This comic, serious inquiry into the nature of art takes its technical vocabulary from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. It is ridiculous to think of poems, paintings, or films as distinct from other things in the world, including people. Talking about art should be contiguous with talking about other relevant matters.

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)

The seat belt analogy argument is aimed at furthering the success of coercive vaccination efforts on the basis that the latter is similar to compulsory use of seat belts. However, this article demonstrated that this argument does not work so well in practice due to several reasons. The possibility of saving resources in health care does not usually apply in our societies, and the paternalist mentality that contributed to the implementation of seat belt–wearing obligation was predominant 30 years ago, but (...) it does not apply at this moment. Furthermore, the risk/benefit analysis is totally different in both scenarios. In the case of seat belts, there is no way to discriminate between the users. In the case of vaccines, individuals present with unique circumstances that may differ substantially from those of another and might be foreseen a priori. This means that an analysis must be performed individually before vaccination is imposed. Finally, one must keep in mind that seat belts are often the only way in which we can protect third parties against a tragic hit by the occupant of another vehicle and are very efficient tools for this purpose. Vaccines, in contrast, do not always create sterilising immunity and are definitely not the only way by which we can avoid spreading a virus; immunity certificates, isolation, or even confinement may also serve as viable methods to achieve this purpose. (shrink)

The hypothalamus is a specialized area in the brain that integrates the control of energy homeostasis. More than 70 years ago, it was proposed that the central nervous system sensed circulating levels of metabolites such as glucose, lipids and amino acids and modified feeding according to the levels of those molecules. This led to the formulation of the Glucostatic, Lipostatic and Aminostatic Hypotheses. It has taken almost that much time to demonstrate that circulating long‐chain fatty acids act as signals of (...) nutrient surplus in the hypothalamus. Moreover, pharmacological and/or genetic inhibition of fatty acid synthase, AMP‐activated protein kinase and carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1 results in profound decrease in feeding and body weight in rodents. The molecular mechanism behind these actions depends on changes in the cellular pool of malonyl‐CoA and fatty acyl‐CoAs. Current evidence also suggests that this pathway may play a major role in the physiological regulation of feeding, by integrating hormonal and nutrient‐derived signals in the hypothalamus. Here, we summarize what is known about hypothalamic fatty acid metabolism and feeding control and provide future directions for research. Understanding these molecular mechanisms could provide new targets for the treatment of obesity and related disorders. BioEssays 29: 248–261, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

La presente reflexión emana de la doctrina que llamo naturalismo universal: todo lo existente es natural sea o no descrito y explicado satisfactoriamente por las ciencias naturales. Ahora bien, a pesar de los progresos de las ciencias positivas y empíricas como la física, la química y la biología, no tenemos una explicación satisfactoria de lo que hace que un ser vivo lo sea. En consecuencia resulta indispensable reexaminar la tesis del principio vital y considero que la ciencia contemporánea se honraría (...) retomándolo con el objetivo de comprender mejor la constitución y el comportamiento del ser vivo. (shrink)

Background: Waiving parent permission can be an option in some epidemiological and social research with adolescents. However, exemptions have not been uniformly considered or applied. Our aim is to critically assess the different factors that could be taken into account when making decisions about waiving active parental permission in observational research with adolescents.DiscussionIn some cases alternatives to parental permission could be applied to protect the rights of both adolescents and parents and also to assure the benefits to adolescents as a (...) group that can come from appropriately conducted studies. However, the criteria of ensuring minimal risk can be difficult to define and apply and a distinction between harm and discomfort is reviewed. Waiving active parental permission could be acceptable when the risk of harm is minimal; when the research questions are related to an activity for which adolescents are not legally considered to be children; when the risk of harm or discomfort may increase if parental permission is required; and when risk of discomfort is low because the questionnaire is not potentially offensive for some adolescents and/or for some parents.SummaryStringent rules concerning parental permission in some studies could be detrimental to adolescents. A framework and a decision tree guide are proposed to help researchers and Research Ethics Committees in their decisions on whether active parental permission must be obtained. (shrink)

Phenomenology in medicine’s main contribution is to present a first-person narrative of illness, in an effort to aid medicine in reaching an accurate disease diagnosis and establishing a personal relationship with patients whose lived experience changes dramatically when severe disease and disabling condition is confirmed. Once disease is diagnosed, the lived experience of illness is reconstructed into a living-with-disease narrative that medicine’s biological approach has widely neglected. Key concepts like health, sickness, illness, disease and the clinical encounter are being diversely (...) and ambiguously used, leading to distortions in socio-medical practices such as medicalization, pharmaceuticalization, emphasis on surveillance medicine. Current definitions of these concepts as employed in phenomenology of medicine are revised, concluding that more stringent semantics ought to reinforce an empirical phenomenological or postphenomenological approach. (shrink)

Philosophers and metrologists have refuted the view that measurement’s epistemic privilege in scientific practice is explained by its theory-neutrality. Rather, they now explicitly appeal to the role that theories play in measurement. I formulate a challenge for this view: scientists sometimes ascribe epistemic privilege to measurements even if they lack a shared theory about their target quantity, which I illustrate through a case study from early geodesy. Drawing on that case, I argue that the epistemic privilege of measurement precedes shared (...) background theory and is better explained by its pre-theoretic function in enabling a distinctive kind of inquiry. (shrink)

Este artículo aborda dos temáticas de la novela La muerte es una vieja historia de Hernán Rivera Letelier: la construcción de la identidad de la mujer pentecostal y el uso de la música tanto en el templo como en la vida de un fiel pentecostal. En el primer apartado abordamos tres aspectos del primer tema relacionados con la mujer pentecostal: la inteligencia social y cognitiva, la corporalidad y sensualidad, y la violencia sexual. En el segundo apartado hacemos referencia a la (...) importancia que tiene la música en los templos y la vida cotidiana de los pentecostales, que en la novela se refleja en las anécdotas y experiencias que se cuentan de la protagonista, la hermana Tegualda. (shrink)

Quaestio, Volume 20, Issue, Page 534-538, January 2020.

Resumen: El objetivo de este artículo es describir y analizar cómo se han ido transformando históricamente los conceptos de comunidad y sujeto desde sus orígenes hasta la actualidad en el pentecostalismo. A partir del análisis de la literatura más significativa en Chile sobre de este movimiento socioreligioso, mostraremos cómo tanto la literatura especializada como el movimiento pentecostal mismo han pasado desde una concepción fundacionalista de la comunidad y los sujetos pentecostales, a una concepción postfundacionalista de los mismos. Metodológicamente hemos revisado (...) y analizados todos los artículos y libros de sociología y antropología del pentecostalismo publicado desde 1967 hasta la actualidad. Nos hemos encontrado una crisis y desencanto religioso en el movimiento pentecostal, y un debilitamiento de la fuerza aglutinante de las nociones fundacionalistas del pentecostalismo. El movimiento pentecostal se encuentra en un momento postfundacionalista, que hemos denominado provisoriamente postpentecostalismo.: The aim of this paper is to describe and analyse how the concepts of community and people have historically evolved from their origins up to these days in Pentecostalism. Considering an analysis of the most relevant literature in Chile on this religious movement, we will show how the specialized literature and the movement itself have shifted from foundationalist notions of community and subject, towards post-foundationalist notions of these concepts. Methodologically we have reviewed and analysed all the articles and books of sociology and anthropology of Pentecostalism published from 1967 to the present. We have encountered a crisis and religious disenchantment in the Pentecostal movement, and a weakening of the agglutinating force of the foundational notions of Pentecostalism. The Pentecostal movement is at a postfoundationalist moment, which we have tentatively called postpentecostalism. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyse the semantics that has acquired the fear’s symbolism in the culture of Chilean Pentecostalism. By means of the revision and analysis of bibliographic information, we will show how the figure of fear is revealed in the images of hell, the Devil and God. Then we will provide an interpretation of the symbolic peculiarity of fear, which seems to operate as a kind of master symbol of Pentecostalism, not only because it is one (...) of the most important symbols of this culture, but because its polysemy helps to attract the attention of the believers. This would allow it to gather a wide range of paradoxical meanings and to thematize the distinction between transcendence and immanence, and also to facilitate the transmission of one image of fear with a clear deontological and exemplary function for its believers. In order to achieve this, the symbol of fear uses resources from the historical, social and cultural context. (shrink)

Black Africans who were brought to Cuba as slaves represented a variety of origins and belonged to linguistic groups that were as divergent as their cultural backgrounds. A huge majority, however, originated in the Congo basin. The last officially recorded arrival of a slave ship in a Cuban port took place in 1873.It would be impossible to classify expressions of Bantu origin that were used in the slave trade. The arbitrary label “Congo” has been applied to most such expressions with (...) a view to noting and suggesting a kinship with the cultural and religious heritage branching off from the Bantu linguistic trunk. (shrink)

Languages use predicates and arguments to express events and event participants. In order to establish generalizations concerning the variety languages show regarding the strategies for discerning some arguments from the others, the concept of roles—and, particularly, macroroles, mesoroles, and microroles—associated with participants provides a widely studied starting point. In this article, the formal properties in the arguments of a set of 14 verb meanings in Spanish Sign Language have been analyzed. Arguments have been studied by considering their microroles, and a (...) quantitative method for measuring distances from a plurality of properties has been adopted. The novelty of this analysis is that it focuses on how arguments group in terms of these properties. Subsequently, some generalizations justifying why some verb meanings have a tendency to associate with certain forms of argument expression are highlighted in this study. (shrink)

La cultura occidental, con la que vivimos y entendemos, nació bajo los auspicios de un triple ente: la conjugación de lacultura arábigo-musulmana, la civilización germano-eslava y el mundo clásico-bíblico; todos éstos vendrían a encajar, en principio, los miembros articulados del hombre moderno occidental. En concreto, las lenguas modernas han resultado un vehículo habitual y pertinente de la cultura clásica, en mayor o menor proporción y la someten a su propio arbitrio, creando una nueva dinámica literaria, determinada por razones estilísticas o (...) de prestigio. Por ello, no dejan de ser preocupantes los constantes vaivenes de una sociedad ávida de informaciones y conocimientos, sin ningún rumbo a seguir ni alguna meta humanamente satisfactoria. (shrink)

El objetivo de este trabajo es estudiar los modos en los que la documentación árabe emitida por las notarías mozárabes de Toledo es incluida en dos cartularios elaborados en el scriptorium catedralicio: Toledo, Biblioteca Capitular, 42-20 (1190) y Madrid, Archivo Histórico Nacional, 987B (1257 p. q.). Estos volúmenes tienen en común que no copian las cartas árabes de forma literal, sino que las traducen y resumen. No obstante, también presentan diferencias importantes: mientras que Toledo, Biblioteca Capitular, 42-20 copia algunas firmas (...) árabes, en Madrid, Archivo Histórico Nacional, 987B el árabe está completamente ausente. Además, los volúmenes también se diferencian en la colocación de los resúmenes del árabe en el conjunto de documentos copiados y, sobre todo, en la lengua meta de las traducciones: latín en el primer caso, romance en el segundo. De este modo, el análisis de los mecanismos de recepción del árabe en estos dos cartularios nos proporciona información sobre la convivencia de lenguas en la Toledo medieval y documenta los cambios en el panorama lingüístico en el periodo que medió entre la elaboración de los dos cartularios. (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.

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)

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)