This article proposes a theory of the firm based on the concept of common good provided by the Aristotelic-Thomistic and Catholic Social Thought traditions, with particular attention given to the concept of work. We argue that the incorporation of a concept of work, based on the A-T and CST traditions, provides a better understanding of the firm´s common good in terms of sociability, cooperation, personal fulfillment and friendship. In this manner, taking into account an A-T and CST concept of work, (...) we provide a better understanding of different aspects in which the common good can be achieved within the firm. (shrink)

Unemployed and informal workers seem an unlikely source of large-scale collective action in Latin America. Since 1997, however, Argentina has witnessed an upsurge of protest and the emergence of unusually influential federations of unemployed and informal workers. To explain this puzzle, this article offers a policy-centered argument. It suggests that a workfare program favored common interests and identities on the part of unemployed workers and grassroots associations, allowing them to overcome barriers to collective action. State responses to demands for workfare (...) benefits generated a pattern of protest and negotiation that strengthened those groups and dramatically expanded social policy. (shrink)

Resumen: El siguiente ensayo realiza un análisis crítico de los discursos/prácticas de la modernidad desde la biopolítica en torno a la anormalidad, la ciencia (como tecnociencia) y las posibilidades de comunidad que existen en las relaciones de las/los marginados/as. Tomando como referentes las películas Freaks y La Forma del Agua. Mostrando cómo el cine juega y propone elementos críticos de estas prácticas/discursos de la modernidad. Dentro de esta anormalidad se considerará a la monstruosidad como metáfora y como realidad corpórea, y (...) las mujeres como cuerpos limítrofes y marginales del reparto (en términos de Rancière). Un análisis que juega con la contingencia de la crisis social que atravesamos a nivel mundial, así como de los fragmentos sociales y corporales, pero que, sin embargo, en sus entrañas posibilitan otras formas de relaciones, otros tejidos y posibilidades de comunidad. Abstract: The following essay makes a critical analysis of the discourses/practices of modernity from the perspective of biopolitics around abnormality, science (as technoscience) and the possibilities of community that exist in the relationships of the marginalized. Taking as referents the films Freaks and The Shape of Water. Showing how cinema plays and proposes critical elements of these practices/discourses of modernity. Within this abnormality, we will consider monstrosity as metaphor and corporeal reality, and women as borderline and marginal bodies of the cast (in Rancière's terms). An analysis that plays with the contingency of the social crisis we are going through worldwide, as well as the social and corporal fragments, but which, nevertheless, in their entrails make possible other forms of relationships, other fabrics and possibilities of community. (shrink)

In our article, we argue, following Nelson Goodman and Arthur Danto, that in contrast to the essentialist conception of authenticity, it is more fertile to consider authentic patterns not as the inner core of the person, but as a case of metaphorical exemplification. According to our approach, if we accept that authentic style is a metaphorical exemplification, then, based on Richard Rorty’s concepts of language and metaphor, style can be seen as an exaptation or reuse of symbols previously adapted through (...) cultural selection to other specific functions. To support this approach, we proceed as follows. First, using Goodman’s and Danto’s model, we argue that authentic style can best be grasped through metaphorical exemplification. We then show that the metaphorical use of linguistic, pictorial, and other symbols is the result of exaptation. According to our results, the authentic style is the exaptation of symbols previously adapted to culturally selected functions. We then separate authenticity from creativity through the concepts of style and manner—borrowed from Danto—and we point out that whether a particular symbol is authentic or not is not affected by whether creative or mechanical mental processes are responsible for its creation. Finally, we examine the relationship between authenticity and autonomy, and we show that in an environment that promotes autonomous decisions and authentic style, agents that originally generated inauthentic symbols may be able to produce authentic ones. (shrink)

Se analiza la interpretación escotista de algunos textos aristotélicos para establecer la contraposición entre naturaleza y voluntad. La posición de Escoto implica una reivindicación de la contingencia frente a la necesidad, de la acción frente a la ciencia. Es decir, la distinción entre naturaleza y voluntad le aboca a proponer una ontología en la que el ser contingente precede al ser necesario. El saber de la ciencia que establece las regularidades necesarias de la naturaleza queda subordinado al saber de la (...) acción humana. Se tiene especialmente presente las Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis, IX, q. 15. (shrink)

El artículo nos ofrece una mirada al hombre y a su vasto espectro del pensamiento, asumiendo la dificultad de intentar ‘atrapar’ el núcleo duro del proyecto bensoniano. Bateson es un personaje que transrecorrió disciplinas -comunicación, etnología y antropología, psiquiatría/psicología, genética, filosofía, biología, zoología, etología y etiología, cibernética- instalándose en lo que él llama la historia natural de las ideas o ecología de la mente. El presente artículo expone un apronte a este vasto pensamiento Batesoniano, y en particular su epistemología para (...) el cambio cultural. (shrink)

Pricing policies and fair-trade practices are critical for sustaining commercial relationships between firms and customers. Nevertheless, in current business practices, fairness has been mistakenly reduced to a minimalistic ethic wherein justice only demands legal and explicit norms to which commercial parties voluntarily agree. Aimed at giving a different explanation of commercial agreements, this paper will introduce a Virtue Ethics (VE) explanation of the relationship between pricing and the common good by taking up classical concepts related to justice in commerce. In (...) particular, we will explore three principles associated with the notion of fairness in commerce as defined in Neo-Aristotelian ethics towards a relationship between a common good and justice in pricing, i.e., proportionality, benevolence and well-being. To exemplify how these criteria of justice apply to decision-making in commercial practices, we will discuss several cases of fair and unfair commercial relationships. (shrink)

Las demostraciones de la existencia de Dios de Christian Wolff se encuentran principalmente en su _Theologia naturalis_. A pesar de que esta obra contiene en cada una de sus dos partes un argumento distinto, Wolff la llama “sistema de Teología natural”. Por ello, puede entenderse que las dos demostraciones no son totalmente independientes, sino que comparten una estructura argumental similar, aunque Wolff no lo mencione expresamente. En este trabajo me propongo mostrar: 1) que aquello que las dos pruebas tienen en (...) común es que ambas están basadas en la noción del ente que tiene en su esencia la razón de su existencia. 2) Que esta noción es el vínculo entre la perfección absoluta y la existencia necesaria. 3) Que la diferencia entre las dos pruebas consiste en que se desarrollan en direcciones opuestas, cada una presentándose como el reverso de la otra. Mientras que la primera parte de la existencia necesaria y concluye con la perfección absoluta, la segunda parte de la perfección absoluta y concluye con la existencia necesaria. (shrink)

The paper differentiates between three levels of the notion of health – biological health, medical health, and social health – and underlines the cultural concept of health and disease, its dependence on religion, ideology, and the general view of life. Keywords: biological health, medical health, normality, social health, well-being CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

There is a central doctrine in Aristotle that usually isn’t recognized in its importance: the affirmation of the difference and the plurality. In the course of the centuries, Aristotelism lost which was perhaps its most characteristic and specific feature versus Platonism, that is, its criticism of unity and its defense of plurality. The first principle is not the One but the plurality. The horizon of thinking is not the unity but the diversity of the logos. The unity of the logos (...) presupposes the differences within reality. Heidegger attracted attention to the peculiarity of the practical philosophy of Aristotle. It was the case of dialectics, rhetoric, poetics, ethics, politics, etc. We are referring to knowledges that are art rather than science. Nothing is so differentiated as human action, as it is always performed from a new starting point. Dialectic and rhetorical speeches are always circumscribed to the individual. (shrink)

Intuición y hermenéutica -- El ser de sí mismo en la identidad narrativa de Paul Ricoeur -- Fenomenología como hermenéutica de la existencia -- Filosofía de la religión -- Los fines de la educación -- Tema formadores y medios -- Las experiencias de aprendizaje artístico de los estudiantes.

Environmental protection presents a challenge for commodity-producing democracies. To account for the enforcement of environmental laws in decentralized systems, this article proposes a multilevel approach that highlights the importance of national laws and subnational implementation rules to the politics of enforcement. This approach contrasts with prominent scholarship that focuses on sanctions and the electoral incentives and bureaucratic resources of enforcers. The advantages of the multilevel approach are demonstrated by the enforcement of the native forest protection regime in the Argentine Chaco (...) Forest, which is shaped not only by whether sanctions on illegal deforestation are applied by subnational authorities but also by the design of both the national law and subnational regulations. The article employs quantitative data and case studies based on extensive fieldwork to show how affected subnational organized interests influenced the design of the NFPR and the provincial regulations that weaken or strengthen enforcement. (shrink)

This paper aims to integrate the concept of autonomous and subordinated work into Aristotelian organizational theory by enhancing the epistemological framework of neo-Aristotelianism and by adding a Thomistic interpretation of organizational practical knowledge. We sustain that, in order to advance our understanding of the firm in terms of excellence and the common good, the concept of practical knowledge applied to organizational theory requires reflection on the nature of work in modern organizations. For this, we will explain how an organization that (...) aims for excellence is most appropriately defined as a community of autonomous work, how practical knowledge in organizations must be defined considering work as deliberative production and, finally, how productivity in organizations is best described when work is envisioned in terms of autonomy and subordination. (shrink)

We relax the assumption that priors are common knowledge, in the standard model of games of incomplete information. We make the realistic assumption that the players are boundedly rational: they base their actions on finite-order belief hierarchies. When the different layers of beliefs are independent of each other, we can retain Harsányi's type-space, and we can define straightforward generalizations of Bayesian Nash Equilibrium and Rationalizability in our context. Since neither of these concepts is quite satisfactory, we propose a hybrid concept, (...) Mirage Equilibrium, providing us with a practical tool to work with inconsistent belief hierarchies. When the different layers of beliefs are correlated, we must enlarge the type-space to include the parametric beliefs. This presents us with the difficulty of the inherent openness of finite belief subspaces. Appealing to bounded rationality once more, we posit that the players believe that their opponent holds a belief hierarchy one layer shorter than they do and we provide alternative generalizations of BNE and Rationalizability. Finally, we show that, when beliefs are degenerate point beliefs, the definition of Mirage Equilibrium coincides with that of the generalized BNE. (shrink)

In this commentary I discuss the role of types of knowledge and conceptual structures in lexical representation, revealing the explanatory potential of frame-based knowledge. Although frame-based lexical semantics is not alien to the theoretical model outlined in Jackendoff's conceptual semantics, testing its relevance to the analysis of the lexical evidence presented in his book has been left out of consideration.

Analysis of the concept of dialectics in Proclus, specially in Commentary on Parmenides II, V and VII. It considers three aspects: 1) Dialectics as method. 2) Dialectics as a particular perspective of universe. 3rd) Dialectics as order of negations.

This commentary asks the reader to examine Pylyshyn's target article and the imagery debate at four levels of analysis – institutional, programmatic, empirical, and individual. It is proposed that the debate follows somewhat generic patterns of discourse at all four levels, but the discourse associated with one side of the debate may or may not be expressible and evaluated in terms of the other. The different sides of the debate might better serve cognitive science if they proceed as separate research (...) programs in their respective sub-disciplines. A more inclusive program could result, however, if the opposing approaches could somehow unite. (shrink)

The current use of citation-based metrics to evaluate the research output of individual researchers is highly discriminatory because they are uniformly applied to authors of single-author articles as well as contributors of multi-author papers. In the latter case, these quantitative measures are counted, as if each contributor were the single author of the full article. In this way, each and every contributor is assigned the full impact-factor score and all the citations that the article has received. This has a multiplication (...) effect on each contributor's citation-based evaluative metrics of multi-author articles, because the more contributors an article has, the more undeserved credit is assigned to each of them. In this paper, I argue that this unfair system could be made fairer by requesting the contributors of multi-author articles to describe the nature of their contribution, and to assign a numerical value to their degree of relative contribution. In this way, we could create a contribution-specific index of each contributor for each citation metric. This would be a strong disincentive against honorary authorship and publication cartels, because it would transform the current win-win strategy of accepting honorary authors in the byline into a zero-sum game for each contributor. (shrink)

This paper invokes the conceptual framework of Bourdieu to analyse the mechanisms, which help to maintain inappropriate authorship practices and the functions these practices may serve. Bourdieu’s social theory with its emphasis on mechanisms of domination can be applied to the academic field, too, where competition is omnipresent, control mechanisms of authorship are loose, and the result of performance assessment can be a matter of symbolic life and death for the researchers. This results in a problem of game-theoretic nature, where (...) researchers’ behaviour will be determined more by the logic of competition, than by individual character or motives. From this follows that changing this practice requires institutionalized mechanisms, and change cannot be expected from simply appealing to researchers’ individual conscience. The article aims at showing that academic capital is translated into honorary authorship. With little control, undetected honorary authorship gives the appearance of possessing intellectual capital. In this way a dominant position is made to be seen as natural result of intellectual ability or scientific merit, which makes it more acceptable to those in dominated positions. The final conclusion of this paper is that undemocratic authorship decisions and authorship based performance assessment together are a form of symbolic violence. (shrink)