_BMC Medical Ethics_ is an open access journal publishing original peer-reviewed research articles in relation to the ethical aspects of biomedical research and clinical practice, including professional choices and conduct, medical technologies, healthcare systems and health policies. _BMC __Medical Ethics _is part of the _BMC_ series which publishes subject-specific journals focused on the needs of individual research communities across all areas of biology and medicine. We do not make editorial decisions on the basis of the interest of a study or (...) its likely impact. Studies must be scientifically valid; for research articles this includes a scientifically sound research question, the use of suitable methods and analysis, and following community-agreed standards relevant to the research field. Specific criteria for other article types can be found in the submission guidelines. _BMC series - open, inclusive and trusted_. (shrink)

Antecedentes: El uso de la tecnología médica amplía las posibilidades de vida, pero plantea responsabilidades y problemas filosóficos, legales o políticos. Objetivo: Realizar una revisión sistemática sobre la evolución de las publicaciones científicas del uso bioético de las tecnologías de salud en los últimos 20 años. Metodología: Se realizó una revisión bibliográfica usando la base de datos Scopus. Resultados: La aplicabilidad de las tecnologías de salud, desde un punto de vista bioético, ha aumentado en los últimos años. Conclusión. Existe un (...) aumento en el número de publicaciones del uso bioético de la tecnología médica en los últimos 20 años. (shrink)

Throughout history, the public space in different towns and cities has been characterized by welcoming and favoring social and cultural encounters and exchanges. In turn, these urban fabrics have served to promote revolutions, changes, and social improvements. In the west countries case, the urban revolution has turned into a territorial expansion of democracy. Thus, structural social changes demanded by society have started from the squares and streets of numerous cities. Changes, which in many cases have been a real change. But (...) what happens when the vindication, fight or even revolution started from squares and streets serves to reverse all the democratic advances achieved This article analyzes the social demand phenomenon for independence in the Basque urban environments during the years 1969-2011. To do this, the methodology used is based on the academic and field review, characterizing the actions of independence and terrorism from an urban context through graffiti, murals, posters, and demonstrations. Thus, the neutrality of the public space progressively has been diminishing in the Basque urban environment until appropriating it. These aspects began to take relevance at the beginning of democracy. (shrink)

Food advertising targeted at children is associated with the development of unhealthy eating habits and childhood obesity. In Spain, where one in every three children suffers from overweight, a voluntary regulation mechanism has been adopted to control such advertising, despite evidence of its ineffectiveness. This study's stated objective was to evaluate the grounds for implementing a policy that would ban the advertising of energy-dense, nutrient-poor food and beverages targeted at children in Spain, incorporating an ethical perspective in the analysis. Using (...) a bibliographic search of various databases, we reviewed the evidence for answering the seven questions posed by Walton et al.'s ethical evaluation framework, drawn up on the basis of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics Stewardship model. The results show that the proposed intervention is cost-effective, minimally intrusive, promotes healthy environments, acts on a vulnerable population, helps children lead healthy lifestyles, reduces social health inequalities, increases parents' individual freedom of choice and enjoys the support of scientists, health professionals and consumers alike. Accordingly, we feel that the time has come for food advertising directed to children in Spain to be statutorily regulated, by banning the promotion of EDNP products. (shrink)

Empirical findings about intuitions putatively cast doubt on the traditional methodology of philosophy. Herman Cappelen and Max Deutsch have argued that these methodological concerns are unmotivated as experimental findings about intuitions are irrelevant for assessments of the methodology of philosophy—I dub this the ‘Irrelevance Claim’. In this paper, I first explain that for Cappelen and Deutsch to vindicate the Irrelevance Claim from a forceful objection, their arguments have to establish that intuitions play no epistemically significant role whatsoever in philosophy—call this (...) the ‘Orthogonality Claim’. I then argue that even under a charitable reading of their views Cappelen and Deutsch fail to establish the Orthogonality Claim. Lastly, I discuss empirical evidence that the Orthogonality Claim is false. The arguments in this paper will demonstrate that Cappelen and Deutsch cannot motivate the Irrelevance Claim and that their replies to recent experimental attacks on traditional methodology of philosophy do not succeed. (shrink)

In Schopenhauer as Educator (1874), Nietzsche wrote: “For there is a kind of misused and exploited culture – just take a look around you! And precisely those powers that today most actively promote culture have ulterior motives, and they do not engage in intercourse with it for pure and unselfish reasons.” (The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Vol. 2, (Trans. Richard T. Gray), SUP, California, 1995, p. 218, 16; hereafter CW). And he listed these powers, indicating the reason why they (...) were enemies of a true culture: “I have not yet enumerated all those powers that promote culture without, however, being able to realize its goal, the production of genius. I already named three: the selfishness of the moneymakers, the selfishness of the state, and the selfishness of all those who have reason to disguise and conceal themselves behind form. I cite, fourth, the selfishness of scholarship (Wissenschaft) and the peculiar nature of its servants, the scholars (Gelehrten).” (CW 2, p. 224, 11). This exploitation of culture, pressed into the service of these four powers, resulted in a pseudoculture (Afterkultur). In this paper, I will first deal with the goal of a true culture as Nietzsche formulated it in Schopenhauer as Educator. Then, I will focus on one of these enemies of a true culture: the selfishness of scholarship, or rather, science. Nietzsche’s critique is still pertinent nowadays, even more so in my view. Finally, I will briefly discuss,starting from a Nietzsche’s text on the philosopher of the future, one of the tasks of the philosopher in our increasing technological world. (shrink)

La noción ilustrada de opinión pública apelaba a un circuito de comunicación racional que enlazaba a los actores (de la esfera pública burguesa primero, de la sociedad civil después), con las normas vinculantes emanadas de las instancias formales de creación y aplicación de la ley. Este enlace entra en crisis en el siglo XIX, y parece abandonarse definitivamente con el advenimiento de la sociedad de masas, la expansión de los medios y la autonomización del sistema político. Sin embargo, en la (...) teoría política más contemporánea encontramos una nueva reivindicación de la opinión pública. Este trabajo analiza, en primer lugar, la recuperación de la opinión pública como mecanismo articulador entre sociedad civil y sistema político. Luego se expone la caracterización de la opinión pública como filtro y selección de un campo de sentido para la decisión política. La intención es mostrar que, funcionalmente adaptadas a la realidad de las sociedades complejas, ambas caracterizaciones siguen afirmando una relación fuerte entre opinión pública y decisión política legítima. (shrink)

The most popular measure of corporate reputation is the ranking of the most admired companies. But what exactly do we admire in people and firms of good reputation? This article is about the ethical dimension of corporate reputation. It integrates the trait approach in personality psychology and philosophical ethics to the study of reputation and related concepts as a way to account for the discontinuities between reputation at the individual and corporate levels under conditions of uncertainty. Through an examination of (...) the distinction between perceptions and grounding of reputation, the article also sheds light on the explanatory power of reputation concepts and critically appraises the possibility of character and organizational virtue. (shrink)

Rivers of ink have flowed through the comments and interpretations that were made about Paulo Freire's writings and, in good time, never enough. The intention of the present text is not to do the same, but rather to confront Freire's thought with a reality that he did not live with the intensity of the current era, typical of the spirit of a financially based, speculative and parasitic capitalism, globalized and neoliberal, of social and dystopian distancing with high technology, colonizer and (...) predator, racial and patriarchal. We point out this spirit without specifically engaging in it, although we consider it as the basis for taking off our plot display. To finish, the wandering storyline is lowered to the public-school classroom. (shrink)

Is Machiavelli an Epicurean in his political and religious thought? Recent scholarship has identified him as the foremost representative of Epicureanism in Renaissance Florence. In particular, his incomplete epic poem, The Ass, is read as an expression of his adherence to Lucretian naturalism. This article offers a new reading of the poem and shows that its teaching reveals that Machiavelli is closer to a Platonic variant of classical naturalism linked with the idea of a natural virtue modelled on the lives (...) of animals which has been lost through human civilization and progress and to which it is necessary to return periodically. The article focuses on the poem’s claim that civil religion is a necessary component for good laws that maintain a free republic and argues that Machiavelli offers a poetic reflection on the role of Numa as the founder of Roman religion on the model of a neo-Pythagorean philosophical religion that was instrumental in the rise of constitutional government. More than Lucretius’s critique of religion, Machiavelli’s poem can be read as an extended reflection on Plutarch’s texts – above all, his Life of Numa. (shrink)

Should we use human germline genome modification (HGGM) only when serious diseases are involved? This belief is the underlying factor in the article written by Kleiderman, Ravitsky and Knoppers to which I now respond. In my opinion, the answer to this question should be negative. In this paper, I attempt to show that there are no good reasons to think that this technology should be limited to serious diseases once it is sufficiently proven to be safe and efficient. In fact, (...) opting otherwise would negatively harm human beings’ right to the highest standard of health that unmodified embryos could promote. Therefore, the issue should not be so much to define adequately what a serious disease is, but rather to elucidate whether this concept should play any role beyond the context of preimplantation genetic testing (PGT). This paper argues that we should not accept the similarity between technologies such as PGT and HGGM because they face different challenges and offer totally different possibilities. Therefore, we are in urgent need to build a completely new ethical architecture that covers the application of germline editing in human embryos. As a part of that process, a much deeper debate on the necessity of distinguishing different disease types is required. (shrink)

The fundamental problem proponents of truth conditional semantics must face is to specify what role a truth theory is supposed to play within a meaning theory. The most detailed proposal for tackling this problem is the account developed by Ernest Lepore and Kirk Ludwig. However, as I will show in this paper, theories along the lines of Lepore and Ludwig do not suffice to put someone into the position to understand the objectlanguage. The fundamental problem of truth conditional semantics thus (...) remains unsolved. (shrink)

One thousand four-hundred thirty Portuguese psychologists answered a questionnaire that had been designed in order to ascertain the level of acceptability of a set of proposed ethical principles, which subsequently served as a basis for the Portuguese Psychologists’ Ethics Code. On the one hand, the results show that, as expected, the ethical principles rated high on the evaluation scale. On the other hand, the results also highlighted the need for a formal regulation of the practice of psychology in Portugal, especially (...) in view of participants’ noticeable failure to recognize the importance of the principle of professional integrity. The responsibility of psychologists in modern societies is huge. As such, the large number of different training programs in Portugal, and the implied lack of a strong professional identity, is a cause of concern. The creation of a professional association allows an external identification of the profession in terms of aims and methods. The main goal of such an association is to promote public trust and enhance public demand. The results also indicate that training and experience lead to a higher valorization of ethical principles, and this is an insight that will be of great importance to the professional practice of psychology. (shrink)

This paper explores the functional role of noise in synthetic biology and its relation to the concept of randomness. Ongoing developments in the field of synthetic biology are pursuing the re-organisation and control of biological components to make functional devices. This paper addresses the distinction between noise and randomness in reference to the functional relationships that each may play in the evolution of living and/or synthetic systems. The differentiation between noise and randomness in its constructive role, that is, between noise (...) as a perturbation in routine behaviours and noise as a source of variability that cells may exploit, indicates the need for a clarification and rectification of the conflicting uses of the notion of noise in the studies of the so-called noise biology. (shrink)

En su obra La Estructura de las Revoluciones Científicas, Kuhn hace una distinción entre ciencia revolucionaria -la que origina nuevos paradigmas- y ciencia normal -aquella que contribuye a aumentar el alcance y la precisión con la que puede aplicarse un paradigma. De esta manera es posible ent..

Será que somos livres para comer o que queremos? Será que a alimentação pode ser errada, não por não ser saudável, mas por ser moralmente incorrecta? Neste ensaio filosófico o leitor é levado, numa linguagem acessível e directa, a acompanhar uma análise crítica da racionalidade que suporta a alimentação humana padrão (baseada no consumo de carne de outros animais). Tal racionalidade é aqui qualificada como especista, pois pressupõe e dissemina a descriminação com base na pertença a uma espécie. Descriminação essa (...) que o autor, através de discussão argumentativa, típica dos textos filosóficos, denuncia como injustificável. Isto torna aquela alimentação moralmente incoerente. Afinal, quais são as diferenças moralmente relevantes entre a carne dos animais produzidos para alimentação humana e a dos animais de estimação? Sem compromissos maiores que a coerência da razão, o autor desacredita algumas das justificações mais comuns associadas ao consumo de carne e discute as alternativas à aceitação irreflectida da herança histórica do domínio humano sobre os outros animais. Neste pequeno livro o leitor não encontrará uma resposta única ao problema levantado sobre a moralidade da alimentação, mas encontrará certamente uma discussão útil para alcançar essa resposta por próprio. (shrink)

The document starts by skating that the concept of progress, which is key in the Enlightenment programme of philosophy of history, has disappeared in our society of risk, and wonders whether it is today possible rethinking the philosophy of history. The second part refers to the denial of philosophy of history by Badiou and Lyotard, as a consequence of the disappearance of the “modern subject”, which was the core of philosophy of history. There are many “histories”, but there is not (...) one “History”. The third part of the paper looks for a way out from that denial, finding it in the sartrean concept of “alienation”, which involves a changein the human relationships (“reification”) as a consequences of the “subject matter worked by praxis”, which is a concept that allows us to speak today of a universal history, whose “no‐subject” would be that “worked subject matter”. The conclusion of the paper is that the aim of philosophy today is not to “contemplate the world” or “change the world” but rather to “take care of the world”. (shrink)

The present paper deals with the notion of complementarity associated with Salmon’s proposal of peaceful coexistence between scientific explanation models. The relation between the coexistence of such models and theoretical reduction is studied. Finally a way of understanding peaceful coexistence is proposed which does not rely on pragmatic factors and also allows us to return to the use of the explanatory capacity of theories as a value of relevance in the rational choice between scientific theories.

El artículo analiza la transformación que se produce en el lenguaje político a partir de las traducciones al latín de las obras éticas y políticas de Aristóteles en el siglo XIII. Se destaca el papel central de Tomás de Aquino, que inaugura la tradición tomista dentro de la cual se elabora un paradigma político que tiene el reino como núcleo. Dentro de este paradigma el rey no es caracterizado desde el punto de vista del poder, sino como “vicario de la (...) multitud”. Esta tradición política es alternativa al republicanismo de algunos pensadores políticos italianos y a la razón de estado que acabará triunfando en la modernidad. El artículo habla de un humanismo tomista alternativo a los otros humanismos del renacimiento. (shrink)

En A Letter Concerning Toleration John Locke argumenta en favor de la tolerancia religiosa afirmando que el Estado no puede mejorar la vida de las personas forzándolas a vivir de acuerdo con creencias que ellas no suscriben. Más recientemente, Ronald Dworkin y Will Kymlicka han desarrollado argumentos similares. En el caso del primero, contra ciertas políticas paternalistas; en el del segundo, en apoyo de la tesis liberal de la neutralidad estatal. Mi propósito en el presente artículo es analizar la plausibilidad (...) de dichos argumentos concebidos como una defensa de la tesis de la neutralidad estatal. Intentaré demostrar que ambas versiones del argumento fracasan. En la sección II, cuestionaré la capacidad de los argumentos para respaldar las conclusiones que aspiran establecer, sin objetar la plausibilidad de las premisas involucradas. En la sección III, desarrollaré tres objeciones contra la concepción del bienestar crítico que constituye el corazón de ambas versiones del argumento. In A Letter Concerning Toleration, John Locke argues in favor of religious toleration positing that the state cannot make a person's life better by forcing that person to live according to beliefs he refuses. More recently, Ronald Dworkin and Will Kymlicka have developed similar arguments. In the first case, against some paternalistic policies; in the second, in support of the liberal ideal of state neutrality. My aim in the present paper is to analyze the plausibility of these arguments conceived as a defense of liberal neutrality. I will prove that both versions of the argument fail. In section II, I will object the argument's capability to support the conclusions it attempts to establish, without raising doubts about the reliability of its premises. In section III, I will submit three objections against the conception of critical well-being that constitutes the core of both versions of the argument. (shrink)

The paper starts by stating that the concept of progress, which is a key factor in the Enlightenment programme on the philosophy of history, has vanished from our society of risk, and posits whether it is possible today to rethink the philosophy of history. The second part refers to the negation of this philosophy by Badiou and Lyotard, due to the disappearance of the “modern subject”, which lay at its heart. There are many “histories”, but there is no single “History”. (...) The third part of the paper seeks to counteract that negation through the Sartrean concept of “alienation”, which involves a change in human relationships (“reification”), resulting from the “subject matter worked by praxis”. This is a concept that allows us to speak today of a universal history, whose “no-subject” would be that “worked subject matter”. The paper concludes by affirming that the aim of philosophy today is not to “contemplate the world” or “change the world” but rather to “take care of the world”. (shrink)