que con el mismo título fue pronunciada en el Congreso Internacional de Filosofía Teórica y Práctica destinado a estudiar el problema del mal y ver el tratamiento realizado por varios autores empezando por Agustín de Hipona. En la presentación se quiere mostrar la característica única que tiene Agustín por la manera cómo enfrenta el problema del mal, por lo cual se le puede considerar el primer autor moderno porque el planteamiento sigue su (...) experiencia vital hecha de búsqueda de felicidad y el resultado pasa a ser la primera filosofía cristiana. Se estudia la respuesta maniquea a la que se adhirió y los motivos que le llevaron a abandonarla totalmente y superarla definitivamente tal y como queda patente en los textos claves de sus obras y en particular en las Confesiones y en el De natura boni que se presentan. (shrink)

In many mammalian cell types, increases in the level of nonpolymerized tubulin cause an inhibition in tubulin synthesis which is accompanied by a decrease in tubulin mRNA levels. To see whether inhibition is caused by nuclear or cytoplasmic events, two groups have recently examined the ability of enucleated cells to autoregulate tubulin synthesis.1,2 These experiments have demonstrated that transcription, processing, and transport of tubulin mRNAs from the nucleus to the cytoplasm are not major sites of autoregulation. Instead, monomeric tubulin must (...) reduce, either directly or indirectly, the translatability of its own message. (shrink)

The controversy over the so-called Ashley Treatment (AT), a series of medical procedures that inhibited both growth and sexual development in the body of a profoundly intellectually impaired girl, usually centers either on Ashley’s rights, including a right to an intact, unaltered body, or on Ashley’s parents’ rights to make decisions for her. The claim made by her parents, that the procedure would improve their ability to care for her, is often dismissed as inappropriate or, at best, irrelevant. We argue, (...) however, that caregiving is a central issue in the controversy, as Ashley’s need for caregiving is a defining characteristic of her life. In this article, we analyze the ethics of the Ashley Treatment within the context of family caregiving. Through the physical and emotional work of caregiving, families participate in the formation and maintenance of personal identity, a process that Hilde Lindemann recently called “holding.” We argue that, in an intellectually disabled person such as Ashley, who depends on her family for every aspect of her care, the family’s contribution to identity is an essential source of personhood. We believe that the treatment can be justified if it is indeed an instance of appropriate family “holding” for Ashley. (shrink)