International business enterprises face a number of ethical issues when conducting business in unfamiliar parts of the world, especially in places wherecorruption is deeply rooted. This is the situation in Latin America - a highly heterogeneous region characterized by cultural complexity, inconsistencies, andcontradictions at multiple levels of society, with implications for business ethics that are potentially as troubling to outsiders as they are opaque.We briefly indicate the relevant academic literature on this subject, noting that studies of business ethics in Latin (...) America are surprisingly sparse, fragmented, and uneven in comparison with the abundance of published research on business ethics and values in other world regions. Given the importance of Latin American markets, production capacity, raw materials, and economic growth, we identify this situation as a challenge and opportunity for business ethics researchers. Examination of these issues contributes new information and insight into the realities of doing business in emerging market countries and is critical on a theoretical as well as a practical level. (shrink)

This paper describes a novel diagramming technique that we have found useful for highlighting differences in the work values of countries located within a single cultural region, followed by a brief demonstration of its application to countries in two regions (Latin America and the Mediterranean) with regard to managing corruption. We also indicate a few of the various ways that this technique can be used, such as to identify similarities between countries that are not in the same cultural region, yet (...) have one or more important cultural characteristics in common which set them apart from others in their respective regions.The paper directs attention to the practical and theoretical significance of intra-regional cultural differences that may be taken for granted by insiders to the region, while being overlooked by others. We hope that the introduction of this diagramming technique will stimulate further conceptual and empirical exploration of the potential significance of intra-regional cultural differences for international business ethics, as a preliminary step towards development and delivery of organizational interventions to manage the ethical frictions generated by critical differences in beliefs, attitudes, norms and values internationally. (shrink)

En el estudio que aquí se presenta se analiza hasta qué punto se puede llegar a una situación democrática estable, siguiendo los planteamientos del Cesarismo Democrático de Laureano Valenilla Lanz, que para conseguir los objetivos utilitaristas señalados por Simón Bolívar en su Manifiesto de Cartagena, intentó construir un sistema autoritario de gobierno. En contra de los razonamientos expresados por el autor venezolano, y desde una óptica más actual, hablar de democracia no supone quedarse en la mera constatación de las realidades (...) concretas, sino hacerlo desde una perspectiva de deber ser. Aceptar los hechos tal y como son, tiene como consecuencia teórica la ausencia de criterio demarcador que oriente la política concreta y, cómo no, la labor intelectual. Entre los objetivos de estas páginas resaltan dos: la democracia se refuerza con un mayor grado de democracia; y que la lucha por las condiciones económicas, sociales o laborales, no puede ser desgajada de la pugna política por conseguir cada vez mayores espacios democráticos, tanto en la sociedad como en el Estado. (shrink)

IntroductionCardiology is characterized by its state-of-the-art biomedical technology and the predominance of Evidence-Based Medicine. This predominance makes it difficult for healthcare professionals to deal with the ethical dilemmas that emerge in this subspecialty. This paper is a first endeavor to empirically investigate the axiological foundations of the healthcare professionals in a cardiology hospital. Our pilot study selected, as the target population, cardiology personnel not only because of their difficult ethical deliberations but also because of the stringent conditions in which they (...) have to make them. Therefore, there is an urgent need to reconsider clinical ethics and Value-Based Medicine. This study proposes a qualitative analysis of the values and the virtues of healthcare professionals in a cardiology hospital in order to establish how the former impact upon the medical and ethical decisions made by the latter.ResultsWe point out the need for strengthening the roles of healthcare personnel as educators and guidance counselors in order to meet the ends of medicine, as well as the need for an ethical discernment that is compatible with our results, namely, that the ethical values developed by healthcare professionals stem from their life history as well as their professional education.ConclusionWe establish the kind of actions, communication skills and empathy that are required to build a stronger patient-healthcare professional relationship, which at the same time improves prognosis, treatment efficiency and therapeutic adhesion. (shrink)

Cardiology is characterized by its state-of-the-art biomedical technology and the predominance of Evidence-Based Medicine. This predominance makes it difficult for healthcare professionals to deal with the ethical dilemmas that emerge in this subspecialty. This paper is a first endeavor to empirically investigate the axiological foundations of the healthcare professionals in a cardiology hospital. Our pilot study selected, as the target population, cardiology personnel not only because of their difficult ethical deliberations but also because of the stringent conditions in which they (...) have to make them. Therefore, there is an urgent need to reconsider clinical ethics and Value-Based Medicine. This study proposes a qualitative analysis of the values and the virtues of healthcare professionals in a cardiology hospital in order to establish how the former impact upon the medical and ethical decisions made by the latter. (shrink)

IntroductionCardiology is characterized by its state-of-the-art biomedical technology and the predominance of Evidence-Based Medicine. This predominance makes it difficult for healthcare professionals to deal with the ethical dilemmas that emerge in this subspecialty. This paper is a first endeavor to empirically investigate the axiological foundations of the healthcare professionals in a cardiology hospital. Our pilot study selected, as the target population, cardiology personnel not only because of their difficult ethical deliberations but also because of the stringent conditions in which they (...) have to make them. Therefore, there is an urgent need to reconsider clinical ethics and Value-Based Medicine. This study proposes a qualitative analysis of the values and the virtues of healthcare professionals in a cardiology hospital in order to establish how the former impact upon the medical and ethical decisions made by the latter.ResultsWe point out the need for strengthening the roles of healthcare personnel as educators and guidance counselors in order to meet the ends of medicine, as well as the need for an ethical discernment that is compatible with our results, namely, that the ethical values developed by healthcare professionals stem from their life history as well as their professional education.ConclusionWe establish the kind of actions, communication skills and empathy that are required to build a stronger patient-healthcare professional relationship, which at the same time improves prognosis, treatment efficiency and therapeutic adhesion. (shrink)

Las tres novelas escogidas responden a la decadencia económica de Valparaíso a mediados del siglo XX al representar el espacio y la sociedad, así como los afectos predominantes: Valparaíso, puerto de nostalgia de Salvador Reyes, se sitúa en el Plan de la ciudad y fluctúa entre la idealización nostálgica de la burguesía inglesa y la bohemia del presente; Hijo de ladrón de Manuel Rojas y El mundo herido de Armando Méndez Carrasco, privilegian, en cambio, el espacio de los cerros y (...) transitan hacia un período de duelo frente al tiempo perdido, actualizando, respectivamente, los valores ilustrados y la comunidad tradicional. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that there are epistemic norms on evidence-gathering and consider consequences for how to understand epistemic normativity. Though the view that there are such norms seems intuitive, it has found surprisingly little defense. Rather, many philosophers have argued that norms on evidence-gathering can only be practical or moral. On a prominent evidentialist version of this position, epistemic norms only apply to responding to the evidence one already has. Here we challenge the orthodoxy. First, we argue that (...) there is no significant normative difference between responding to evidence you have and gathering more evidence. Second, we argue that our practices of epistemically criticizing agents for their poor evidence-gathering indicate the existence of epistemic norms on evidence-gathering. Finally, we show that our thesis has important implications for recent debates about the relationship between epistemic norms and inquiry. (shrink)

The importance of fairness in machine learning models is widely acknowledged, and ongoing academic debate revolves around how to determine the appropriate fairness definition, and how to tackle the trade-off between fairness and model performance. In this paper we argue that besides these concerns, there can be ethical implications behind seemingly purely technical choices in fairness interventions in a typical model development pipeline. As an example we show that the technical choice between in-processing and post-processing is not necessarily value-free and (...) may have serious implications in terms of who will be affected by the specific fairness intervention. The paper reveals how assessing the technical choices in terms of their ethical consequences can contribute to the design of fair models and to the related societal discussions. (shrink)

En el escenario actual de Cuba y el mundo la migración al software libre constituye una necesidad para el desarrollo para garantizar la independencia tecnológica. Los procedimientos para realizar dicho proceso son fundamentales en la estrategia definida por el país que incluye la "Guía cubana de migración al software libre", sin embargo, su aplicación práctica enfrenta dificultades que han motivado a los autores a la elaboración de una estrategia específica para la migración al software libre en el sector de la (...) Salud Pública de la provincia de Camagüey, Cuba. En esta estrategia se proponen las acciones concretas, los programas docentes que permitirán la recalificación del capital humano y las acciones que posibiliten garantizar la sostenibilidad de la migración al concluir el proceso. In the present Cuban and world scenarios the migration to free software constitutes a need for the development to guarantee technological independence. The procedures to carry out that process are vital in the strategy defined by the country that includes “Cuban guidelines for the migration to free software” however its practical implementation is facing difficulties that have motivated the authors to elaborate a specific strategy form the migration to free software in the Public health sector in the province of Camagüey, Cuba. In this strategy actions are suggested, like teaching programs that will allow the recertification of the capital human resources and steps that will make possible to guarantee the sustainability of the migration at the end of the process. (shrink)

Drawing from ethnographic research in the Research Triangle of North Carolina and Williamsburg, Virginia, the authors build on Anzaldúa's conceptualization of “borderlands” to analyze how borders of social membership are constructed and enforced in “el Nuevo South.” Our gender analysis reveals that intersecting structural conditions—the labor market, the organization of public space, and the institutional organization of health care and other public services—combine with gendered processes in the home and family to regulate women's participation in community life. Enforcers of borders (...) include institutional actors, mostly women, in social services and clinics who occupy institutional locations that enable them to define who is entitled to public goods and to categorize migrants as undeserving “others.” We reveal how a particularly configured matrix of domination transcends the spheres of home, work, and community to constrain women migrants' physical and economic mobility and personal autonomy and to inhibit their participation in their societies of reception. (shrink)

This is an existential-phenomenological reading of Max Weber's "Class, Status, Party" that seeks a fuller understanding of meaning accomplishment in a stratified World. I appropriate stratification as a single meaning structure ontically defined by domination, intersubjectivity, and life-chances and ontologically determined by the power-to-be, There-being-with-others, and potentiality. I then discuss the significance of these structures in finite transcendence and describe ways they factually unfold in World achievement. I conclude with logotherapeutic reflections concerning meaning accomplishment in a stratified World and a (...) summary of key questions facing existential-phenomenology in light of the likelihood that There-being must embrace, indeed, live, the inherent equality of Being among Daseins to accomplish its authenticity. (shrink)

This research was carried out in a classroom of the center of comprehensive family development in the municipality of Durango, Mexico. The center trains young people in making crafts. From these young people, 13 teenage mothers ages 15-23, all victims of abuse as children, were selected. With this group, we implemented the philosophical-pedagogical proposal called "Philosophy for children and teenagers," first developed by the American philosopher Matthew Lipman. The main goal was to form a "community of inquiry," where through philosophical (...) dialogue the participants developed cognitive skills, allowing them to share, in an ethical and moral dialogue, their life experiences within a democratic setting. The results were demonstrated through the disclosures made by the participants during the philosophical dialogues, We also recorded the cognitive abilities detected over 20 sessions. We contrast the results with the theories to demonstrate the participants’ cognitive changes. We also observed unexpected findings in other academic fields that facilitate ethical and moral thinking. (shrink)

This paper offers a particular intuitionistic negation completion of Urquhart's system C resulting in a super-intuitionistic contractionless propositional logic equivalent to Dummett's LC without contraction.

In a time of globalization, Political Philosophy for the Global Age provides a theoretical basis for the convergence of human values in terms of legitimate conceptions of time, language, and notions of self. Sánchez Flores reviews what she considers to be the most important positions in the current debate on political theory (liberalism, communitarianism, feminism, and postcolonialism) and also proposes her own original contribution. Sánchez Flores’s unique approach is a critique of a type of morality formulated solely on (...) the basis of the Judeo-Christian view of reality. It is a theoretical construct that becomes an invitation to explore other notions of human morality and an inquiry into the need to produce a political philosophy that universalizes an ethics of caring and responsibility as well as provides a locus where diverse human cultures can meet. (shrink)

Resumen Es muy conocida la opinión de Kant en relación con la inmoralidad del suicidio. De ahí que, muchos autores lo consideren como un prohibicionista absoluto. Sin embargo, no hay hasta el momento un análisis puntual sobre la definición metafísica-conceptual del suicidio en la teoría kantiana. En este artículo propongo entender el suicidio en Kant como una muerte física, total, autorreferencial, voluntaria e inmoral. Esta definición contrastará con la privación de la vida, la cual no implica inmoralidad. Al ser voluntarios, (...) tanto la privación de la vida, como el suicidio son actos racionales y entendibles a partir de las máximas de acción. La inmoralidad del suicidio sólo surgirá al considerar la primacía de las razones morales por encima de razones no morales.It is common knowledge theposition of Kant regarding the immorality of suicide. Several authors attribute him an absolutist-forbidden criterion. Nerveless, there is no extended analysis about the metaphysical-conceptual definition of suicide in Kantian theory. In this paper I hold that suicide in Kant can be defined asphysical death, full, self-referential, voluntary, and immoral. This definition conflicts with the definition of deprivation of life which is not immoral. As voluntarily acts, both suicide and deprivation of life are rational acts that can be understood as maxims of action. The immorality property of suicide is due to the primacy of moral over non-moral reasons. (shrink)

In the wake of corporate ethical scandals that have harmed millions of employees and investors, there has been an increase in the number of works written in the last decade, which aim to answer one apparently simple question: what causes unethical behavior, and what can we do, if anything, to prevent similar transgressions in the future? The extensive research around this question is the best proof of its real complexity as the challenge of disentangling the background of ethical behavior has (...) obvious academic and practical interest. This study aims to take a further step toward that goal. Much research has noted the impact of multiple aspects of organizational contexts on individuals’ ethical behavior. However, studies that analyze the impact of organizational learning capability (OLC) on employees’ ethical behavior are few and far between. This was the first aim of this study. The second centered on gaining a deeper understanding of the relationship between OLC and ethical behavior by analyzing the mediating role of employability and organizational commitment. We tested our hypotheses through a structural equation methodology applied to a sample of 641 workers from 166 Spanish consultancy firms and found a positive, direct relationship between OLC and employability, OLC and organizational commitment, employability and organizational commitment, and organizational commitment and ethical behavior. (shrink)

Understanding Computers and Cognition presents an important and controversial new approach to understanding what computers do and how their functioning is related to human language, thought, and action. While it is a book about computers, Understanding Computers and Cognition goes beyond the specific issues of what computers can or can't do. It is a broad-ranging discussion exploring the background of understanding in which the discourse about computers and technology takes place. Understanding Computers and Cognition is written for a wide audience, (...) not just those professionals involved in computer design or artificial intelligence. It represents an important contribution to the ongoing discussion about what it means to be a machine, and what it means to be human. Book jacket. (shrink)

In this article, I offer a methodological analysis of the empirical research on the causal effects of trade liberalisation, and assess whether such studies can be of any use for guiding policy prescriptions in real-world economies. The analysis focuses on the mainstream economic research that has been used to support arguments in favour of trade liberalisation during the last decades. Even though there are empirical results that could be taken as valid evidence for a causal connection between free trade and (...) economic gains, none of the existing evidence licences trustworthy inferences about the policy effectiveness of trade liberalisation reforms in real-world cases. There are three aspects of the empirical literature that make it highly problematic for making reliable policy inferences: (a) the criteria used to define the notion of ‘free trade’, (b) the background assumptions embedded in the econometric techniques used for estimating causal effects, and (c) the widespread desire among academic economists to attain scientific results in terms of universally valid generalisations. The analysis exposes a worrisome mismatch between, on the one hand, the research aims and outcomes of scientific economics and, on the other, the kind of evidence that would be useful for guiding actual policy deliberations. (shrink)

This paper reports the policy-responses of different Philippine higher education institutions (HEIs) to the novel coronavirus, COVD-19 pandemic. It compares these responses with those made by HEIs in Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Publicly available data and news reports were used to gauge the general public’s reaction to these policies and how the Philippines’ responses fare with its Southeast Asian neighbors. The paper observes that despite the innovations made by Philippine HEIs in terms of alternative learning modes and technologies for delivering (...) education, there are still gaps and challenges in their responses. It recommends that policy-responses and learning innovations should be grounded on a deeper understanding of distance education and should be sensitive to the call of the times. (shrink)

The knowledge extraction from data with noise or outliers is a complex problem in the data mining area. Normally, it is not easy to eliminate those problematic instances. To obtain information from this type of data, robust classifiers are the best option to use. One of them is the application of bagging scheme on weak single classifiers. The Credal C4.5 model is a new classification tree procedure based on the classical C4.5 algorithm and imprecise probabilities. It represents a type of (...) the so-calledcredal trees. It has been proven that CC4.5 is more robust to noise than C4.5 method and even than other previous credal tree models. In this paper, the performance of the CC4.5 model in bagging schemes on noisy domains is shown. An experimental study on data sets with added noise is carried out in order to compare results where bagging schemes are applied on credal trees and C4.5 procedure. As a benchmark point, the known Random Forest classification method is also used. It will be shown that the bagging ensemble using pruned credal trees outperforms the successful bagging C4.5 and RF when data sets with medium-to-high noise level are classified. (shrink)

Esta investigación se realizó con el objetivo de evaluar el impacto de la pandemia en las expectativas y oportunidades de los jóvenes en la zona metropolitana del Valle de México para seguir estudiando en un contexto de pobreza marcado por la incertidumbre de la COVID-19. El estudio se llevó a cabo con metodología cuantitativa, con alcance descriptivo y correlacional a partir de la definición de tres variables independientes: 1) rango de edad, 2) nivel de estudios, 3) su condición de estudiante; (...) y dos variables dependientes: 1) razón que motiva a los jóvenes a capacitarse; 2) tipo de discriminación. El diseño y análisis fueron trabajados desde teorías sobre pobreza, representaciones sociales y el estado del arte sobre comunicación del COVID-19. Las conclusiones revelan que los jóvenes encuestados encuentran una motivación para aprender en correlación con una mayor preparación; los que poseen estudios universitarios su motivación se centra en mejorar su calidad de vida; mientras que para los de menor nivel de estudios todos los motivos tienen la misma ponderación. En general, las principales motivaciones para aprender se encuentran en el ámbito de la familia, así como influir positivamente en otros. La necesidad de aprender como requisito, para obtener comida o un apoyo económico, y para cuidar de la comunidad, resultan tener la menor frecuencia de motivación, lo que demuestra que las políticas económicas implementadas por el Estado, no han generado las representaciones sociales y culturales suficientes para el progreso integral de las personas. (shrink)

El presente artículo presenta a un nuevo tipo de protagonista desarrollado en el manganime japonés:los héroes/heroínas nihilistamina. A diferencia del entusiasta héroe shōnen, los personajes de algunos de los títulos más populares del medio se sacrifican para la supervivencia de la humanidad pese a su visión nihilista del mundo, marcada por el trauma, la desafección institucional y los trastornos mentales. Mediante un análisis narratológico de sus funciones, apoyado en una presentación del contexto del humanitarismo en Japón,ofrecemos un punto de partida (...) para integrar este tipo de personajes en los estudios sobre la representación del humanitarismo en la ficción contemporánea. (shrink)

This text seeks to introduce a question related to the place that philosophy occupies within the contemporary scene, thus opening a problematization regarding whether it can respond to the demands imposed on it by the present. In this regard, we seek to rethink the notion of philosophy from a standpoint that rescues its practical, material, and affective dimensions, making visible the transformative impulse that it can have with respect to the usual meanings associated with disciplinary production linked to the traditional (...) division between theory and practice, thus opening it to a dimension that recognizes the implicating (creative, interventional) role that philosophy has in the production of reality. (shrink)

La materia de este estudio, es la misma que preocupo a la humanidad desde sus albores, siendo abordada por grandes pensadores que van desde Aristoteles hasta Teilhard de Chardin. El presente ensayo propone una solucion cientifica a la coexistencia del libre albedrio humano inmerso en un mundo donde las leyes que rigen la causa-efecto no dejan margen al fenomeno de libertad. Como consecuencia primordial explica el mecanismo natural que sustenta la existencia de un alma inmortal y la existencia de un (...) creador. (shrink)

Structured time (hyle) and its relationship to other elements of physics: matter, energy, space, etc.