The ancient practice of chanting typically takes place within a community as a part of a live ceremony or ritual. Research suggests that chanting leads to improved mood, reduced stress, and increased wellbeing. During the global pandemic, many chanting practices were moved online in order to adhere to social distancing recommendations. However, it is unclear whether the benefits of live chanting occur when practiced in an online format. The present study assessed the effects of a 10-min online chanting session on (...) stress, mood, and connectedness, carried out either in a group or individually. The study employed a 2 (chanting vs. control) × 2 (group vs. individual) between-subjects design. Participants (N= 117) were pseudo-randomly allocated across the four conditions. Before and after participation, individuals completed the Spielberg’s State Trait Anxiety Inventory, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, the Social Connectedness Scale and Aron’s Inclusion of Self in Other Scale. Online chanting led to a significant reduction in stress and an increase in positive affect when compared to the online control task. Participants who took part in group chanting also felt more connected to members of their chanting group than participants in the control group. However, feelings of general connectedness to all people remained similar across conditions. The investigation provides evidence that online chanting may be a useful psychosocial intervention, whether practiced individually or in a group. (shrink)

This book focuses on various concepts of space and their historical evolution. In particular, it examines the variations that have modified the notions of place, orientation, distance, vacuum, limit, bound and boundary, form and figure, continuity and contingence, in order to show how spatial characteristics are decisive in a range of contexts: in the determination and comprehension of exteriority; in individuation and identification; in defining the meaning of nature and of the natural sciences; in aesthetical formations and representations; in determining (...) the relationship between experience, behavior and environment; and in the construction of mental and social subjectivity. Accordingly, the book offers a comprehensive review of concepts of space as formulated by Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Einstein, Heisenberg, Penrose and Thorne, subsequently comparing them to notions developed more recently, in the current age, which Foucault dubbed the age of space. The book is divided into four distinct yet deeply interconnected parts, which explore the space of life, the space of experience, the space of science and the space of the arts. (shrink)

Aging is characterized by the decline and deterioration of functional cells and results in a wide variety of molecular damages and reduced physical and mental capacity. The knowledge on aging process is important because life expectancy is expected to rise until 2050. Aging cannot be considered a homogeneous process and includes different trajectories characterized by states of fitness, frailty, and disability. Frailty is a dynamic condition put between a normal functional state and disability, with reduced capacity to cope with stressors. (...) This geriatric syndrome affects physical, neuropsychological, and social domains and is driven by emotional and spiritual components. Sarcopenia is considered one of the determinants and the biological substrates of physical frailty. Physical and cognitive frailty are separately approached during daily clinical practice. The concept of motoric cognitive syndrome has partially changed this scenario, opening interesting windows toward future approaches. Thus, the purpose of this manuscript is to provide an excursus on current clinical practice, enforced by aneddoctical cases. The analysis of the current state of the art seems to support the urgent need of comprehensive organizational model incorporating physical and cognitive spheres in the same umbrella. (shrink)

This article investigates the place of trust in learning relations in the classroom, not only between teacher and student, but also between student and student. To do this, it will first examine a pedagogy called community of inquiry, espoused by John Dewey and used in most Philosophy for Children courses in Australia. It will then consider what different forms of trust are involved in other power relations in the classroom, particularly the rational structuralism of R.S Peters, or the experiential philosophy (...) of Maria Montessori. It concludes that a community of inquiry shifts the ethical learning relation in significantly different ways because for educational growth, it values ethical trust more highly than a strategic trust in logical principle, duty, Truth, or cost/benefit analysis. (shrink)

Este artículo aporta una clarificación sobre lo que sí podemos decir de la relación entre este mundo y el futuro anunciado por la esperanza cristiana (escatología). La iluminación según la sagrada Escritura de la recíproca interdependencia y complementariedad entre el futuro intrahistórico y el metahistórico, permite encontrar pautas teórico-prácticas de actuación. Una humanidad nueva conduce a forjar un mundo según el plan de Dios, un mundo donde ha de reinar la paz y la justicia. El futuro es la ciudad de (...) la Paz; construirla es tarea de todos. En esta hora de la historia, la mujer está dando una aportación digna de consideración. El sueño de futuro que alimenta el Apocalipsis no es una ilusión, pues se está gestando ya en lo escondido de la historia. (shrink)

La discussione generale sulla filosofia della scienza contemporanea è complicata dal numero e dall’eterogeneità delle scienze, mentre lo studio di temi specifici porta inevitabilmente a dissertazioni specialistiche che mancano nel dare ragione della trama di senso sottostante. Questo Piccolo trattato di epistemologia intende occupare uno spazio vuoto, proponendo alcuni temi chiave per la comprensione dei meccanismi alla base della conoscenza scientifica: i rapporti tra filosofia e scienze, siano esse naturali o umane; la complessa relazione tra fatti e valori; la distinzione (...) tra scoperta e giustificazione; la necessità di un discorso etico sulla ricerca, che chiami in causa categorie come fiducia, empatia, altruismo ed egoismo. Con un approccio chiaro e rigoroso, il volume intende rivolgersi a quell’ampia fascia di pubblico interessata alle tematiche centrali dell’epistemologia, della filosofia e delle scienze. (shrink)

Razón, poesía, historia.--La cuestión del estoicismo español.--El querer.

In this conceptual article, we argue that defining corporate social responsibility and corporate social irresponsibility as opposite constructs produces a lack of clarity between responsible and irresponsible acts. Furthermore, we contend that the treatment of the CSR and CSI concepts as opposites de-emphasizes the value of CSI as a stand-alone construct. Thus, we reorient the CSI discussion to include multiple aspects that current conceptualizations have not adequately accommodated. We provide an in-depth exploration of how researchers define CSI and both identify (...) and analyze three important gray zones between CSR and CSI: the role of harm and benefit, the role of the actor and intentionality, and the role of rectification. We offer these gray zones as factors contributing to the present lack of conceptual clarity of the term CSI, as a concept in its own right, leading to difficulties that researchers and managers experience in categorizing CSI acts as distinct from CSR. (shrink)

The proliferation of for-profit enterprises offering stem cell storage services for personal use illustrates one of the ways health is increasingly governed through uncertainty and speculative notions of risk. Without any firm guarantee of therapeutic utility, commercial stem cell banks offer to store a range of bodily tissues, signalling the further transformation of the living body into an accumulation strategy within biotechnology capitalism’s ‘tissue economies’. This article makes two related claims: first, it suggests that specifically gendered forms of identification with (...) the leading edge of the bioeconomy are embedded in the speculative practices of commercial stem cell banking and are particularly visible in the recent creation of a banking service for endometrial tissue marketed directly to women. Second, the article offers a novel analytic through which to explore the commercial banking of one’s own bodily tissues (or ‘autologous’ banking) through Marx’s discussion of money hoarding. The aim of the article is to thus further the conceptual claims linking emergent forms of economic and biomedical subjectivity to transformations in biotechnology capital. (shrink)

The passage of time seems to be a fundamental aspect of experience. However, most descriptions of the passage of time itself are incompatible with the four-dimensional block universe model of space and time, in which time is extended like space, and all states of affairs exist equally and eternally in this varied tapestry of space and time. The tension between temporal passage and the block universe seems to leave one with the option of either abandoning the block universe in favor (...) of a metaphysics that can accommodate our experience, or holding that this experience of passage is illusory. I argue for a third option: that we have certain dynamic experiences, which lend themselves to the view that time passes, those dynamic experiences can be accounted for within the block universe model without any additional mechanism, and those dynamic experiences are not illusory, but veridical. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyze the role of science and technology studies journal editors in organizing and maintaining the peer review economy. We specifically conceptualize peer review as a gift economy running on perpetually renewed experiences of mutual indebtedness among members of an intellectual community. While the peer review system is conventionally presented as self-regulating, we draw attention to its vulnerabilities and to the essential curating function of editors. Aside from inherent complexities, there are various shifts in the broader political–economic (...) and sociotechnical organization of scholarly publishing that have recently made it more difficult for editors to organize robust cycles of gift exchange. This includes the increasing importance of journal metrics and associated changes in authorship practices; the growth and differentiation of the STS journal landscape; and changes in publishing funding models and the structure of the publishing market through which interactions among authors, editors, and reviewers are reconfigured. To maintain a functioning peer review economy in the face of numerous pressures, editors must balance contradictory imperatives: the need to triage intellectual production and rely on established cycles of gift exchange for efficiency, and the need to expand cycles of gift exchange to ensure the sustainability and diversity of the peer review economy. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss some rather puzzling facts concerning the semantics of Warlpiri expressions of cardinality, i.e. the Warlpiri counterparts of English expressions like one,two, many, how many. The morphosyntactic evidence, discussed in section 1, suggests that the corresponding expressions in Warlpiri are nominal, just like the Warlpiri counterparts of prototypical nouns, eg. child. We also argue that Warlpiri has no articles or any other items of the syntactic category D(eterminer). In section 2, we describe three types of readings— (...) "definite", "indefinite" and "predicative"—which are generally found with Warlpiri nouns, including those which correspond to English common nouns and cardinality expressions. A partial analysis of these readings is sketched i n section 3. Since Warlpiri has no determiner system, we hypothesize that the source of (in)definiteness in this language is semantic. More specifically, we suggest that Warlpiri nominals are basically interpreted as individual terms or predicates of individuals and that their three readings arise as a consequence of the interaction of their basic meanings, which are specific to Warlpiri, with certain semantic operations, such as type shifting (Rooth and Partee 1982, Partee and Rooth 1983, Partee 1986, 1987), which universally can or must apply in the process of compositional semantic interpretation. (shrink)

In this paper I analyze Kant’s ideas about eating and drinking. First, I show that gluttony and drunkenness are considered ways to oppose to the duty to oneself as an animal being. Second, I claim that for Kant there is a healthy way of having meals, which consists in eating together with friends. Then I indicate that Kant accepts that one can drink at dinner parties but has to avoid drinks that lead to drunkenness and unsocial behavior. In this sense, (...) he draws a classification of the various kinds of alcoholic drinks, according to their potential harm. Afterwards, I illustrate how Kant’s own intimate life was a daily practice of his thoughts on dietetic conceptions and on what is better for digestion and health. To conclude, I mention the idea of a philosopher’s medicine of the body and why a strict diet should be avoided. (shrink)

'Ethics' was not developed as a separate branch of philosophy in Buddhist traditions until the modern period, though Buddhist philosophers have always been concerned with the moral significance of thoughts, emotions, intentions, actions, virtues, and precepts. Their most penetrating forms of moral reflection have been developed within disciplines of practice aimed at achieving freedom and peace. This Element first offers a brief overview of Buddhist thought and modern scholarly approaches to its diverse forms of moral reflection. It then explores two (...) of the most prominent philosophers from the main strands of the Indian Buddhist tradition – Buddhaghosa and Śāntideva – in a comparative fashion. (shrink)

The role of demographic terminology in the fields of medicine and public health is critical in the identification and allocation of resources to the communities that most benefit from intervention...

Following the declaration of the COVID-19 outbreak as a global pandemic in March 2020, a state of alarm was decreed in Spain. In this situation, healthcare workers experienced high levels of stress, anxiety and depression due to the heavy workload and working conditions. Although Spain experienced a progressive decline in the number of COVID-19 cases until the last week of May and the work overload among health workers was substantially reduced, several studies have shown that this work overload is associated (...) with the later emergence of psychological symptoms induced by stress. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the levels of stress, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress and compassionate fatigue in health professionals. The sample consisted of 973 health professionals 16.5% men, 82.9% women, and one non-binary person. The data were collected through an online questionnaire sent to the participants by e-mail. DASS-21 was used to measure anxiety, stress and depression, PCL-C to measure post-traumatic stress and ProQOL -vIV to measure compassion fatigue. In addition, other descriptive variables that could be related to these levels of psychological symptomatology were evaluated. The results reveal that after the work overload experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers report psychological symptoms, post-traumatic stress and compassion fatigue. It is therefore recommended that these professionals be provided with psychological help in order to reduce the emotional impact of COVID-19, and consequently improve their mental health. (shrink)

En reseña de:Elósegui Itxaso, María (coord.), Los principios y la interpretación judicial de los derechos fundamentales. Homenaje a Robert Alexy en su 70 Aniversario. Zaragoza y Madrid, Fundación Manuel Giménez Abad y Marcial Pons, 2016.

This article exposes the neoplatonic element present in the metaphysics of causality elaborated in the seventeenth century by Leibniz. It explains this question in relation with medieval Neoplatonism, whose metaphysics of the Verb appears as the nucleus of the explanation of the relationship between causality and otherness.

Las fuentes de la revelación han afirmado siempre la presencia salvífica del Espíritu Santo más allá de los límites del antiguo y del nuevo Israel. Este artículo es un intento por percibirla en las ceremonias religiosas de los pueblos indígenas y mestizos del Sur Andino Peruano. Para alcanzar su objetivo, considera las circunstancias que acompañaron el anuncio del Evangelio en América y encuentra en la Carta a los Hebreos una clave para comprender e interpretar el proceso de inculturación del cristianismo (...) en los ritos dedicados a la Madre Tierra. Frente a la idolatría tributaria de la muerte, estos antiguos cultos aparecen como núcleos generadores de vida, que revelan la intervención providente de Dios en situaciones de sufrimiento injusto. (shrink)