In this paper intergenerational dimensions of reproductive behavior are studied within the context of the experience of a mid-sized Spanish town just before and during the demographic transition. Different indicators of reproduction are used in bivariate and multivariate approaches. Fertility shows a small, often statistically significant intergenerational dimension, with stronger effects working through women and their mothers than those stemming from the families of their husbands. These effects are materialized mainly through duration-related fertility variables, are singularly absent for variables such (...) as age at first birth or birth intervals, and are much stronger in the case of firstborn daughters than with later siblings. There is a substantial increase in the strength of intergenerational effects during the course of the demographic transition, most visible in age at last birth and duration of reproduction (between women and their mothers), as well as in the effects working through the families of their husbands. These results underscore the on-going importance of biological dimensions of reproduction as well as the way attitudes toward reproduction are taught within the family. The changes identified in this study suggest that the transmission of values and attitudes became more important for reproductive outcomes during this period of demographic modernization. (shrink)

Content-based authorship identification is an emerging research problem in online social media networks, due to a wide collection of issues ranging from security to privacy preservation, from radicalization to defamation detection, and so forth. Indeed, this research has attracted a relevant amount of attention from the research community during the past years. The general problem becomes harder when we consider the additional constraint of identifying the same false profile over different social media networks, under obvious considerations. Inspired by this emerging (...) research challenge, in this paper we propose and experimentally assess an innovative framework for supporting content-based authorship identification and analysis in social media networks. (shrink)

Since March 14, 2020, Spanish citizens have been confined to their homes due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Participating in musical activities has been associated with reduced anxiety and increased subjective wellbeing. The aim of this study is to analyze how Spanish citizens used music during the lockdown period. We also study perceptions of the impact music has in everyday life, in particular examining the respondents’ insights into the effects of listening to music in situations of isolation. The (...) study was conducted using the MUSIVID19 questionnaire administered to a total of 1868 Spanish citizens. The results indicate that during lockdown, respondents perceived an increase in the time they devoted to musical activities such as listening, singing, dancing or playing an instrument. The participants also reported using music to cope with the lockdown, finding that it helped them to relax, escape, raise their mood or keep them company. The findings suggest an improvement in their perception of the value of music in personal and social wellbeing during the lockdown. However, the study reveals significant differences in the use and perceptions of music according to respondents’ personal situations. Age and feelings of vulnerability may lead to more conservative uses of musical practice and to more moderate perceptions of the positive values of music. (shrink)

We argue that, in certain circumstances, doctors might beprofessionallyjustified to provide abortions even in those jurisdictions where abortion is illegal. That it is at least professionally permissible does not mean that they have an all-things-considered ethical justification or obligation to provide illegal abortions or that professional obligations or professional permissibility trump legal obligations. It rather means that professional organisations should respect and indeed protect doctors’ positive claims of conscience to provide abortions if they plausibly track what is in the best (...) medical interests of their patients. It is the responsibility of state authorities to enforce the law, but it is the responsibility of professional organisations to uphold the highest standards of medical ethics, even when they conflict with the law. Whatever the legal sanctions in place, healthcare professionals should not be sanctioned by the professional bodies for providing abortions according to professional standards, even if illegally. Indeed, professional organisation should lobby to offer protection to such professionals. Our arguments have practical implications for what healthcare professionals and healthcare professional organisations may or should do in those jurisdictions that legally prohibit abortion, such as some US States after the reversal ofRoe v Wade. (shrink)

We argue that, from the point of view public health ethics, vaccination is significantly analogous to seat belt use in motor vehicles and that coercive vaccination policies are ethically justified for the same reasons why coercive seat belt laws are ethically justified. We start by taking seriously the small risk of vaccines’ side effects and the fact that such risks might need to be coercively imposed on individuals. If millions of individuals are vaccinated, even a very small risk of serious (...) side effects implies that, statistically, at some point side effects will occur. Imposing such risks raises issues about individual freedom to decide what risks to take on oneself or on one’s children and about attribution of responsibility in case of adverse side effects. Seat belt requirements raise many of the same ethical issues as vaccination requirements, and seat belt laws initially encountered some opposition from the public that is very similar to some of the current opposition to vaccine mandates. The analogy suggests that the risks of vaccines do not constitute strong enough reasons against coercive vaccination policies and that the same reasons that justify compulsory seat belt use—a measure now widely accepted and endorsed—also justify coercive vaccination policies. (shrink)

Ethical debate surrounding human enhancement, especially by biotechnological means, has burgeoned since the turn of the century. Issues discussed include whether specific types of enhancement are permissible or even obligatory, whether they are likely to produce a net good for individuals and for society, and whether there is something intrinsically wrong in playing God with human nature. We characterize the main camps on the issue, identifying three main positions: permissive, restrictive and conservative positions. We present the major sub-debates and lines (...) of argument from each camp. The review also gives a flavor of the general approach of key writers in the literature such as Julian Savulescu, Nick Bostrom, Michael Sandel, and Leon Kass. (shrink)

La mal llamada “Conquista del Desierto” constituyó una serie de campañas militares ocurridas en el actual territorio patagónico argentino entre los años 1878 y 1885 cuyo resultado fue el asesinato, la violación y sometimiento a la esclavitud de diversos pueblos y comunidades indígenas. Este no fue un caso aislado, sino que se suma a una serie de ataques sistemáticos que han sufrido los indígenas en la Argentina. En los últimos años, a raíz del reclamo y las luchas de los pueblos (...) y comunidades indígenas, así como también de las organizaciones de derechos humanos, se han comenzado a juzgar algunos de estos hechos. En particular, la Masacre de Napalpí (1924) y la Masacre de La Bomba (1947) fueron los primeros que lograron respuestas judiciales favorables. En ambos se determinó que el accionar estatal era constitutivo de un genocidio y, por lo tanto, se debía resarcir a las comunidades actuales. Ahora bien, la Campaña del Desierto, al día de hoy, no tiene respuesta por parte del Estado. Teniendo presente este panorama, nuestro objetivo en este trabajo es reconstruir los diferentes problemas que enfrenta la posibilidad del reclamo judicial. Para ello, comenzaremos describiendo en qué consistió la Campaña del Desierto. Luego, explicaremos la noción de genocidio aplicado a hechos de injusticias históricas. Como tercer paso, reconstruiremos los casos jurisprudenciales que se han preocupado por genocidios indígenas ocurridos en el pasado. Con este panorama revelado, nos enfocaremos en los diferentes problemas jurídicos y políticos que surgen en los reclamos de justicia. (shrink)

Conflict of interests in medicine are typically taken to be financial in nature: it is often assumed that a COI occurs when a healthcare practitioner’s financial interest conflicts with patients’ interests, public health interests, or professional obligations more generally. Even when non-financial COIs are acknowledged, ethical concerns are almost exclusively reserved for financial COIs. However, the notion of “interests” cannot be reduced to its financial component. Individuals in general, and medical professionals in particular, have different types of interests, many of (...) which are non-financial in nature but can still conflict with professional obligations. The debate about healthcare delivery has largely overlooked this broader notion of interests. Here, we will focus on health practitioners’ moral or religious values as particular types of personal interests involved in healthcare delivery that can generate COIs and on conscientious objection in healthcare as the expression of a particular type of COI. We argue that, in the healthcare context, the COIs generated by interests of conscience can be as ethically problematic, and therefore should be treated in the same way, as financial COIs. (shrink)

El corazón de Heidegger: el concepto de «estado de ánimo» de Martin de Heidegger, de reciente traducción al español, proporciona valiosas claves para la comprensión y el estudio de la obra de Byung-Chul Han en el ámbito hispanohablante. En este artículo expondremos cómo este texto arroja luz sobre las bases filosóficas de Han, la constitución de su proyecto de relación con la alteridad, el marco fenomenológico en el que origina y el imprescindible papel de Martin Heidegger en su pensamiento. Del (...) mismo modo, contribuye a identificar las etapas de su recorrido, así como los cambios experimentados en sus propuestas. (shrink)

The definition of love given by Descartes in the Passions of the Soul has never stopped puzzling commentators. If the first Cartesian textbooks discreetly evoke or even fail to discuss Descartes’s account of love, Spinoza harshly criticizes it, pointing out that it is ‘on all hands admitted to be very obscure’. More recently several scholars have noticed the puzzling character of the articles of the Passions of the Soul on love and hate. In this paper, I would like to propose (...) a reassessment of the definition of love provided by the Passions of the Soul and the Letters to Elisabeth and Chanut. By tracing back Descartes’s scholastic sources, I will demonstrate how Descartes builds up his definition of love by displacing or subverting the meaning of several major elements of the thomistic vulgata on love. Hence, a significant part of the obscurity of the definition given by the Passions of the Soul possibly finds its ultimate rationale in this attempt to recover some traditional questions of the scholastic debate on love, while advancing new answers to them. (shrink)

The Australian Federal Government has announced a two-year trial scheme to compensate living organ donors. The compensation will be the equivalent of six weeks paid leave at the rate of the national minimum wage. In this article I analyse the ethics of compensating living organ donors taking the Australian scheme as a reference point. Considering the long waiting lists for organ transplantations and the related costs on the healthcare system of treating patients waiting for an organ, the 1.3 million AUD (...) the Australian Government has committed might represent a very worthwhile investment. I argue that a scheme like the Australian one is sufficiently well designed to avoid all the ethical problems traditionally associated with attaching a monetary value to the human body or to parts of it, namely commodification, inducement, exploitation, and equality issues. Therefore, I suggest that the Australian scheme, if cost-effective, should represent a model for other countries to follow. Nonetheless, although I endorse this scheme, I will also argue that this kind of scheme raises issues of justice in regard to the distribution of organs. Thus, I propose that other policies would be needed to supplement the scheme in order to guarantee not only a higher number of organs available, but also a fair distribution. (shrink)

Ambientato nel Regno di Napoli del tardo Seicento, il saggio esplora la cultura dell'epoca attraverso la vicenda biografica dei membri dell'Accademia degli Investiganti, Tommaso Cornelio, Lucantonio Porzio, Francesco d'Andrea e Giuseppe Valletta. Attraverso l'analisi delle opere degli Investiganti, il testo mostra un quadro della loro riflessione filosofico-scientifica dovuta alla diffusione delle teorie atomistiche dei maggiori pensatori europei (Boyle, Descartes, Galilei, etc.) nei circoli partenopei--Back cover.

In der Reihe werden herausragende monographische Untersuchungen und Sammelbände zu allen Aspekten der Philosophie Kants veröffentlicht, ebenso zum systematischen Verhältnis seiner Philosophie zu anderen philosophischen Ansätzen in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Veröffentlicht werden Studien, die einen innovativen Charakter haben und ausdrückliche Desiderate der Forschung erfüllen. Die Publikationen repräsentieren den aktuellsten Stand der Forschung.

Desde la perspectiva de las ciencias jurídicas y, en particular, del derecho internacional ambiental, la presente intervención aborda la emergencia de un Derecho internacional contemporáneo y acude a las ideas del cosmopolitismo blando y la vertiente normativa del constitucionalismo global, como debates filosóficos-jurídicos que podrían cimentar un terreno fértil, un sustrato material, para incidir en las fuentes formales de creación de normas internacionales para enfrentar los problemas globales ambientales. En ese sentido, hace mención a la emergencia y reconocimiento del derecho (...) humano al ambiente sano y saludable como un derecho humano autónomo y exigible, desde su vertiente sustantiva y procesal, lo que puede vislumbrase como el embrión de una ciudadanía global ambiental. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 9, September 2020, Page 62-65.

Il saggio si interroga sul rapporto tra immagine di libro e lettura, muovendo dalla constatazione che solo la trasformazione dei lettori in ambito umanistico (con il rifiuto della glossa) ha cambiato l’idea del libro diffusa nel Medioevo. Il nuovo disegno della pagina, di maggiore ordine e leggibilità, si è consolidato nei secoli, e la nuova immagine di libro è rimasta immutata, nonostante le innovazioni, nell’editoria moderna. Solo l’avvento delle nuove tecnologie digitali ha suggerito una nuova immagine, che, tuttavia, non è (...) ancora né pienamente definita né ben consolidata; alle posizioni di chi ha individuato il libro nuovo nella forma dell’ipertesto (letto anche sui vecchi pc), il saggio affianca le riflessioni di chi cerca l’immagine nuova nell’e-book letto su un e-reader, sottolineando tuttavia che si è solo agli inizi di una lunga trasformazione. This essay concerns the relationship between the image of the book and how it reads. It begins from the observation that only the change of the readers during the humanistic age has transformed the widespread perception of the book in the Middle Ages. The new layout of the page, neater and more readable, became well established in the following centuries, and that image of the book in the modern publishing industry has remained unchanged, in spite of innovations. New digital technologies have proposed a new image, that however is neither clearly defined nor well established. The essay underlines the observations of those who believe that the hypertext form is the new book, even readable on the old pc, and the observations of those that think of e-book as a new image, that can be read only on the e-reader. The essay ends with the idea that we are at the beginning of a long change. (shrink)

At several places in this paper we have made use of a well-known rhetorical device: an argument was made; a character —dubbed “fictional reader” — was then evoked who voiced some objections against that particular argument; and finally, we answered those objections, thus bringing to a close, at least temporarily, our argument. The use of this device raises a question: “How is the presence of the ‘fictional reader” to be understood?” Is it a “mere” rhetorical tool, or does this character (...) designate some particular target? For instance, depending on the context, it could be seen as aimed at different straw men: traditionally minded sociologists, Whiggish historians, well-intentioned philosophers of science. Actually, none of these characters is behind the “fictional reader”. Rather, it refers, potentially, to any of the scientific actors (Milstein, Schwaber, Koprowski, Cohn, and so on) who inhabit our set of narratives. In other words, the “fictional reader” is an icon for the “native” reader/writer who simultaneously produces and questions the products of that particular literary activity known as scientific texts, by explicitly and implicitly raising the issue of the distinction between fact and technique.By following actors in their disputes about the novelty of K & M's contribution, it became apparent that it is not exactly clear which of the different elements of “hybridoma technology” should be regarded as “novel.” Was it the use of the P3 myeloma line? Was it the theoretical framework related to the notion of allelic exclusion? Was it ...? In each and every case, arguments can be made for or against the existence of a certain continuity or discontinuity with previous work. And in each case, the determination of novelty, as translated through the continuity/discontinuity issue, appeared to be hanging on the previous attribution of an epistemological status to the object that had allegedly been discovered: was it a fact or a technique?If one focuses on the relatively narrow network of immunogenetics, it could be argued that within that particular evidential context a series of “facts” had been established which, when transferred to other fields, such as the virological research being pursued in Koprowski's institute, were translated into a technique. However, as we have seen, even from an immunogenetic point of view the production of monoclonal antibodies can be viewed as being simultaneously a fact and a technique to establish that fact. Not only, as he himself noted,139 was Milstein not seeking to develop a technique for the production of monoclonal antibodies when the original experiments were carried out, but the significance later imputed to those experiments was not immediately attributed to them. The paper was seen as one among other papers that used cell fusion techniques to dissect the genetic control of antibody diversity. Distinctions that now appear crucial (e.g.: were the fusion partners two myelomas or a myeloma and a spleen cell?) were easily overlooked. At some point, around 1977, the production of monoclonal antibodies became a goal in itself, no longer linked to the initial immunogenetic network. The transformation of [MILSTEIN 75] into the foundational event of “hybridoma technology” was thus achieved. This transformation did not flow naturally from the original experiments. Rather, it involved specific investments which mobilized the activity of a large number of other scientific and industrial actors.140A tentative generalization can be deduced from our case study. The dichotomy between fact and technique that underlines much of contemporary science studies seem to be fundamentally misconceived, insofar as the determination of what counts as a fact and what counts as a technique is not possible on a priori grounds. Historians and sociologists of science are confronted with a field of heterogeneous interventions where particular pieces of work are constituted as discrete entities and simultaneously attributed a technical or a factual identity. “Novelty” and “innovation” are precisely the result of such polymorphic attributional processes. (shrink)

There has been some concern m recent years that economic interests in the biotechnology area could, particularly through patenting, have a constricting influence on scientific research. Despite this concern, there have been no studies of this phenomenon beyond isolated cases. In this article we examine the evolution of the biomedical field of hybridoma/monoclonal antibody research with detailed examples of the three types of patent claims that have emerged there—basic claims, claims on application techniques, and claims on specific antibodies. We analyze (...) the impact of these claims and their legal histories on the free flow of scientific information and, the activity of scientific researchers. We conclude that such patent claims present severe restrictions for both, not only in the monoclonal area but in general, amounting to a subtle but significant shift in the political economy of science and technology. (shrink)

Imaginando circunstancias extravagantes, pero de obediente prolijidad, Putnam ha procurado aislar objetos, capacidades o sucesos, de los que podría pensarse constituyen ejemplos de representaciones per se, o medios suficientes para que, de alguien que los posea o utilice, se diga que representa o refiere a alguna cosa.

Este artículo busca problematizar parcialmente la constitución ontológica de la noción de praxis hegemónica en Antonio Gramsci; producir una definición de posthegemonía como posición política y no como doctrina; arriesgar la noción de que, de haber una “ontología” posthegemónica, convendría asentarla bajo tacha en el lugar de un posible pensamiento de la diferencia ontológica; describir brevemente un espacio de praxis emergente en el que la noción posthegemónica se hace explícita; y regresar a Antonio Gramsci a partir de una posible entrada (...) en crisis del concepto de hegemonía en su obra misma. (shrink)

La UE ha sido el proyecto de prevención de conflictos más exitoso de todo el mundo. Si bien es cierto que la UE ha servido para evitar que el conflicto entre Francia y Alemania se mantuviera, las bases del proyecto europeo son mucho más amplias. Uno de los colectivos que más han aportado a la construcción europea son los judíos, a los que algunos autores les han calificado como los europeos más antiguos. Desde los años 60 vivimos una nueva ola (...) de antisemitismo con unas características muy particulares y que hoy en día está afectando no solo a los europeos judíos sino también a la propia estabilidad del proyecto europeo. (shrink)