Organ trafficking is officially banned in several countries and by the main Nephrology Societies. However, this practice is widespread and is allowed or tolerated in many countries, hence, in the absence of a universal law, the caregiver may be asked for advice, placing him/her in a difficult balance between legal aspects, moral principles and ethical judgments.In spite of the Istanbul declaration, which is a widely shared position statement against organ trafficking, the controversy on mercenary organ donation is still open and (...) some experts argue against taking a negative stance. In the absence of clear evidence showing the clinical disadvantages of mercenary transplantation compared to chronic dialysis, self-determination of the patient may conflict with other ethical principles, first of all non-maleficence. The present paper was drawn up with the participation of the students, as part of the ethics course at our medical school. It discusses the situation in which the physician acts as a counselor for the patient in the way of a sort of “reverse” informed consent, in which the patient asks advice regarding a complex personal decision, and includes a peculiar application of the four principles to the donor and recipient parties. (shrink)

Patient and citizen participation is now regarded as central to the promotion of sustainable health and health care. Involvement efforts create and encounter many diverse ethical challenges that have the potential to enhance or undermine their success. This article examines different expressions of patient and citizen participation and the support health ethics offers. It is contended that despite its prominence and the link between patient empowerment and autonomy, traditional bioethics is insufficient to guide participation efforts. In addition, the turn to (...) a “social paradigm” of ethics in examinations of biotechnologies and public health does not provide an account of values that is commensurable with the pervasive autonomy paradigm. This exacerbates rather than eases tensions for patients and citizens endeavoring to engage with health. Citizen and patient participation must have a significant influence on the way we do health ethics if its potential is to be fulfilled. (shrink)

Young children typically demonstrate a transfer deficit, learning less from video than live presentations. Semantically meaningful context has been demonstrated to enhance learning in young children. We examined the effect of a semantically meaningful context on toddlers’ imitation performance. Two- and 2.5-year-olds participated in a puzzle imitation task to examine learning from either a live or televised model. The model demonstrated how to assemble a three-piece puzzle to make a fish or a boat, with the puzzle demonstration occurring against a (...) semantically meaningful background context (ocean) or a yellow background (no context). Participants in the video condition performed significantly worse than participants in the live condition, demonstrating the typical transfer deficit effect. While the context helped improve overall levels of imitation, especially for the boat puzzle, only individual differences in the ability to self-generate a stimulus label were associated with a reduction in the transfer deficit. (shrink)

Laura Hengehold presents a new, Deleuzian reading of Simone de Beauvoir's phenomenology, the place of recognition in The Second Sex, the philosophical issues in her novels, the important role of her student diaries and her early interest in Bergson and Leibniz.

Xenotransplantation - the transfer of living tissue between species - has long been heralded as a potential solution to the severe organ shortage crisis experienced by the United Kingdom and other 'developed' nations. However, the significant risks which accompany this biotechnology led the United Kingdom to adopt a cautious approach to its regulation, with the establishment of a non-departmental public body - UKXIRA - to oversee the development of this technology on a national basis. In December 2006 UKXIRA was quietly (...) disbanded and replaced with revised guidance, which entrusts the regulation of xenotransplantation largely to research ethics committees. In this article we seek to problematize this new regulatory framework, arguing that specialist expertise and national oversight are necessary components of an adequate regulatory framework for a biotechnology which poses new orders of risk, challenges the adequacy of traditional understandings of autonomy and consent, and raises significant animal welfare concerns. We argue for a more considered and holistic approach, based on adequate consultation, to regulating biotechnological developments in the United Kingdom. (shrink)

This wide-ranging volume explores the tension between the dietary practice of veganism and the manifestation, construction, and representation of a vegan identity in today's society. Emerging in the early 21st century, vegan studies is distinct from more familiar conceptions of "animal studies," an umbrella term for a three-pronged field that gained prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000s, consisting of critical animal studies, human animal studies, and posthumanism. While veganism is a consideration of these modes of inquiry, it is (...) a decidedly different entity, an ethical delineator that for many scholars marks a complicated boundary between theoretical pursuit and lived experience. The Routledge Handbook of Vegan Studies is the must-have reference for the important topics, problems and key debates in the subject area and is the first of its kind. Comprising over 30 chapters by a team of international contributors, this handbook is divided into five parts: - History of Vegan Studies - Vegan Studies in the Disciplines - Theoretical Intersections - Contemporary Media Entanglements - Veganism Around the World These sections contextualize veganism beyond its status as a dietary choice, situating veganism within broader social, ethical, legal, theoretical, and artistic discourses. This book will be essential reading for students and researchers of vegan studies, animal studies and environmental ethics. (shrink)

This paper examines a particular type of frontispiece - a depiction of angels showing a title tabula - that seems to have been in the decorative repertoire of Late Antique Gospel Books. The oldest surviving miniature presenting this composition is the title page of the Trier Gospels from eighth-century Echternach, which derives from a sixth-century prototype. A copy of this prototype was possibly made by the Registrum Master, which, by the end of the tenth century, was in contact with the (...) scriptorium of Echternach. A Gospel Book from the diocese of Liège provides evidence of the existence of this supposed model; the decoration of the Liège example seems likely to have been copied in part from that model, which later also became a source of inspiration for the luxurious Gospel Books created at Echternach. The eleventh-century miniatures suggest that the decorative cycle of the Late Antique prototype may have included several angel pages. The type of frontispiece considered here appears also in some illustrated manuscripts of Beatus’s Commentary on the Apocalypse, whose angel and Evangelist pages derive, however, from other Late Antique sources. (shrink)

The exhibition Space/Sight/Self was designed to study the role of portraiture in contemporary art as a nexus of three issues identity, vision, and place. The goal was to produce a portrait, as it were, of contemporary portraiture. This catalog documents the exhibition and helps to facilitate viewers' reflections and responses about the spaces, sights, and selves that enable us to construct and question our identity.".

Biotechnology now makes it possible to enhance human traits as well as treat illnesses and disorders. What it has neglected to establish, however, is a clear line between these two functions, a distinction between what counts as treatment or therapy and what counts as enhancement. The bulk of the literature on enhancements focuses on the ethics of enhancements, not on the criteria that qualify a procedure as an enhancement . While the ethical questions regarding the desirability of enhancements are certainly (...) worthy of consideration, so is the issue of what constitutes an enhancement versus a form of treatment or therapy. Scholars have debated the issue of whether a distinction between therapy and enhancement exists, but the placement of that distinction has not yet been sufficiently addressed . Much like the field of bioethics itself, my study of this issue is a work in progress, so this paper will ask and explore questions relevant to this topic without providing answers to all of them. Nonetheless, they are important questions to ask with important implications for the future of bioethics. This paper will describe the line between enhancement and therapy, map the terrain and define the terms. It will also investigate where the line is at present, and where and how it has been set by legislation and private companies. It will then illustrate the issues, using two examples, to demonstrate the difficulties and complexities involved. Finally, it will explore the implications of the line for society’s financial as well as physical interests, and for healthcare access in the United States. It will conclude by considering the open question of how a company, a government, and a just society should go about setting the line. I hope that asking the questions and exploring their complexities will help draw attention to and prompt serious consideration of the placement of the line between therapy and enhancement. (shrink)

Merleau-ponty's thesis of the ambiguity of time is used to criticize husserl's and hume's views of the self. the thesis states that 1) the experience of present and past time depend on one another for intelligibility, and 2) the "objective" is past experience frozen in time; the "subjective" is present experience. adequate accounts of the self (and, generally, adequate philosophical explanation) will respect the ambiguity of time and discuss the interaction between subjective and objective facets of experience.

This paper proposes the importance of the ethics of entrepreneurship as a field of study. The paper argues that entrepreneurship is an ethical activity of pressing importance, as it significantly influences the sort of lives we will lead in the future. Furthermore, the distinctive nature of entrepreneurial action leads to a distinctive set of ethical problems and ethical obligations. To contribute to our understanding of entrepreneurial ethics and to help spur greater inquiry in the area, the paper offers a framework (...) that begins to capture and organize the range of ethical issues and topics that arise in conjunction with what we term the “creative market action” of pioneering entrepreneurs. Framing entrepreneurship as a process of creative market action allows us to identify the unique ethicalcharacteristics of entrepreneurship and to take the first steps in identifying the distinctive research questions that demand our scholarly attention. (shrink)

Introduction. The Science Question in Political Theory -- Earth to Arendt -- Vico's World of Nature -- Descartes and Democracy -- Hobbes's Worldly Geometry of Politics -- Epilogue. Science and Politics at the End of the World.

What we consider “nature” is always historical and relational, shaped in contingent configurations of representational and social practices. In the early twentieth century, the English ecologist A.G. Tansley lamented the pervasive problem of international misunderstandings concerning the nature of “nature.” In order to create some consensus on the concepts and language of ecological plant geography, Tansley founded the International Phytogeographical Excursion, which brought together leading plant geographers and botanists from North America and Europe. The first IPE in August 1911 started (...) with the Norfolk Broads. It was led by Marietta Pallis, Tansley’s former student at Cambridge. This trip and the work of Pallis, neglected in other accounts of this early period of the history of ecology, influenced the relations between Tansley and important American ecologists H.C. Cowles and F.E. Clements. Understanding “place” as a network of relations, our regional focus shows how taking international dialogue, travel and interchange into account enriches understanding of ecological practice. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to discuss and evaluate the role of positive emotions for cooperation in dialogical inquiry. I analyse dialogical interactions as vehicles for inquiry, and the role of positive emotions in knowledge gain is illustrated in terms of a case study taken from Socratic Dialogue, a contemporary method used in education for fostering group knowledge. I proceed as follows. After having illustrated the case study, I analyse it through the conceptual tools of distributed cognition and character-based (...) virtue epistemology, focusing on the two functions that emotions seem to play in the process of knowledge-building. These functions are motives for joint inquiry, and building blocks of the affective environment where the inquiry takes place. Positive emotions such as love and gratitude foster knowledge generation by providing an environment for posing questions and exploring aspects of a specific topic that a subject would not investigate outside of a group. This analysis helps me defend the thesis for which positive emotions are beneficial for cooperation. Because cooperation is the process that leads a group to cognitive transformation, emotions that support cooperation are beneficial for group knowledge creation as well. I assume that the beneficial function that positive emotions play within dialogical inquiry is the one of enhancement of cooperation. A beneficial factor not only comprises positive emotions that facilitate and strengthen cooperation among the agents in their epistemic practices, but also consists of such emotions that nurture the epistemic agents, enhancing their responsibility to generate epistemic goods, as propositional knowledge or explanatory understanding, for example. Thus, the responsibility toward the epistemic practice disclose the ethical dimension of group inquiry. (shrink)

Through the concepts of ἔργον and βίος, the article describes the twohappiest forms of life, i.e., the theoretical and the political one, askingwhether happiness is founded on the conjunction of the two. Focusingon the connection between philosophy, education and politics the paperemphasizes the role of contemplation as πράξις and the importance ofphilosopher for the city.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, blood and convalescent plasma donors are dearly needed. There is a need to modify donor recruitment strategies in order to stimulate these donors. Financial stimulants though, cannot be possibly used. This paper will analyze, from an ethical perspective, the possible consequences regarding the blood and plasma donor system by a simple shift of attention from the voluntary unpaid donor to the paid one or the blood seller.

The Hippo pathway, a cascade of protein kinases that inhibits the oncogenic transcriptional coactivators YAP and TAZ, was discovered in Drosophila as a major determinant of organ size in development. Known modes of regulation involve surface proteins that mediate cell‐cell contact or determine epithelial cell polarity which, in a tissue‐specific manner, use intracellular complexes containing FERM domain and actin‐binding proteins to modulate the kinase activities or directly sequester YAP. Unexpectedly, recent work demonstrates that GPCRs, especially those signaling through Galpha12/13 such (...) as the protease activated receptor PAR1, cause potent YAP dephosphorylation and activation. This response requires active RhoA GTPase and increased assembly of filamentous (F‐)actin. Morever, cell architectures that promote F‐actin assembly per se also activate YAP by kinase‐dependent and independent mechanisms. These findings unveil the ability of GPCRs to activate the YAP oncogene through a newly recognized signaling function of the actin cytoskeleton, likely to be especially important for normal and cancerous stem cells. (shrink)

The purpose of this work is to get to know which are the most frequent factors of stress in the childhood and, considering that the perception of the threat is intermediate by the characteristics of each subject, establish if there is any connection between those events taken as threatening and t..

Kant afirma que Dios conoce todo a priori, que tiene un intelecto intuitivo y puro; pero el sistema crítico enseña que este aspecto de la divinidad no es cognoscible por nosotros. Entonces, ¿cómo determinar los atributos del intelecto divino si Dios mismo no puede ser objeto de conocimiento? Algunos sostienen que este modo de concebir este atributo divino debe ser comprendido a partir de las convicciones religiosas del filósofo. Por el contrario, mostraremos que este peculiar modo de concebir el intelecto (...) de Dios está fundado en un argumento que Kant expone in extenso en las Lecciones de teología filosófica. Throughout his work, Kant states that God knows everything a priori, that He has pure and intuitive cognition. However, the Kantian critical system claims that the intellect of God cannot be known by our human cognition. Thus, the question that must be answered is how are we to determine God's intellectual attributes, consider-ing that God him/herself cannot be an object of our knowledge whatsoever. Some scholars claim that the way in which Kant determines God's mind should be understood in relation to Kant's religious convictions. On the contrary, we sustain that this peculiar way of conceiving the intellect of God is supported by an argument that Kant develops in extensor in his Lectures on Philosophical Theology. (shrink)

Both scholars and practitioners acknowledge that the major factors explaining behavior are cognition, emotion, and context. However, existing theories tend to only focus on a combination of two. Furthermore, not all models are rooted in a specific theory of mind. Finally, there is no consistent definition of ‘mind.’ To address these issues, we review the major models explaining behavior. We then describe the Theory of Analysis of Demand, an interactionist model of functioning of mind that thoroughly addresses the conjoint interplay (...) of cognition, emotion, and context. A key concept of the TAD is emotional symbolization, the process of relating one’s experiences of the external context with an inevitable emotional reaction. By considering an intersection among cognition, emotion, and context, TAD fills the gap in the existing literature and expands our understanding of behavior. Moreover, we describe the TAD intervention methodology, Individual-Setting of intervention-Orga... (shrink)

Let R be a real closed field, and X⊆Rm\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${X\subseteq R^m}$$\end{document} semi-algebraic and 1-dimensional. We consider complete first-order theories of modules over the ring of continuous semi-algebraic functions X→R\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${X\to R}$$\end{document} definable with parameters in R. As a tool we introduce -piecewise vector bundles on X and show that the category of piecewise vector bundles on X is equivalent to the category of syzygies of (...) finitely generated submodules of free modules. We give an explicit method to determine the Baur–Monk invariants of free modules in terms of pre-piecewise vector bundles. When R is a recursive real closed field this yields the decidability of the theory of free modules. Where it makes sense, we address the same questions for continuous definable functions in o-minimal expansions of a real closed field. From the free module case we are able to deduce generalisations of some results to arbitrary modules over the ring. We present a geometrically motivated quantifier elimination result down to the level of positive primitive formulae with a certain block decomposition of the matrix of coefficients. (shrink)

En esta nota crítica (i) se hace una breve descripción de cada uno de los artículos que componen Orayen: de la forma lógica al significado, (ii) se señalan algunas cuestiones que no están claras en ellos o en las réplicas de Orayen y, (iii) en la medida de lo posible, se indica si los autores desarrollan ulteriormente los problemas abordados en sus artículos. The aim of this critical note is threefold: (i) it briefly describes and comments on each of the (...) articles of Orayen: de la forma lógica al significado; (ii) identifies some issues that may not be clear enough or not fully developed whether in the articles or even in Orayen's replies; (iii) as far as possible, it refers to further studies made by the authors themselves on the same, or quite related, subjects addressed by them in their papers. (shrink)