Most people (and philosophers) distinguish between performing a morally wrong action and being blameworthy for having performed that action, and believe that an individual can be fully excused for having performed a wrong action. My purpose is to reject this claim. More precisely, I defend what I call the “Dependence Claim”: A's doing X is wrong only if A is blameworthy for having done X. I consider three cases in which, according to the traditional view, a wrong action could be (...) excused: duress, mental illness, and mistake. I try to show that the reasons for excusing in either case are not relevantly distinguishable from the reasons for claiming that the prima facie wrong action is not wrong all things considered. (shrink)

Com este texto objetivamos mostrar que cor, linha e movimento, não são apenas conceitos da linguagem visual, mas elementos que nos permitem perceber, metaforicamente, “ramos do Ser”. Ao contrário de inferir verdades ou essências, como se tivéssemos o controle “absoluto” de nossa vida e, por consequência, de nossas criações, a pintura nos insere na ambiguidade do mundo visível ao qual estamos imersos. Assim, cor, linha e movimento nos dão um meio de adentrarmos no universo ontológico do qual nós, de fato, (...) só temos acesso indiretamente. Indiretamente, pois o Ser só aparece em partes; nunca por inteiro. É desta forma que o artista mostra ao filósofo que a expressão se faz no mundo das coisas e que é uma experiência como gênese do Ser. Como referencial teórico do nosso artigo utilizaremos os textos de Merleau-Ponty sobre a arte, especialmente O olho e o espírito. Também recorremos ao testemunho de artistas e analisaremos algumas obras de arte. Ao fim, como resultado, o filósofo diz que a pintura faz ver a “fixação” de uma coisa, não em um tempo ou em um espaço objetivo, mas em um horizonte de “transcendência”. (shrink)

Dois temas atravessam este artigo: cidade e imaginário religioso. Como pressupostos referenciais trabalha-se a problemática do espaço e dos lugares. De sua interação emerge a origem da Igreja, o contexto da formação católica brasileira e sua inscrição no campo do imaginário. Palavras-chave: Cidade; Imaginário religioso; Espaço/lugar; História. ABSTRACT This article comprises two themes: the city and the religious imaginary, approached with basis on the concepts of space and places. From their interaction emerge the origin of the Church, the context of (...) Brazilian catholic background and its insertion in the field of the imaginary. Key words: City; The religious imaginary; Space/place; History. (shrink)

La crisis del Covid-19 ha tenido un impacto en la docencia y costará mucho tiempo poder comprender y describir el alcance de este. La presencialidad en cualquier actividad humana se ha visto afectada desde muchos puntos de vista. Pero, sin duda, la educación ha sido una de las áreas sobre las que más se ha publicado dada la trascendencia que tiene sobre el ser humano. El objetivo del artículo es describir qué ha sucedido en materia de educación universitaria durante los (...) primeros momentos de la pandemia y como se ha desarrollado posteriormente, así como los aspectos esperables a largo plazo. (shrink)

The proposal made 50 years ago by Schulman :1558–1569, 1968), Laidlaw and Morette-DeWitt :1375–1378, 1971) and Dowker to decompose the propagator according to the homotopy classes of paths was a major breakthrough: it showed how Feynman functional integrals opened a direct window on quantum properties of topological origin in the configuration space. This paper casts a critical look at the arguments brought by this series of papers and its numerous followers in an attempt to clarify the reason why the emergence (...) of the unitary linear representation of the first homotopy group is not only sufficient but also necessary. (shrink)

Informed by Gloria Anzaldúa's and José Carlos Mariátegui's work, as well as by Andean cosmology, Omar Rivera turns to Inka stonework and architecture as an example of a "Cosmological Aesthetics." He articulates ways of sensing, feeling and remembering that are attuned to an aesthetic of water, earth and light. On this basis, Rivera brings forth a corporeal orientation that can be inhabited by the oppressed, one that withdraws from predominant modern/Western conceptions of the human. By providing an aesthetic (...) analysis of cosmological sensing, Rivera sets the stage for exploring physical dimensions of anti-colonial resistance, and furthers the Latinx and Latin American tradition of anti-colonial and liberatory philosophy. Seeingaesthetic involvements with the cosmos as a source for embodied modes of resistance, Rivera turns to the work of María Lugones and Enrique Dussel in order to make explicit the aesthetic dimensions of their work. Andean Aesthetics and Anticolonial Resistance creates a new dialogue between art historians, artists, and philosophers working on Latin American thought, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. It weaves together a Latin American philosophy that connects pre-Columbian cosmologies with contemporary thinkers. Rivera's original approach introduces us to the living, evolving and aesthetic alternatives to coloniality of power and of knowledge, overhauling current understandings of decolonial theory and opening the tradition in transformative ways. (shrink)

SENA, Luzia (Org.). Ensino religioso e formação docente . (Religious teaching and teacher qualification) Amauri Carlos Ferreira SANGENIS, Luiz Fernando Conde. Gênese do pensamento único em educação: franciscanismo e jesuitismo na história da educação brasileira. (Genesis of an only thought in education: franciscanism and Jesuitism in the history of Brazilian education) Antônio Francisco da Silva TREVISAN, A. Santo Tomás de Aquino – O Credo: tradução, prefácio, introdução e notas. (Saint Thomas of Aquinas – The Creed: translation, preface, introduction and notes) (...) Ivonei Antônio de Oliveira BENELLI, Sílvio José. Pescadores de homens. Estudo psicossocial de um seminário católico. (Fishers of men. A psycho-social study of a Catholic seminary) João Batista Libanio ESTRADA, Juan Antonio. A impossível teodicéia: a crise de fé em Deus e o problema do mal. (The impossible theodicy: the crisis of faith in God and the problem of evil) Lindomar Rocha Mota USARSKI, Frank. Constituintes da Ciência da Religião: cinco ensaios em prol de uma disciplina. (Constituents of the science of religion: five essays on behalf of a discipline) Roberlei Panasiewicz CONGAR, Yves. Ele é o Senhor e dá a vida. (He is the Lord and bestows life) Roberlei Panasiewicz. (shrink)

Edited by Ivette Fred-Rivera and Jessica Leech. What is the relationship between ontology and modality: between what there is, and what there could be, must be, or might have been? Throughout a distinguished career, Bob Hale’s work has addressed this question on a number of fronts, through the development of a Fregean approach to ontology, an essentialist theory of modality, and in his work on neo-logicism in the philosophy of mathematics. This collection of new essays engages with these themes (...) in Hale’s work in order to make further progress in our understanding of ontology, modality, and the relations between them. Some essays directly address questions in modal metaphysics, drawing on ontological concerns. Others raise questions in modal epistemology and its links to matters of ontology, such as the challenge to give an epistemology of essence. There are also several essays engaging with questions of what might be called ‘modal ontology’: the study of whether and what things exist necessarily or contingently. Such issues can be raised and addressed directly, but they also have an important bearing on the kinds of semantic commitments engendered in logic and mathematics, e.g., to the existence of sets, or numbers, or properties, and so on. It is thus explored in some chapters to what extent one’s ontology—and indeed, one’s ontology of necessary beings—interacts with other plausible assumptions and commitments. (shrink)

This paper adds to the epistemological contributions of Latin American philosophy. In particular, I propose a “resistant epistemology” informed by contemporary indigenous Andean philosophies and cosmologies. Focusing on the work of María Lugones, Rodolfo Kusch, and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, I explore ways in which communities are made and remade on the basis of knowledges from below, surviving political and ecological crises, including colonialism and modern development. These kinds of resistive knowledges draw from rituals, quotidian and cosmic rhythms, and affective (...) withdrawals from instrumental and objectifying dispositions. (shrink)

What is the experience of creating a synergistic approach to arts and sciences practice in a learning community focused on the notion of sustainable development? In this article, I answer this question through an evolutionary approach to societal transformation. My social research inquiry integrates the arts and sciences, a learning and design community, sustainable development, and Internet networking. Codesigners created the conditions to explore in multimodal dialogue and engage, guide, and design the emergence of what I call evolutionary artscience through (...) portfolios and a new systems design space-the ArtSciLAB (an online artscience laboratory). Eighteen individuals working in nine countries participated in the Evolutionary Learning Community Network. Our learning and design experience, guided by Evolutionary Systems Design inquiry supports General Evolution Theory. We guided the Evolutionary Learning Community Network and designed the ArtSciLAB to incubate localized knowledge for development in learning regions worldwide. (shrink)

El libro estudia las ideas sociales y los referentes de la generación de políticos y pensadores peruanos que se denomina "Generación del 9i00", centrándose en "Carácter de la literatura en el Perú independiente" (1905) de José de la Riva-Agüero, connotado pensador político y polígrafo peruano, Se ve la influencia del pensamiento reaccionario, la Escuela teológica y el maurrasianismo en el quehacer intelectual peruano del periuodo que aparece en la cubierta.

Perfect ethical duties have usually puzzled commentators on Kant's ethics because they do not fit neatly within his taxonomy of duties. Ethical duties require the adoption of maxims of ends: the happiness of others and one's own perfection are Kant's two main categories. These duties, he claims, are of wide obligation because they do not specify what in particular one ought to do, when, and how much. They leave ‘a latitude for free choice’ as he puts it. Perfect duties, however, (...) such as the duties of respect, to avoid suicide, lying, and servility, do not appear to require the adoption of ends but only the performance or omission of specific types of actions. The puzzle is how these duties can be ethical, and therefore wide. Faced with this difficulty, Mary Gregor denies that perfect ethical duties are wide. She claims that they are an ‘anomaly’ and that they do not belong to ethics proper but to moral philosophy in general. She argues that these duties are derived from the categorical imperative, instead of, as Kant himself appears to have thought, the first principle of virtue. Taking a very different approach, Onora O'Neill finds the perfect/imperfect distinction of little importance and suggests doing without it altogether. Most other interpreters also assume that ‘wide’ is opposed to ‘perfect’ so that a wide perfect duty is a conceptual impossibility. (shrink)

La presente publicación de Víctor Samuel Rivera reúne diez ensayos, escritos entre los años 2014 y 2017, cuyo foco son las democracias capitalistas liberales, según las llama el autor. Estamos, por consiguiente, ante un trabajo decididamente actual que nos coloca frente a dos evidencias. La primera es que el objeto de estudio ofrece retos singulares, pues se trata de reflexionar acerca del mismo flujo histórico que enmarca nuestras condiciones de saber y fija nuestros horizontes de sentido. La segunda sería (...) que Rivera, al acometer la indagación de un presente vivo, se ha lanzado a articular ideas de primera mano. Nos encontramos, así, ante una apuesta del pensar, justamente aquello que se le pide, en su grado máximo, a la filosofía. (shrink)

Cet article se concentre sur deux aspects : les liens très forts unissant le contexte politique et la création des musées en Amérique latine et le développement des centres de culture scientifique, technique et industrielle pour parer la carence d’une éducation scientifique de qualité. L’argumentation est construite autour de quatre angles principaux : le contexte de création des premiers musées d’histoire naturelle ; l’émergence des communautés scientifiques, la prise en compte de la nécessité de la popularisation des sciences pendant le (...) processus de transition à la démocratie et le développement des centres de culture scientifique, technique et industrielle à partir 1978.This article focuses on two aspects: the strong links between political context and museum creation in Latin America, and the development of centres of scientific, technical and industrial culture to remedy the gap in high-quality scientific education. Our argument here is built up from four main angles: the context in which the first natural history museums were created, the emergence of scientific communities, the acknowledged need for science popularisation during the transition to democracy and the development, since 1978, of centres of scientific, technical and industrial culture. (shrink)

How to reciprocate a precious gift? In this case the gift was given to us twice. First, in the shape of Paget Henry’s pioneering reinvention of René Ménil’s “Aesthetic Marxism.” Through it, second, we’re led to rediscover the fantastic world of Ménil’s hitherto ignored but crucial contribution to contemporary philosophy: his systematization of the poetics of revolt. Our debt with Ménil and Henry is unpayable. Our humble response in this essay is to offer readers a map to the treasure that (...) is Ménil’s thought. We aim to offer a path across and beyond the sedimentation and pacifying effects of given frames of judgment and the imagination in today’s post-classical public sphere. We call it “fantastic critique,” largely inspired by our wider reading of Ménil’s work and specifically his original concept of the “velocity of the spirit.” It renews the Hegelo-Marxian revolutionary formula. Here. Keep it with you. It’s a precious gift. (shrink)

. A comparison is made between two unlikely debates over intelligence. One debate took place in 1550 at Valladolid, Spain, between Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Gines de Sepúlveda over the intelligence of the Amerindian. The other debate is contemporary, between John Searle and various representatives of the “strong” artificial intelligence community over the adequacy of the Turing test for intelligence. Although the contemporary debate has yet to die down, the Valladolid debate has been over for four hundred years. (...) The question asked here is whether the contemporary debate can profit from the previous one. The common bond providing the basis for contrast is the issue of the “other” which is present in both debates. From this contrast, the observation is made that the question of meaning is intimately tied to the question of intelligence. (shrink)

This is an entry into a collective journal of the twenty-first century years of plague. It introduces the notion of ‘lawfare’ by way of the contemporary case concerning Lula da Silva and Brazil’s fall from grace. The latter is presented as an instance of violence in the international context, the managerial attitude to global disasters and, indeed, a plague. It chronicles the social struggles around the case and on that basis builds a somewhat playful manifesto for a new relationship between (...) legal scholarship, the law school and the imaginary of permanent catastrophe and plague. (shrink)

La figura de Karl Marx ha sido vista por algunos católicos como ateísta dada las expresiones tomadas fuera de contexto del pensador de Tréveris. No obstante, con rigurosidad el filósofo Enrique Dussel presenta una imagen muy diferente. Marx en realidad va a ser un crítico de los cristianos burgueses de su época, que confundieron el pensamiento de Jesús con un fetichismo bajo el cual terminaron sacrificando vidas inocentes. De hecho, llegaron a impulsar una violencia de lo sagrado que alcanza incluso (...) hasta nuestros días. Por esta razón es fundamental hacer una relectura del pensamiento marxista desde la teología de la liberación para contribuir a la emancipación del ser humano de todo aquello que lo deshumaniza “en nombre de Dios”. (shrink)

The area of smart power grids needs to constantly improve its efficiency and resilience, to provide high quality electrical power in a resilient grid, while managing faults and avoiding failures. Achieving this requires high component reliability, adequate maintenance, and a studied failure occurrence. Correct system operation involves those activities and novel methodologies to detect, classify, and isolate faults and failures and model and simulate processes with predictive algorithms and analytics. In this paper, we showcase the application of a complex-adaptive, self-organizing (...) modeling method, and Probabilistic Boolean Networks, as a way towards the understanding of the dynamics of smart grid devices, and to model and characterize their behavior. This work demonstrates that PBNs are equivalent to the standard Reinforcement Learning Cycle, in which the agent/model has an interaction with its environment and receives feedback from it in the form of a reward signal. Different reward structures were created to characterize preferred behavior. This information can be used to guide the PBN to avoid fault conditions and failures. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In a recent paper published in this journal, Thomas S. Petersen makes a qualified defense of what he calls ‘the Claim from Adoption’, according to which, ‘instead of expending resources on bringing new children [in developed countries] into the world using reproductive technology and caring for these children, we ought to devote these resources to the adoption and care of existing destitute children’. My purpose in this paper is not to discuss Petersen’s argument in favor of that claim. Rather, (...) I want to show that, even if the Claim from Adoption might be, other things being equal, true, it is not true all things considered. What is, all things considered, true is a much more complex set of statements, including a general prima facie obligation to adopt, as well as an obligation by the state of developed countries to discourage procreation and promote adoption of destitute children. (shrink)

We all agree on the justification of defending ourselves or others in some situations, but we do not often agree on why. Two main views compete: subjectivism and objectivism. The discussion has mainly been held in normative terms. But every theory must pass a previous test: logical consistency. It has recently been held that, at least in the case of defending others from aggression, objective theories lead, in some situations, to normative contradiction. My aim is to challenge the idea that (...) only objective theories have this uncomfortable feature. In fact, any plausible theory justifying the defense of others, whether subjectively or objectively, can lead to situations of normative inconsistency. Therefore, the logical test is not the most fitting one for choosing between different theories of private defense. (shrink)

We leverage insights and theories from the extensive inter-firm alliance literature to explore the effect of the sector of the partners on Firm–NGO alliance governance. Our analysis suggests that the sector of the partners has an important impact on alliance governance, not only because it constrains the availability of some governance mechanisms but also because it makes alternative mechanisms available or relevant to the partners. Specifically, we predict that B2N alliances will rely on contracts, a restricted scope, and non-equity hostages, (...) such as reputational hostages and stakeholder involvement, rather than equity, leading to limited protection against opportunism. As a consequence, B2N alliance partners will need to rely on trust-based governance mechanisms to a greater extent than B2B alliance partners, although trust will be harder to build in B2N alliances. (shrink)

In his recent article, ‘A Gift to Theology? Jean-Luc Marion's ‘Saturated Phenomena’ in Christological Perspective’, Brian Robinette has critiqued Marion's phenomenology for confining theology to a one-sided approach to Christology, one that stresses only the passive, mystical reception of Christ. To correct this imbalance, Robinette brings Marion into dialogue with those more active Christologies or ‘prophetical-ethical’ liberation theologies of Gustavo Gutierrez, Johann Baptist Metz and others that stress a life-praxis focused on confronting evil and suffering. In this essay I am (...) arguing that Robinette has not fully developed the ‘logic’ of Marion's phenomenology of the ‘call and the gifted’, in which both a passive and an active element are operative. I explore more fully that very dynamic phenomenological process of the call-and-the-gifted as developed in Marion's work Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness. Once viewed in Christological perspective, and especially in light of Christ's death and resurrection, Marion's phenomenology entails an ethical trope consistent with the mission of Christ as rendered in Scriptural revelation, and thus the gap between Marion's work and the prophetical-ethical theologies of Gutierrez and Baptist Metz becomes narrowed. (shrink)

This article examines the phenomenological structures of the homo temporalis filtered through Augustine's illuminating, if unsystematic, insights on temporality and the imago Dei. It situates such a phenomenological interpretation of the Augustinian self in view of current interpretations that polarize or split the Augustinian self into an either/or scheme—either an “interior” self or an “exterior” self. Given this imbalance, the article suggests that a phenomenological evaluation of Augustine brings to light how interior and exterior spheres are deeply integrated. The article (...) elaborates this position by contending that the self's temporal streaming within the exterior world‐horizon is inescapable because it reflects basic constituents of a self created by God which is nevertheless capable of contemplating a God who transcends time. This seeming paradox is resolved by recourse to what is described as the “double entry” of the self. The temporal streaming of the self in the world‐horizon is porous to the eternal inwardly ; the eternal entry is thus interior and analyzable in terms of a non‐reflective self‐awareness on display in Augustine's De Trinitate; and finally Augustine's understanding of the temporality of faith indicates how the self of faith can be lived in light of Heidegger's emphasis on the future and Husserl's emphasis on the past. (shrink)

Microcredit has emerged as an effective instrument for achieving financial inclusion, stimulating productive activities, and with this support, reinforcing economic growth. This study aims to examine the characteristics of microcredit financing in Ecuador and to quantify its impact on economic growth. The study employs quarterly data from 2013 to 2023. An Error Correction (VEC) model was utilized to ascertain the short- and long-term effects of microcredit and investment on GDP. The findings indicate that microcredit and investment do not exert a (...) significant short-term influence on GDP. However, in the long term, a 1% change in investment is associated with a 0.11% positive impact on GDP. Similarly, a 1% shift in microcredit is linked to a 1.17% favorable effect on GDP. Ultimately, there is a unidirectional causal relationship between GDP and microcredit. (shrink)

abstract The possibility that organ sales by living adults might be made legal is morally distressing to many of us. However, powerful arguments have been provided recently supporting legalisation (I consider two of those arguments: the Consequentialist Argument and the Autonomy Argument). Is our instinctive reaction against a market of organs irrational then? The aim of this paper is not to prove that legalization would be immoral, all things considered, but rather to show, first, that there are some kinds of (...) arguments, offered in favour of legalisation, that are, in an important sense, illegitimate, and second, that even if legalisation might not be wrong all things considered, there are good reasons for our negative moral intuitions. Moreover, identifying these reasons will help highlight some features of moral decisions in non‐ideal situations, which in turn might be relevant to some other moral or policy choices. (shrink)

Aiming at a better understanding of the extent to which Africa-focused research has helped develop context-bound, context-specific, and context-free knowledge, the authors present the findings from a literature review of journal articles with an African context. A systematic search resulted in 271 articles with African data and 139 Africa-focused articles published in 63 top business journals and related disciplines from 2010 onwards. The sample included all journals belonging to the University of Texas Dallas and Financial Times research rankings, as well (...) as the main international business, and business and society outlets. An in-depth analysis of the 139 Africa-focused articles shows an important imbalance in terms of publication patterns, topics covered, theoretical groundings, types of contributions, approaches to the African contexts, and empirics. Building on this exhaustive literature review, the authors provide specific suggestions regarding potential data sources and empirical strategies in African contexts, propose avenues for future research, and introduce four recent studies included in the special issue. (shrink)

Most research on risk aversion in behavioral science with human subjects has focused on a component of risk aversion that does not adapt itself to context. More recently, studies have explored risk aversion adaptation to changing circumstances in sequential decision-making tasks. It is an open question whether one can identify evidence, at the single subject level, for such risk aversion adaptation. We conducted a behavioral experiment on human subjects, using a sequential decision making task. We developed a model-based approach for (...) estimating the adaptation of risk-taking behavior with single-trial resolution by modelling a subject’s goals and internal representation of task contingencies. Using this model-based approach, we estimated the subject-specific adaptation of risk aversion depending on the current task context. We found striking inter-subject variations in the adaptation of risk-taking behavior. We show that these differences can be explained by differences in subjects’ internal representations of task contingencies and goals. We discuss that the proposed approach can be adapted to a wide range of experimental paradigms and be used to analyze behavioral measures other than risk aversion. (shrink)

Almost all admit that there is beauty in the natural world. Many suspect that such beauty is more than an adornment of nature. Few in our contemporary world suggest that this beauty is an empirical principle of the natural world itself and instead relegate beauty to the eye and mind of the beholder. Guided by theological and scientific insight, the authors propose that such exclusion is no longer tenable, at least in the data of modern biology and in our view (...) of the natural world in general. More important, we believe an empirical aesthetics exists that can help guide experimental design and development of computational models in biology. Moreover, because theology and science can both contribute toward and equally profit from such an aesthetics, we propose that this empirical aesthetics provides the foundation for a living synergy between theology and science. (shrink)

En la filosofía política aristotélica, la definición biológica del hombre como “animal político” funciona como justificación para la creación de la polis. Aristóteles clasifica al hombre como un animal caracterizado por su habilidad racional y comunicativa, capacidades que lo determinan a formar comunidades con miras a la “vida buena”. Esta definición de la naturaleza humana supone la creación de la polis; el único espacio donde el hombre puede desarrollar sus virtudes y vivir una vida plena y feliz. Dentro de esta (...) polis, Aristóteles le otorga participación política solo a los individuos que cum-plen con esta descripción. A partir de esto surge la pregunta: ¿Quiénes quedan al margen de la polis? Fuera de este espacio político quedan todos los que hacen posible la vida en la polis: las mujeres, los trabajadores y los esclavos. Más allá de estas redes económicas y sociales queda el propósito de este artículo, la “bestia”: los seres humanos caracterizados por su carencia de disposición política tanto en instancias desarrolladas como la polis y las más primitivas como la aldea o el hogar. De esta manera, los hombres bestiales son inútiles para la vida en comunidad ya que no cumplen con su función como animales políticos y sus acciones no están guiadas por un bien común. Se argumentará que a partir de esto que la bestia padece una triple exclusión: la política, al negársele la posibilidad de ciudadanía; la social, al prohibirle la partici-pación en la comunidad que sustenta económicamente a la polis y, por último, la biológica al ser excluido del conjunto conceptual de los hombres. (shrink)

La exploración sobre la naturaleza, el significado y la estructura del concepto de crisis, y la definición misma de una crisis social convocan, primero, al uso, por lo general, ambiguo del término y, segundo, a las condiciones que manifiesta el mundo contemporáneo. Así, en este libro se procura analizar el, popularmente empleado pero poco esclarecido, concepto de crisis, sobre todo, en dos autores de la segunda generación de la teoría crítica, Habermas y Offe. La intención fundamental del texto es crear, (...) a partir de estos autores, un enfoque para estudiar las dinámicas patológicas de las sociedades contemporáneas. (shrink)