El artículo aborda la responsabilidad médica penal por omisión en situaciones de emergencia de salud, debido a las dudas que aún existen sobre el accionar médico en estas circunstancias y las posibles consecuencias jurídicas por negligencia, impericia e imprudencia. La responsabilidad médica incluye la obligación moral de responder de los propios actos y reparar o indemnizar las consecuencias perjudiciales para terceros. Se identifican las falencias en las normativas ecuatorianas con relación al actuar médico en situaciones de emergencia de salud y (...) se busca aportar a la academia con publicaciones de conocimiento. Se analizan los elementos normativos y fácticos de la responsabilidad médica penal por omisión en situaciones de emergencia de salud en la República de Ecuador, y se busca identificar el marco normativo en la legislación ecuatoriana para superar la inadecuada actuación médica en estas situaciones. El conocimiento de la normativa legal contribuye a superar la responsabilidad médica penal por omisión en situaciones de emergencia en el Ecuador y se menciona y se analiza el art.146 del COIP que es la normativa vigente. El artículo concluye que el objetivo no es criminalizar la práctica médica, ya que no toda muerte es homicidio y no todo proceso judicial implica el encarcelamiento de los involucrados. (shrink)

Since the 1980s, there has been a significant increase in the number of studies concerning Andalusian rural settlements linked to irrigated agriculture, both related to large suburban green belts and to small hydraulic systems. In the vast areas where water is scarce, the settlement apparently would have been concentrated in cities and fortified towns, leaving without population most of the dry lands between them. However, thanks to the intensive survey of one of these regions, La Mancha’s Southeastern area, we are (...) recording a dense rural settlement corresponding to a pattern unknown until now. It consists basically of small villages in plain, devoid of community defense elements, which must have been inhabited by humble peasants, judging by the modesty of the architecture and domestic goods. Surely they make use of the scanty natural resources, which have traditionally oriented the economy of the region towards livestock and rainfed agriculture. In particular, the studied settlement would be related to the demand of wool for the export oriented textile production of the region, within the framework of the commercial expansion of that period. Apparently, most of those villages could have appeared in the eleventh century, disappearing in the middle of the thirteenth century because of the Christian conquest. Their existence would be associated with a general context of population growth that pushed the competition between urban elites and peasants pursuing the privileged agricultural areas, as well as the colonization of less favorable production areas. (shrink)

Background: The acquisition of experience is a major concern for nurses in intensive care units. Although the emotional component of the clinical practice of these nurses has been widely studied, greater examination is required to determine how this component influences their learning and practical experience. Objective: To discover the relationships between emotion, memory and learning and the impacts on nursing clinical practice. Research design: This is a qualitative phenomenological study. The data were collected from open, in-depth interviews. A total of (...) 22 intensive care unit nurses participated in this research between January 2012 and December 2014. Ethical considerations: The School of Nursing Ethics Committee approved the study, which complied with ethical principles and required informed consent. Findings: We found a clear relationship between emotion, memory and the acquisition of experience. This relationship grouped three dimensions: (1) satisfaction, to relieve the patient’s pain or discomfort, give confidence and a sense of security to the patient, enable the presence of family members into the intensive care unit and provide family members with a realistic view of the patient’s situation; (2) error experience, which nurses feel when a patient dies, when they fail to accompany a patient in his or her decision to abandon the struggle to live or when they fail to lend support to the patient’s family; and (3) the feel bad–feel good paradox, which occurs when a mistake in the patient’s care or handling of his or her family is repaired. Conclusion: Emotion is a capacity that impacts on nurses’ experience and influences improvements in clinical practice. Recalling stories of satisfaction helps to reinforce good practice, while recalling stories of errors helps to identify difficulties in the profession and recognise new forms of action. The articulation of emotional competencies may support the development of nursing ethics in the intensive care unit to protect and defend their patients and improve their relationships with families in order to maximise the potential for patient care. (shrink)

Surgical patient safety remains a concern worldwide as, despite World Health Organization recommendations and implementation of its Surgical Safety Checklist, adverse events continue to occur. The aim of this qualitative study was to explore the views and experiences of perioperative nurses regarding the factors that impact surgical patient safety. Data were collected through five focus groups involving a total of 50 perioperative nurses recruited from four public hospitals in Spain. Content analysis of the focus groups yielded four main themes: personal (...) qualities of the perioperative nurse, the surgical environment, safety culture, and perioperative nursing care plans. One of the main findings concerned barriers to the exercise of leadership by nurses, especially regarding completion of the Surgical Safety Checklist. Some of the key factors that impacted the ability of perioperative nurses to fulfil their duties and ensure patient safety were the stress associated with working in the operating room, time pressures, and ineffective communication in the multidisciplinary team. Targeting these aspects through training initiatives could contribute to the professional development of perioperative nurses and reduce the incidence of adverse events by enhancing the surgical safety culture. (shrink)

Just Ecological Integrity presents a collection of revised and expanded essays originating from the international conference "Connecting Environmental Ethics, Ecological Integrity, and Health in the New Millennium" held in San Jose, Costa Rica in June 2000. It is a cooperative venture of the Global Ecological Integrity Project and the Earth Charter Initiative.

The socialism that spread globally after the Russian Revolution of 1917 emerged as a radical political avant-garde in Latin America. In Peru's case, this strain of the avant-garde was not only a literary and artistic movement but also a set of cultural and political practices, the goal of which was the articulation of socialist dreamworlds for a modern nation. In the 1920s, these dreamworlds consisted of alternative utopian narratives to capitalism that envisioned the indio as the modern subject who would (...) reconfigure ideas of community in the country. This article analyzes the utopian narratives of José Carlos Mariátegui, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, and Luis E. Valcárcel, who initially shared many ideals but ultimately took different paths. This study identifies which utopian narrative finally prevailed and their legacy as a blueprint for future ways of thinking about social justice and community in Peru. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to focus on Wittgenstein's conception about Psychology as Science. For that purpose we analyse first Wittgenstein's approach to the psychological questions conected with his new theory of meaning. Then, we intend to concentrate on his idea of Psychology as Science, separating the scientist's from the philosopher's tasks. Finally, we intend to place wittgensteinian view about Psychology as Science in relation to the different views defending a methodological dualism connected with the methodological tension unity-diversity of (...) Science. (shrink)

Julián Marías es uno de los pensadores humanistas más completos del siglo XX y uno de los intelectuales más grandes de la España contemporánea. La presente obra pretende fijar de un modo muy detallado su aportación personal y filosófica al pensamiento universal. El resultado ha sido un riguroso trabajo pluridisciplinar que, desde un planteamiento divulgativo, reúne por primera vez a los mejores conocedores de su vida y su obra.

In “Judy Benjamin is a Sleeping Beauty” (2010) Bovens recognises a certain similarity between the Sleeping Beauty (SB) and the Judy Benjamin (JB). But he does not recognise the dissimilarity between underlying protocols (as spelled out in Shafer (1985). Protocols are expressed in conditional probability tables that spell out the probability of coming to learn various propositions conditional on the actual state of the world. The principle of total evidence requires that we not update on the content of the proposition (...) learned but rather on the fact that we learn the proposition in question. Now attention to protocols drives a wedge between the SB and the JB. We have shown that the solution to a close variant of the SB which involves a clear protocol is P*(Heads) = 1/3 and since Beauty’s has precisely the same information at her disposal in the original SB at the time that she is asked to state her credence for Heads, the same solution should hold. The solution to the JB, on the other hand, is dependent on Judy’s probability distribution over protocols. One reasonable protocol yields P(Red) = 1/2, but Judy could also defend alternative values or a range of values in the interval [1/3, 1/2] depending on her probability distribution over protocols. (shrink)

The use of artificial intelligence in healthcare contexts is highly controversial for the (bio)ethical conundrums it creates. One of the main problems arising from its implementation is the lack of transparency of machine learning algorithms, which is thought to impede the patient’s autonomous choice regarding their medical decisions. If the patient is unable to clearly understand why and how an AI algorithm reached certain medical decision, their autonomy is being hovered. However, there are alternatives to prevent the negative impact of (...) AI opacity in shared (healthcare professional–patient) decision-making processes, and benefit from the high accuracy of such systems. Despite these ethical issues, this paper advocates for its usage and also defends the positive role that it could have in enhancing patients’ autonomy. I advocate for a system where the implementation of AI is only partial, and humans will remain in control of oversighting algorithm interpretation of medical images and patients’ data. (shrink)

Este artículo examina si es posible reconstruir desde la ética discursiva de Habermas y Apel el concepto kantiano de deberes hacia uno mismo. Se intenta mostrar, en primer lugar, que el concepto de deber hacia uno mismo tiene difícil acomodo en la ética del propio Kant, si se interpreta esta ética en un sentido procedimental. A continuación se argumenta que es imposible reconstruir la intuición moral prefilosófica de deber hacia uno mismo desde una ética consecuentemente procedimental, como es la ética (...) discursiva. Por último, se examina en qué sentido la interpretación discursiva de los deberes hacia uno mismo revela una tendencia problemática de la ética del discurso: la tendencia a asimilar excesivamente la moral al derecho o la política. (shrink)

This paper approaches the discussion that took place during the second half of the Twentieth Century about the biological significance of the cryptobiotic state. Cryptobiosis has been defined as an evolutionary strategy in which organisms overcome adverse environmental conditions by entering a latency mode considered the third state between life and death. It is a poorly known phenomenon where metabolism, growth, reproduction and senescence are greatly reduced or cease temporarily. Since metabolism is conceived as a defining feature of life, it (...) is argued that Cryptobiosis is a kind of temporal death, because metabolic activity sometimes seems to have stopped completely during the cryptobiotic state. In the following pages we deal with the cryptobiotic phase -as understood in the second half of the last Century-, considering two basic references: a case study, the case of group Tardigrada -small animals between a tenth of a millimeter and one millimeter that can survive in extreme conditions entering different states of latency-; and, secondly, the model around Cryptobiosis as recursive hierarchical metabolism proposed by Yair Neuman. (shrink)

Se van mostrar algunos contrastes en los lugares de la noción de mismidad del Poema de Parménides de Elea entre diversos textos de Martin Heidegger, con especial atención a qué tiene que ver el olvido de la «palabra enigma» de Parménides en Sein und Zeit con la noción de Sí mismo que allí se elabora. A través del camino hacia los “pensadores del inicio”, distinguir el horizonte de cuestionamiento del diálogo de Platón de aquel del Poema de Parménides, nos llevará (...) a su vez a señalar los diversos sentidos en que Heidegger piensa lo mismo en el Poema de Parménides. (shrink)

Desde un análisis del Curso de teoría del conocimiento en este trabajo se afronta la peculiaridad del tiempo humano, especialmente del tiempo de la esencia humana, y se glosa la importancia de la virtud.

En los textos de Kant sobre los deberes hacia uno mismo cabe distinguir dos líneas argumentativas diferentes: una en las Lecciones de ética de 1784/1785, y la otra en la Metafísica de las costumbres. Este artículo defiende la línea argumentativa de las Lecciones de ética y reivindica un deber hacia uno mismo: el deber de no dejarse utilizar por otros. Posteriormente se analizan algunas objeciones que se han formulado o que es posible formular contra este concepto.

Este artículo examina la posibilidad de abordar la cuestión aristotélica de la “vida buena” o la felicidad desde el marco de una teoría ética postkantiana: la ética del discurso. Se intenta mostrar que la ética contemporánea sólo admite una concepción subjetivista de la “vida buena”, incompatible con un tratamiento racional como el que pretendía darle Aristóteles. A continuación se argumenta que la cuestión de la “vida buena” puede seguir siendo importante para la ética contemporánea si se reconstruye en los términos (...) de una teoría de las condiciones formales que debe cumplir una determinación autónoma de la vida buena, es decir: una determinación no distorsionada por el autoengaño o la falsa conciencia. Sin embargo, finalmente se mostrará que el enfoque aristotélico no puede ser hoy muy relevante para elaborar dicha teoría. En cambio es preferible para la ética contemporánea recurrir a la teoría psicológica o la teoría de la sociedad. (shrink)

"The book presents in accessible fashion recent important work on the self and self-consciousness and also moves the issues forward with interesting new ideas. It provides a notably crisp and clear treatment of some extremely intriguing topics." -- Jane Heal, Department of Philosophy, University of Cambridge In this book, José Luis Bermú dez addesses two fundamental problems in the philosophy and psychology of self-consciousness: (1) Can we provide a noncircular account of fully fledged self-conscious thought and language in terms (...) of more fundamental capacities? (2) Can we explain how fully fledged self-conscious thought and language can arise in the normal course of human development? Bermú dez argues that a paradox (the paradox of self-consciousness) arises from the apparent strict interdependence between self-conscious thought and linguistic self-reference. The paradox renders circular all theories that define self-consciousness in terms of linguistic mastery of the first-person pronoun. It seems to follow from the paradox of self-consciousness that no such account or explanation can be given. Drawing on recent work in empirical psychology and philosophy, the author argues that any explanation of fully fledged self-consciousness that answers these two questions requires attention to primitive forms of self-consciousness that are prelinguistic and preconceptual. Such primitive forms of self-consciousness are to be found in somatic proprioception, the structure of exteroceptive perception, and prelinguistic forms of social interaction. The author uses these primitive forms of self-consciousness to dissolve the paradox ofself-consciousness and to show how the two questions can be given an affirmative answer. (shrink)

Decision Theory and Rationality offers a challenging new interpretation of a key theoretical tool in the human and social sciences. This accessible book argues, contrary to orthodoxy in politics, economics, and management science, that decision theory cannot provide a theory of rationality.

A number of authors have noted that the key steps in Fitch’s argument are not intuitionistically valid, and some have proposed this as a reason for an anti-realist to accept intuitionistic logic (e.g. Williamson 1982, 1988). This line of reasoning rests upon two assumptions. The first is that the premises of Fitch’s argument make sense from an anti-realist point of view – and in particular, that an anti-realist can and should maintain the principle that all truths are knowable. The second (...) is that we have some independent reason for thinking that classical logic is not appropriate in this area. This paper explores these two assumptions in the context of Michael Dummett’s version of anti-realism, with particular reference to the argument from indefinite extensibility developed at various points in Dummett’s writings (e.g. Dummett 1991 Ch. 24). -/- Dummett argues that certain concepts, the indefinitely extensible concepts, are such that we cannot form a clear and determinate conception of all the objects that fall under them. The most familiar examples of indefinitely extensible concepts are mathematical. Dummett discusses the concepts ordinal number, real number, and natural number, which are indefinitely extensible because any conception that one might form of their complete extension can be extended to a more inclusive conception (as, for example, in Cantor’s proof of the non-denumerability of the set of real numbers). This paper argues that the concept of a truth is indefinitely extensible. This gives a Dummettian anti-realist an independent motivation for rejecting the classical understanding of the quantifiers in this area. At the same time, however, it places in doubt the admissibility of the knowability principle, which seems to involve quantification over the “totality” of truths. As Dummett is at pains to point out (1991: 316), some sentences that purport to quantify over the extension of an indefinitely extensible concept plainly have a truth-value (we can truly say, for example, that every ordinal number has a successor, even though when we say that we are not quantifying over the set of all ordinals). But is the knowability principle one of these sentences? (shrink)

Philosophers have often argued that ascriptions of content are appropriate only to the personal level states of folk psychology. Against this, this paper defends the view that the familiar propositional attitudes and states defined over them are part of a larger set of cognitive proceses that do not make constitutive reference to concept possession. It does this by showing that states with nonconceptual content exist both in perceptual experience and in subpersonal information-processing systems. What makes these states content-involving is their (...) satisfaction of certain basic conditions deriving from a general account of representation-driven behaviour that is neutral on the question of concept possession. It is also argued that creatures can be in states with nonconceptual content even though they possess no conceptual abilities at all. (shrink)

Thinking Without Words provides a challenging new theory of the nature of non-linguistic thought. Jose Luis Bermudez offers a conceptual framework for treating human infants and non-human animals as genuine thinkers. The book is written with an interdisciplinary readership in mind and will appeal to philosophers, psychologists, and students of animal behavior.