The COVID-19 pandemic marked a before and after for the global economy, and one of the most affected sectors was the health sector, where rising costs in medical care, protective equipment and infrastructure, coupled with a decrease in income from other regular services, led a large part of health centers such as public and private hospitals to resort to unethical accounting practices for the manipulation of their financial information (creative accounting). These events of financial depression and relaxation of controls during (...) the health emergency allowed the creation of a "favorable" environment to distort financial statements through techniques such as premature recording of income, undervaluation of expenses, among others, to evade taxes and take advantage of the benefits imposed by governments to promote humanitarian aid and prioritize health care. The purpose of this article is to highlight the most common creative accounting practices that were applied in the health sector in Latin America during the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent effects it had on the economy and on the governmental control of the countries in the region for the detection of these practices. (shrink)

Este trabajo profundiza en un momento importante en la historia de la comunicación como lo fue el de la difusión de la imprenta y el desarrollo de las técnicas del grabado aplicadas a la impresión. Se estudian las imágenes del libro bíblico del Apocalipsis, ilustrado por el artista alemán Alberto Durero a finales del siglo XV. Para ello se ha ahondando en el contexto histórico en el que fueron producidas, en la personalidad y circunstancias que rodearon la vida del artista (...) y en las propias imágenes xilográficas rastreando sus antecedentes y características propias. This work focuses on an important moment in the history of communication such as the diffusion of the printing press and the development of the engraving techniques applied to printing. It studies in depth the images of the biblical book of the Apocalypse illustrated by the German artist Alberto Durero by the end of the fifteenth century. This article analyzes the historical context where they were produced, the personality of the artist and the circumstances surrounding his life, and the very own xylographic images, whose antecedents and characteristics are traced. (shrink)

Resumen En este ensayo ofrezco una comparación entre la filosofía del pensador marxista alemán Ernst Bloch y la del pensador francés Quentin Meillassoux a propósito del hecho de que ambos plantean una fundamentación ontológica de la esperanza y de una política de la esperanza. En el primer apartado, presento el concepto religioso de esperanza que critican los filósofos mencionados; en el segundo, abordo la concepción dialéctico-materialista de Bloch; en el tercer apartado, expongo la concepción de Meillassoux, que interpreto como una (...) radicalización crítica de una filosofía inmanente y materialista de la esperanza. A lo largo del ensayo y en la breve conclusión, muestro las semejanzas y diferencias entre las concepciones de ambos pensadores y apuesto por la superioridad, por su mayor consistencia teórica, de la perspectiva de Meillassoux.In this essay I offer a comparison between the philosophy of the German Marxist thinker Ernst Bloch and that of the French thinker Quentin Meillassoux apropos of the fact that both put forward an ontological foundation of hope and a politics of hope. In the first section I present the religious concept -criticized by Bloch and Meillassoux- of hope; in the second I explore the dialectical-materialist conception of Bloch, and in the third section I present the conception of Meillassoux, which I interpret as a critical radicalization of an immanent and materialist philosophy of hope. Throughout the essay and in the brief conclusion I show the similarities and differences between the conceptions of both thinkers and, due to its greater theoretical consistency, favor the perspective of Meillassoux. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editors' IntroductionAlan D. Schrift and Shannon SullivanThe articles in this special issue of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy were selected from revised versions of papers that were originally presented at the sixtieth annual meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas October 13–15, 2022.Michael Hardt of Duke University and Patricia Pisters of the University of Amsterdam gave the SPEP (...) 2022 Plenary Addresses, and we are grateful to be able to include their plenary papers in this special issue. Hardt's paper, "The Politics of Articulation and Strategic Multiplicities," treated SPEP members to an early peek at his newest book, The Subversive 70s (Oxford University Press, 2023). In this work, Hardt digs into the powerful resources for social movements that activists and theorists from the 1970s developed. As he argues, in many ways those activists and thinkers were ahead of their times—and also ahead of ours—in understanding how to analyze interwoven multiplicities of power and how to articulate and organize liberation struggles based on those multiplicities. Hardt brilliantly demonstrates how analyzing the progressive and revolutionary social [End Page 237] movements of the '70s can help us not only understand the roots of contemporary social and political struggles but also reclaim critical resources for those struggles.Patricia Pisters's paper, "Thinking with Fire: Elemental Philosophy and Media Technology," draws upon Gaston Bachelard's "fire complexes" to address a variety of pyrotechnical images appearing in contemporary cinema. Noting that elemental philosophy is on the rise in media studies and elsewhere, not least because of current environmental crises, fire is particularly engaging for its metaphorical, "matterphorical," and technological associations. While acknowledging fire as a material medium—cooking, heating, burning, etc.—Pisters's primary focus in her paper is on fire as an immaterial medium, and it is here that she turns to Bachelard's constellation of fire complexes—the Empedocles, Prometheus, and Novalis Complexes—to which she adds her own fourth complex, the Sita Complex. With these complexes, she provides readings of four cinematic productions that elucidate the annihilating, transgressive, sexual, and purifying qualities of fire, and she suggests that these entangled fire complexes present different kinds of combustive knowledge in which the element of fire manifests itself as material phenomenon of nature, the engine for modern life, and immaterial affective reverie of destruction, transgression, and sexuality.The other articles in this special issue have been organized according to five broad groupings. The first grouping, "On Latin American Philosophy," brings together three papers that engage Latin American philosophy, particularly as found in Mexican, Columbian, and Venezuelan history and political movements. In "Radicalizing Localization: Notes on Santiago Castro-Gómez's Genealogies of Coloniality," Julian Rios Acuña argues that Columbian philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez develops a radical method of localization. This method allows Castro-Gómez to transform Foucauldian genealogy into genealogies of coloniality that grapple with the complexities of extreme violence produced by colonialism. In "Stefan Gandler's Renewal of Critical Theory from Latin America," Jake M. Bartholomew argues for a version of Critical Theory that is not bound by Europe but also remains true to its first-generation Marxist roots. Relocating to Mexico and advocating for Mexican philosophers, German-born philosopher Stefan Gandler shows how Latin American philosophy can enrich Critical Theory, providing more than can the second and third generations of Critical Theory because of its ability to analyze capitalism from outside the economic perspectives of the Global North. In "Two Versions of the Mestizo [End Page 238] Model: Toward a Theory of Anti-Blackness in Latin American Thought," Miguel Gualdron Ramirez criticizes the anti-Blackness that he sees at the heart of mestizo models of latinidad, or lo latinoamericano. Focusing on the concepts of liberation offered by Venezuelan theorist and politician Simón Bolívar and Mexican philosopher José de Vasconcelos, Ramirez reveals the exclusion and erasure of Black bodies, lives, and histories that ground their versions of Latinx identity and Latin American history. Together these three articles showcase how Latin American philosophy can enrich and expand the scope of Continental philosophy.The second grouping, "Liberatory Limits and Misalignments," features three articles... (shrink)

The “Radiography of the Teaching of University Entrepreneurship in Mexico” is situated within the context of the necessity to comprehend and enhance the pedagogical practices associated with entrepreneurship in Mexican universities. This context encompasses a global examination of entrepreneurship and its prevailing trends, as well as a detailed analysis of the entrepreneurial landscape in Mexico. The principal objective of this study is to conduct a comprehensive examination of the pedagogical approaches employed in higher education institutions (HEIs) in Mexico with regard (...) to the teaching of entrepreneurship. The objective is to establish a unified approach to entrepreneurship teaching, identify the most effective pedagogical tools for fostering an entrepreneurial mindset, and disseminate the requisite technical knowledge among educators to facilitate their integration into the classroom. The methodology employed begins with a review of secondary sources to provide a detailed overview of the global and Mexican entrepreneurship landscapes, as well as the current state of entrepreneurship education in higher education institutions (HEIs). In conclusion, the Delphi technique is employed to conduct interviews with experts directly involved in the teaching of entrepreneurship in various HEIs, with the objective of collecting and synthesizing their opinions on the subject matter. The research yielded a “Teaching Model of Entrepreneurship in the University,” which is based on the identified approaches, models, and methodologies. The teacher plays a pivotal role in the teaching of entrepreneurship in higher education institutions (HEIs). The findings indicate that in Mexico, the probability of success or opportunity for entrepreneurs is significantly influenced by the material conditions of the individual, which are shaped by their social stratum and geographical location. Furthermore, data indicates that all HEIs endeavor to impart instruction on entrepreneurship. However, due to significant disparities between private and public institutions, smaller or more remote ones may lack the capacity and resources to do so effectively. Therefore, this results in heterogeneity in the teaching of entrepreneurship, which could condition the chances of success for those wishing to become entrepreneurs. Consequently, the necessity was identified for all entrepreneurship teachers in HEIs in Mexico to be able to achieve a robust and comprehensive process of teaching entrepreneurship, whereby students can develop their entrepreneurial skills at an early stage, as well as the creation of companies at a later stage. (shrink)

Great progress to digitize the world’s available Biodiversity and Biogeography data have been made recently, but managing data from many different providers and research domains still remains a challenge. A review of the current landscape of metadata standards and ontologies in Biodiversity sciences suggests that existing standards, such as the Darwin Core terminology, are inadequate for describing Biodiversity data in a semantically meaningful and computationally useful way. As a contribution to fill this gap, we present an ontology-based system, called BiGe-Onto, (...) designed to manage data together from Biodiversity and Biogeography. As data sources, we use two internationally recognized repositories: the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS). BiGe-Onto system is composed of (i) BiGe-Onto Architecture (ii) a conceptual model called BiGe-Onto specified in OntoUML, (iii) an operational version of BiGe-Onto encoded in OWL 2, and (iv) an integrated dataset for its exploitation through a SPARQL endpoint. We will show use cases that allow researchers to answer questions that manage information from both domains. (shrink)

Introducción: La asignatura Metodología de la Investigación Cualitativa en Salud se imparte a los estudiantes de tercer año de la Licenciatura en Enfermería en la modalidad de clase teórico-práctica como forma organizativa de la docencia. Ello recalca la importancia del trabajo independiente. Las insuficiencias con relación a éste inciden directamente en la asimilación y apropiación de los conocimientos de la asignatura. Objetivo: Elaborar una estrategia didáctica que contribuya al desarrollo del trabajo independiente correspondiente a la asignatura Metodología de la Investigación (...) Cualitativa en Salud.Material y métodos: Se realizó una investigación de desarrollo, encaminada a perfeccionar el proceso docente educativo en la Facultad de Enfermería, de la Universidad de Ciencias Médicas de Camagüey, durante el curso escolar 2011-2012. Para el diagnóstico inicial se procedió al análisis de documentos: los planes de estudio y el programa de la asignatura. También se aplicaron encuestas a un grupo de estudiantes y al colectivo de profesores que imparten la asignatura. Una vez elaborada la estrategia se evaluó por criterio de expertos. Resultados y discusión: La estrategia pone a disposición de la comunidad académica un software educativo que relaciona los contenidos de la asignatura, lo que permitirá al estudiantado realizar las tareas docentes que se orientan en clases así como asimilar, consolidar y sistematizar los conocimientos con mayor facilidad. Introduction: The subject Methodology of Qualitative Research in Health is taught to the students of the third year of the Bachelor in nursing in the form of theoretical and practical lesson as organizational way of teaching. This underscores the importance of self-employment. The shortcomings in relation to this affect directly the assimilation and appropriation of knowledge in the subject. Objective: To develop a teaching strategy that contributes to the development of self-employ ment for the subject Methodology of Qualitative Research in Health. Material aids and methods: A development research was made which aims at improving the educational teaching process in the Faculty of nursing from the University of Medical Sciences in Camagüey, during the 2011-2012 course. For an initial diagnosis the analyses of documents was made: the curriculum and the program of the course. Surveys were also applied to a group of students and the staff of teachers of the subject. Once the strategy was made it was evaluated through criteria of experts. Results and discussion: Strategy makes available to the academic community educational software that relates to the contents of the course, allowing students to perform teaching tasks which are assigned in lessons as well as assimilate, consolidate and systematize the knowledge easiest. (shrink)

El siguiente documento es el resultado de un seminario de investigación sobre novela policíaca latinoamericana reciente, desarrollado en el curso de Novela Latinoamericana, de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras en la Universidad de La Salle. La fundamentación teórica del seminario tuvo como marco general la Estética de la Recepción fundada en la Escuela de Constanza, Alemania, por Hans Robert Jauss y Wolfgang Iser. Para el caso concreto de la teoría literaria sobre novela policíaca vista en perspectiva sociológica, preferimos apelar (...) a las reflexiones fundacionales de Roger Caillios (1942), las que tiene un sugestivo subtítulo, a saber, La novela policíaca. –De cómo la inteligencia se retira del mundo para consagrarse a sus juegos y de cómo la sociedad introduce sus problemas en éstos. Por otra parte, elegimos la novela corta de Roberto Bolaño, La pista de hielo; y sobre esta elaboramos distintas hipótesis de trabajo, hasta lograr, al juicio de nuestros lectores, una propuesta de teoría literaria, que dé cuenta de la nueva narrativa policíaca. (shrink)

This writing is part of a body of reflections about the ‘researching programs’ and ‘categories’ used in philosophy, philology and linguistics to explain human language. Within this framework, several categories like Modell, Vorbild and Paradigm are covered from a descriptive sense according to the ‘Wittgenstein’ research program. From Russell’s conception of language, there is a treatment to the prescriptive aspects of Plato’s ideas and their relation to universals. Then, the universal category in the predicament act and the denotation act are (...) linked proposing their relation with notions such as ‘knowledge’ and ‘truth’. Therefore some concerns, shared by Russell and Wittgenstein about a philosophical grammar, are pointed out for the expression of human understanding. (shrink)

RESUMEN Se aplicó una intervención socio sanitaria en el asentamiento rural El León de Camagüey basada en los resultados de un estudio anterior, desde la comunicación social, educativa, así como aspectos socioculturales evaluados que permitieron la realización de este estudio. Su objetivo fue implementar una estrategia de intervención basada en acciones sociales y educativas colectadas en un manual que organizó contenidos de antropología socio cultural, psicología, sociología de la salud y trabajo social comunitario, la que fue conducida por profesionales de (...) enfermería como prestadores, cuyo encargo social les asigna una mayor permanencia e intercambio con los pobladores, potenciándose el trabajo comunitario a partir de febrero de 2016,como etapa de sostenibilidad. La investigación constituyó un diseño mixto, con un estudio cuasi experimental sin grupo control combinado con métodos cualitativos. La evaluación final efectuada en el periodo 2017-2018 exhibió modificaciones positivas en indicadores de las historias clínicas familiares de los pobladores, repercutiendo en el Análisis de la Situación de Salud, realizado en abril de 2018 y el entorno comunitario. Se demostró la importancia de la aplicación de la estrategia de intervención comunitaria desde las disciplinas de las ciencias sociales, por el personal de enfermería como agente de cambio de desarrollo local y protagonista de sostenibilidad. ABSTRACT A social sanitary intervention was applied in the rural establishment El León of Camagüey, based on social and educational actions collected in a manual that organized social cultural anthropology contents, psychology, sociology of the health and community social work, which was led by infirmary professionals like lenders, whose social order assigns a major permanence and exchange of them with the settlers. The investigation constituted a mixed design, with a study quasi experimentally without control group combined with qualitative methods. The final evaluation carried out in the period 2017-2018 exhibited positive modifications in indicators of the familiar clinical history of the settlers, what reverberated in the Analysis of the Situation of Health, carried in April, 2018 and the community environment. It was demonstrated the importance of the application of the strategy of community intervention from the disciplines of the social sciences, by the infirmary personnel as change agent of local development and protagonist of sustainability. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Knock at the Door: Utopian Dreams for Post-Covid TimesPedro Mora-Ramírez, María Amo-Hernández, and Paula García-RodríguezAnswering the Knock at the Door, Welcoming Utopian Futures, The Knock at the Door: Utopian Dreams for Post-Covid Times, May 21–24, 2023, University of Huelva, Spain, and University of Calgary, CanadaThe COVID-19 pandemic has fostered new adversities and vulnerabilities, prompting reflection on the economic, social, and political paradigms that endanger human and nonhuman (...) lives. For many, it was anxiety and uncertainty that “knock[ed] at the door”; for others, however, those same feelings of unease prompted one of hopefulness: reflecting on the possibilities for resilience and regeneration in the process of changing our vision of the world.1 The Knock at the Door conference brought contemporary utopianism to the forefront of thinking about how to respond to global crises while remaining attentive to other adversities of daily life. Scholars and artists answered the knock in an attempt to examine paths toward utopia, and to take advantage of the regenerative and resilient potential of the present.The conference was the culmination of author/activist Larissa Lai’s fellowship period at the University of Huelva. The 2022–23 María Zambrano Fellowship for the academic year2 allowed Lai to complete the project “Utopian Dreams for Post-Covid Times,” carried out in collaboration with the Huelva research group led by Professor Pilar Cuder-Domínguez, who hosted a number of online and in-person seminars on speculative fiction with Lai. The Knock at the Door conference, marking the end of Lai’s fellowship, created yet another space for scholars, artists, and critics to discuss the potential of utopian narratives. Lai asks: “What does our cultural moment require, and how can we get where we need to go from where we are? How can literature, especially speculative fiction literature, help us get from here to there?”3 [End Page 641] The intention of the conference was to encourage others to continue Lai’s work on how to imagine futures where human and posthuman beings need to remain vigilant to adversities. Utopian scholars, among others, might find the complications of “getting there from here” closely related to Lai’s conception of “insurgent utopias,” or “emergent insurgency.” They could find Lai’s concept of “insurgent utopianism” interesting as it lays the foundations of futurity in terms of crisis responses.The aim of the conference was to explore the imagination of better futures through utopian thinking and practice. In addition, it focused on “the knock at the door,” which is “a moment of contingent arrival... open to cooptation, destruction, bastardization, incorporation, death, or defusal.” Yet, it presents “the powerful possibility of critique—narratively or discursively, in its very materiality.”4 One way of doing this might be to look back at the past century of utopianism and ask who or what has been missing. The conference took up Lai’s idea of insurgent utopianism as a method of paving a path toward a multitude of dreams and actions, all shaped by the unique circumstances of one’s positionality.After the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for utopian thinking has become more pressing than ever. New horizons of hope must be created in the face of emerging anxieties. In a world where anthropocentrism is showing signs of its deadly potential, conference participants reflected on the relevance of the utopian imagination to political resistance and resilience building.Utopian Visions: Contesting Better Worlds in Neoliberal and Feminist UtopiasThe first two panels of the conference addressed the critique of two dominant theoretical (and interrelated) frameworks: capitalism and neoliberalism. Speakers reflected on both in light of theoretical interventions by theorists Rosi Braidotti and Francesca Ferrando. Panelists Benjamin Ghan and Marc Lynch reflected on how creative writers envision ideal worlds and temporalities. In Ghan’s view, utopian narratives create a symphony of voices historically excluded from the category of “the human”: women; LGBTQ+ people; Indigenous peoples. In a similar vein, Lynch described his own novel, A Wasp’s Waist, as highlighting the impossibility of imagining utopias within the capitalist paradigm—and thus the necessity of imagining futures beyond capitalism, and beyond... (shrink)

The recent debate about whether gauge symmetries can be empirically significant has focused on the possibility of 'Galileo's ship' types of scenarios, where the symmetries effect relational differences between a subsystem and the environment. However, it has gone largely unremarked that apart from such Galileo's ship scenarios, Greaves and Wallace (2014) proposed that gauge transformations can also be empirically significant in a 'non-relational' manner that is analogous to a Faraday-cage scenario, where the subsystem symmetry is related to a change in (...) a charged boundary state. In this paper, we investigate the question of whether such non-relational scenarios are possible for gauge theories. Remarkably, the answer to this question turns out to be closely related to a foundational puzzle that has driven a host of recent developments at the frontiers of theoretical physics. By drawing on these recent developments, we show that a very natural way of elaborating on Greaves and Wallace's claim of non-relational empirical significance for gauge symmetry is incoherent. However, we also argue that much of what they suggest is correct in spirit: one can indeed construct non-relational models of the kind they sketch, albeit ones where the empirical significance is not witnessed by a gauge symmetry but instead by a superficially similar boundary symmetry. Furthermore, the latter casts doubt on whether one really abandons Galileo's ship in such scenarios. (shrink)

Ordinary use of empty names encompasses a variety of different phenomena, including issues in semantics, mental content, fiction, pretense, and linguistic practice. In this paper I offer a novel account of empty names, the cognitive theory, and show how it offers a satisfactory account of the phenomena. The virtues of this theory are based on its strength and parsimony. It allows for a fully homogeneous semantic treatment of names coped with ontological frugality and empirical and psychological adequacy.

En los más disímiles contextos universitarios, se generan hoy programas para mejorar los desempeños de los docentes en el proceso formativo; pero, infortunadamente estos no siempre resultan en un mejoramiento de la práctica cotidiana de las universidades, sobre todo en la calidad de la formación de los profesionales. De este hecho, el propósito del presente artículo está dado en realizar una valoración de las principales influencias epistemológicas en lo relativo a la profesionalización del docente universitario y develar aquellos desempeños idóneos (...) esenciales que deben poseer en este nivel de educación como expresión de las competencias que deben desarrollar. Today, in most diverse university contexts, programs are developed to improve the performance of professors in the educational process; but unfortunately, they do not always result in improving the daily practice of universities, especially in the quality of professionals training. Of this fact, the purpose of the present article is to carry out a valuation of the main epistemological influences related to the professionalization of universities` professors; and to determine the main essential suitable performances these professionals should have as an expression of the competences they must develop. (shrink)

Se describe la evaluación diagnóstica mixta, formativa, participativa y democrática del Propedéutico, desarrollada en 2014-2015. Problemas enfrentados: oposición y resistencia de profesores y autoridades, no de estudiantes, aceptar la representatividad de los participantes y pocas facilidades. Se obtuvieron resultados sobre diseño curricular, estudiantes, práctica docente, gestión, infraestructura y tutoría, incluyendo recomendaciones pertinentes para su mejora. Palabras clave: Evaluación, nivel medio superior, evaluación participativa, resistencia.

Resumen: La influencia de Schopenhauer en la filosofía de la ciencia del siglo XX ha sido poco estudiada. En este artículo defiendo que la teoría del conocimiento de Schopenhauer impulsó históricamente la idea de que al menos un objetivo de la investigación científica estriba en la exploración tenaz y creativa del potencial heurístico de un sistema teórico, de una matriz disciplinar o de un programa de investigación científica. Sostengo que en ella también se origina una ambigüedad en el significado de (...) los conceptos de descubrimiento objetivo e innovación epistémica.: Little research has been done on Schopenhauer’s influence on twentieth-century philosophy of science. This article defends the thesis that Schopenhauer’s epistemology historically promoted the idea that at least one of the objectives of epistemic research is the tenacious and creative exploration of heuristic potential of a theoretical system, a disciplinary matrix and a scientific research program. I further state that his theory of science leads to ambiguity about the meaning of concepts such as objective discovery and epistemic innovation. (shrink)

Although formal analysis provides us with interesting tools for treating Curry’s paradox, it certainly does not exhaust every possible reading of it. Thus, we suggest that this paradox should be analysed with non-formal tools coming from pragmatics. In this way, using Grice’s logic of conversation, we will see that Curry’s sentence can be reinterpreted as a peculiar conditional sentence implying its own consequent.

The twenty-first century presents a major challenge for civil engineering. The magnitude and future importance of some of the problems perceived by society are directly related to the field of the civil engineer, implying an inescapable burden of responsibility for a group whose technical soundness, rational approach and efficiency is highly valued and respected by the citizen. However, the substantial changes in society and in the way it perceives the problems that it considers important call for a thorough review of (...) our structures, both professional and educational; so that our profession, with its undeniable historical prestige, may modernize certain approaches and attitudes in order to continue to be a reliable instrument in the service of society, giving priority from an ethical standpoint to its actions in pursuit of the public good . It possesses important tools to facilitate this work (new technologies, the development of communications, the transmission of scientific thought.···); but there is nevertheless a need for deep reflection on the very essence of civil engineering: what we want it to be in the future, and the ability and willingness to take the lead at a time when society needs disinterested messages, technically supported, reasonably presented and dispassionately transmitted. (shrink)

En esta discusión abordo la hermenéutica analógica de Mauricio Beuchot comparándola con la hermenéutica filosófica de Hans-Georg Gadamer. Argumento que Beuchot vuelve a la idea clásica de la hermenéutica como método de interpretación y no la juzga, como Gadamer, como una fenomenología de la comprensión. Sin embargo, Beuchot no atiende las razones de Gadamer en contra de concebir la hermenéutica como una metodología. Si se considera como metodología centrada en la analogía, la hermenéutica analógica deja de lado otros recursos interpretativos (...) importantes. Finalmente, Beuchot adopta una teoría correspondentista de la verdad contra la que argumenta Gadamer y que es incompatible con una hermenéutica filosófica. In this paper I analyze Mauricio Beuchot's analogical hermeneutics by contrasting it with Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. I argue that Beuchot goes back to the classical idea of hermeneutics as a method of interpretation, and does not see it, as Gadamer does, as a phenomenology of understanding. However, Beuchot does not address Gadamer's arguments against using hermeneutics as a methodology. Considered as a methodology centered on analogy, analogical hermeneutics overlooks other important interpretation resources. Finally, Beuchot adopts a correspondence theory of truth, which Gadamer objects and is incompatible with philosophical hermeneutics. (shrink)

We offer an empirical assessment of description theories of proper names. We examine empirical evidence on lexical and cognitive development, memory, and aphasia, to see whether it supports Descriptivism. We show that description theories demand much more, in terms of psychological assumptions, than what the data suggest; hence, they lack empirical support. We argue that this problem undermines their success as philosophical theories for proper names in natural languages. We conclude by presenting and defending a preliminary alternative account of reference (...) from a developmental perspective. (shrink)

Background The prioritization protocols for accessing adult critical care in the extreme pandemic context contain tiebreaker criteria to facilitate decision-making in the allocation of resources between patients with a similar survival prognosis. Besides being controversial, little is known about the public acceptability of these tiebreakers. In order to better understand the public opinion, Quebec and Ontario’s protocols were presented to the public in a democratic deliberation during the summer of 2022. Objectives (1) To explore the perspectives of Quebec and Ontario (...) citizens regarding tiebreakers, identifying the most acceptable ones and their underlying values. (2) To analyze these results considering other public consultations held during the pandemic on these criteria. Methods This was an exploratory qualitative study. The design involved an online democratic deliberation that took place over two days, simultaneously in Quebec and Ontario. Public participants were selected from a community sample which excluded healthcare workers. Participants were first presented the essential components of prioritization protocols and their related issues (training session day 1). They subsequently deliberated on the acceptability of these criteria (deliberation session day 2). The deliberation was then subject to thematic analysis. Results A total of 47 participants from the provinces of Quebec (n = 20) and Ontario (n = 27) took part in the online deliberation. A diverse audience participated excluding members of the healthcare workforce. Four themes were identified: (1) Priority to young patients - the life cycle - a preferred tiebreaker; (2) Randomization - a tiebreaker of last resort; (3) Multiplier effect of most exposed healthcare workers - a median acceptability tiebreaker, and (4) Social value – a less acceptable tiebreaker. Conclusion Life cycle was the preferred tiebreaker as this criterion respects intergenerational equity, which was considered relevant when allocating scarce resources to adult patients in a context of extreme pandemic. Priority to young patients is in line with other consultations conducted around the world. Additional studies are needed to further investigate the public acceptability of tiebreaker criteria. (shrink)