Shannon Sullivan's critique of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception is based on the argument that, due to his concept of the “anonymous body,” his theory of intersubjectivity omits the particularities of bodies, such as gender. I argue that Merleau-Ponty's “anonymous body” is not in fact “neutral” as Sullivan suggests, and moreover that he does not ignore differences but rather provides us with the idea of difference as a process of differentiation. Additionally, I argue that Sullivan's concept of “hypothetical construction,” which is (...) introduced as an alternative to Merleau-Ponty, turns out to be a conscious construction, not reflecting upon its very conditions. Thus, Sullivan's account fails by presupposing what in fact needs to be explained: the particularities. (shrink)

Narrative film can be a useful way of looking at bioethical scenarios. This volume presents a collection of brief, accessible essays written by international experts from medicine, social sciences, and the humanities, all of whom have experience using film in their teaching of medical ethics. Each author looks at a single scene from a popular film in order to illuminate its ethical dimensions.

This exploration of the works of various authors and artists will bring us to a philosophical contemplation of the portrait as a heterotopic space. On one hand, a portrait represents the faces of the self and others, embodying both individuality and collectivity. On the other hand, the space within the conventional frame of a portrait transforms from a mere representation of documented reality to a co-constructed and reified form of expression. The article is divided in three parts. The first part (...) sinks into Lotman’s epistemic groundwork on culture, space, and especially art as a founding philosophical and analytical reference and will also outline the relationship and difference between the semiophere and the facesphere. The second part focuses on establishing a relationship between the facesphere and the heterotopic idea of space and portrait genre. Here the article explores Michael Foucault’s thought in relation to heterotopic space, later proposed in association with the space of the portrait. The third part is devoted to establishing relationships between the theoretical background and the analysis of case studies belonging to the portrait genre selected from photographic works in “Living Pictures: Photography in Southeast Asia,” an exhibition at the National Gallery in Singapore. I will conclude with some brief considerations to summarize the path taken. (shrink)

Se presenta un artículo con el objetivo de elaborar un sistema de talleres con la utilización de técnicas participativas para la autodirección estudiantil en la universidad médica, tema de gran relevancia en el desempeño del modelo del profesional. Este sistema contiene un conjunto de orientaciones teórico-metodológicas y herramientas de trabajo para ser implementadas por los estudiantes en la brigada, las cuales propician el fortalecimiento de su autodirección en analogía con el modelo del profesional. An article is presented with the objective (...) of elaborating a system of workshops with the use of collaborative techniques for the students’ self-direction in the medical university, issue of great relevance in the development of the future professional. This system contains a group of theoretical-methodological guidelines and working tools to be implemented by the students of the brigade, the ones that give the strength of its self-direction in analogy with the ideal professional. (shrink)

One of the most fundamental premises of feminist philosophy is the assumption of an invidious asymmetry between the genders that has to be overcome. Parallel to this negative account of asymmetry we also find a positive account, developed in particular within the context of so-called feminist philosophies of difference. I explore both notions of gender asymmetry. The goal is a clarification of the notion of asymmetry as it can presently be found in feminist philosophy. Drawing upon phenomenology as well as (...) feminist difference theory , I argue that a gender asymmetry does exist that cannot-as in the first assumption-be transformed into symmetry. (shrink)

Introduction:Healthcare workers facing the threatening COVID-19 can experience severe difficulties. Despite the need to evaluate both the psychological distress and positive protective resources, brief and reliable assessment tools are lacking.Aim:Study 1 aimed at developing a new assessment tool to measure psychological distress and esteem in healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Study 2 aimed to explore and compare the psychological reactions of healthcare workers of the COVID-19 and the non-COVID-19 wards.Methods:In Study 1, psychologists created 25 items based on their clinical (...) experience. A preliminary qualitative evaluation selected the best 15 items for the new tool assessing the COVID-19 psychological impact with 2 scales: psychological distress and esteem. The CPI-HP was administered to 110 healthcare professionals to study its psychometric properties and the internal structure with exploratory graph analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Study 2 compared two groups of healthcare professionals of the COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 departments.Results:In Study 1, the CPI-HP showed satisfying psychometric properties, and the two-factor structure was confirmed with good fit indices. In Study 2, the two groups of healthcare workers showed comparable levels of psychological distress and resilient coping, but the COVID-19 group displayed significantly higher esteem and appreciation of the experience.Discussion:All operators showed high psychological distress during the emergency, but the COVID-19 group reported higher resources, probably due to stronger group cohesion and greater esteem, perceived meaning, and own work value.Conclusion:Assessing the psychological distress and resources of healthcare professionals with specific tools is important. Psychological interventions should promote their psychological health. (shrink)

One of the most fundamental premises of feminist philosophy is the assumption of an invidious asymmetry between the genders that has to be overcome. Parallel to this negative account of asymmetry we also find a positive account, developed in particular within the context of so-called feminist philosophies of difference. I explore both notions of gender asymmetry. The goal is a clarification of the notion of asymmetry as it can presently be found in feminist philosophy. Drawing upon phenomenology as well as (...) feminist difference theory, I argue that a gender asymmetry does exist that cannot-as in the first assumption-be transformed into symmetry. (shrink)

En el contexto de cambios del proceso de globalización, la medicalización constituye una problemática central en la agenda de salud internacional. Durante la década de 1990, comenzó la expansión internacional del diagnóstico de trastorno por déficit de atención e hiperactividad (TDAH), entre otros factores, merced a la creciente relevancia de actores no médicos en el proceso y de legislaciones específicas para diferentes diagnósticos. El artículo busca contribuir a un análisis del espacio que le otorga la prensa escrita on line a (...) los procesos de medicalización del TDAH en Argentina en el siglo XXI, como aporte a una lectura panorámica de los procesos en la región y a nivel internacional, y como contribución a un área de vacancia en los estudios sociales. Para este artículo, analizamos 236 artículos on line de periódicos argentinos de alcance nacional y provincial entre 2001 y 2017. Para el relevamiento se diseñaron mecanismos de selección y filtro, con criterios y herramientas de búsqueda y procesamiento de noticias. Se efectuaron estimaciones de regularidad de tópicos emergentes y procesamientos parciales de información, incluyendo, entre otras dimensiones, año, jurisdicción, medio, fecha, sección, título, categoría, características de la nota, palabras clave, concepto o nombre del problema, fármaco/droga, tratamiento, actores sociales y recomendaciones. Con el artículo nos interesa engrosar los todavía escasos estudios que aportan a la comprensión de cómo el diagnóstico de TDAH está migrando a diferentes regiones del globo y, más específicamente, cómo está posicionándose como un problema de salud internacional. Los resultados muestran que, en los procesos de medicalización del TDAH en niños y niñas, la prensa escrita argentina (nacional y provincial) se constituye en un actor no médico relevante tanto en la institucionalización de la problemática como en la presentación de líneas terapéuticas a seguir y en acciones orientadas al impulso de legislaciones específicas. (shrink)

This monographic section questions the concept of domesticity, and some of its concrete developments, both as a principle of order and as a device through which historically and culturally variable differences and meanings are articulated – starting with those associated with it from the very beginning, namely the values of stability, solidity and centredness. The essays collected here challenge the idea of a separation between domestic and political space, which is made to coincide tout court with that between private and (...) public space. For a long time, this dichotomy relegated domesticity to a politically irrelevant dimension. Instead, it is the home as a political form that is here investigated and questioned. (shrink)

Convolutional neural networks, which automatically learn features from raw data to approximate functions, are being increasingly applied to the end-to-end analysis of electroencephalographic signals, especially for decoding brain states in brain-computer interfaces. Nevertheless, CNNs introduce a large number of trainable parameters, may require long training times, and lack in interpretability of learned features. The aim of this study is to propose a CNN design for P300 decoding with emphasis on its lightweight design while guaranteeing high performance, on the effects of (...) different training strategies, and on the use of post-hoc techniques to explain network decisions. The proposed design, named MS-EEGNet, learned temporal features in two different timescales in an efficient and optimized way, and was validated on three P300 datasets. The CNN was trained using different strategies and was compared with several state-of-the-art algorithms. Furthermore, variants of the baseline MS-EEGNet were analyzed to evaluate the impact of different hyper-parameters on performance. Lastly, saliency maps were used to derive representations of the relevant spatio-temporal features that drove CNN decisions. MS-EEGNet was the lightest CNN compared with the tested SOA CNNs, despite its multiple timescales, and significantly outperformed the SOA algorithms. Post-hoc hyper-parameter analysis confirmed the benefits of the innovative aspects of MS-EEGNet. Furthermore, MS-EEGNet did benefit from transfer learning, especially using a low number of training examples, suggesting that the proposed approach could be used in BCIs to accurately decode the P300 event while reducing calibration times. Representations derived from the saliency maps matched the P300 spatio-temporal distribution, further validating the proposed decoding approach. This study, by specifically addressing the aspects of lightweight design, transfer learning, and interpretability, can contribute to advance the development of deep learning algorithms for P300-based BCIs. (shrink)

This contribution sheds light on the role of infinite idealization in structural analysis, by exploring how infinite elements and finite element methods are combined in civil engineering models. This combination, I claim, should be read in terms of a ‘complementarity function’ through which the representational ideal of completeness is reached in engineering model-building. Taking a cue from Weisberg’s definition of multiple-model idealization, I highlight how infinite idealizations are primarily meant to contribute to the prediction of structural behavior in Multiphysics approaches.

Gender-based differences in body image dissatisfaction are not conclusive. Women’s body experiences and their impact on sexual satisfaction may advance knowledge on how heterosexual, bisexual, and lesbian women internalize heterosexist values. In this study, we quantitatively examined the degree of body image and sexual dissatisfaction experienced by heterosexual, bisexual, and lesbian women, to determine whether body dissatisfaction can predict sexual dissatisfaction. Three hundred and fifty-four women completed an online survey measuring body and sexual dissatisfaction. No sexual orientation-based differences were observed (...) in body or sexual dissatisfaction; however, body concerns were found to have less influence on sexual dissatisfaction in lesbian women compared to heterosexual and bisexual women. Standards of beauty remain constant among all women, yet removing themselves from the male gaze may be interpreted as a protective factor which shields women from expressing concern about their appearance during sexual activity. (shrink)

1. Transmodernity, in the words of Irena Ateljevic, is “an umbrella term that connotes the emerging socio-cultural, economic, political and philosophical shift” which we are experiencing in the era...

This book on the Tripurārahasya, a South Indian Sanskrit work which occupies a unique place in the Śākta literature, is a study of the Śrīvidyā and Śākta traditions in the context of South Indian intellectual history in the late middle ages. Associated with the religious tradition known as Śrīvidyā and devoted to the cult of the Goddess Tripurā, the text was probably composed between the 13th and the 16th century CE. The analysis of its narrative parts addresses questions about the (...) relationships between Tantric and Purāṇic goddesses. The discussion of its philosophical and theological teachings tackles problems related to the relationships between Sākta and Śaiva traditions. The stylistic devices adopted by the author(s) of the work deal uniquely with doctrinal and ritual elements of the Śrīvidyā through the medium of a literary and poetic language. This stylistic peculiarity distinguishes the Tripurārahasya from many other Tantric texts, characterized by a more technical language. The book is intended for researchers in the field of Asian Studies, Indology, Philosophical, Theological or Religious Studies, Hindu Studies, Tantric Studies and South Asian Religion and Philosophy, in particular those interested in Śākta and Śaiva philosophic-religious traditions. (shrink)

Sobre la base del carácter no cognitivo de los juicios estéticos Matías Oroño plantea una alternativa para mediar el debate entre conceptualismo y no conceptualismo. El autor se propone mostrar que, si bien los juicios de gusto no son juicios de conocimiento, sin embargo, aclaran aspectos relevantes de la teoría kantiana del conocimiento. Para ello, discute algunos tópicos de la interpretación de Heidemann. Consideraremos tres problemas: el carácter no cognitivo de los juicios estéticos; el significado del predicado bello y, finalmente, (...) atenderemos a la propuesta de solución, a saber, la “referencia de los juicios estéticos al “conocimiento en general”. (shrink)

There have been major developments in the understanding of children’s nonhuman concepts, particularly God concepts, within the past two decades, with a body of cross-cultural studies accumulating. Relatively less research has studied those of non-Christian faiths or children’s concepts of popular occult characters. This paper describes two studies, one in Spain and one in England, examining 5- to 10-year-olds’ human and nonhuman agent beliefs. Both settings were secular, but the latter comprised a Muslim majority. Children were given a false-belief task (...) in which they were asked to infer about three humans, three animals and three supernatural beings. Similar false beliefs about humans, with subtle differences in inferences about animals and supernatural beings, were found between the two locations. In London different patterns for God between participants with a family religion, in particular Muslims, and non-affiliates, were identified as well as an association between religious beliefs and practice and inferences about God. Findings are discussed in the light of theory and research on the role of sociocultural inputs in children’s theory of mind development and understanding of agency. (shrink)

Body expression and dance are activities that contribute to the integral well-being of people. In an educational context, the process of evaluating our students implies variations in their moods. This study tackles the states of mind that students perceive before and after the evaluation of a practice in the subject ofBody expression and dance, developed through choreographies, that were, previously rehearsed, and later presented to the rest of the class in a specific session. Our main interest was the obtention of (...) information on the states of mind of the students prior to the evaluation of their choreographies, and again once they had been performed. The study design consisted of two phases: two different choreographies separated by an interval of 2 months. The students were asked about their moods before and after performing their choreographies, which were evaluated. The participants, 167 in total, 35 women and 132 men, aged 18 to 22 years old, filled out a POMS questionnaire, before and after the evaluation of each occasion. Differences were found in the stress-anxiety, vigor-activity, fatigue-immobility scales and the total mood score. In all of them, except for the fatigue-immobility scale, we found a decrease in scores after the performance, compared to scores before. For the Stress-Anxiety factor, lower values were observed in the post-tests in comparison to the pre-tests, and also lower values in the pre- and post-test scores regarding the second choreography. We conclude that the practical evaluation of the subject through choreography modifies the mood states of the students, favoring their well-being after its execution, which is why evaluation through practice is considered a positive element in the educational process. (shrink)

Background: Psychological abuse of older people is difficult to recognise; specifically, nursing home residents have been documented to be at higher risk of psychological abuse during daily care, such as during feeding. Healthcare professionals adopt positive and negative verbal prompts to maintain residents’ eating independence; however, negative prompts’ purposes and implications have never been discussed to date. Research aims: To critically analyse negative verbal prompts given during mealtimes as forms of abuse of older individuals and violation of ethical principles. Research (...) design: This is a secondary analysis of three cases of negative prompts that emerged in a large descriptive study based upon focus group methodology and involving 13 nursing homes and 54 healthcare professionals. Participants and research context: This study included 3 out of 13 nursing homes caring for residents with moderate/severe functional dependence in self-feeding mainly due to dementia; in these nursing homes, we conducted three focus groups and 13 healthcare professionals participated. Ethical considerations: This study was conducted in accordance with the Human Subject Research Ethics Committee guidelines after being approved by the Review Board of the Trust. Findings: With the intent of maintaining self-feeding independence, negative verbal prompts have been reported as being used by nursing home teams. By critically analysing these negative prompts, it turned out they could trigger intimidation, depression and anxiety and thus could be considered as forms of abuse; moreover, negative prompts can threaten the ethical principles of (1) autonomy using a paternalist approach, (2) beneficence and non-maleficence as with the intent to act in the best interests of residents (to maintain self-feeding independence) they are harmed in their dignity and (3) justice, given that residents who received negative prompts are treated differently from those who received positive prompts. Discussion: Eating should be a pleasant experience with a positive impact on physiological, psychological and social well-being. However, negative prompting can lead to abuse and violation of basic ethical principles, destroying the healthcare professional resident and relative relationships strongly dependent on trust. Conclusion: Negative verbal prompting must be avoided. (shrink)

En revendiquant le rôle méthodologique fondateur de la philosophie, dans ce célèbre Discours de 1894, très cité dans le cadre du « Débat sur l'historicisme », Windelband procède à une remise en perspective des théories de la connaissance en place à son époque. En polémiquant tout à la fois avec les philosophies positivistes et avec Dilthey, en critiquant notamment l'opposition établie par celui-ci entre Sciences de l'Esprit et Sciences de la Nature, Windelband défend ici l'idée que les sciences contemporaines demandent (...) à être différenciées non pas sur la base de leur objet spécifique (l'esprit ou la nature), mais de leur méthode d'approche des objets, méthode qui varie selon qu'elle soit généralisante (ou nomothétique) ou singularisante (ou idiographique). In his famous Address of 1894 — often cited within the contextual framework of the so-called « Debate on historicism » —, Windelband asserts the methodological and founding role of philosophy. He sets about putting into perspective the theories of knowledge that were current at the time. In arguing with both the positivistic philosophies and Dilthey, notably in criticizing the opposition brought about by the latter between « Sciences of the Mind » and « Sciences of Nature », Windelband champions here the idea that contemporary sciences have to be differentiated not on the basis of their specific object (mind, or nature), but on the basis of their method of approach of these objects — a method that varies, depending on whether it is totalizing (or nomothetic) or singularizing (or ideographic). (shrink)

El planteo que pretendo desarrollar en el presente trabajo surge de la reflexión sobre mi práctica docente en la cátedra de 'Introducción a la Filosofía' de la Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata, en la que me desempeño impartiendo clases teóricas desde el año 2003 a la fecha. Los destinatarios de las mismas son, principalmente, alumnos de la carrera de Psicología, en sus variantes de licenciatura y/o profesorado, de la Facultad de (...) Psicología de la UNLP. Las principales características de la materia son el abultado número de alumnos que la cursan, su organización cuatrimestral, y, como es obvio, su ubicación inicial en la carrera; su acreditación depende de la aprobación de un examen parcial escrito, en las clases de trabajos prácticos, y de la aprobación de un examen final, de modalidad oral. (shrink)

The issue of whether the writings of Thomas Aquinas show internal contradictions has not only stirred readers from his earliest, often critical, reception, but also led to the emergence of a literary genre that has crucial relevance to the history of medieval Thomism. Concordances were drawn up which listed Thomas' contradictory statements and, in most cases, tried to disguise the appearance of contradiction by exegesis. But what was at stake in this interpretive endeavor? What role did the concordances play in (...) shaping Thomism? What tensions did they reveal in the works of Thomas? The book aims to investigate these questions and puts the concordance of Peter of Bergamo (1482), which represents the most important example of this type of text, at the center of the investigation. Contributors are Marieke Abram, Kent Emery, Jr., Maarten J.F.M. Hoenen, Isabel Iribarren, Thomas Jeschke, Catherine König-Pralong, Mario Meliadò, Silvia Negri, Zornitsa Radeva, and Peter Walter. (shrink)

In the spring of 1784 the Marquis of Puységur, a great landowner and colonel in an artillery regiment, was called to the bedside of Victor, the son of his steward, who was suffering from pneumonia. Puységur was a follower of the new holistic medicine taught in an atmosphere of intense enthusiasm and scandal by Franz-Anton Mesmer, an Austrian doctor who had been living in Paris for several years. As a disciple of Mesmer, he intended to direct his ‘vital fluid’ onto (...) the young patient, by means of ‘magnetic passes’, to provoke ‘spasms’ which would lead to a calm state and an improvement in health. But things did not go as anticipated. Instead of displaying the anticipated spasms, the young Victor sank into a strange state of unconsciousness which, at first sight, resembled a deep sleep. Then he revived once more and came to life with a new personality. Freed from his inhibitions, he no longer spoke his habitual dialect, but the French of aristocrats, and he had no hesitation in berating his school teacher, whose secret thoughts he appeared to be able to read. Finally, he forecast the stages by which he would be cured and the remedies which would be suitable for him. Puységur wrote down all these strange facts and the following year he published a report which caused a sensation. Soon, throughout France, somnambulists appeared and observations about their subjects gathered. From that time onwards, the incomprehensible facts apparently evident in ‘provoked’ or ‘artificial somnambulism’ and also in ‘magnetic sleep’ - such expressions were used by Puységur and his followers for the state that he had just discovered - were to give rise to huge controversy. The Marquis of Puységur triggered the development nineteenth century of a movement of reflections and practices which have generally been referred to by the expression ‘animal magnetism’, invented by Mesmer. On the eve of the Revolution and throughout the nineteenth century this movement held a real fascination for philosophers, writers, and scholars. But there has been a tendency to overlook this episode in European culture, which has ultimately become a “lost continent” in our own period. (shrink)

‘What is important is to understand that every fact is already a theory. The blue of the sky already demonstrates the fundamental laws of chromatics. We should not look for anything behind these phenomena; they themselves are the theory’ Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen, n. 575Because of the density of the aphorism, the quotation above implies more than the words seem to say explicitly. It refers to an apprehension of reality in a poetic and conceptual mode, a vision of the world (...) and humanity opposed to the mechanistic one that emerged from eighteenth century rationalism. Indeed Goethe is a milestone in the history of the themes inherited from ancient traditions and the Renaissance that have in common the project of integrating ‘the science of humankind, the science of nature and a study of the destiny of humanity through the adventure of existence’. (shrink)