Güinope, Honduras was the site of a highly acclaimed people-centered development project in the 1980s. The ACORDE/Ministry of Natural Resource/World Neighbors Integrated Development Program (IDP) was unique for its time, since rather than relying on technology transfer, it promoted innovation skills for local generation of responses to needs. Furthermore, it was one of the first efforts in Latin America to employ villagers as principal agents of change. Fifteen years after the inception of the IDP and ten years after its completion, (...) the authors interviewed farmers in their fields and held a series of participatory workshops over eighteen months with ten outstanding farmers who had become project leaders. The leaders identified influential factors behind their involvement and produced recommendations for rural development interventions. Further, a generalized concept map typifying ideal characteristics for farmer promoters was constructed. Recommendations for development agencies centered on project design and implementation, demanding a methodology for strengthening local innovative capacities, participation, and control over resources. Ultimately, the leaders downplayed the role of technologies in rural development and called for special attention to enabling communities to confront external pressures, in particular recent government ``modernization'' policies, that they felt threatened community livelihood. (shrink)

In this paper we advance a new solution to Quinn’s puzzle of the self-torturer. The solution falls directly out of an application of the principle of instrumental reasoning to what we call “vague projects”, i.e., projects whose completion does not occur at any particular or definite point or moment. The resulting treatment of the puzzle extends our understanding of instrumental rationality to projects and ends that cannot be accommodated by orthodox theories of rational choice.

It is undeniable that human agents sometimes act badly, and it seems that they sometimes pursue bad things simply because they are bad. This latter phenomenon has often been taken to provide counterexamples to views according to which we always act under the guise of the good. This paper identifies several distinct arguments in favour of the possibility that one can act under the guise of the bad. GG seems to face more serious difficulties when trying to answer three different, (...) but related, arguments for the possibility of acting under the guise of the bad. The main strategies available to answer these objections end up either undermining the motivation for GG or failing to do full justice to the nature of perverse motivation. However, these difficulties turn out to be generated by focusing on a particular version of GG, what I call the “content version”. But we have independent reasons to prefer a different version of GG; namely, the “attitude version”. The attitude version allows for a much richer understanding of the possibility of acting on what we conceive to be bad. Drawing on an analogy with theoretical akrasia and theoretical perversion, I try to show how the attitude version can provide a compelling account of perverse actions. (shrink)

Anecdotes have shown that some articles on profitable drugs are constructed by and shepherded through publication by pharmaceutical companies and their agents, whose influence is largely invisible to readers. This is ghost-management, the substantial but unrecognized research, analysis, writing, editing and/or facilitation behind publication. Publicly available documents suggest that these practices extremely widespread affecting up to 40% of clinical trial reports in key periods but it has been unclear how representative these documents are. This article presents the results of an (...) investigative sampling of the self-presentation of publication planning services, and presents this and other evidence of a sizable publication planning industry. Thus different lines of evidence indicate that ghost-management is a common and important phenomenon, strongly affecting the published medical literature in the service of marketing. (shrink)

Kant’s views on the relation between freedom and moral law seem to undergo a major, unannounced shift. In the third section of the Groundwork, Kant seems to be using the fact that we must act under the idea of freedom as a foundation for the moral law. However, in the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant claims that our awareness of our freedom depends on our awareness of the moral law. I argue that the apparent conflict between the two texts depends (...) on a reading of the opening paragraphs of Groundwork III, and on an interpretation of Kant’s claim that we “act under the idea of freedom”, that is implausible on textual and on philosophical grounds. I then present an alternative interpretation of what Kant means by “acting under the idea of freedom” and of the opening paragraphs of Groundwork III. I argue that the only substantive conclusion of these paragraphs is that no theoretical proof of freedom is necessary. Moreover I argue that although these paragraphs raise concerns about the validity of the moral law, these concerns and Kant’s answers to them, do not give rise to any significant conflict with his views in the Critique of Practical Reason. (shrink)

The COVID‐ 19 pandemic is a critical test for the already overburdened and mostly underfunded public healthcare systems of Latin America. In a region that suffers from severe inequalities, public healthcare systems are the only source of medical care for a large sector of the population who work in the informal economy or are unemployed. State‐run hospitals and clinics are already overstressed by continuous demand for treatment of vector‐borne diseases and community‐acquired infections as well as high rates of non‐communicable diseases. (...) Ideological misconceptions and denial among Latin America’s political leaders prevented timely preparations for the pandemic and added to chronic governance problems. As ethical expertise in Latin America focuses on research ethics, few hospitals in the region have functioning clinical ethics committees or clinical ethics policy, forcing healthcare personnel to make excruciating treatment decisions in an environment dominated by material scarcity and public distrust. This essay examines the emergence of COVID‐19 in Latin America and the serious challenge that it poses for Latin America's public healthcare systems. (shrink)

In this paper, I reply to Ruth Chang’s ‘What is so Hard about Hard Choices’.

Recently, Piccinini and Craver have stated three theses concerning the relations between functional analysis and mechanistic explanation in cognitive sciences: No Distinctness: functional analysis and mechanistic explanation are explanations of the same kind; Integration: functional analysis is a kind of mechanistic explanation; and Subordination: functional analyses are unsatisfactory sketches of mechanisms. In this paper, I argue, first, that functional analysis and mechanistic explanations are sub-kinds of explanation by scientific (idealized) models. From that point of view, we must take into account (...) the tradeoff between the representational/explanatory goals of generality and precision that govern the practice of model-building. In some modeling scenarios, it is rational to maximize explanatory generality at the expense of mechanistic precision. This tradeoff allows me to put forward a problem for the mechanist position. If mechanistic modeling endorses generality as a valuable goal, then Subordination should be rejected. If mechanists reject generality as a goal, then Integration is false. I suggest that mechanists should accept that functional analysis can offer acceptable explanations of cognitive phenomena. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to understand more precisely what kind of irrationality involved in procrastination. The chapter argues that in order to understand the irrationality of procrastination one needs to understand the possibility and the nature of what I call “top-down independent” policies and long-term actions. A policy or long-term action) is top-down independent if it is possible to act irrationally relative to the adoption of the policy without ever engaging in a momentary action that is per se (...) irrational. involved in procrastination one needs to It argues that procrastination is one of the corresponding vices of an overlooked virtue; namely, “practical judgment.” On this account, procrastination turns out to be a failure of instrumental rationality that can be so characterized without assuming the correctness of any further norms of practical rationality. Thus this account of procrastination also constitutes an important objection to Christine Korsgaard’s claim that a purely instrumental conception of rationality is incoherent. (shrink)

This chapter discusses some strategies pharmaceutical companies employ to establish influence and even hegemony over domains of medical knowledge: marketing products via medical research and education. The chapter thus contributes to understanding the political economy of knowledge in this industry. As a counterpart to traditional epistemology, studying the political economy of knowledge shifts attention from individual claims and their justifications to some of the forces available to shape terrains on which claims are produced, distributed, and consumed.Of pharmaceutical companies’ clinical research, (...) 70–75% is performed by contract research organizations. CROs conduct trials with one eye to the drug approval process and the other to the marketing of products. On the basis of trial data, analyzed by pharmaceutical company statisticians and scientists, publication planners design suites of scientific manuscripts and hire ghostwriters to write them. These are then given to academic authors, who generally have had little prior connection to the research, analysis, or writing. The manuscripts are published in medical journals appropriate for the audiences the companies wish to reach.The doctors and researchers with whom companies engage most closely are generally termed key opinion leaders. In addition to authoring manuscripts, KOLs serve companies in a number of roles, but most prominently as speakers—at professional meetings, in after-dinner and similar settings arranged by sales representatives, and in continuing medical education courses, which doctors must take to keep their licenses. Research, education, and marketing, then, are often fused. (shrink)

Anticipation has emerged over the past two decades as a fundamental tool for a wide variety of normative frameworks aimed at promoting a more socio-politically responsible governance of science, technology and innovation. However, theoretical considerations and reflections on the meaning and scope of anticipation have received far less attention than its invocation. The main objective of this article is to advance the theoretical-conceptual treatment of anticipation. On the one hand, it assumes that there is a connection between the ways of (...) thinking about and using the future and the fields of science, technology and innovation that are considered the object of ethical-political problematisation. On the other hand, the article evaluates each of these forms of anticipatory articulation of responsibility on the basis of their respective ethico-political radicality. (shrink)

Recently, there has been a growing interest, both within theoretical biology and the philosophy of biology, in the possibility and desirability of a theory of development. Among the many issues raised within this debate, the questions of the spatial and temporal boundaries of development have received particular attention. In this article, noting that so far the discussion has mostly centered on the processes of morphogenesis and organogenesis, we argue that an important missing element in the equation, namely the development of (...) language and cognition in general, may play an important role in settling the issue of temporal boundaries. After examining the idea that the development of language, cognition, and action are bona fide biological processes, we explore the consequences for a general theory of development of taking them into consideration. (shrink)

In this note we introduce and study algebras of type such that is a bounded distributive lattice and ⌝ is an operator that satisfies the condition ⌝ = a ⌝ b and ⌝ 0 = 1. We develop the topological duality between these algebras and Priestley spaces with a relation. In addition, we characterize the congruences and the subalgebras of such an algebra. As an application, we will determine the Priestley spaces of quasi-Stone algebras.

The introduction of ethics in the running of a corporate firm is functional to the reaching of its business purposes.The adoption of values of distributive justice (equity) and respect (trust) concurs and determines the building of trust both inside thecorporation itself and externally, making the birth of solid relationships based on collaboration and a lasting sense of loyalty possible in a productive world, which tends to praise efficiency throughout the entire production line. Therefore, the judgment that ethics pays and the (...) conclusion that the growth of an “ethical sense” in the organization makes up one of the most difficult challenges of modern management. (shrink)

Reply to critics on panel on "Appearances of the Good".

For non-analytic ethical naturalists, externalism about moral motivation is an attractive option: it allows naturalists to embrace a Humean theory of motivation while holding that moral properties are real, natural properties. However, Michael Smith has mounted an important objection to this view. Smith observes that virtuous agents must have non-derivative motivation to pursue specific ends that they believe to be morally right; he then argues that this externalist view ascribes to the virtuous agent only a direct de dicto desire to (...) do what is morally right, but not a direct motivation to be kind, help those in need, et. I first clarify this “fetishism objection”; I then show how the non-analytical naturalist can provide an understanding of virtuous motivation that is immune to this objection. (shrink)

Non-recent (historic) childhood sexual abuse is an important issue to research, though often regarded as taboo and frequently met with caution, avoidance or even opposition from research ethics committees. Sensitive research, such as that which asks victim-survivors to recount experiences of abuse or harm, has the propensity to be emotionally challenging for both the participant and the researcher. However, most research suggests that any distress experienced is usually momentary and not of any clinical significance. Moreover, this type of research offers (...) a platform for voices which have often been silenced, and many participants report the cathartic effect of recounting their experiences in a safe, non-judgemental space. With regard to the course of such research, lines of inquiry which ask adult participants to discuss their experiences of childhood sexual abuse may result in a first-time disclosure of that abuse by the victim-survivor to the researcher. Guidance about how researchers should respond to first-time disclosure is lacking. In this article, we discuss our response to one research ethics committee which had suggested that for a qualitative study for which we were seeking ethical approval (investigating experiences of pregnancy and childbirth having previously survived childhood sexual abuse), any disclosure of non-recent (historic) childhood sexual abuse which had not been previously reported would result in the researcher being obliged to report it to relevant authorities. We assess this to be inconsistent with both law and professional guidance in the United Kingdom; and provide information and recommendations for researchers and research ethics committees to consider. (shrink)

La percepción clara y distinta es el elemento sobre el que se asienta la certeza metafísica de Descartes. Con todo, el planteamiento de los argumentos escépticos referidos a la duda metódica cartesiana ha evidenciado la necesidad de hallar una justificación al propio criterio de la percepción clara y distinta. Frente a los intentos basados en la indubitabilidad de la percepción o en la garantía surgida de la bondad divina, se defenderá una justificación alternativa pragmatista.

En este trabajo sostengo que la concepción mecanicista no captura la relevancia explicativa de la ley de polarización dinámica de Cajal. La relevancia explicativa de la ley se fundamenta en su rol como principio de diseño neuronal. Como tal, la ley nos brinda acceso epistémico a intervenciones ideales, conceptualmente posibles, sobre la localización de los diversos componentes de los centros nerviosos, y nos permiten evaluar el impacto de esas intervenciones sobre las condiciones de viabilidad del organismo.

A dominant theme in the ninth of the Heroides, Deianira's letter to Hercules, is Deianira's indignation that Hercules has been defeated by a woman: first by Iole ; then by Omphale . The theme is exploited so insistently that Vessey, who regards the epistle as spurious, sees in this insistence a sign of the forger's clumsiness. consider the exploitation of the motive of‘victor victus’ in Heroides 9, on the contrary, as a strong sign of Ovidian authorship. From the very beginning (...) of the letter, the reader is reminded that if a woman, Iole, has metaphorically destroyed Hercules, another woman is on the point of destroying Hercules in a much more real and literal way, and this woman is none other than Deianira herself. When Deianira writes the letter, she has just sent to Hercules the garment soaked in Nessus' poison that will provoke Hercules' horrible death : thus Deianira, rather than Iole or Omphale, is the woman who vanquishes the unvanquished hero. But this is not only a matter of dramatic irony based on the general lines of the story. Heroides 9 is an elegiac rewriting of Sophocles' Trachiniae , and at the same time is inserted in the time and the ‘body’ of the tragedy. Ironic prefiguration in Heroides is normally realized through intertextual anticipation: thefuture events that are prefigured are present in the texts of the model epic or tragedy. Deianira blames Hercules for bis defeat: quern numquam Iuno seriesque immensa laborum fregerit, huic Iolen imposuisse iugum quem non mille ferae, quern non Stheneleius hostis, non potuit Iuno vincere, vincit amor. (shrink)

A implementação de tecnologias móveis de informação e comunicação no suporte à Saúde Mental tem atraído a atenção das autoridades. Com a ascensão das Inteligências Artificiais, esse movimento pode ser impulsionado de maneira exponencial. Nesse cenário, esta revisão tem como objetivos verificar a aplicabilidade das Inteligências Artificiais (IAs) na Saúde Mental e analisar os aspectos que favorecem a relação entre IAs e usuários. Para tanto, realizou-se uma revisão sistemática nas bases de dados PubMed e Biblioteca Virtual em Saúde, no período (...) de 25 de maio a 23 de junho de 2023. Selecionamos os 100 primeiros artigos mais relevantes com as palavras-chave: “Inteligência Artificial”, “Saúde Mental”, “Chatbots”, “Psicoterapia”, “Psicologia” e suas equivalentes em inglês. Os critérios de inclusão foram: acesso aberto, publicação a partir de 2018, em português ou inglês e menção à atuação de IAs no âmbito da Saúde Mental. Para reduzir o risco de viés, excluímos os estudos que não mensuraram o impacto das intervenções por meio de métodos experimentais ou quase-experimentais. Para a síntese dos dados, delimitaram-se alguns pontos específicos de análise, como “Resultado da intervenção”, “Aspectos que favorecem a relação”, entre outros. Atenderam aos critérios de inclusão 24 estudos, dos quais 17 apresentaram resultados positivos em suas intervenções. O uso de IAs na Saúde Mental possui grande potencial de expansão e os resultados obtidos neste trabalho podem guiar a implementação dessas práticas e futuras pesquisas na área. (shrink)

A short reconstruction of the analytic-synthetic method, a key idea in Medieval and Early Modern Logic.

El objetivo del presente artículo consiste en analizar la relación Dewey-Honneth con el propósito de profundizar en la comprensión de la idea de > y evidenciar algunos puntos de encuentro que, en el ámbito de la filosofía social, se dan entre la tradición pragmatista y la teoría crítica de la sociedad representadas por John Dewey y Axel Honneth. Se considera la existencia de cierto aire de familia en el entendimiento de Honneth sobre la idea > con relación a las consideraciones (...) del pragmatismo, especialmente las elaboradas por C. S. Peirce y Dewey, en lo que respecta al análisis de la relación entre teoría y praxis. La tesis que se defiende afirma que para Dewey y Honneth, existe una prioridad metodológica de la experiencia para la comprensión de la moralidad en el contexto de la reconstrucción normativa de la misma; dicha prioridad entiende que la fuente de normatividad se constituye en el análisis de las prácticas sociales individuales y colectivas, de cómo se relacionan los individuos y los grupos con las instituciones vigentes, y de la incidencia recíproca de las mismas en su interacción con el ambiente social, económico, político y cultural. (shrink)

Standpoint theory makes the claim that there are social positions from which privileged perspectives on knowledge can be obtained. This article describes some arguments that stake out relatively narrow grounds for the relevance of standpoint theory to science and technology: namely, the oppressed are in a potentially good position to understand social relations. Although these grounds seem narrow and apparently irrelevant to the bulk of the activity of the sciences, recent work in science and technology studies indicates that social relations (...) are topics and resources as much in physics and mathematics as in primatology and psychology. So, if we accept the arguments for standpoint theory, the social picture of science should lead us to recognize the wide-ranging applicability of standpoint theory to science. (shrink)

A short reconstruction of the vicissitudes of the notion of ethical naturalism through American late nineteenth-century 'naturalism', Moore criticism of so-called naturalistic ethics, reaching Anscombe, Geach and Foot and their particular kind of anti-non-naturalism. The conclusion is that the notion of ethical naturalism is little more than a mere 'flatus vocis' used to indicate three heterogeneous kinds of ethical theories.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the primary architect of the neuron doctrine and the law of dynamic polarization, is considered to be the founder of modern neuroscience. At the same time, many philosophers, historians, and neuroscientists agree that modern neuroscience embodies a mechanistic perspective on the explanation of the nervous system. In this paper, I review the extant mechanistic interpretation of Cajal’s contribution to modern neuroscience. Then, I argue that the extant mechanistic interpretation fails to capture the explanatory import of Cajal’s (...) law of dynamic polarization. My claim is that the definitive formulation of Cajal’s law of dynamic polarization, despite its mechanistic inaccuracies, embodies a non-mechanistic pattern of reasoning (i.e., design explanation) that is an integral component of modern neuroscience. (shrink)

El renovado interés que ha adquirido el pensamiento político desde la segunda mitad del siglo veinte ha dado lugar a nuevas perspectivas para su estudio. Sin embargo, el desarrollo teórico de las ciencias sociales no ha tenido una interacción fluida entre las disciplinas que la componen. En este trabajo argumentaré que los desarrollos metodológicos sobre la posibilidad histórica de la teoría política deberían estar interconectados con los desarrollos en el campo de la historiografía. Para sostener mi posición me propongo realizar (...) una aproximación problemática en torno a la posibilidad de construir un conocimiento histórico-científico de la teoría política, a partir de los siguientes tópicos: la temporalidad histórica; el vínculo entre temporalidad y pensamiento, y la politización del pensamiento. (shrink)

El artículo reflexiona sobre las fases de la introducción en el pensamiento español de la Teoría Crítica. (1) En los años sesenta, las traducciones de Adorno o Marcuse coinciden con la influencia de otros elementos de la historia efectual del pensamiento de Marx. (2) En un segundo periodo, que abarca la transición y los primeros gobiernos socialdemócratas, las otras formas de marxismo se repliegan y se normaliza la producción española de tesis doctorales, artículos y libros sobre la Escuela de Frankfurt (...) y desde sus postulados. (3) Después de 1989, la crisis de una forma de marxismo influye en las otras, y asistimos a la normalización académica que coexiste con la necesidad de una reformulación profunda del paradigma crítico. (shrink)

El sentido de la vida es un tópico en filosofía. Este trabajo trata de ofrecer una respuesta acerca de qué se puede entender por el «sentido deportivo de la vida». Para ello se recurre a la filosofía de José Ortega y Gasset y sus comentaristas, pero también de Gustavo Bueno. Se desarrollan cada uno de los sintagmas de la expresión para, a continuación, enfrentar directamente la pregunta conductora de nuestra investigación: «¿Merece la pena dedicar la vida al deporte extremo?». Se (...) concluye que responder a esa pregunta exige establecer un criterio de valor extrasubjetivo; lo cual no es tarea fácil. (shrink)

We show that for an arbitrary logic being locally tabular is a strictly weaker property than being locally finite. We describe our hunt for a logic that allows us to separate the two properties, revealing weaker and weaker conditions under which they must coincide, and showing how they are intertwined. We single out several classes of logics where the two notions coincide, including logics that are determined by a finite set of finite matrices, selfextensional logics, algebraizable and equivalential logics. Furthermore, (...) we identify a closure property on models of a logic that, in the presence of local tabularity, is equivalent to local finiteness. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is twofold. First, it outlines the concept of ontological frame. Secondly, two models are distinguished on this structure. The first one is connected to Kant’s concept of possible object and the second one relates to Leibniz’s. Leibniz maintains that the source of possibility is the mere logical consistency of the notions involved, so that possibility coincides with analytical possibility. Kant, instead, argues that consistency is only a necessary component of possibility. According to Kant, something is (...) possible if there is a cause capable of bringing it into existence; to this end consistency alone is not sufficient. Thus, while the Leibnizian notion of consistency is at the root of the concept of analytical possibility, the Kantian notion of possibility is the source of real possibility. This difference plays an important role in the discussion of Gödel’s ontological proof, which can be formally interpreted on the ontological frame of the pure perfections. While this proof, under some emendation condition, is conclusive in the context of Leibniz’s ontological model, it is not so within the Kantian one. This issue will be the subject of the second part of the present essay. (shrink)

A questão sobre Deus em Aristóteles aparece na teoria sobre o primeiro motor imóvel, demonstrada no livro XII da Metafísica. Tudo o que se move é movido por outro. Entende Aristóteles que no universo há uma série indeterminada de motores e movidos. Todos os movimentos têm uma causa anterior. Mas, não é possível regredir ao infinito, pois todos e cada um sempre dependeriam de outro. Por esta razão, conclui o Estagirita que é necessário que exista um primeiro motor imóvel que (...) não seja movido por nenhum outro. Ora, se não existisse um primeiro motor absoluto, seria impossível o movimento gerado nos outros motores que compõem o universo. Neste estudo sobre a teoria aristotélica, que se tornou tradicional na teodiceia, apresentamos determinados passos da Metafísica com o auxílio de alguns comentadores sem, contudo, entrar em aporias importantes que o texto aristotélico vem suscitando entre os pesquisadores. (shrink)

A discussion of the origins of the very notion of development, its role in eocnomic thoery, and its discussion in applied ethics.

The paper explores the effects of social disablement caused by imprisonment, analyzing how this institution can exacerbate existing disability conditions or create new ones. Through a review of sociological literature, it highlights how the prison context can significantly contribute to an additional level of disablement. Considering the incapacitating effects of imprisonment, it emerges that the prison system acts as a “producer” of social disablement, intensifying marginalization processes and increasing societal disparities. This process is fueled by prison overcrowding, loss of employment (...) and housing, suspension of social assistance, and the breakdown of family ties, creating a vicious cycle that generates and reinforces social disablement. The article underscores the need for greater attention and research in the field of disability within the prison environment, considering the dynamic interaction between individual conditions and contextual factors that influence it. Furthermore, it calls for a critical reflection on the social function and practices of prison institutions, proposing a more inclusive approach that reconsiders penal structures and policies to mitigate the disabling effects of detention. (shrink)

Both Adam Smith's epistemology and his politics lead to a stalemate. The former is under the opposing pulls of an essentialist ideal of knowledge and of a pragmatist approach to the history of science. The latter still tries to provide a foundation for a natural law, while conceiving it as non-absolute and changeable. The consequences are (i) inability to complete both the political and the epistemological works projected by Smith; (ii) decentralization of the social order, giving rise to several partial (...) orders, such as that of the market. (shrink)