The northern Mexican Ralámuli people consider plants to be their kin. First‐ and secondhand ethnographies bring forth fundamental issues that convey the possibility of communicating with plants. For example, the notion of an interconnected world has to do with roots, with threads, and with thought or nátali (consciousness, remembrance, ancestral memory), all of which embrace the life path. This path also refers to that used by healers, who in their dreams and through their chants communicate with sacred plants. This article (...) also deepens the understanding of textiles—originally made from vegetal fibers and considering that in Ralámuli origin stories the Earth was woven—and their iconography, which also appears in healing contexts, to see if there is a relationship between specific motifs and the information that, via dreams and chants, the plants are delivering. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch was one of the best-known philosophers and novelists of the post-war period. In this book, Sabina Lovibond explores the tangled issue of Murdoch's stance towards gender and feminism, drawing upon the evidence of her fiction, philosophy, and other public statements. As well as analysing Murdoch's own attitudes, Iris Murdoch, Gender and Philosophy is also a critical enquiry into the way we picture intellectual, and especially philosophical, activity. Appealing to the idea of a 'social imaginary' within which Murdoch's (...) work is located, Lovibond examines the sense of incongruity or dissonance that may still affect our image of a woman philosopher, even where egalitarian views officially hold sway. The first thorough exploration of Murdoch and gender, Iris Murdoch, Gender and Philosophy is a fresh contribution to debates in feminist philosophy and gender studies, and essential reading for anyone interested in Murdoch's literary and philosophical writing. (shrink)

En el siglo XX se ha realizado un " punto de inflexión " en la filosofía, que ha sido conocido por muy pocos, que ha sido abandonado apenas entrevisto. Este libro es el intento de tomarlo en serio y ensayar una visión de los problemas morales que no lo pase por alto; dicho con otras palabras, que no sea arcaico.

L’article soutient l’hypothèse que, loin de récuser la question de l’obligation politique, Hegel présente cette notion à nouveaux frais en s’appuyant sur la notion de Gesinnung. À travers une lecture croisée dans les Principes de la philosophie du droit de l’introduction à l’éthicité et de certains paragraphes consacrés au droit étatique interne, l’article se penche sur les concepts de droiture et de patriotisme, ce dernier représentant la véritable disposition politique. Dans le sillage de l’interprétation institutionnaliste de Hegel, le propos de (...) cette étude est de mettre en relief les affinités entre la conception hégélienne et la théorie associative de l’obligation. (shrink)

This multilevel meta-analysis examines whether emotional intelligence can be enhanced through training and identifies training effects’ determinants. We identified 24 studies containing 28 samples aiming at increasing individual-level EI among healthy adults. The results revealed a significant moderate standardized mean change between pre- and post-measurement for the main effect of EI training, and a stable pre- to follow-up effect. Additionally, the type of EI model, dimensions of the four branch model, length, and type of publication turned out to be significant (...) moderators. The results suggest that EI trainings should be considered effective interventions. (shrink)

Sabina Alkire shows how Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen's capability approach can be coherently---and practically---put to work in poverty reduction activities so that the voices and values of the poor matter. This provides economists, philosophers, theologians, and development practitioners with a way forward that addresses both theoretical and practical challenges.

This paper is concerned with monumental art in Slovakia before and after the fall of Communism in 1989. Generally, art in public spaces is important, because it influences the knowledge and feelings the people who use this space have about the past and the present, and thus influences the shared social construction of who we are as a social group. In this article we concentrate on the period of Communism and the formal and iconographic aspects that were essential to art (...) at that time. We also look at the political use of art—the ways in which explicit and implicit meanings and ideas were communicated through art to the general public. We touch also on the present situation regarding the perception of “Communist art”. In the final section we discuss the state of affairs of the last twenty years of chaotic freedom in the post-socialist era. On the one hand, since there is no real cultural politics or conception for artworks in public spaces at the level of the state many artworks simply disappear, often without public discussion, and on the other hand, some actors use their political power to build monuments that promote their private political views. (shrink)

While increasing attention has been paid in recent years to the relation between Foucault’s conception of critique and Kant’s, much controversy remains over whether Foucault’s most sustained early engagement with Kant, his dissertation on Kant’s Anthropology, should be read as a wholesale rejection of Kant’s views or as the source of Foucault’s late return to ethics and critique. In this paper, I propose a new reading of the dissertation, considering it alongside 1950s-era archival materials of which I advance the first (...) scholarly appraisal. I argue that Foucault manifests a fundamental ambivalence to Kantian anthropology, rejecting it in theoretical terms while embracing its practical (‘pragmatic’) conception of the subject. Furthermore, I take these texts to collectively evidence Foucault’s attempt to situate himself within the anthropological-critical tradition rather than extricating himself from it. If we interpret Foucault to reject this tradition’s appeal to an essentialized, theoretical conception of subjectivity, what remains of anthropology is its inherent practical reflexivity in structure. Thus, I situate Foucault’s conception of ethics as one’s relation to oneself in continuity with this tradition. (shrink)

Ten countries have established quotas for female representation on publicly traded corporate and/or state-owned enterprise boards of directors, ranging from 33 to 50 %, with various sanctions. Fifteen other countries have introduced non-binding gender quotas in their corporate governance codes enforcing a “comply or explain” principle. Countless other countries’ leaders and policy groups are in the process of debating, developing, and approving legislation around gender quotas in boards. Taken together, gender quota legislation significantly impacts the composition of boards of directors (...) and thus the strategic direction of these publicly traded and state-owned enterprises. This article outlines an integrated model of three institutional factors that explain the establishment of board of directors gender quota legislation based on the premise that the country’s institutional environment co-evolves with gender corporate policies. We argue that these three key institutional factors are female labor market and gendered welfare state provisions, left-leaning political government coalitions, and path-dependent policy initiatives for gender equality, both in the public realm as well as in the corporate domain. We discuss implications of our conceptual model and empirical findings for theory, practice, policy, and future research. These include the adoption and penalty design of board diversity practices into corporate practices, bottom-up approaches from firm to country-level gender board initiatives, hard versus soft regulation, the leading role of Norway and its isomorphic effects, the likelihood of engaging in decoupling, the role of business leaders, and the transnational and international reaction to board diversity initiatives. (shrink)

This paper claims that Kant’s conception of culture provides a new means of understanding how the two parts of the Critique of Judgment fit together. Kant claims that culture is both the ‘ultimate purpose’ of nature and to be defined in terms of ‘art in general’ (of which the fine arts are a subtype). In the Critique of Teleological Judgment, culture, as the last empirically cognizable telos of nature, serves as the mediating link between nature and freedom, while in the (...) Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, the connection between art and morality passes through culture. In either case, Kant offers distinct, yet interdependent, arguments for how culture demonstrates the amenability of nature to its supersensible ground: the central question Kant claims in the Introduction that the work seeks to answer. Thus, not only does this account advance a concept essential to both parts of the work; it also demonstrates how the two parts can be conceived as complementary, with each supplementing the other to solve Kant’s central question. As such, understanding the Critique of Judgment in terms of culture enables us to see how the two parts of the work do not merely share points of similarity or common themes, but presuppose one another in order to understand how nature is amenable to freedom. (shrink)

This Editorial introduces the thematic series on 'Toward a New Psychiatry: Philosophical and Ethical Issues in Classification, Diagnosis and Care' http://www.biomedcentral.com/series/newpsychiatry.

An influential strand in philosophy of science claims that scientific paradigms can be understood as relativized a priori frameworks. Here, Kant’s constitutive a priori principles are no longer held to establish conditions of possibility for knowledge which are unchanging and universally true, but are restricted only to a given scientific domain. Yet it is unclear how exactly a relativized a priori can be construed as both stable and dynamical, establishing foundations for current scientific claims while simultaneously making intelligible the transition (...) to a subsequent framework. In this article, I show that important resources for this problem have been overlooked in Kant’s theory of reflective judgement in the third Critique. I argue that Kant accorded the task of formulating new scientific laws to reflective judgement, which is charged with forming new ‘universals’ that guide the experience of nature. I show that this is the very task attributed to the relativized a priori: the constitution of a given conceptual framework, not of the conditions for object-reference as such. I conclude that Kant’s considered conception of science encompasses the operations of both reflective and determining judgement. Relativizations of the a priori should follow Kant’s lead. (shrink)

Il contributo propone alcune riflessioni maturate nel cantiere di ricerca per l’Atlante linguistico ed etnografico del Piemonte occidentale (ALEPO), lavorando dunque prima alla raccolta, poi all’elaborazione di un corpus di dati complesso e imponente, destinato a un oggetto scientifico peculiare qual è un atlante. Alla luce delle prime pubblicazioni dell’ALEPO è possibile tentare un bilancio delle scelte che hanno guidato la ricerca e iniziare a leggerne i risultati. Per quanto riguarda le prospettive di sviluppo nel trattamento e nella presentazione dei (...) dati, tra le più importanti quelle che riguardano gli etnotesti, componente importante e peculiare del corpus di materiali raccolti per l’ALEPO, che va ancora pienamente valorizzata per metterne in luce i significati etnolinguistici, sociolinguistici e testuali. (shrink)

We propose an account of the subject’s cognition that allows for a full articulation of the phenomenon of ideology. We argue that ideology operates at the level of the a priori: it transcendentally conditions the intelligibility of thought and practice. But we draw from strands of post-Kantian philosophy of science and social philosophy in repudiating Kant’s view that the a priori is necessary and fixed. Instead, we argue, it is contingent, and therefore revisable. More precisely, it is conditioned materially: it (...) must be understood as an activity, continuous with and shaped by material social practice. We conclude with some remarks about the possibility of agency over one’s relativized, materially conditioned a priori; that is, over the possibility of critique. (shrink)

This groundbreaking, open access volume analyses and compares data practices across several fields through the analysis of specific cases of data journeys. It brings together leading scholars in the philosophy, history and social studies of science to achieve two goals: tracking the travel of data across different spaces, times and domains of research practice; and documenting how such journeys affect the use of data as evidence and the knowledge being produced. The volume captures the opportunities, challenges and concerns involved in (...) making data move from the sites in which they are originally produced to sites where they can be integrated with other data, analysed and re-used for a variety of purposes. The in-depth study of data journeys provides the necessary ground to examine disciplinary, geographical and historical differences and similarities in data management, processing and interpretation, thus identifying the key conditions of possibility for the widespread data sharing associated with Big and Open Data. The chapters are ordered in sections that broadly correspond to different stages of the journeys of data, from their generation to the legitimisation of their use for specific purposes. Additionally, the preface to the volume provides a variety of alternative “roadmaps” aimed to serve the different interests and entry points of readers; and the introduction provides a substantive overview of what data journeys can teach about the methods and epistemology of research. (shrink)

Increases in international travel and migratory flows have enabled infectious diseases to emerge and spread more rapidly than ever before. Hence, it is increasingly easy for local infectious diseases to become global infectious diseases (GIDs). National governments must be able to react quickly and effectively to GIDs, whether naturally occurring or intentionally instigated by bioterrorism. According to the World Health Organisation, global partnerships are necessary to gather the most up-to-date information and to mobilize resources to tackle GIDs when necessary. Communicable (...) disease control also depends upon national public health laws and policies. The containment of an infectious disease typically involves detection, notification, quarantine and isolation of actual or suspected cases; the protection and monitoring of those not infected; and possibly even treatment. Some measures are clearly contentious and raise conflicts between individual and societal interests. In Europe national policies against infectious diseases are very heterogeneous. Some countries have a more communitarian approach to public health ethics, in which the interests of individual and society are more closely intertwined and interdependent, while others take a more liberal approach and give priority to individual freedoms in communicable disease control. This paper provides an overview of the different policies around communicable disease control that exist across a select number of countries across Europe. It then proposes ethical arguments to be considered in the making of public health laws, mostly concerning their effectiveness for public health protection. (shrink)

Inmersos en un ambiente sociocultural impregnado por la increencia, el creyente se encuentra hoy fuertemente confrontado: convocado para anunciar a Dios a sus contemporáneos, y a un tiempo persistentemente rechazado por ello. De ahí que sea una urgencia reflexionar sobre cuáles son las claves antropológicas del hombre contemporáneo que le han conducido a tal cerrazón en su estructura íntima hasta instalarlo en la increencia. El presente artículo aborda no sólo en el por qué el anuncio cristiano no interesa al hombre (...) contemporáneo, sino, más radicalmente, por qué Dios ha dejado de ser significativo al hombre. Y también algunas consideraciones desde donde proponer la fe hoy, alcanzar nuevos caminos para el anuncio del Evangelio. (shrink)

Si bien la obra de Joseph Ratzinger es rica en interpolaciones sobre la esperanza, carece sin embargo de una presentación sistemática. La presente investigación, recogiendo todo el corpus ratzingeriano, pretende ofrecer una sistematización del tema esperanza, su fundamento bíblico, su estructura antropológica y su composición teológica.

La lectura de obras literarias constituye una herramienta para contribuir al desarrollo cognoscitivo, valorativo y empático del estudiante, así como a la aprehensión y transformación de la realidad. Por lo que el objetivo consistió en valorar la importancia de los talleres de apreciación literaria como contribución a la praxis humana en la Educación Médica mediante el criterio de especialistas. Reading literary works is a tool to contribute to students' cognitive, assessable and empathetic development as well as to capture and transform (...) reality. Therefore, the objective is to assess the importance of literary appreciation as a contribution to human praxis in the educational context of a medical university. (shrink)

Las universidades de Ciencias Médicas tienen el reto de graduar un profesional que posea una amplia cultura general integral. El diagnóstico y caracterización del estado actual de la formación socio-humanista de los estudiantes que ingresan a la Casa de Altos Estudios reveló las insuficiencias que existen, por lo cual el objetivo consistió en la elaboración de un sistema de talleres de apreciación literaria para la formación socio-humanista de los estudiantes de Medicina de primer año de la Universidad de Ciencias Médicas (...) de Camagüey que forma parte de un proyecto aprobado en el programa de ciencia, tecnología e innovación nacional número 2, Organización, eficiencia y calidad de los servicios de salud, con el código 152049. El mismo constituye un aporte al Trabajo Educativo y de Extensión Universitaria en la institución. Medical universities face the challenge of graduating a professional with a comprehensive cultural background. The diagnosis and characterization of the current situation in regards to the socio-humanistic education of the students entering Camaguey´s Medical University revealed several insufficiencies. Due to this, the objective of this research was to prepare a system of literary analysis workshops to enable the socio-humanistic education of first year Medical students at Camaguey´s Medical University. This investigation has been approved as a project belonging to a national science, technology and innovation program with the code 152049 and is a contribution to the educational work of the university. (shrink)

Este texto tiene por objetivo investigar los orígenes del movimiento ideológico anarco-feminista en el Río de la Plata, examinando las circunstancias históricas que propiciaron su surgimiento y que lo caracterizaron. Analizando sus posturas y opiniones contenidas en su principal medio impreso de difusión: el periódico La Voz de la Mujer, las bases de su pensamiento crítico, libertario y emancipatorio respecto a la condición de la mujer, contenidos en su consigna: ni dios, ni patrón, ni marido. Así como sus repercusiones en (...) las transformaciones sociales que se gestaron a finales del siglo XIX.Palabras clave: Feminismo. Anarquismo. Río de la Plata. La Voz de la Mujer. AbstractThis text aims to investigate the origins of the anarcho-feminist ideological movement in the Río de la Plata, examining the historical circumstances that led to its emergence and characterized it. Analyzing their positions and opinions contained in their main print media: the newspaper La Voz de la Mujer, the bases of their critical, libertarian and emancipatory thinking regarding the condition of the women, contained in their slogan: neither god, nor boss, nor husband. As well as its repercussions in the social transformations that took place at the end of the 19th century.Keywords: Feminism. Anarchism. Río de la Plata. La Voz de la Mujer. (shrink)

Is Big Data science a whole new way of doing research? And what difference does data quantity make to knowledge production strategies and their outputs? I argue that the novelty of Big Data science does not lie in the sheer quantity of data involved, but rather in the prominence and status acquired by data as commodity and recognised output, both within and outside of the scientific community and the methods, infrastructures, technologies, skills and knowledge developed to handle data. These developments (...) generate the impression that data-intensive research is a new mode of doing science, with its own epistemology and norms. To assess this claim, one needs to consider the ways in which data are actually disseminated and used to generate knowledge. Accordingly, this article reviews the development of sophisticated ways to disseminate, integrate and re-use data acquired on model organisms over the last three decades of work in experimental biology. I focus on online databases as prominent infrastructures set up to organise and interpret such data and examine the wealth and diversity of expertise, resources and conceptual scaffolding that such databases draw upon. This illuminates some of the conditions under which Big Data needs to be curated to support processes of discovery across biological subfields, which in turn highlights the difficulties caused by the lack of adequate curation for the vast majority of data in the life sciences. In closing, I reflect on the difference that data quantity is making to contemporary biology, the methodological and epistemic challenges of identifying and analysing data given these developments, and the opportunities and worries associated with Big Data discourse and methods. (shrink)

En las primeras páginas de la Ciencia de la lógica, el pensar tiene la pretensión de iniciar su propio movimiento sin aceptar ningún pensamiento dado o presuposición como la paradójica y pura autorreferencia del vínculo de ser y nada. De acuerdo conesto, proponemos una lectura que afirma la presencia de una negatividad que explica la actividad inmanente del pensar en el inicio de la Ciencia de la lógica.

El objetivo de este artículo es mostrar cómo en la novela Ciudad de cristal de Paul Auster tiene lugar una aproximación a lo singular mediante el lenguaje. Sin embargo, esta adecuación entre las palabras y las cosas tiene que sucumbir frente al movimiento y cambio constante de estas últimas, lo que produce que la adecuación perfecta de lo singular y el lenguaje no se pueda llevar a cabo, transformándose el lenguaje en silencio. Creemos que esto se confirma en la actitud (...) de dos de los personajes de esta novela, cuya única alternativa y escapatoria consiste en fundirse con la ciudad, convirtiendo el espacio en una nueva articulación lingüística. The aim of this article is to show how in Paul Auster’s novel City of Glass, an approach to singularity through language takes place. Nevertheless, this adjustment between words and things fails because of the constant movement and change of things, resulting in failure of the perfect adjustment between the singular and language, turning the language into silence. We think that this is confirmed in the behaviour of two of this novel’s characters, whose only alternative and escape consists of merging with the city, transforming the space into a new linguistic articulation. (shrink)

RESUMEN El propósito de este artículo es demostrar que Hegel, al cuestionar la idea de progreso e introducir la noción de Presente Absoluto en su introducción a las Lecciones sobre la Filosofía de la Historia Universal, propone una nueva forma de pensar el tiempo histórico gracias a una concepción de la eternidad entendida como reunión negativa de los momentos del tiempo. Esta concepción hace posible comprender el presente histórico en su apertura y fragilidad, encontrando sus raíces lógicas en el conflicto (...) de la Idea Absoluta consigo misma. ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to demonstrate that Hegel in his Introduction to the Lectures on the Philosophy of World History proposes a new way of thinking historical time thanks to a notion of eternity understood as the negative reunion of the moments of time by questioning the idea of progress and introducing the notion of absolute pre-sent. This notion makes possible comprehending the historical present in its openness and fragility finding its logical roots in the conflict of the Absolute Idea with itself. (shrink)

El propósito de este artículo es demostrar que Hegel, al cuestionar la idea de progreso e introducir la noción de Presente Absoluto en su introducción a las Lecciones sobre la Filosofía de la Historia Universal, propone una nueva forma de pensar el tiempo histórico gracias a una concepción de la eternidad entendida como reunión negativa de los momentos del tiempo. Esta concepción hace posible comprender el presente histórico en su apertura y fragilidad, encontrando sus raíces lógicas en el conflicto de (...) la Idea Absoluta consigo misma. (shrink)

In 2008, Dutch anti-Islam Member of Parliament Geert Wilders produced a short video called Fitna to visualize his argument that Islam is a dangerous religion. Thousands of men and women across the globe uploaded their own videos to YouTube to criticize or support the film. In this article, we look at these alternative videos from a feminist perspective, contrasting the gender portrayal and narratives in Fitna with those in the alternative videos. We contend that Fitna expressed an extremist Orientalist discourse, (...) in which women are presented as the current and future victims of the oppression of Muslim men and Islam. In contrast, the YouTube videos give voice to women themselves who come from across the globe, are relatively young and often active Muslims. Second, they express different view points in generically new ways, criticizing and ridiculing Wilders or producing serious and committed explanations of their own understanding of Islam. Third, although relatively few women appeared in the videos, those that did speak for themselves, not only take on Wilders, but also claim their right to speak within Islam. We propose to understand these videos as acts of citizenships through which women constitute themselves as global citizens, in some cases by engaging in ‘deliberation’ as it is understood in feminist political theory, in other cases by taking a ‘voice’ that can be responded to. (shrink)

An introduction to an interview with Michel Foucault in 1979, which contextualizes his general stance on the Iranian uprising, as well as his conception of philosophical journalism and political spirituality, his rejection of the teleology of history, and his willingness to let historically silenced subjects speak for themselves.