Prisoners sometimes die in prison, either due to natural illness, violence, suicide, or a result of imprisonment. The purpose of this study is to understand deaths in custody using qualitative methodology and to argue for a comprehensive definition of death in custody that acknowledges deaths related to the prison environment. Interviews were conducted with 33 experts, who primarily work as lawyers or forensic doctors with national and/or international organisations. Responses were coded and analysed qualitatively. Defining deaths in custody according to (...) the place of death was deemed problematic. Experts favoured a dynamic approach emphasising the link between the detention environment and occurrence of death rather than the actual place of death. Causes of deaths and different patterns of deaths were discussed, indicating that many of these deaths are preventable. Lack of an internationally recognised standard definition of death in custody is a major concern. Key aspects such as place, time, and causes of death as well as relation to the prison environment should be debated and incorporated into the definition. Systematic identification of violence within prison institutions is critical and efforts are needed to prevent unnecessary deaths in prison and to protect vulnerable prisoners. (shrink)

El adulto, como intermediario entre las obras literarias y los niños o jóvenes, ha utilizado unos instrumentos de control con criterios basados en aspectos religiosos, psicológicos, pedagógicos y morales, que han influido en el proceso de creación del autor y en sus publicaciones. Es ineludible la reflexión sobre antiguos mecanismos de censura y los que aún perduran en la actualidad.

El número que aquí se presenta constituye el 59 de la revista Anales de la Cátedra Francisco Suárez. Es también el tercero y último por el momento de los que he sido responsable como editora. Con estos números se ha tratado de ofrecer un recorrido por asuntos y problemas de actualidad a través de las reflexiones y análisis de investigadoras e investigadores del pensamiento jurídico nacional e internacional, lo que ha permitido reunir una amplia variedad de marcos teóricos, metodologías de (...) conocimiento y aproximaciones a sistemas jurídicos específicos. (shrink)

El presente artículo devela los aprendizajes no explícitos u ocultos que la sociedad actual, pragmática, antropocentrista y urbano-agroindustrial, impone a sus habitantes, por medio de diversos mecanismos, con relación a la concepción y a la relación con los animales no humanos1. Esta influencia reproduce y normaliza conductas de maltrato, explotación, desprecio, destierro y destrucción de los hábitats de la fauna. El análisis que se presenta aquí, basado en el encuentro entre marcos pedagógicos críticos de la educación ambiental y de la (...) reflexión de la ética relacionada con los animales, conduce a la elaboración de una agenda educativo ambiental encaminada a romper con la inercia de algunos valores hegemónicos y a posibilitar esfuerzos pedagógicos que internalicen la noción de la otredad animal. Los aportes hacen hincapié en la implicación de ciertos conocimientos, valores, habilidades, actitudes y pautas de conducta que pueden ser abordados tanto dentro como fuera de los espacios escolares en favor de la significación de una ética animal como camino al ejercicio de una cultura crítica y responsable de su relación con la vida, en la Tierra. (shrink)

Since 1991, sperm donors in the UK have had the legal right to withdraw consent for the use of their sperm in fertility treatment. This has the potential to adversely affect patients. It may mean that previous recipients of a donor’s sperm cannot have further children who are full biological siblings to an existing child, and that embryos created from the donor’s sperm and a patient’s eggs must be destroyed.

Face processing and its role in the social phenotype of autism spectrum disorders has gained a significant amount of attention in the past decade. The components involved in the processing and use of information from the face represent a network of systems that are complex. This article shows that face processing is neither a simple process nor one that is universally abnormal in individuals with autism. Several complementary processes that may contribute to impairment in face processing in individuals with autism (...) are described. It includes lower-level visual processing, visual attention, early-stage processing of faces, memory for faces, and the emotional significance of faces. The variability in performance on face processing tasks by individuals with ASD reflects an underlying variability in ability in face processing in the ASD spectrum, making face processing a model system for understanding the nature of social impairment in ASD. (shrink)

More than a decade has passed since North American Indigenous scholars began a public dialogue on how we might “Indigenize the academy.” Discussions around how to “Indigenize” and whether it’s possible to “decolonize” the academy in Canada have proliferated as a result of the Truth and Reconciliation of Canada, which calls upon Canadians to learn the truth about colonial relations and reconcile the damage that is ongoing. Indigenous scholars are increasingly leading and writing about efforts in their institutions; efforts include (...) land- and Indigenous language-based pedagogies, transformative community-based research, Indigenous theorizing, and dual governance structures. Kim Anderson’s paper invites dialogue about how Indigenous feminist approaches can spark unique Indigenizing practices, with a focus on how we might activate Indigenous feminist spaces and places in the academy. In their responses, Elena Flores Ruíz uses Mexican feminist Indigenizing discourse to ask what can be done to promote plurifeminist indigenizing practices and North-South dialogues that acknowledge dynamic Indigenous pasts and diverse contexts for present interactions on Turtle Island. Georgina Tuari Stewart proceeds to describe Mana Wahine indigenous feminist theory from Aotearoa before proceeding to develop a “kitchen logic” of mana, which parallels Anderson’s understanding of tawow. Finally, Madina Tlostanova reflects on how several ways of advancing indigenous feminist academic activism described by Anderson intersect with examples from her own native Adyghe indigenous culture divided between the neocolonial situation and the post-Soviet trauma. (shrink)

En este texto se cuestiona el modo como Michel Henry ha determinado la esencia originaria de la manifestación. Se explica por qué la manifestación no puede ser esencialmente determinada ni como inmanencia ni como trascendencia y se apunta el sentido que tiene ese concepto fenomenológico fundamental.

El libro recientemente publicado por Nuria Sánchez Madrid sobre Hannah Arendt destaca tanto por el elevado nivel teórico que presenta como por la original aproximación a su pensamiento. La obra de Arendt es ciertamente una de las de mayor repercusión en el contexto del pensamiento político contemporáneo, lo cual ha dado lugar a una amplísima bibliografía en torno a ella. Por lo que constituye una tarea verdaderamente meritoria presentar un ensayo novedoso sobre su obra, que transcienda los lugares comunes que (...) caracterizan a muchos de los ensayos que se publican sobre ella y abra nuevas perspectivas sobre su pensamiento. Esto lo consigue el libro de Nuria Sánchez Madrid a través de dos expedientes fundamentales. En primer lugar, sacando a luz toda una serie de presencias latentes en el pensamiento arendtiano, autores como Max Weber, Georg Jellinek, Ernst Cassirer o Alexander Kojève, que no aparecen explícitamente tematizados en la obra de Arendt y sobre los que las investigaciones prácticamente no han centrado la atención, pero que como se pone de manifiesto a lo largo del libro dejaron una huella en su pensamiento. En segundo lugar, confrontando a Arendt con algunas de las principales figuras del pensamiento político contemporáneo, como Judith Butler o Judith Shklar, lo que arroja nueva luz sobre determinados aspectos fundamentales de su obra, que normalmente son tratados desde la inmanencia del marco teórico que impone la categorización arendtiana y no se logra captar el carácter problemático de los mismos. (shrink)

This book is an account of the important influence on the development of mathematical logic of Charles S. Peirce and his student O.H. Mitchell, through the work of Ernst Schroder, Leopold Lowenheim, and Thoralf Skolem. As far as we know, this book is the first work delineating this line of influence on modern mathematical logic.

In this paper we review and argue for the relevance of the concept of open-ended evolution in biological theory. Defining it as a process in which a set of chemical systems bring about an unlimited variety of equivalent systems that are not subject to any pre-determined upper bound of organizational complexity, we explain why only a special type of self-constructing, autonomous systems can actually implement it. We further argue that this capacity derives from the ‘dynamic decoupling’ (in its minimal or (...) most basic sense: the phenotype–genotype decoupling) by means of which a radically new way of material organization (minimal living organization) is achieved, allowing for the long-term sustenance of systems whose individual-metabolic and collective-historical pathways become thereafter deeply intertwined. (shrink)

The study of metaphysical possibility involves two central questions: What are possible worlds? Is there an empty possible world? In looking at the first question we consider the different accounts of possible worlds—Lewisian realism, ersatzism, etc. In looking at the second question we consider the discussions of metaphysical nihilism, the modal ontological arguments, etc. In this paper I am drawing these two questions together in order to show how the position we hold on one of these issues affects the position (...) we should hold on the other. (shrink)

Here we reconsider teachers’ changing subjectivities as autonomous agents whose practices acknowledge risk as an essential element in intellectual inquiry. We seek alternative descriptions to the limiting language of teachers’ current practices within the primacy of the market. We are convinced by Levinas’s claim that ethics is the first philosophy with its concomitant responsibility for the Other. This provides a valuable point of departure and our understanding of its relevance is expanded by Biesta and Todd. This perspective allows interruption of (...) the global reform ensemble with its reductionist understandings of teachers’ subjectivities within concerns for a ‘visible pedagogy’ and performativity. We illustrate how this global policy imperative is reworked in policies in the Republic of Ireland and share reflexive insights from our tutoring of teachers studying for a Master’s degree in Education. We show that teachers’ autonomy, which we understand as the capacity of teachers to facilitate risk and make ethically informed local judgements, is severely restricted by imposed standards, codes and laws to which there is tightly policed adherence. Instead we describe teachers’ practices occurring within an Invisible Pedagogy, which is not concerned with totalising and limited performativity but instead, explores risks associated with existential possibilities beyond commodification. (shrink)

Could there have been nothing? is the first book-length study of metaphysical nihilism - the claim that there could have been no concrete objects. It critically analyses the debate around nihilism and related questions about the metaphysics of possible worlds, concrete objects and ontological dependence.

Our aim in the present paper is to approach the nature of life from the perspective of autonomy, showing that this perspective can be helpful for overcoming the traditional Cartesian gap between the physical and cognitive domains. We first argue that, although the phenomenon of life manifests itself as highly complex and multidimensional, requiring various levels of description, individual organisms constitute the core of this multifarious phenomenology. Thereafter, our discussion focuses on the nature of the organization of individual living entities, (...) proposing autonomy as the main concept to grasp it. In the second part of the article we show how autonomy is also fundamental to explaining major evolutionary transitions, in an attempt to rethink evolution from the point of view of the organizational structure of the entities/organisms involved. This gives further support to the idea of autonomy not only as a key to understanding life in general but also the complex expressions of it that we observe on our planet. Finally, we suggest a possible general principle that underlies those evolutionary transitions, which allow for the open-ended redefinition of autonomous systems: namely, the relative dynamic decoupling that must be articulated among distinct parts, modules or modes of operation in these systems. (shrink)

This essay frames systemic patterns of mental abuse against women of color and Indigenous women on Turtle Island (North America) in terms of larger design-of-distribution strategies in settler colonial societies, as these societies use various forms of social power to distribute, reproduce, and automate social inequalities (including public health precarities and mortality disadvantages) that skew socio-economic gain continuously toward white settler populations and their descendants. It departs from traditional studies in gender-based violence research that frame mental abuses such as gaslighting--commonly (...) understood as mental manipulation through lying or deceit--stochastically, as chance-driven interpersonal phenomena. Building on structural analyses of knowledge in political epistemology (Dotson 2012, Berenstain 2016), political theory (Davis and Ernst 2017), and Indigenous social theory (Tuck and Yang 2012), I develop the notion of cultural gaslighting to refer to the social and historical infrastructural support mechanisms that disproportionately produce abusive mental ambients in settler colonial cultures in order to further the ends of cultural genocide and dispossession. I conclude by proposing a social epidemiological account of gaslighting that a) highlights the public health harms of abusive ambients for minority populations, b) illuminates the hidden rules of social structure in settler colonial societies, and c) amplifies the corresponding need for structural reparations. (shrink)

The article explores the different modalities of the notion of bond in Rousseau’s philosophy (social, civil, political) according to the main axes of his thinking. We begin with the criticism of the sociability of Enlightenment developed in the Discourse on the Origins and Basis of Inequality among Men in order to compare it with the political remedy that emerges in the Social Contract, as well as the analysis that is conducted in the Émile around “the abstract man” cultivating his capacity (...) for attachment. Thus the genealogy of the links can emerge from the relationships of need. Alongside the condemnation of mutual dependence, mapping the notions of link, bond, relationship, node and spring offers full meaning to the positive definition of Man as a “relative being”. (shrink)