In democratic societies, citizens forget the link between public and private affairs, so they isolate themselves form the society. Then, a few people gather all the power in their hands, and despotism arrives. In order to keep freedom, we need to make people discover the value of political participation, by showing them, in quotidian live, their interest on public affairs.

Positive family functioning during adolescence is usually studied analyzing parents' competences and children's relationship abilities. We present an instrument for the assessment of parental competence, which encompasses both educational style and transmission of values. The objective of the study was to analyze its factor structure and to assess its value in predicting adolescent outcomes. We recruited 2,459 high school students, aged 12–15, in 40 schools from Spain, Peru, Mexico, and Chile. They responded to the instrument and to other questions regarding (...) lifestyles. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were carried out in order to assess the internal structure of the instrument, and internal consistency of the resulting dimensions was calculated. Finally, regression analyses were performed to establish associations between the parenting dimensions and adolescent outcomes. Factor analyses showed a consistent structure, with good fit indices in the four countries. The final four factors include parenting styles and education in values. Regression analyses showed associations with adolescent outcomes. For example, adolescents' life satisfaction was best predicted by Warmth and Education in fortitude. Practical implications are suggested. (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)

We explore the distinctive characteristics of Mexico's society, politics and history that impacted the establishment of genetics in Mexico, as a new disciplinary field that began in the early 20th century and was consolidated and institutionalized in the second half. We identify about three stages in the institutionalization of genetics in Mexico. The first stage can be characterized by Edmundo Taboada, who was the leader of a research program initiated during the Cárdenas government (1934-1940), which was primarily directed towards improving (...) the condition of small Mexican farmers. Taboada is the first Mexican post-graduate investigator in phytotechnology and phytopathology, trained at Cornell University and the University of Minnesota, in 1932 and 1933, respectively. He was the first investigator to teach plant genetics at the National School of Agriculture and wrote the first textbook of general genetics, Genetics Notes, in 1938. Taboada's most important single genetics contribution was the production of "stabilized" corn varieties. The extensive exile of Spanish intellectuals to Mexico, after the end of Spain's Civil War (1936-1939), had a major influence in Mexican science and characterizes the second stage. The three main personalities contributing to Mexican genetics are Federico Bonet de Marco and Bibiano Fernández Osorio Tafall, at the National School of Biological Sciences, and José Luis de la Loma y Oteyza, at the Chapingo Agriculture School. The main contribution of the Spanish exiles to the introduction of genetics in Mexico concerned teaching. They introduced in several universities genetics as a distinctive discipline within the biology curriculum and wrote genetics text books and manuals. The third stage is identified with Alfonso León de Garay, who founded the Genetics and Radiobiology Program in 1960 within the National Commission of Nuclear Energy, which had been founded in 1956. The Genetics and Radiobiology Program rapidly became a disciplinary program, for it embraced research, teaching, and training of academics and technicians. The Mexican Genetics Society, created by de Garay in 1966, and the development of strains and cultures for genetics research were important activities. One of de Garay's key requirements was the compulsory training of the Program's scientists for at least one or two years in the best universities of the United States and Europe. De Garay's role in the development of Mexican genetics was fundamental. His broad vision encompassed the practice of genetics in all its manifestations. (shrink)

While anthropogenic species extinctions can be considered morally problematic for a range of reasons, they can also be described as a problem of interspecies justice. That is the focus of this paper in which we argue that human-caused species extinctions can be integrated within a non-anthropocentric account of reparative justice that is significantly similar to how reparation is understood within political theory at large. An account such as this faces a series of difficulties, such as how to make right past (...) injustices against victims that do not exist any longer and which belonged to species now extinct. For that purpose, we offer an argument in favour of symbolic forms of reparation in the form of, amongst other things, the preservation and restoration of habitat to materially repair the interspecies justice relationship; as well as monuments and education to honour the nonhuman dead. (shrink)

The purpose of this research is the analysis of a specific cultural and political tension, through two decisive concepts: imagocracy and imagomaquia. Our aim is to define the political battlefield in the arena of audiovisual communication. In the case of Latin America, we have identified two significant moments, in which the popular audiovisual strategies had crucial importance. Our material of research has been both the New Latin American Cinema and the sociology of the decolonial image. We have studied them in (...) depth in order to define the effectiveness of popular audiovisual strategies as nuclei of creation and aesthetic-political resistance, which opposes the hegemonic audiovisual order. (shrink)

Este artículo sistematiza y analiza el pensamiento político de Jacob Taubes a partir de los conceptos de secularización y mesianismo, poniéndolo en relación con otros pensadores cercanos a su contexto histórico y temático, como Carl Schmitt o Walter Benjamin. Asimismo, se muestran los vínculos entre el pensamiento de Taubes, la historia de los conceptos políticos y determinado pensamiento de la comunidad mesiánica, evaluando su pertinencia para la política. This article systematizes and analyzes the political thought of Jacob Taubes from the (...) concepts of secularism and messianism, putting it in relation to other thinkers close to its historical context and themes, such as Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin. Likewise, links between Taubes's thinking, the history of political concepts and a certain thought of the messianic community are shown, evaluating their relevance to politics. (shrink)

El presente artículo es un estudio teórico sobre las similitudes entre las doctrinas gnósticas, que florecieron alrededor del siglo ii de nuestra era, y el pensamiento estético del pintor ruso Vasili Kandinsky. El objetivo es analizar estos dos marcos de ideas filosóficas y espirituales para exponer sus similitudes y diferencias. De esta manera, se indagará si, pese a los siglos que las separan y la diferencia de contextos históricos que las rodean, pueden existir en los orígenes de ambas propuestas doctrinales (...) unas problemáticas existenciales y filosóficas comunes. El estudio buscará, con ello, dilucidar si es posible entender la estética de Kandinsky como una especial gnosis moderna estructurada a través de sus planteamientos conceptuales y artísticos. Los resultados de la investigación pretenden no solo dar luces sobre la originalidad de Kandinsky dentro de la historia del arte, sino que también llegar a ser útiles para resaltar y comprender algunos puntos importantes de la discusión cultural dentro de la cual se enmarca su obra. (shrink)

Scientific disagreements sometimes persist even if scientists fully share results of their research. In this paper we develop an agent-based model to study the impact of diverging diagnostic values scientists may assign to the evidence, given their different background assumptions, on the emergence of polarization in the scientific community. Scientists are represented as Bayesian updaters for whom the diagnosticity of evidence is given by the Bayes factor. Our results suggest that an initial disagreement on the diagnostic value of evidence can, (...) but does not necessarily, lead to polarization, depending on the sample size of the performed studies and the confidence interval within which scientists share their opinions. In particular, the more data scientists share,the more likely it is that the community will end up polarized. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt señala que la acción de los ciudadanos dentro de una democracia participativa consiste en juzgar. El verdadero ciudadano debe estar formado en el juicio político. Cada ciudadano ejerce su participación plena a través del intercambio de argumentos que explican sus acciones. Esta facultad de argumentar dinamiza su participación política. Sin embargo, el juicio político no consiste en ejercitar el pensamiento desde el plano meramente lógico racional del entendimiento. Por el contrario, la política, al estar delimitada por la acción (...) y la palabra, acude a otros registros de la acción práctica, tales como la estética y la historia. En esta reflexión iniciamos el paso de lo estético a lo político precisando lo que entendemos por juicio reflexionante y por juicio estético y que permitirán constituir la facultad de juzgar propia de lo político. Haciendo un recorrido por la racionalidad estética que señala la relevancia de lo subjetivo susceptible de ser comunicado, la estética kantiana nos abre el camino para el juzgar político, también centrado en el diálogo intersubjetivo de intereses por negociar tan propios de un proceso democrático. Conceptos como el gusto, el sentido común, la genialidad estética del genio, bien podrían compararse con el liderazgo político capaz de atraer en el caso de la política y de suscitar el placer por lo estético, en el caso del buen gusto. (shrink)

Background: This study developed a photo and video database of 4-to-6-year-olds expressing the seven induced and posed universal emotions and a neutral expression. Children participated in photo and video sessions designed to elicit the emotions, and the resulting images were further assessed by independent judges in two rounds. Methods: In the first round, two independent judges, experts in the Facial Action Coding System, firstly analysed 3,668 emotions facial expressions stimuli from 132 children. Both judges reached 100% agreement regarding 1,985 stimuli, (...) which were then selected for a second round of analysis between judges 3 and 4. Results: The result was 1,985 stimuli were produced from 124 participants. A Kappa index of 0.70 and an accuracy of 73% between experts were observed. Lower accuracy was found for emotional expression by 4-year-olds than 6-year-olds. Happiness, disgust and contempt had the highest agreement. After a sub-analysis evaluation of all four judges, 100% agreement was reached for 1,381 stimuli which compound the ChildEFES database with 124 participants and 51% induced photographs. The number of stimuli of each emotion were: 87 for neutrality, 363 for happiness, 170 for disgust, 104 for surprise, 152 for fear, 144 for sadness, 157 for anger 157, and 183 for contempt. Conclusions: The findings show that this photo and video database can facilitate research on the mechanisms involved in early childhood recognition of facial emotions in children, contributing to the understanding of facial emotion recognition deficits which characterise several neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. (shrink)

Las relaciones que pueden establecerse entre azar, igualdad y biotecnología suscitan un debatebien prolijo en el campo de la filosofía moral, generando dudas y numerosas discusiones. La reflexión sobre el alcance moral de ciertas hipotéticas posibilidades que podría brindar la biotecnología, permite iluminar el debate sobre la suerte bruta en materia de justicia distributiva.

In this paper we present a new framework of idealization in biology. We characterize idealizations as a network of counterfactual conditionals that can exhibit different degrees of contingency. We use the idea of possible worlds to say that, in departing more or less from the actual world, idealizations can serve numerous epistemic, methodological or heuristic purposes within scientific research. We defend that, in part, it is this structure what helps explain why idealizations, despite being deformations of reality, are so successful (...) in scientific practice. (shrink)

En el artículo se describe el tránsito filosófico-existencial de Tula, protagonista de la novela La tía Tula de Miguel de Unamuno, por los tres estadios vitales del filósofo danés Søren Kierkegaard. A lo largo del texto, se muestra que las dudas existenciales que se plantea la protagonista son extensivas para todo el género humano. Además, el texto busca mostrar cómo la narrativa del pensador español está plagada de reflexiones filosóficas y está fuertemente influida por el existencialismo cristiano de Kierkegaard. Debatiéndose (...) entre la fe y la razón, Tula transita por los estadios tomando decisiones que entrañan sufrimiento. En esta novela, se plasman los afanes del ser humano por la perpetuación, inmortalidad y salvación frente al rostro descarnado de la nada. (shrink)

Martha Nussbaum es fundamentalmente una filósofa política y moral que, cimentada en la tradición aristotélica, ha logrado integrar en unapostura teórica una visión de la justicia social con una perspectiva sobre la naturaleza y el cultivo de ciertas emociones morales que resultan apropiadas para edificar una nueva ciudadanía democrática. Para nuestra autora, la justicia no puede estar desligada del accionar de las personas en la vida cotidiana, por tanto, considera que este vínculo se puede materializar mediante el cultivo de las (...) emociones, las cuales se entienden como elementos claves de la vida moral que afinan nuestra percepción del mundo y orientan nuestras elecciones. Guiados por esta noción, en este artículo presentamos algunos aspectos fundamentales del pensamiento político de Nussbaum, mostrando la transición que la autora experimenta en sus teorías desde las posturas del liberalismo de Rawls hasta consolidar su propia visión de la “justicia compasiva”, la cual es unaforma concreta de apuntalar la norma pública que defiende cómo todas las personas merecen igual respeto y dignidad. En este recorrido igualmente reflexionaremos sobre la influencia de las posturas comunitaristas de finales del siglo XX en los ideales de ciudadanía de la filósofa de Chicago. (shrink)

Según John Searle, las posiciones _por defecto_, _i. e_., las condiciones de inteligibilidad del pensamiento y la acción son algunos _puntos de partida_ que se presuponen de manera pre-reflexiva y pragmática. Su postulación es, además, una novel manera de tratar con algunos problemas perennes de la filosofía, dejándolos entre paréntesis. Dichos problemas son la existencia del mundo externo, la verdad y como esta tiene que ver con hechos, la percepción directa, los significados de las palabras y, finalmente, la causalidad. En (...) este artículo analizamos cómo las mencionadas posiciones conforman una humanidad _por defecto_, y cómo su ausencia, _deshumanizaría_. Esto es relevante en el caso de la cooperación, una posición _por defecto_ básica para la intencionalidad colectiva, y piedra angular de la civilización humana. (shrink)

The HIT model explains the existence of semantic category-specific deficits by assuming that sensory knowledge is crucially important in processing living things, while functional knowledge is crucially important in processing nonliving things – the sensory/functional assumption. Here we argue that the sensory/functional assumption as implemented in HIT is neither theoretically nor empirically grounded and that, in any case, there is neuropsychological evidence which invalidates this assumption, thereby undermining the HIT model as a whole.

Recensión de N. Belloso Martín, El control democrático del poder judicial en España, Universidad de Burgos/ Moinho do Verbo, Curitiba, 1999.