Las personas dedicadas a otorgar servicios de la salud tienen el compromiso legal, ético, profesional y humano de velar por la salud y el bienestar de la sociedad. Un médico no sólo debe formarse en el ámbito académico y técnico, también debe construir y trabajar en su ética profesional. La actualización médica continua en medicina basada en evidencia y el continuo adiestramiento en el área práctica y clínica, si bien son de suma importancia, deben ir de la mano con la (...) aplicación de los principios éticos tales como el respeto por la autonomía, la beneficencia, no maleficencia al paciente y la justicia. El análisis de casos clínicos reales a la luz de la ética es un ejercicio muy enriquecedor para trascender en nuestra práctica diaria. No solamente es de gran ayuda para detectar y prevenir conductas que pudieran vulnerar o atentar contra la dignidad de los pacientes, sino para reafirmar el valor y la centralidad de la persona humana en el abordaje médico. (shrink)

En la actualidad Cuba desarrolla un Programa de Atención Integral al Paciente con Úlcera de Pie Diabético mediante el uso del Heberprot-P, esencial para disminuir la amputación y la discapacidad. El trabajo tiene el objetivo de realizar un diagnóstico sobre la aplicación del Heberprot-P en el Servicio de Angiología del Hospital Provincial Universitario Manuel Ascunce Domenech de Camagüey. Se realizaron encuestas a pacientes para identificar necesidades sentidas relacionadas con el tratamiento y para las actitudes manifiestas, y se hicieron entrevistas (...) al personal médico y de enfermería. El diagnóstico permitió corroborar la necesaria investigación con enfoque social del servicio de salud escogido a nivel territorial. Destaca elevar el trabajo de captación de pacientes desde el nivel primario de salud para garantizar un mayor alcance del programa, así como la trascendencia del apoyo familiar y la relación profesional de la salud- paciente a fin de lograr la calidad requerida. At present Cuba is developing a program concerning the care of patient with ulcer of the diabetes foot by means of Heberprot-P essential to reduce the amputation and disability. The aim of this paper is to carry out a diagnosis about social aspects of the application of the Heberprot-P in the Angiology service at Manuel Ascunce Domenech Hospital in Camaguey. Some surveys were carry out to identify certain needs related with the treatment and the attitude shown and on the other hand some interview were made to the medical and nursing staff. The diagnosis allowed to verify the need of the research with social approach. The paper highlight how to incorporate patients from the primary health level, in order this program has a higher scope and the importance of the family support and the professional relationship to accomplish the quality required. (shrink)

There is very little study of Latin American Philosophy in the English-speaking philosophical world. This can sometimes lead to the impression that there is nothing of philosophical worth in Latin American philosophy or its history. The present article offers some reasons for thinking that this impression is mistaken, and indeed, that we ought to have more study of Latin American philosophy than currently exists in the English-speaking philosophical world. In particular, the article argues for three things: (1) an account of (...) cultural resources that is useful for illuminating the fact of cultural differences and variations in cultural complexity, (2) a framework for understanding the value of philosophy, and (3) the conclusion that there is demonstrable value to Latin American philosophy and its study. (shrink)

I consider some themes and issues arising in recent work on moral responsibility, focusing on three recent books —Carlos Moya's Moral Responsibility, Al Mele's Free Will and Luck, and John Martin Fischer's My Way. I argue that these texts collectively suggest some difficulties with the way in which many issues are currently framed in the free will debates, including disputes about what constitutes compatibilism and incompatibilism and the relevance of intuitions and ordinary language for describing the metaphysics of free will (...) and moral responsibility. I also argue that each of the accounts raise more particular puzzles: it is unclear to what extent Moya’s account is properly an account of free will; Mele’s account raises questions about the significance of luck for compatibilist theories; and Fischer’s account of the value of responsibility as self-expression raises questions about the normative significance of moral responsibility. (shrink)

The paper presents a renewed Habermasian view on transnational multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) and assesses the institutional characteristics of the Equator Principles Association (EPA) from a deliberative democracy perspective. Habermas’ work has been widely adopted in the academic literature on the political responsibilities of (multinational) corporations (i.e., political corporate social responsibility), and also in assessing the democratic qualities of MSIs. Commentators, however, have noted that Habermas’ approach relies very much on ‘nation-state democracy’ and may not be applicable to democracy in MSIs—in (...) which nation-states are virtually absent. We argue that Habermas’ detailed conceptualization of the institutionalization of deliberative democracy can be applied to transnational MSIs if these initiatives can be said to have their own ‘dèmoi’ that can be represented in associational decision-making. Therefore, we develop a definition of the dèmos of an MSI based on the notion of collective agency. Subsequently, we explain how Habermas’ approach to democracy can be applied to MSIs and show that it has more to offer than hitherto has been uncovered. Our illustrative analysis of the EPA confirms the criticisms regarding this MSI which have recently been articulated by researchers and practitioners, but also yields new findings and possible avenues for the further development of the EPA: That is, although our assessment suggests that the EPA in its current state is still far from being a democratic MSI, the possibility of a sensible analysis of its democratic character indicates that transnational MSIs can, in principle, help to fill governance gaps in a democratic way. (shrink)

One of the great dangers of our time is that the cumulative long-term action of smart socio-technical environments engineered to control thought and behavior results in an excessive loss of freedom. In response to this challenge, that we shall call humanity’s socio-technical dilemma, we outline here some fundamental ideas of a political program to control these environments, which is similar to the one proposed by Brett Frischmann and Evan Selinger. It is similar insofar as we share their paternalistic and humanistic (...) approach. But it is different insofar as we claim, first, the duty to admit that it is a version of Sloterdijk’s controversial human zoo; second, the theoretical and practical convenience of identifying the human capabilities to be promoted by these environments with the capabilities necessary for the democratic electorate to comply with the competence principle; and third, the awareness of the probable long-term unsustainability of the program in a context of competition between countries and companies, in spite of which it must be implemented because of its moral superiority. (shrink)

Coherence theories are regularly confronted with the objection that there can be many coherent systems, so that mere coherence is said to be insufficient as either the defining element of truth or even as a working criterion of truth. This objection has been called the “master objection”. If someone is taking coherence not only as a criterion supporting the truth of a theory, but as an ingredient to a definition of “true” she has to attack the master objection straight on.

Einleitung -- Phänomenologie -- Epistemologie -- Poetologie -- Schlussbemerkungen -- Verzeichnisse.

History of science provides access to a reservoir of meaningful experiments that can be studied and reproduced in classrooms. This is the case of Joule’s paddle-wheel experiment which displays the potentiality to help students improve their understanding of the concept of energy. This experiment has been mentioned in many physics textbooks during the twentieth century. Recently, it has received renewed attention by several researchers in science education. However, the accounts of Joule’s experiment proposed by these researchers are at variance with (...) each other: either in terms of equivalences, in terms of energy change, or in terms of energy transformation and Rankine’s definition. This raises several questions: What is their respective contribution to the understanding of the historical emergence of the energy concept, and to the understanding of the very meaning of this concept? Are these accounts concurrent? Eventually, how can they help for the teaching energy? To investigate these questions, historical details concerning this experiment are first considered. It is stressed that Joule did not made use of the concept of energy, and instead described his experiment in terms of conversion of living force into heat. The three accounts of Joule’s experiment are then presented and their respective contribution discussed. By emphasizing different aspects of this experiment, they are shown to suggest different strategies for teaching energy. For all that, they are not contradictory and, considered together, they bring to light the great potential of Joule’s experiment to foster students understanding of this concept. (shrink)

Most experimental studies of facial expression processing have used static stimuli (photographs), yet facial expressions in daily life are generally dynamic. In its original photographic format, the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces (KDEF) has been frequently utilized. In the current study, we validate a dynamic version of this database, the KDEF-dyn. To this end, we applied animation between neutral and emotional expressions (happy, sad, angry, fearful, disgusted, and surprised; 1,033-ms unfolding) to 40 KDEF models, with morphing software. Ninety-six human observers categorized (...) the expressions of the resulting 240 video-clip stimuli, and automated face analysis assessed the evidence for 6 expressions and 20 facial action units (AUs) at 31 intensities. Low-level image properties (luminance, signal-to-noise ratio, etc.) and other purely perceptual factors (e.g., size, unfolding speed) were controlled. Human recognition performance (accuracy, efficiency, and confusions) patterns were consistent with prior research using static and other dynamic expressions. Automated assessment of expressions and AUs was sensitive to intensity manipulations. Significant correlations emerged between human observers’ categorization and automated classification. The KDEF-dyn database aims to provide a balance between experimental control and ecological validity for research on emotional facial expression processing. The stimuli and the validation data are available to the scientific community. (shrink)

Tras una inicial aproximación a la génesis del concepto de responsabilidad, génesis en la que se empiezan a percibir algunos de los rasgos del mismo que terminarán por hacerse explícitos en nuestros días, el trabajo se centra en señalar las implicaciones que tiene adscribir decididamente la responsabilidad a la época moderna y, en concreto, al surgimiento de la civilización industrial. Acaso una de las más importantes sea la de obligarnos a plantear toda una serie de asuntos en conexión necesaria con (...) otro tema-eje del pensamiento moderno, el de la identidad. Junto a dicho tema, en el texto quedan apuntados otros, como el de la justa escala en la que abordar tales asuntos o el del mal, por citar sólo dos, cuya envergadura puede servir como indicador de la importancia que presenta el concepto de responsabilidad en el pensamiento contemporáneo. (shrink)

San Pedro de Alcántara destaca por su vida de profundización en la vida contemplativa y mística. Un ejemplo palpable de esta actitud la encontramos su Tratado de Oración y Meditación. En esta reflexión realizamos una lectura filosófica de un párrafo de la meditación del primar día de esta obra alcantarina. Desde la antropología existencial, el autor del Tratado nos invita a la contemplación de uno mismo, para llegar a la trascendencia y la alteridad que deja su huella en lo más (...) profundo del ser personal. Saint Pedro of Alcántara stands out for his enthusiasm for a comtemplative and mystical life. A very good instance of his disposition towards this can be found in his “Tratado de Oración y Meditación”. In this reflection we can interpret philosophically a paragraph from this particular work, which deals with meditation on the first day, that is to say, on Monday. By means of existential anthropology, the author invites us to look thoroughly into ourselves so that we can reach a transcendental state which will mark our inner self. (shrink)

Environmental theorists and practitioners generally accept that responsibility for environmental harm is best understood as common but differentiated, yet little work has been done to philosophically articulate this idea. This paper develops this theory by bringing Iris Marion Young's two-tiered model of responsibility to bear on the topic of addressing and redressing environmental damage. I demonstrate how her approach can satisfy the commonality criterion (i.e. that everyone has a role to play in confronting environmental harm), while still satisfying the differentiation (...) criterion (i.e. that different actors have different kinds and degrees of responsibility), and that it does so in a manner that is persuasive, politically useful, and reasonably acceptable to all sides. In aiming to satisfy the commonality criterion, the paper identifies traditional sustainable communities as environmentalist exemplars, emphasizing that these communities have a vital role to play in combatting our present ecological crisis. (shrink)

The intent of this article is not to compare the philosophies of education of Confucius and Peter Kemp but to draw out what is perennial in Confucius’s philosophy of education and bring it to the contemporary context in Peter Kemp’s philosophy of education. The first part deals with Confucius’s teachings on education. The second part highlights Peter Kemp’s philosophy of education, the context of which is globalization and its dangers. The synthesis of both philosophies would mean that education is a (...) right that everyone is entitled to, that education is basically cultivation of character more than instruction, that the virtues of ren, righteousness, wisdom, and propriety can be adapted and applied to the demands of global citizenship. The method of teaching can be both dialogical (Confucius) and democratic (Kemp) when the teacher is passionate, engaged, knowledgeable of issues, caring for students, and an exemplar of what she teachers. (shrink)

One of the causes of the rebirth that the philosophy of being of Thomas Aquinas has been experiencing since the middle of the last century is, without a doubt, the impact of the studies carried out on this subject by the French medievalist, Étienne Gilson. Spurred on by the onto-theological critique of M. Heidegger, Gilson and other Thomists, made common cause to clarify the scope of the Heideggerian invective, which judged that Aquinas’s metaphysics of being would also have fallen into (...) an essentialism or reification of being. The proposal of these authors focused on highlighting the original notion of being (actus essendi) in front of interpreters (some from the Thomist school itself) who would have obscured its meaning, fundamentally its supreme current value. In the opinion of Gilson, Fabro and others, the main cause of this blurring would be the identification of being and existence. My objective in this article is to critically analyze some positions of contemporary Thomism and justify the impossibility of identifying what Thomas Aquinas calls esse by existence. (shrink)

La Revolución Rusa tuvo un inmediato impacto mundial, tanto por el ejemplo que supuso para procesos revolucionarios o de intensa movilización social desatados en el período subsiguiente en varios países de Europa (Finlandia, Alemania, Austria, Hungría, Italia, etc.) como por los grandes debates que suscitó en el socialismo internacional, ya que fue una de las principales causas del “gran cisma” (en palabras del historiador Carl Schorske) dentro de la II Internacional Socialista entre las organizaciones e individuos que se volcarían hacia (...) la reconstrucción de la socialdemocracia y aquellos que apostarían a la construcción de la Internacional Comunista.El período inmediatamente posterior a la Revolución Rusa (1917-1920), hasta la consolidación de la Comintern en su II Congreso, fue un momento fluido de debate acerca de la caracterización de la Revolución Rusa y sus consecuencias políticas, teóricas y estratégicas. A través del análisis de las posiciones de Karl Kautsky y Antonio Gramsci —dos intelectuales de gran influencia teórica en el movimiento socialista internacional— pretendemos iluminar algunos aspectos principales del debate que provocó este proceso: el carácter de las fuerzas sociales involucradas, los objetivos de la revolución, el rol de la democracia y la dictadura en el proceso de transición al socialismo y la aplicabilidad internacional del balance de la Revolución Rusa. El análisis se centra en fuentes primarias de cada autor, situando las posiciones de cada uno en el contexto de su relación con el socialismo de su país y los debates que lo atravesaban. (shrink)

“What is the difference between badal and ‘aṭf bayān?” Here is a student question, quite legitimate, which, interestingly enough, does not find an immediate answer. This answer is not found neither in Arabist grammars of Arabic, nor even in the traditional Arab grammars of Arabic which, for many, only rely as a distinction between the two on the sacrosanct ’i‘rāb and in the very restricted framework of the vocative. Thus there is nothing to differentiate two examples given by Ibn Ǧinnī, (...) illustrating respectively badal and ‘atf bayān: qāma ’aḫū-ka zaydun and qāma ’aḫū-ka muḥammadun. Moreover, a grammarian and logician like ’Astarābāḏī even explicitly states that he does not see any clear difference between badal al-kull min al-kull and the ‘atf al-bayān. This criterion is neither distributional, nor inflectional, nor even semantic and pragmatic, even if it results from the latter, but suprasegmental, and it turns out that medieval Arabic grammarians are not deaf to it, as this article will show. (shrink)

Examino Acerca del cielo (De caelo) I 2 con el fin de mostrar allí la presencia de la demostración científica. Este desarrollo pretende aportar nueva evidencia en favor de la no discrepancia entre teoría y praxis científica en Aristóteles (Barnes, 1969) y de relativizar la interpretación de que el método real y únicamente usado es la dialéctica (cuyo antecedente se remonta a Owen, 1980). Además, siguiendo la propuesta hermenéutica de Gotthelf (1987) y Detel (1993 y 1997), mostraré de qué modo (...) se utiliza la demostración científica en la prueba de la existencia del cuerpo simple o éter. Ofreceré también una reconstrucción de las pruebas mediante la elaboración de un esquema que abarque el conjunto de las deducciones. Estos últimos desarrollos constituyen el aporte más novedoso del presente artículo. I examine On the Heavens (DC) 12 in order to show there the presence of scientific demonstration. This development tries to contribute new evidence in favor of the not discrepancy between theory and scientific practice in Aristotle (Barnes, 1969) and to make the interpretation that method real and solely used is dialectic relative (whose precedent goes back to Owen, 1980). In addition, following the hermeneutic proposal of Gotthelf (1987) and Detel (1993 and 1997), I will show how scientific demonstration is used in the proof of simple body (ether) existence. I will offer also a reconstruction of the proof by means of the elaboration of a scheme that includes the set of deductions. The latter developments constitute the most new contribution of the present paper. (shrink)

This dissertation focuses on the topic of analyticity. The traditional concept of analyticity characterizes analytic sentences in at least two ways. On the one hand, these sentences are thought to be true in virtue only of the meaning of the expressions that constitute them. On the other hand, they are thought to be such that they can be concluded by competent speakers in an a priori fashion--that is, merely on the basis of the speakers' knowledge of the meaning of the (...) expressions contained in the sentences. In the dissertation I argue that these two ways of characterizing analyticity do not single out the same set of sentences, and that at least two different notions of meaning should be postulated to account for this fact. ;To show this I focus first on the notion of truth in virtue of meaning. I identify two ways in which a sentence can be said to be true in virtue of meaning: on the one hand, if the condition it expresses necessarily obtains; on the other hand, if semantic facts concerning the reference of the expressions that constitute it determine that it has to be true. I argue that the sets of sentences that can be said to be true in virtue of meaning according to these two criteria and the set of sentences ordinarily deemed analytically true do not coincide. ;I focus then on the second traditional criterion for analyticity--i.e., apriority. This criterion determines a set of sentences--what I call a priori acceptable sentences--that seems to coincide most closely with the set of sentences we ordinarily judge to be analytic. To account for the disparity between the extensions of this and the 'truth in virtue of meaning' criteria I propose that a distinction should be made between truth-conditional meaning--which concerns the contribution of expressions to truth-conditions--and conceptual meaning--which concerns the abilities necessary for competence in a language. I finally argue that conceptual meaning cannot always guarantee the truth of a priori acceptable sentences. (shrink)

: Development studies is concerned with two issues: the development of normative theories of development and justice, and the empirical study of the effects of interventions and their impact on the global policy context. These distinct theoretical aims of the discipline lead to epistemological difficulties in practice. In this paper I argue that development studies suffer from two main conceptual deficiencies. The first one corresponds to an analytical incapability for providing a definitive version of social justice that is simultaneously impartial (...) and plural. The second weakness involves an empirical deficiency related to development discourse and current policies and practices. Identifying both epistemic deficiencies inherently embedded into what development has traditionally been about, may help to shed light on its analytical and technical boundaries and thus its ability to truly carry out its stated goals. To that end, this paper focuses on highlighting the consequences of these two epistemic oversights. I conclude that the field of development has no other alternative than turning to its epistemic roots to adequately review the very essence of its conceptualization and effects. (shrink)