_Blood_, according to Gil Anidjar, maps the singular history of Christianity. As a category for historical analysis, blood can be seen through its literal and metaphorical uses as determining, sometimes even defining Western culture, politics, and social practices and their wide-ranging incarnations in nationalism, capitalism, and law. Engaging with a variety of sources, Anidjar explores the presence and the absence, the making and unmaking of blood in philosophy and medicine, law and literature, and economic and political thought from ancient Greece (...) to medieval Spain, from the Bible to Shakespeare and Melville. The prevalence of blood in the social, juridical, and political organization of the modern West signals that we do not live in a secular age into which religion could return. Flowing across multiple boundaries, infusing them with violent precepts that we must address, blood undoes the presumed oppositions between religion and politics, economy and theology, and kinship and race. It demonstrates that what we think of as modern is in fact imbued with Christianity. Christianity, Blood fiercely argues, must be reconsidered beyond the boundaries of religion alone. (shrink)

We present four new change detection methods that create an automated change map from a probability map. In this case, the probability map was derived from a 3D model. The primary application of interest is aerial photographic applications, where the appearance, disappearance or change in position of small objects of a selectable class (e.g., cars) must be detected at a high success rate in spite of variations in magnification, lighting and background across the image. The methods rely on an earlier (...) derivation of a probability map. We describe the theory of the four methods, namely Bernoulli variables, Markov Random Fields, connected change, and relaxation-based segmentation, evaluate and compare their performance experimentally on a set probability maps derived from aerial photographs. (shrink)

El deseo de modificar artificialmente la conciencia es un hecho tan antiguo como la humanidad pero no es hasta muy recientemente cuando surge el interés científico y social entorno a la relación entre enfermedad mental y drogas. En las últimas décadas esta preocupación se ha avivado vistos los efectos devastadores del consumo de algunas sustancia, la aparición de nuevas drogas y a los avances en la organización del saber en torno a la psicopatología. Entrar a fondo en el tema ser (...) ía largo, supondría exponer las definiciones y límites de los conceptos "enfermedad mental" y "toxicomanía" así como las interacciones entre ambos problemas que dan como resultado complejos entrecruzamientos intercmbios. (shrink)

Clinical ethics refers to an emerging field in clinical medicine that focuses on the process of ethical decision-making in a clinicalsetting. It has developed as a result of a growing awareness that modern medicine – characterized by technological progress, culturaldiversity and social challenges – is posing a range of new “ethical dilemmas” that medical science alone cannot solve. For thisreason, clinical ethics is often linked to “ethics consultation,” which consists of services provided by an individual ethicist, ethicsteam or committee to (...) address the ethical issues involved in a specific clinical case. Although clinical ethics developed in the beginningmainly as a methodological analysis to arrive at a justification for clinical ethical decisions, it quickly has become clear thatthe difficulty in clinical decision-making is only one aspect of wider ethical problems pertaining to the doctor-patient relationshipas a whole and, most likely, to the core value of the medical profession. The principles method is usually presented as the mostpopular methodological approach to an analysis of clinical cases. However, strong criticism of this model has been voiced, and otheralternative approaches are referred to, such as the casuistry model. Recently, significant contributions have been made by narrativemedicine and virtue ethics. According to these methodologies, sound anthropology and a good relationship with the sick person arekey elements required of any person engaged in medical practice who aims to be genuinely appropriate from an ethical perspective. DOI: 10.5294/pebi.2016.20.1.3. (shrink)

The medical profession is observing a rising number of calls to action considering the threat that climate change poses to global human health. Theory-led bioethical analyses of the scope and weight of physicians’ normative duty towards climate protection and its conflict with individual patient care are currently scarce. This article offers an analysis of the normative issues at stake by using Korsgaard’s neo-Kantian moral account of practical identities. We begin by showing the case of physicians’ duty to climate protection, before (...) we succinctly introduce Korsgaard’s account. We subsequently show how the duty to climate protection can follow from physicians’ identity of being a healthcare professional. We structure conflicts between individual patient care and climate protection, and show how a transformation in physicians’ professional ethos is possible and what mechanisms could be used for doing so. An important limit of our analysis is that we mainly address the level of individual physicians and their practical identities, leaving out important measures to respond to climate change at the mesolevels and macrolevels of healthcare institutions and systems, respectively. (shrink)

One of the foundational problems of biochemistry concerns the conceptualisation of the relationship between the composition, structure and function of macromolecules like proteins. Part of the recent philosophical literature displays a reductionist bias, that is, the endorsement of a form of microstructuralism mirroring an out-dated biochemical conceptualisation. We shall argue that such microstructuralist approaches are ultimately committed to a potentialist form of micro-predeterminism whereby the macrostructure and function of proteins is accounted for solely in terms of the intrinsic properties and (...) potentialities of the components of the primary structure as if they were self-contained or essentially immutable entities. We shall instead suggest that a conceptualisation of the relationship between proteins’ composition, structure and function consistent with contemporary biochemical practice should account also for the causal role of the cellular, organismal and environmental relations in protein development. The analysis of the folding process we propose suggests that microstructure-laden reductionist approaches are ontologically indefensible. Rather than a potentialist form of micro-predeterminism, our analysis ultimately supports a relational-construction-based view of protein development and potentialities formation, which requires an indispensable analysis of the dynamical interplay between the micro-level of the parts and the macro-level of the relational structures of their systems. (shrink)

Downward causation exercised by emergent properties of wholes upon their lower-level constituents’ properties has been accused of conceptual and metaphysical incoherence. Only upward causation is usually peacefully accepted. The aim of this paper is to criticize and refuse the traditional hierarchical-vertical way of conceiving both types of causation, although preserving their deepest ontological significance, as well as the widespread acceptance of the traditional atomistic-combinatorial view of the entities and the relations that constitute the so-called ‘emergence base’. Assuming those two perspectives (...) with no reserves, we are condemned to confine our debate to the question of whether reified wholes can have the power to downwardly change or influence their lower-level parts, a question which seems profoundly misleading to me. I therefore propose an alternative relational ontological view, assuming a straightforward horizontal and intra-level way of representing those putative cases of cross-level causation. I finally confront two recent replies to Kim’s well-known objections to DC—Craver and Bechtel and Kistler :595–609, 2009)—, emphasizing their global positive approaches, as well as the reasons why their accounts still seem insufficient to me. I conclude arguing that both Kim’s principle of the causal closure of the physical domain and its allegation of an overdetermination in cases of DC can be surpassed by the new relational ontological perspective presented here. (shrink)

This paper proposes an integrated-structure notion of interlevel emergence, from a dynamic relational ontological perspective. First, I will argue that only the individualist essentialism of atomistic metaphysics can block the possibility of interlevel emergence. Then I will show that we can make sense of emergence by recognizing the formation of structures of transformative and interdependent causal relations in the generation and development of a particular class of mereological complexes called integrated systems. Finally, I shall argue that even though the emergent (...) structural attributes of such systems are not micro-determined nor micro-reducible, they can still be accounted for by an interlevel integrative neo-mechanistic form of explanation. (shrink)

Acts of Religion, compiled in close association with Jacques Derrida, brings together for the first time a number of Derrida's writings on religion and questions of faith and their relation to philosophy and political culture. The essays discuss religious texts from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, as well as religious thinkers such as Kant, Levinas, and Gershom Scholem, and comprise pieces spanning Derrida's career. The collection includes two new essays by Derrida that appear here for the first time in any (...) language, as well as a substantial introduction by Gil Anidjar that explores Derrida's return to his own "religious" origins and his attempts to bring to light hidden religious dimensions of the social, cultural, historical, and political. (shrink)

Physicians frequently encounter situations in which their professional practice is intermingled with moral affordances stemming from other domains of the physician’s lifeworld, such as family and friends, or from general morality pertaining to all humans. This article offers a typology of moral conflicts ‘at the margins of professionalism’ as well as a new theoretical framework for dealing with them. We start out by arguing that established theories of professional ethics do not offer sufficient guidance in situations where professional ethics overlaps (...) with moral duties of other origins. Therefore, we introduce the moral theory developed by Christine M. Korsgaard, that centres around the concept of practical identity. We show how Korsgaard’s account offers a framework for interpreting different types of moral conflicts ‘at the margins of professionalism’ to provide either orientation for solving the conflict or an explanation for the emotional and moral burden involved in moral dilemmas. (shrink)

In this article I address the issue of the ontological conditions of possibility for a naturalistic notion of emergence, trying to determine its fundamental differences from the atomist, vitalist, preformationist and potentialist alternatives. I will argue that a naturalistic notion of ontological emergence can only succeed if we explicitly refuse the atomistic fundamental ontological postulate that asserts that every entity is endowed with a set of absolutely intrinsic properties, being qualitatively immutable through its extrinsic relations. Furthermore, it will be shown (...) that, ironically enough, this metaphysical assumption is implicitly shared by all the above mentioned alternatives to Emergentism. The current article concludes that the notion of organization by itself is not enough, and that ontological emergence can only be justified by assuming a relational ontological perspective that, in opposition both to atomism and holism, defends that the existence-conditions, the identity and the causal behavior of any emergent systemic property can only be conceived, and explained, as constructed by and through specific networks of qualitatively transformative relational processes that occur between the system’s components and between the system and its environment. Additionally, I try to explain how one can make sense of the idea that an emergent phenomenon is both dependent on, and autonomous from, its emergence base. (shrink)

This work focuses on the role that music has in the constitution of the World as a philosophical category. I explore the work of Eugenio Trías and Augustine of Hippo, and the way both philosophers have conceptualized music in relation to the constitution of the time of the World. For Trías music is not about the World but about its limits and, in that way, gives it a form. For Augustine music relates man to universe’s ordo , liberating him from (...) mundane distentio animi and helping him to give sense to a World that gives itself as finite. (shrink)

Analitik psikoloji 20. yüzyılda İsviçreli psikoterapist Carl Gustav Jung tarafından oluşturulmuş kuramdır. Kuram sadece psikoterapi alanını değil psikolojiden teoloji, etnografi, edebiyat ve güzel sanatlara kadar pek çok bilim dalını da etkilemiştir. Jung’un kuramındaki en önemli başarısı; bilinçdışı ile bireysel bilinçdışı ve kolektif bilinçdışının keşfidir. Bu keşifle sadece çeşitli bilim dalları edebî metinlerde geçen kolektif imgeler ve onların kolektif simgelerinin neler olduğunu değil insanlar da ruhun ihtiyacının ne olduğunu öğrenmiştir. Jung’un kuramının birincil maddesi ontolojik açıdan insanın kendisinden daha güçlü bir varlığa (...) bağlanma ihtiyacıyla doğmasıdır. İnsan bu temel ihtiyacını göz ardı ederek yaşamını sürdürdüğünde enerjisini yapısına ters yönde isteklere harcayarak giderir. Nitekim insan doğası gereği hayatın çeşitli yönlerine ilgi duyan, onları gerçekleştirmede istekli olan varlıktır. Bu istekler bazen toplumun refahını engelleyici dolayısıyla dinî emirlere aykırı olabilir. Böylece gerek toplumun kurallarına gerek dinin buyruklarına ters düşülür. Bu durumda dinen istenilen insan olunamadığı gibi psikolojik açıdan da bireyselleşme gerçekleştirilememiş olur. Bireyselliğini gerçekleştirememiş insanlar Jung’un kuramında isimlendirdiği gibi gölgelerinin farkına varamamış kişilerdir. Analitik psikolojide insanlık adına çok önemli olan gölgelerin farkına varılması oldukça zordur. Klinik gözlemlerinden hareketle kuramını oluşturan Jung’a göre hayatı boyunca gölgelerinin farkına varamayan insanlar olduğu gibi hayatlarının bazı evrelerinde yaşadıkları tecrübe neticesinde kendilerini bitkin, yorgun hatta hasta hisseden insanların olması da mümkündür. Jung kuramında gölgelerinin farkına varamayan insanların; bireyselleşmelerinin gerçekleşmediğini belirtir. Ona göre insanlığın en büyük yıkımı bireyselleşmenin gerçekleşmediği toplumlardan kaynaklanacaktır. Makale; analitik psikolojide gölge arketipinin tasavvufî görüşte arzu, istek, hayatın ilkeleri manalarına da gelen nefs teriminin benzeşik oluşu üzerine kaleme alınmıştır. Bu sebeple makalede on bir tane mutasavvıf şairin dîvânında zikredilen nefs kelimesi kuram doğrultusunda titizlikle incelenmiştir. Makale Jung’un kuramı ışığında bir arketip olan gölge ibaresinin mutasavvıf şairlerin dîvânlarında incelenen nefs ibaresine karşılık geldiği elli bir manzumenin açıklanmasından oluşmaktadır. Elde edilen veriler neticesinde makale gölgenin tanımı, bilinçlenmeye başlama, gölgeleri tanıma, bireyselleşme ve gölge çeşitleri olmak üzere beş bölümdür. Makalede yer alan gölge çeşitleri; acelecilik, hırs, kibir ve kin alt bölümlerini ihtiva etmektedir. Bu alt bölümlerde insanın olumsuz özelliklerini anlatan gölge çeşitlerini bildiren manzumelerin aynı zamanda insanın bu kötü hasletleriyle nasıl mücadele edeceğine dair öğütleri, çözüm önerilerini içerdiği tespit edilmiştir. Mutasavvıf şairler tarafından okuyucusuna verilen bu öğütler Jung’un da kuramında özellikle üzerinde durduğu hasletlerdir. Çalışmayla gerek klasik Türk edebiyatı gerek Türk İslâm edebiyatı alanına metinlerde zikredilen kelimelerin sembolik anlamlarının kazandırılması, farklı bir derinlik getirilmesinin yanında teoloji bilim dallarına da katkı sağlaması ümit edilmektedir. (shrink)

Many believe that an upward-sloping life is better than a downward-sloping life because of its shape. This is a common way of formulating the shape of a life hypothesis. We argue that the hypothesis is mistaken. We need not assume that there is something intrinsically valuable in the shape of one’s life to justify the tendency to judge an upward-sloping life as better than a downward sloping one. Instead, we can appeal to more fundamental and less controversial claims to justify (...) such a judgment. What one might justifiably judge to be better are features of lives which are often (though not necessarily) correlated with, rather than constituted by, an upward slope. (shrink)

Many believe that an upward-sloping life is better than a downward-sloping life because of its shape. This is a common way of formulating the shape of a life hypothesis. We argue that the hypothesis is mistaken. We need not assume that there is something intrinsically valuable in the shape of one’s life to justify the tendency to judge an upward-sloping life as better than a downward sloping one. Instead, we can appeal to more fundamental and less controversial claims to justify (...) such a judgment. What one might justifiably judge to be better are features of lives which are often (though not necessarily) correlated with, rather than constituted by, an upward slope. (shrink)

Some relevant distinctions between the notions of complexity, non-linearity, self-organization and emergence are addressed.

Physicians frequently encounter situations in which their professional practice is intermingled with moral affordances stemming from other domains of the physician’s lifeworld, such as family and friends, or from general morality pertaining to all humans. This article offers a typology of moral conflicts ‘at the margins of professionalism’ as well as a new theoretical framework for dealing with them. We start out by arguing that established theories of professional ethics do not offer sufficient guidance in situations where professional ethics overlaps (...) with moral duties of other origins. Therefore, we introduce the moral theory developed by Christine M. Korsgaard, that centres around the concept of practical identity. We show how Korsgaard’s account offers a framework for interpreting different types of moral conflicts ‘at the margins of professionalism’ to provide either orientation for solving the conflict or an explanation for the emotional and moral burden involved in moral dilemmas. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es analizar dos confusiones o puntos ciegos asociados a la teoría de la secularización, fundamentalmente en lo que respecta a la relación que establece entre lo secular y lo religioso. Para ello tomamos como punto de partida el trabajo de José Casanova titulado Genealogías de la secularización, en el que estudia las tres sub-tesis a partir de las que se articula dicha teoría: diferenciación entre esferas seculares y religiosas, declive generalizado de la creencia y de (...) la práctica religiosa y privatización de lo religioso. Una vez señalado lo anterior, el primero de los «blindspots» que analizaremos parte de abordar la secularización desde la perspectiva de la primera sub-tesis y se manifiesta en forma de euro-centrismo o de cristiano-centrismo. Desde esta perspectiva, la particularidad cristiano-europea se utiliza como patrón general de secularización; el segundo «blindspot» se centra en la segunda sub-tesis (aunque en menor medida también en la tercera) y parte de una identificación absoluta entre lo religioso y la religión. Desde este punto de vista, la teoría de la secularización reduce el fenómeno religioso a la religión, dejando fuera de esta ecuación una importante cantidad de formas religiosas que no consiguen (o no buscan) sistematizarse (tal y como la religión exige). (shrink)

En este trabajo intentaré mostrar que, de acuerdo con Agustín de Hipona –y a diferencia de una cierta lectura relativamente clásica de Pascal–, el deseo puede ser el comienzo de la relación del hombre con el Absoluto. Para ello divido el texto en cuatro partes: primero, describo la situación existencial primordial de la que nace el deseo, la inquietud. Después, describo el doble despliegue del deseo: amor o concupiscencia, según objeto e inclinación. En tercer lugar, intento describir los tipos de (...) concupiscencias y sus paralelismos en ambos autores. Concluyo mostrando la importancia de la costumbre en la constitución del deseo. (shrink)

RESUMEN Se presentan los resultados de la investigación La calidad de vida en pacientes con catarata senil atendidos en Nuevitas de junio a diciembre del 2016, con el objetivo de demostrar el impacto social de la cirugía. Para el estudio descriptivo, longitudinal, prospectivo realizado se seleccionaron 65 pacientes, los cuales constituyen la muestra seleccionada. Para medir el impacto se aplicó una planilla de recolección de datos, y el cuestionario de calidad de vida relativa a la visión pre y postoperatoria. Se (...) concluye que todos los pacientes fueron operados debido a un deterioro visual y funcional marcado. Luego de la cirugía se logró una recuperación visual satisfactoria, con una mejor calidad de vida que revela valores altamente significativos desde el punto de vista clínico, psicológico y social que contribuyeron a la reincorporación de estos ancianos a la sociedad. ABSTRACT It is presented the results of the investigation “The quality of life in patients with senile cataract attended in Nuevitas from June to December, 2016", with the objective to demonstrate the social impact of the surgery. For the descriptive, longitudinal, pilot study were selected 65 patients, which constitute the chosen sample. To measure the impact there was applied a chart of information compilation, and the questionnaire of quality of life relative to the vision pre and postoperative. It was concluded that all the patients were operated due to a pronounced visual and functional deterioration. After the surgery a satisfactory visual recovery was achieved, with a better quality of life that reveals highly significant values from the clinical, psychological and social point of view that they contributed to the reincorporation of these elders to the society. (shrink)

The principal purpose of this text is to show that Michel Henry’s radicalization ofphenomenology conduces to a problematic interpretation of the world and human desire, and to proposea solution to the problem from the philosophy of Augustine of Hippo. If for Henry, Life is absoluteimmanence, for Augustine it is also extasis. If for the first desire has to be reduced to mere immanence,for the later this desire (appetitus) is one of the ways in which man can encounter the Absolute.

The title of the present essay repeats, word for word, the title of an article that the British philosopher U.T. Place published in 1956: “Is Consciousness a Brain Process?”.

It is an open question whether well-being ought to primarily be understood as a temporal concept or whether it only makes sense to talk about a person’s well-being over their whole lifetime. In this article, I argue that how this principled philosophical disagreement is settled does not have substantive practical implications for well-being science and well-being policy. Trying to measure lifetime well-being directly is extremely challenging as well as unhelpful for guiding well-being public policy, while temporal well-being is both an (...) adequate indirect measure of lifetime well-being, and an adequate focus for the purposes of improving well-being through public policy. Consequently, even if what we ought to care about is lifetime well-being, we should use temporal measures of well-being and focus on temporal well-being policies. (shrink)

Contextualist theories of truth appeal to context to solve the liar paradox: different stages of reasoning occur in different contexts, and so the contradiction is dispelled. The word ‘true’ is relativized by the contextualists to contexts of use. This paper shows that contextualist approaches to the liar are committed to a form of semantic relativism: that the truth value of some sentences depends on the context of assessment, as well as the context of use. In particular, it is shown how (...) Simmons’s and Glanzberg’s contextualist approaches entail relativism. In both cases, the liar sentence gets different semantic evaluations as uttered in a fixed context of use but assessed from different contexts. Shift in context of use alone cannot provide the full explanation of the liar. These contextualist approaches, as originally presented, were thus mischaracterised and they should be re-evaluated according to their full implications. (shrink)

Philosophers of well-being have tended to adopt a foundationalist approach to the question of theory and measurement, according to which theories are conceptually before measures. By contrast, social scientists have tended to adopt operationalist commitments, according to which they develop and refine well-being measures independently of any philosophical foundation. Unfortunately, neither approach helps us overcome the problem of coordinating between how we characterize well-being and how we measure it. Instead, we should adopt a coherentist approach to well-being science.