La propuesta antropológica del médico español Pedro Laín Entralgo, se direcciona a la ejecución de un proyecto académico y autobiográfico, desde el cual se vivencien relaciones interpersonales genuinas, en las que siendo el otro desconocido, sin nombre, sea ayudado en su menesterosidad. Laín está convencido de que la razón suficiente para ser solidario con el otro es su condición de persona y, por serlo, debo creerle y serle prójimo. Dicho proyecto es denominado por Laín “pleisología de la vida cotidiana”; tal (...) propuesta resulta necesaria y debe ser acogida por el cristianismo en nuestros días. Se hace perentorio, hacer del cristianismo una propuesta con sentido, para ello, quien se quiera cristiano, que asuma su modo de serlo como vocación y la formule como un proyecto personal (sea persona), responsable y desde allí contribuya a la humanización de las relaciones humanas mediante la práctica de un amor samaritano. (shrink)

Online crowdsourcing platforms have rapidly become a popular source of data collection. Despite the various advantages these platforms offer, there are substantial concerns regarding not only data validity issues, but also the ethical, societal, and global ramifications arising from the prevalent use of online crowdsourcing platforms. This paper seeks to expand the dialogue by examining both the “internal” aspects of crowdsourcing research practices, such as data quality issues, reporting transparency, and fair compensation, and the “external” aspects, in terms of how (...) the widespread use of crowdsourcing data collection shapes the nature of scientific communities and our society in general. Online participants in research studies are informal workers who provide labor in exchange for remuneration. The paper thus highlights the need for researchers to consider the markedly different political, economic, and socio-cultural characteristics of the Global North and the Global South when undertaking crowdsourcing research involving an international sample; such consideration is crucial for both increasing research validity and mitigating societal inequities. We encourage researchers to scrutinize the value systems underlying this popular data collection research method and its associated ethical, societal, and global ramifications, as well as provide a set of recommendations regarding the use of crowdsourcing platforms. (shrink)

Ever since its first documented live birth in 2014, the use of uterine transplantation (UTx) for the treatment of absolute uterine factor infertility (UFI) has seen major clinical advances, which include the use of alternative surgical approaches, different donor states, and diverse patient populations. In addition to the thorough research programs that developed the technique, this accomplishment has occurred in large part following a number of ethical frameworks, such as the Montreal Criteria and the Indianapolis Consensus, which paved the way (...) to transition from experimental animal trials to human ones. To date, over 60 uterine transplants have been performed in the world, and at least 18 births have been thus far confirmed. While the procedure remains experimental, the vast knowledge and procedural experience amassed over the last 20 years of rigorous research have hinted at the next step of discovery. In particular, advancing social circumstances have prompted the question regarding the use of this technology in transgender individuals. Though the potential use of uterine transplants in the transgender population has been hypothesized, no in‐depth ethical framework has been developed towards this purpose. Herein, we explore the ethical issues revolving around the use of this technology in this patient population and provide key insights that may advance this cause. (shrink)

This study seeks to examine the impact of alumni connections between the evaluators and evaluatees on the results of peer review ratings for the Korean national R&D project and selection success rate. Specifically, this study analyzed the evaluation results of 8,402 research proposal entries submitted between 2007 and 2011 for the “general researchers support project,” all in the Natural Science and Engineering areas and sponsored by the National Research Foundation of Korea. Each proposal entry was evaluated by three evaluators, and (...) approximately 39 percent of the proposals had at least one evaluator from the same university. The results of this study showed that evaluators have a tendency to give relatively high scores to research proposals submitted by the alumni of the same universities as their alma mater. Also, when an evaluator from the same university as an evaluatee was included in the evaluator group, the results of this study showed that the percentage of entry submissions was higher compared to the contrary. Such results show that in the process of peer review–based research proposal evaluations for national R&D projects, alumni connections have significant influence on evaluation results in South Korea. (shrink)

Conventional understanding and research regarding prognostic understanding too often focuses on transmission of information. However, merely overcoming barriers to patient understanding may not be sufficient. In this article the authors provide a more nuanced understanding of prognostic awareness, using oncological care as an overarching example, and discuss factors that may lead to prognostic discordance between physicians and patients. We summarize the current literature and research and present a model developed by the authors to characterize barriers to prognostic awareness. Ultimately, multiple (...) influences on prognostic understanding may impede acceptance by patients even when adequate transfer of information takes place. Physicians should improve how they transmit prognostic information, as this information may be processed in different ways. A model of misunderstandings in awareness, ranging from patient understanding to patient belief, may be useful to guide future discussions. Future decision-making studies should consider these many variables so that interventions may be created to address all aspects of the prognostic disclosure process. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 48-69, March 2022.

I explain why Ross Cameron's definition of ultimate ontological basis is incorrect, and propose a different definition in terms of ontological dependence, as well as a definition of reality's fundamental layer. These new definitions cover the conceptual possibility that self-dependent entities exist. They also apply to different conceptions of the relation of ontological dependence.

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 30-32.

We still ask the question ‘What is Enlightenment?’ Every generation seems to offer new and contradictory answers to the question. In the last thirty or so years, the most interesting characterisations of Enlightenment have been by historians. They have told us that there is one Enlightenment, that there are two Enlightenments, that there are many Enlightenments. This has thrown up a second question, ‘How Many Enlightenments?’ In the spirit of collaboration and criticism, I answer both questions by arguing in this (...) article that there are in fact three Enlightenments: Radical, Sceptical and Liberal. These are abstracted from the rival theories of Enlightenment found in the writings of the historians Jonathan Israel, John Robertson and J.G.A. Pocock. Each form of Enlightenment is political; each involves an attitude to history; each takes a view of religion. They are arranged in a sequence of increasing sensitivity to history, as it is this which makes it possible to relate them to each other and indeed propose a composite definition of Enlightenment. The argument should be of interest to anyone concerned with ‘the Enlightenment’ as a historical phenomenon or with ‘Enlightenment’ as a philosophical abstraction. (shrink)

Ann M. Blair -- Lorraine Daston -- Benjamin Elman -- Anthony Grafton -- Jill Kraye -- Peter N. Miller -- Jean-Louis Quantin -- Quentin Skinner.

An account, based principally on Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society, of his concept of enlightened governance, and of the relation between that concept and his concept of human nature.

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 6, June 2022.

Austrian economist Ludwig Mises’s central role in the socialist calculation debates has been consensually acknowledged since the early 1920s. Yet, only recently Nemeth, O’Neill, Uebel, and others have drawn particular attention to Mises’s encounter with logical empiricist Otto Neurath. Despite several surprising agreements, Neurath and Mises certainly provide different answers to the questions “what is meant by rational economic theory” (Neurath) and whether “socialism is the abolition of rational economy” (Mises). Previous accounts and evaluations of the exchange between Neurath and (...) Mises suffer from attaching little regard to their idiosyncratic uses of the term “rational.” The paper at hand reconstructs and critically compares the different conceptions of rationality defended by Neurath and Mises. The author presents two different resolutions to a detected tension in Mises’s deliberations on rationality: the first is implicit in Neurath’s, O’Neill’s, and Salerno’s reading of Mises and faces several interpretational problems; the author proposes a divergent interpretation. Based on the reconstructions of Neurath’s and Mises’s conceptions of rationality, the author suggests some implications with respect to Viennese Late Enlightenment and the socialist calculation debates. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that punishment should be proportional to desert; that desert turns solely on culpability and not on results: that culpability is a function of what the actor perceives are the risks of his act to others’ interests and the reasons he perceives that might justify, excuse, or aggravate taking those risks; that because culpability is a complex function, ordinally ranking acts in terms of culpability is quite difficult; that converting the ordinal ranking into cardinal measures of (...) deserved punishment must perforce be controversial; and that deserved punishment, which is deserved suffering, must somehow deal with the fact that the actor may have already suffered undeservedly. (shrink)

“Opt-out” organ procurement policies based on presumed consent are typically advertised as being superior to “opt-in” policies based on explicit consent at securing organs for transplantation. However, Michael Gill has argued that presumed consent policies are also better than opt-in policies at respecting patient autonomy. According to Gill’s Fewer Mistakes Argument, we ought to implement the procurement policy that results in the fewest frustrated wishes regarding organ donation. Given that the majority of Americans wish to donate their organs, it is (...) plausible that a presumed consent policy would result in fewer frustrated wishes compared to the current opt-in policy. It follows that we ought to implement a policy of presumed consent. In this paper, I first consider and find wanting an objection to the Fewer Mistakes Argument developed recently by Douglas MacKay. I also consider an objection put forth by James Taylor but argue that there is a methodological reason to prefer my own argument to Taylor’s. Finally, I argue for two theses: first, that Gill’s major argument in favor of the crucial premise of the Fewer Mistakes Argument is flawed, and second, that the major premise of the Fewer Mistakes Argument is false. (shrink)

Several proponents of the interventionist theory of causation have recently argued for a neo-Russellian account of causation. The paper discusses two strategies for interventionists to be neo-Russellians. Firstly, I argue that the open systems argument – the main argument for a neo-Russellian account advocated by interventionists – fails. Secondly, I explore and discuss an alternative for interventionists who wish to be neo-Russellians: the statistical mechanical account. Although the latter account is an attractive alternative, it is argued that interventionists are not (...) able to adopt it straightforwardly. Hence, to be neo-Russellians remains a challenge to interventionists. (shrink)

Casini, Illari, Russo, and Williamson (2011) suggest to model mechanisms by means of recursive Bayesian networks (RBNs) and Clarke, Leuridan, and Williamson (2014) extend their modelling approach to mechanisms featuring causal feedback. One of the main selling points of the RBN approach should be that it provides answers to questions concerning manipulation and control. In this paper I demonstrate that the method to compute the effects of interventions the authors mentioned endorse leads to absurd results under the additional assumption of (...) faithfulness, which can be expected to hold for many RBN models of mechanisms. (shrink)

Building on Nozick's invariantism about objectivity, I propose to define scientific objectivity in terms of counterfactual independence. I will argue that such a counterfactual independence account is (a) able to overcome the decisive shortcomings of Nozick's original invariantism and (b) applicable to three paradigmatic kinds of scientific objectivity (that is, objectivity as replication, objectivity as robustness, and objectivity as Mertonian universalism).

Journal of Applied Philosophy, EarlyView.

Democratic institutions are appealing means of making publicly justified social choices. By allowing participation by all citizens, democracy can accommodate diversity among citizens, and by considering the perspectives of all, via ballots or debate, democratic results can approximate what the balance of reasons favors. I consider whether, and under what conditions, democratic institutions might reliably make publicly justified social decisions. I argue that conventional accounts of democracy, constituted by voting or deliberation, are unlikely to be effective public justification mechanisms. I (...) conclude that the limitations of conventional mechanisms can be ameliorated through the use of lotteries instead of elections. (shrink)

According to Immanuel Kant, legality means the quality of an action being merely and simply in conformity with a law. The article defends the significance of this notion and explains how it indicates the existence of a legal relation. The legal relation, in turn, is the result of resolving an antinomy between the social and the substantive dimension of moral judgment.

Innovation and sustainability are postulated as key variables for the future of large commercial distribution. In addition, the development of Information and Communication Technologies solutions, and especially those related to Artificial Intelligence and digitization, are particularly relevant factors in the current pandemic scenario in which retail companies operate. These tools are essential to face the derived changes in commercial relations, especially between companies and consumers. For all these reasons, this work aims to examine the effect of ICT, as a driving (...) factor for innovation and its direct and indirect impact on sustainability in retailing. Furthermore, this study takes into account the eventual differences in these relationships according to the types of store formats. To achieve the aforementioned objective, a theoretical model is proposed that is tested through an empirical study carried out on a sample of 510 consumers of three store formats of grocery retail formats in Spain. For the analysis of the data obtained, the partial least squares regression technique and the Multigroup Analysis were used. The results obtained confirm the direct and indirect effect of ICT on innovation and sustainability in grocery retailing. In addition, the results indicate that consumers unequally perceive the technological progress of companies. These differences are greater between discount stores versus hypermarkets and supermarkets. The larger the size of the store format, the higher the incidence of ICT in relation to innovation. Therefore, it is vital to take ICT into consideration, where Artificial Intelligence is imperative for the growth and development of sustainable competitive advantages in retail companies. (shrink)

Consequential historical decisions that shaped transportation systems and their influence on society have many valuable lessons. The decisions we learn from and choose to make going forward will play a key role in shaping the mobility landscape of the future. This is especially pertinent as artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more prevalent in the form of autonomous vehicles (AVs). Throughout urban history, there have been cyclical transport oppressions of previous-generation transportation methods to make way for novel transport methods. These cyclical oppressions (...) can be identified in the baroque and modernist periods, and a third oppression may occur in the contemporary period. To explore the idea of a third oppression, we focus on the bicycle and outline the history of cycling to understand how historical mode oppression unfolded. We then present several social and political factors that contributed to the oppression of cycling and share recommendations for how to avoid future oppressions including political, social, and design actions for researchers and policymakers to take. This paper argues that priorities for AI-enabled mobility and cyclist needs be advanced in proportion to the extent that they contribute to societal goals of urban containment, public realm, and proximal cities. Additionally, future mobility evolutions should prioritise mobility justice and mode choice over inducing a singular transportation method. (shrink)

Determinism is a doctrine or assumption best defined in the realm of the natural sciences. In this paper I explain in detail the four senses of determinism, from the most fundamental metaphysical sense, to the most complex epistemic (predictive) sense. I take as a starting point the analysis of determinism offered by Stephen Kellert. Each of these senses is then expounded and commented with a view to explore some of the implications of each of them in theoretical physics. The most (...) important of my tasks in this paper is to differentiate between the metaphysical and epistemic consequences of the deterministic assumption. My objective is to show that determinism as an ontological tenet is capable of withstanding criticism, even though predictive determinism is likely to be false. (shrink)

Changes in healthcare financing increasingly rely upon patient cost-sharing to control escalating healthcare expenditures. These changes raise new challenges for physicians that are different from those that arose either under managed care or traditional indemnity insurance. Historically, there have been two distinct bases for arguing that physicians should not consider costs in their clinical decisions—an “aspirational ethic” that exhorts physicians to treat all patients the same regardless of their ability to pay, and an “agency ethic” that calls on physicians to (...) be trustworthy advisors to their patients. In the setting of greater patient cost-sharing, physicians' aspiration and agency roles increasingly conflict. Satisfactorily navigating the new terrain of consumer-driven healthcare requires physicians to consider these two roles and how they can best be reconciled so as to maximize quality of care while respecting the heterogeneity of patients' financial resources and willingness to pay. (shrink)

Nehamas geeft in zijn essay een kritische reactie op de religieuze wereldvisie, en houdt een pleidooi voor het heidendom. Het heidendom zou in tegenstelling tot het monotheïsme erkennen dat er veel manieren zijn waarop mensen hun leven kunnen bevestigen, en is volgens Nehamas een combinatie tussen tolerantie en kosmopolitisme.

P. F. Strawson a critiqué le compte de Leibniz de 1'individuation, en demandant pourquoi il est métaphysiquement impossible pour qu'il y ait des consciences indiscernables mais distincts. L'analogie entre la conscience et la monade est centrale pour Leibniz, et done la critique de Strawson met en question la nécessité métaphysique du principe de l'identité des indiscernables . Par un examen de quelques questions dans le système ontologique de Leibniz, nous défendrons la nécessité métaphysique du PII contre Strawson.