Human rights and theology: An essential debate Human rights form an essential element of the new Constitution of South Africa. Can Christians take part in the debate on human rights? A model will be proposed called 'Analogy and difference’, which indeed makes it possible and desirable to do so. Although not founded essentially on Scripture or theology, analogies for the three basic principles of human rights — freedom, equality and participation — can be found in the Christian tradition. However, the (...) difference between the Christian tradition and the tradition of the Enlightenment has to be taken into account. Thus, the Christian can critically enter the debate on human rights, not to fill the concepts with Christian meaning, but to achieve a new ethical consensus. (shrink)

While parents have traditionally provided proxy consent for minors to participate in research, this has proven inadequate for adolescents who are mentally and emotionally capable of making their own decisions. Research has proven that even young children, and certainly most adolescents, are developmentally prepared to make such decisions for themselves. The author challenges the assumption that both consent and assent are static concepts, and proposes that a sliding scale of competence be created to ascertain the adolescent's comprehension of the proposed (...) research by shifting the burden of proof to those who believe a particular adolescent is unable to provide informed consent. (shrink)

Gracias al invaluable aporte hecho por Foucault, hoy sabemos que la transición del acto de tortura de un espacio público y abierto a un espacio cerrado y secreto trajo consigo una serie de repercusiones filosóficas, políticas y físicas de gran complejidad. No obstante, vale la pena significar que, dentro del contexto de las dictaduras militares del cono sur, el acto de la tortura –si bien fiel a su naturaleza cerrada, inaccesible y secreta– evidenció en ciertos casos una regresión atávica a (...) espacios que si bien no eran públicos sí eran abiertos: los registros de los hombres y mujeres que tras ser sedados, golpeados y brutalmente enceguecidos fueron arrojados al mar, las montañas, los volcanes y el desierto chileno así lo confirman. Debido a esto, los rasgos físicos de la geografía chilena terminan siendo constituidos por los cuerpos anónimos de todas estas personas. Por eso, en su afán por re-construir tanto el cuerpo de la nación chilena como los cuerpos de los torturados, con su INRI (2004) Raúl Zurita apela a una inversión filosófica y física de la geografía chilena. Si bien es cierto que dicha inversión cosmogónica confirma que la redención está negada para estas almas, el despliegue astuto del recurso de la metalepsis, como concatenación metonímica que ya de por sí es, permite que estos cuerpos, antes fustigados, concebidos siempre como ajenos al país, irónicamente terminen por configurar la fisionomía misma de un Chile zuritano en el que los términos “democracia” y “muerte” resultan estar ligados de manera indisoluble. (shrink)

The papers in Richard Vallée's Words and Contents span twenty-one years. The author navigates the discovery and exploration of different expressions and perspectives on language in this volume. Beginning with referring expressions and later addressing context sensitivity, the book examines how specific words contribute to the contents of utterances and the philosophical issues that surround them.

This paper organizes the question of gun controls as violence policy under two quite different headings. The first issue to be discussed is the relationship between gun use and the death rate from violent crime. The second question is whether and how firearms control strategies might reduce the death rate from violence. When we review the evidence on the relationship between guns and violence, it seems clear that gun use, usually handgun use, increases the death rate from violence by a (...) factor of three to five. Nobody in mainstream social science or criminology argues against such weapon effects these days, although some are more skeptical of the magnitude estimated than others. Thus the problem is both genuine and important. (shrink)

Medieval Sephardi literature was a catalytic presence in the Jewish intellectual landscape of the eighteenth century. In _Sepharad in Ashkenaz_, a celebrated group of contributors provides the first, comprehensive evaluation of the medieval Sephardi canon in the Ashkenazi world. These essays explore the introduction of Sephardi texts into Jewish discourse, the Ashkenazi reception of the Sephardi masters, and the resulting literary innovations that forever changed Jewish scholarship. Through a series of case studies and analyses of works by Maimonides, Spinoza, and (...) Kant, among others, this volume unravels an intricate diasporic network that led to Jewish modernity. (shrink)

Philosophical tradition sharply distinguishes the conditions under which belief and action are reasonable. This dissertation examines one attempt to sustain this division, namely, the Humean analysis of practical reasons. The Humean analysis divides practical reasons into end and means. The former concerns what one should pursue as goal. The latter, what one should do to realize one's ends. Humeans argue that end reasons are not subject to the conditions of reasonable belief. Since end reasons pick out what has value for (...) an agent, Humeans contend that what makes life meaningful lies largely outside epistemic criteria. I find that Humeans base this claim on two distinct arguments. Each assumes that end reasons are unfit for epistemic appraisal because they lack some feature owned by psychological states suited to epistemic appraisal. A psychological state is fit for epistemic assessment only if its attitude ascribes a truth value to its content and its content owns a truth value. I examine the first conjunct. Regarding , Humeans argue that all genuine end reasons move their agents and, thus, these reasons are wants or take wants as components, since desire is the only source of agent-motivation. But in desiring that p, one does not ascribe a truth-value to p. Thus, end reasons lie outside epistemic criteria, assuming that only those psychological states whose attitude ascribes a truth value to its content are fit for epistemic assessment. Among those who claim that end reasons are a type of conative psychological state in that all genuine end reasons must move their agents are: R. M. Hare, P. H. Nowell-Smith, Gilbert Harman, Donald Davidson, B. A. O. Williams, and Daniel Dennett. I argue that this appeal to motivation fails by examining when an actor is an agent, finding that these conditions do not require that all genuine end reasons motivate. I add that rational failings, such as weakness of will, strongly suggest that not all genuine end reasons motivate. I conclude that end reasons are best conceived as a type of belief and, thus, these reasons do not lie outside epistemic assessment due to their psychological attitude. (shrink)

Based on the data of four periods of CLHLS, the latent variable growth model was applied to 2344 older adults who completed four follow-up surveys, to study the trajectory of leisure activities and cognitive ability and explore the relationship between leisure activities and cognitive ability of older adults. The results showed that: leisure activities and cognitive ability of older adults showed a non-linear downward trend; leisure activities significantly and positively predicted the cognitive ability of older adults at every time point; (...) the initial level of leisure activity positively predicted the initial level of cognitive ability but negatively predicted the rate of cognitive decline; In addition, cognitive activities had a greater effect on cognitive ability than non-exercise physical activities; the rate of decline of leisure activities also significantly and positively predicted the rate of decline of cognitive ability; cross-lagged regression analysis further suggested the overall positive predictive effect of leisure activity on cognitive ability; overall, education level had a significant contribution to cognitive ability, and the higher the education level, the slower the decline of cognitive ability; and smoking could promote cognitive ability in older adults and no significant effect was found between alcohol drinking and cognitive ability. Accordingly, the government should encourage older adults to do more leisure activities, especially the cognitive activity, to effectively prevent cognitive decline. (shrink)

Selective protein degradation maintains cellular homeostasis, but this process is disrupted in many diseases. Targeted protein degradation (TPD) approaches, built upon existing cellular mechanisms, are promising methods for therapeutically regulating protein levels. Here, we review the diverse palette of tools that are now available for doing so throughout the gene expression pathway and in specific cellular compartments. These include methods for directly removing targeted proteins via the ubiquitin proteasome system with proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs) or dephosphorylation targeting chimeras (DEPTACs). Similar (...) effects can also be achieved through the lysosomal system with autophagy‐targeting chimeras (AUTACs), autophagosome tethering compounds (ATTECs), and lysosome targeting chimeras (LYTACs). Other methods act upstream to degrade RNAs (ribonuclease targeting chimeras; RIBOTACs) or transcription factors (transcription factor targeting chimeras; TRAFTACs), offering control throughout the gene expression process. We highlight the evolution and function of these methods and discuss their clinical implications in diverse disease contexts. (shrink)