Genomic biobanking research is undergoing exponential growth in Africa raising a host of legal, ethical and social issues. Given the scientific complexity associated with genomics, there is a growing recognition globally of the importance of science translation and community engagement for this type of research, as it creates the potential to build relationships, increase trust, improve consent processes and empower local communities. Despite this level of recognition, there is a lack of empirical evidence of the practise and processes for effective (...) CE in genomic biobanking in Africa. To begin to address this vacuum, 17 in-depth face to face interviews were conducted with South African experts in genomic biobanking research and CE to provide insight into the process, benefits and challenges of CE in South Africa. Emerging themes were analysed using a contextualised thematic approach. Several themes emerged concerning the conduct of CE in genomic biobanking research in Africa. Although the literature tends to focus on the local community in CE, respondents in this study described three different layers of stakeholder engagement: community level, peer level and high level. Community level engagement includes potential participants, community advisory boards and field workers; peer level engagement includes researchers, biobankers and scientists, while high level engagement includes government officials, funders and policy makers. Although education of each stakeholder layer is important, education of the community layer can be most challenging, due to the complexity of the research and educational levels of stakeholders in this layer. CE is time-consuming and often requires an interdisciplinary research team approach. However careful planning of the engagement strategy, including an understanding of the differing layers of stakeholder engagement, and the specific educational needs at each layer, can help in the development of a relationship based on trust between the research team and various stakeholder groups. Since the community layer often comprises vulnerable populations in low and middle income countries, co-development of innovative educational tools on genomic biobanking is essential. CE is clearly a component of a broader process best described as stakeholder engagement. (shrink)

The artistic design stance is an important part of art appreciation, but it remains unclear how it can be applied to artworks for which art historical context is no longer available, such as Ice Age art. We propose that some of the designer's intentions can be gathered noninferentially through direct experience with prehistoric artworks.

In 1986, Mikenberg et al. introduced the semantic notion of quasi-truth defined by means of partial structures. In such structures, the predicates are seen as triples of pairwise disjoint sets: the set of tuples which satisfies, does not satisfy and can satisfy or not the predicate, respectively. The syntactical counterpart of the logic of partial truth is a rather complicated first-order modal logic. In the present article, the notion of predicates as triples is recursively extended, in a natural way, to (...) any complex formula of the first-order object language. From this, a new definition of quasi-truth is obtained. The proof-theoretic counterpart of the new semantics is a first-order paraconsistent logic whose propositional base is a 3-valued logic belonging to hierarchy of paraconsistent logics known as Logics of Formal Inconsistency, which was proposed by Carnielli and Marcos in 2002. (shrink)

The decolonial theory understands that Western Modernity keeps imposing itself through a triple mutually reinforcing and shaping imprisonment: coloniality of power, coloniality of knowledge, and coloniality of being. Technical design has an essential role in either maintaining or overcoming coloniality. In this article, two main approaches to decolonizing the technical design are presented. First is Yuk Hui’s and Ahmed Ansari’s proposals that, revisiting or recovering the different histories and philosophies of technology produced by humankind, intend to decolonize the minds of (...) philosophers and engineers/architects/designers as a pre-condition for such decolonial designs to take place. I call them top-down approaches. Second is some technical design initiatives that, being developed alongside marginalized/subalternate people, intend to co-construct decolonial sociotechnical solutions through a committed, decolonizing, and careful dialog of knowledge. I call them bottom-up approaches. Once that is done, the article’s second half derives ontological, epistemological, and political consequences from the conjugation of top-down and bottom-up approaches. Such consequences challenge some established or not yet entirely overcome understandings in the philosophy of technology and, in so doing, are meant to represent some steps in PT’s decolonization. Even though both top-down and bottom-up approaches are considered, the article’s main contributions are associated with decolonial technical design practices, whose methodologies and outcomes are important study cases for PT and whose practitioners can be taken as inspiring examples for philosophers who want to decolonize/enlarge PT or make it decolonial. (shrink)

Objective:A growing body of evidence supports the effectiveness of body-oriented interventions in educational contexts, showing positive influences on social-emotional competence. Nevertheless, there is a lack of systematization of the evidence regarding preschool years. This is a two-part systematic review. In this first part, we aim to examine the effects of BOI on preschoolers' social-emotional competence outcomes.Data Sources:Searches were conducted in Pubmed, Scopus, PsycInfo, ERIC, Web of Science, Portal Regional da BVS and CINAHL.Eligibility Criteria:English, French and Portuguese language articles published between (...) January 2000 and October 2020, that evaluated the effects of BOI implemented in educational contexts on social-emotional competence of preschool children. Only randomized controlled trials or quasi-RCT were included.Data Extraction and Synthesis:Two reviewers independently completed data extraction and risk-of-bias assessment. The level of scientific evidence was measured through the Best Evidence Synthesis.Results:Nineteen studies were included. There was strong evidence that BOI do not improve anger/aggression, delay of gratification and altruism. Nevertheless, there was moderate evidence that BOI effectively improve other social-emotional outcomes, such as empathy, social interaction, social independence, general internalizing behaviors, and general externalizing behaviors. The lack of scientific evidence was compromised by the methodological quality of the studies.Conclusion:BOI effectively improve specific social-emotional competences of preschool children.Systematic Review Registration:PROSPERO, identifier CRD42020172248. (shrink)

This special issue on what some regard as a crisis of replicability in cognitive science (i.e. the observation that a worryingly large proportion of experimental results across a number of areas cannot be reliably replicated) is informed by three recent developments. -/- First, philosophers of mind and cognitive science rely increasingly on empirical research, mainly in the psychological sciences, to back up their claims. This trend has been noticeable since the 1960s (see Knobe, 2015). This development has allowed philosophers to (...) draw on a wider range of relevant resources, but it also makes them vulnerable to relying on claims that may not survive further scrutiny. If we have reasons to believe that a large proportion of findings in the psychological sciences cannot be reliably replicated, this would be a problem for philosophers who use such findings in their work. Second, philosophers are increasingly designing and carrying out their own experiments to back up claims, or to test claims earlier made from the armchair, for example, on the perceived permissibility of diverting trolleys or on the nature of free will. This growing field of experimental philosophy has diversified the intellectual field in philosophy, but may also be vulnerable to issues of replicability that philosophers did not face before. -/- Third, the recent evidence of apparently widespread non-replicability in the social sciences (and other fields) has forced philosophers of science to grapple with long standing questions from their field from a new perspective. To what extent does replicability matter for theory construction? How do the notions of replicability and scientific progress interact? How can normative insights from philosophy of science be used in order to improve scientific practice? -/- It is with these three developments in mind—the increasing importance of empirically-informed philosophy, of experimental philosophy, and of philosophy of science around replicability—that this special issue has been conceived. (shrink)

Psychological evidence suggests that laypeople understand the world around them in terms of intuitive ontologies which describe broad categories of objects in the world, such as ‘person’, ‘artefact’ and ‘animal’. However, because intuitive ontologies are the result of natural selection, they only need to be adaptive; this does not guarantee that the knowledge they provide is a genuine reflection of causal mechanisms in the world. As a result, science has parted ways with intuitive ontologies. Nevertheless, since the brain is evolved (...) to understand objects in the world according to these categories, we can expect that they continue to play a role in scientific understanding. Taking the case of human evolution, we explore relationships between intuitive ontological and scientific understanding. We show that intuitive ontologies not only shape intuitions on human evolution, but also guide the direction and topics of interest in its research programmes. Elucidating the relationships between intuitive ontologies and science may help us gain a clearer insight into scientific understanding. (shrink)

In this paper we defend structural representations, more specifically neural structural representation. We are not alone in this, many are currently engaged in this endeavor. The direction we take, however, diverges from the main road, a road paved by the mathematical theory of measure that, in the 1970s, established homomorphism as the way to map empirical domains of things in the world to the codomain of numbers. By adopting the mind as codomain, this mapping became a boon for all those (...) convinced that a representation system should bear similarities with what was being represented, but struggled to find a precise account of what such similarities mean. The euforia was brief, however, and soon homomorphism revealed itself to be affected by serious weaknesses, the primary one being that it included systems embarrassingly alien to representations. We find that the defense attempts that have followed, adopt strategies that share a common format: valid structural representations come as “homomorphism plus X”, with various “X”, provided in descriptive format only. Our alternative direction stems from the observation of the overlooked departure from homomorphism as used in the theory of measure and its later use in mental representations. In the former case, the codomain or the realm of numbers, is the most suited for developing theorems detailing the existence and uniqueness of homomorphism for a wide range of empirical domains. In the latter case, the codomain is the realm of the mind, possibly more vague and more ill-defined than the empirical domain itself. The time is ripe for articulating the mapping between represented domains and the mind in formal terms, by exploiting what is currently known about coding mechanisms in the brain. We provide a sketch of a possible development in this direction, one that adopts the theory of neural population coding as codomain. We will show that our framework is not only not in disagreement with the “plus X” proposals, but can lead to natural derivation of several of the “X”. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine how faith-led practices in family firms affect organizational stewardship. Current studies highlight the relevance of religious adherence for family businesses, yet provide limited understanding of how this shapes the key traits of these organizations. Drawing on six autobiographies of family business leaders who openly express their adherence to their faith, and adopting an open-systems analysis of these autobiographies, we demonstrate that faith-led values influence organizational and leadership practices. Overall, our study suggests that (...) the influence of religious beliefs in the organizational practices of family businesses have greater repercussions than previously thought. By introducing a faith-led approach to stewardship, we enrich the theoretical discussion around stewardship and the relevance of religion in family business. (shrink)

This study investigates professional tax practitioners' ethical judgments and behavioral intentions in cases involving client pressure to adopt aggressive reporting positions, an issue that has been identified as the most difficult ethical/moral problem facing public accounting practitioners. The multidimensional ethics scale (MES) was used to measure the extent to which a hypothetical behavior was consistent with five ethical philosophies (moral equity, contractualism, utilitarianism, relativism, and egoism). Responses from a sample of 67 tax professionals supported the existence of all dimensions of (...) the MES other than egoism. Regressions of ethical judgments and behavioral intentions on the MES dimensions indicate that ethical decision making is most heavily influenced by the moral equity dimension, followed by the contractualism dimension. In contrast, the utilitarianism and relativism dimensions were only related to ethical judgments and behavioral intentions in isolated instances. (shrink)

The gap between economic rationality, as embedded in utility maximization, and ethical rationality, identified with a set of rules that prescribe the right course of action, has been a challenging issue for economists, philosophers, and business ethicists. Despite the difference and the noncompetition between a scientific economic approach of economics and business ethics, and a behavioral and philosophical one, we highlight the importance of the Aristotelian concept of prudence or phronesis applied to business activity. Phronesis allows for a conceptualization of (...) rationality that can be simultaneously applied to economics and ethics. It also allows conceiving the intrinsically ethical nature of economic rationality. This relationship requires an appropriate education and the intervention of the state. (shrink)

Decolonial approaches to technical design are part of a broader category of design methodologies, which actualize unfulfilled sociotechnical potentialities. In this paper, I present some decolonial theory concepts and discuss three decolonial approaches to illuminate philosophical debates that: 1) Can find in them clear traces of a third set of elements that shape every design/technology, along with the well-analyzed technical-scientific and ethical-political ones. In dialogue with Walter Vincenti and some others, I call these elements structured procedures, imagery lexicon, and aesthetical (...) values, which constitute the central aspects of Eugene Ferguson’s art of engineering; 2) Identify, starting from some Gilbert Simondon’s and Andrew Feenberg’s ideas, any invention as triply situated ; 3) Can be taught by these decolonial approaches about some of the mainstream philosophy of technology’s colonial limitations, becoming thus able to widen it. (shrink)

Gervain et al. discuss both behavioral and neurophysiological AGL studies that investigate rule and structure learning processes in infants. The paper provides an overview of all the major AGL paradigms used to date to investigate infant learning abilities at the level of morpho‐phonology and syntax from a very early age onwards. Gervain et al. also discuss the implications of the results for a general theory of natural language acquisition.

Conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) has become prominent in metaphor scholarship because of its explanation of the relations between people's metaphoric thoughts and their use of metaphoric discourse. Our aim in this article is to explore the temporal characteristics of how conceptual metaphors shape verbal metaphor use. We argue that cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics mostly adopt simplistic, and psychologically implausible, views of how conceptual metaphors are activated and then constrain people's comprehension of metaphoric language. But more contemporary ideas on how cognitive (...) processing unfolds over time in human experience provide better models of how conceptual metaphors shape verbal metaphor use. The implications of this newer vision of CMT are discussed, particularly in regard to methods for studying how conceptual metaphors support interpretation of linguistic metaphor. (shrink)

This article argues that corporate social responsibility may contribute to product differentiation in export markets and thus improve export performance. We test this argument by observing a period of decreasing export competitiveness in a leading emerging economy. Using a large-scale survey design with 252 questionnaires completed by mediumand large-sized Brazilian exporters, we used structural equations modelling to test our hypotheses. The results suggest that CSR product differentiation predicts export performance better than product quality differentiation and almost as well as product (...) innovation differentiation. Multi- group analysis further revealed that the positive and significant effect of CSR product differentiation on export performance is likely to be contingent on the number and type of countries that are targeted. Our study contributes to the literature on CSR and export performance by developing and empirically validating a model that explains under which conditions CSR-based product differentiation may lead to improved export performance. (shrink)

This article argues that corporate social responsibility (CSR) may contribute to product differentiation in export markets and thus improve export performance. We test this argument by observing a period of decreasing export competitiveness in a leading emerging economy (Brazil). Using a large-scale survey design with 252 questionnaires completed by medium- and large-sized Brazilian exporters, we used structural equations modelling to test our hypotheses. The results suggest that CSR product differentiation predicts export performance better than product quality differentiation and almost as (...) well as product innovation differentiation. Multi-group analysis further revealed that the positive and significant effect of CSR product differentiation on export performance is likely to be contingent on the number and type (developing vs. developed) of countries that are targeted. Our study contributes to the literature on CSR and export performance by developing and empirically validating a model that explains under which conditions CSR-based product differentiation may lead to improved export performance. (shrink)

Computational models of child language development can help us understand the cognitive underpinnings of the language learning process, which occurs along several linguistic levels at once (e.g., prosodic and phonological). However, in light of the replication crisis, modelers face the challenge of selecting representative and consolidated infant data. Thus, it is desirable to have evaluation methodologies that could account for robust empirical reference data, across multiple infant capabilities. Moreover, there is a need for practices that can compare developmental trajectories of (...) infants to those of models as a function of language experience and development. The present study aims to take concrete steps to address these needs by introducing the concept of comparing models with large-scale cumulative empirical data from infants, as quantified by meta-analyses conducted across a large number of individual behavioral studies. We formalize the connection between measurable model and human behavior, and then present a conceptual framework for meta-analytic evaluation of computational models. We exemplify the meta-analytic model evaluation approach with two modeling experiments on infant-directed speech preference and native/non-native vowel discrimination. (shrink)

Abstract Does Duns Scotus identify the natural will with the affectio commodi ? This identification has become the standard view. In this paper, I will challenge this view through an analysis of some key texts. The main thesis of the paper is that Scotus allows for two scenarios related to the will's dual affections. The first is the real situation of the created will: the will is a free potency and possesses two affections. The second is a hypothetical case; Scotus (...) suggests the fictive case of a will that only possesses the affectio commodi . Accordingly, it can be concluded that: ( i ) when considering the will in its real condition, both affections belong to the will's free appetite; ( ii ) in the hypothetical case the natural will, the intellectual appetite and the affectio commodi are all identified; ( iii ) in the real condition of the will, the natural will is a passive inclination to receive perfection. (shrink)

This paper describes a one-day workshop format for introducing ethics into the engineering curriculum prepared at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRM). It responds to the ethics criteria newly integrated into the accreditation process by the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET). It also employs an ethics across the curriculum (EAC) approach; engineers identify the ethical issues, write cases that dramatize these issues, and then develop exercises making use of these cases that are specially tailored to mainstream (...) engineering classes. The different activities and strategies employed in this workshop are set forth. Specific references are made to the cases and exercises developed as a result of these workshops. The paper ends by summarizing the different assessments made of the workshop by addressing the following questions: how did it contribute to the overall ABET effort at UPRM; could other universities benefit from a similar activity; and how did the participants evaluate the workshop? (shrink)

This study examines how multinational corporations (MNCs) from the retail sector deal with four challenges they face when adopting Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies: the challenge of developing well-performing CSR projects and programs, building competitive advantages based on CSR, responding to local stakeholder issues in the host countries and learning from different CSR experiences on a worldwide basis. Based on in-depth case studies of two globally leading retail MNCs (with strong operations in Latin America), the concept of Transverse CSR Management (...) emerged. Transverse CSR Management is defined as a distinctive form of organizational configuration that crosses different functional areas, country operations, and the boundaries of the firm. In particular, this article makes three main contributions: (1) we identify four central challenges faced by MNC managers when developing their CSR strategies; (2) we propose the concept of Transverse CSR Management to face these central challenges (together, at the same time) and identify its key elements (top management, external stakeholders, functional areas, and country subsidiaries); and (3) we propose four mechanisms (hierarchical, relational, cultural, and collaborative) through which the concept of Transverse CSR Management can be implemented by practicing managers. This study provides valuable insights for MNC managers in headquarters and subsidiaries on the issues they need to address in order to successfully deal with the four CSR-related challenges. (shrink)

Alongside scholarly and societal dimensions of research impact, the meaningfulness of research, emerging from the link to context, is crucial. Authentic inclusion of Global South scholars based in the Global South aids these objectives.

Transhumanist thought on overpopulation usually invokes the welfare of present human beings and the control over future generation, thus minimizing the need and meaning of new births. Here we devise a framework for a more thorough screening of the relevant literature, to have a better appreciation of the issue of natality. We follow the lead of Hannah Arendt and Brent Waters in this respect. With three overlapping categories of words, headed by “natality,” “birth,” and “intergenerations,” a large sample of books (...) on transhumanism is scrutinized, showing the lack of sustained reflection on the issue. After this preliminary scrutiny, a possible defense of natality in face of modern and transhumanist thought is marshaled, evoking a number of desirable human traits. One specific issue, the impact of modern values on natality, is further explored, reiterating that concerns about overpopulation and enhanced humans should keep in sight the natural cycle of birth and death. (shrink)

To organise future behaviour, it is important to remember both the central and contextual aspects of a situation. We examined the impact of contextual threat or safety, learned through verbal instructions, on face identity recognition. In two studies (N = 140), 72 face–context compounds were presented each once within an encoding session, and an unexpected item/source recognition task was performed afterwards (including 24 new faces). Hierarchical multinomial processing tree modelling served to estimate individual parameters of item (face identity) and source (...) memory (threat or safety context) as well as guessing behaviour. Results show that language was highly effective in establishing threatening and safe context conditions. In Study 1, a fleeting picture stream (1 s per picture) led to poor item and source recognition. Prolonged presentation times (Study 2 with 6 s per picture) improved face memory but no contextual modulation was observed. Thus, incidental face learning was surprisingly poor and rapidly changing contextual settings might have interfered with the accurate encoding of face identity information and item–source binding. (shrink)

Transhumanism proposes human enhancement while regarding the human body as unfit for the future. This fulfills age-old aspirations for a perfect and durable body. We use “alienation” as a concept to analyze this mismatch between human aspirations and our current condition. For Hannah Arendt alienation may be accounted for in terms of earth- and world-alienation, as well as alienation from human nature, and especially from the given (“resentment of the given”). In transhumanism, the biological body is an impediment to human (...) accomplishment. At most, this movement accepts “clean” bodies, not bodies with excretions. We argue that real human bodies are valued in the event of giving birth, so a modified concept that Arendt proposed, natality, seems a suitable way to explore the dialectic alienation-reconciliation involving the body (Arendt’s “A child has been born unto us”), when re-read by some feminist scholars. (shrink)

The present study aims to understand how temporality is the condition of possibility of that understanding-of-being which understands beings as present-at-hand. To do so, we will try to present an outline of the structure of temporality developed by Heidegger in Being and Time and in The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. The exposition of such a structure will then allow us to show how presentness—and therefore the entity that has this mode of being—can only come to the fore in a present.

Knauff and Gazzo Castañeda (2022) criticise the use of the term “new paradigm” in the psychology of reasoning and raise important issues about how to advance research in the field. In this commentary I argue that for the latter it would be helpful to clarify further the concepts that reasoning theories rely on, and to strengthen the links between the theories and the empirical observations that would and would not be compatible with them.

El antropocentrismo determina nuestra percepción sobre el mundo y nuestra relación con él, teniendo un efecto material en tanto que impregna nuestros discursos, pensamiento, sensibilidades y prácticas. Este artículo trata de explorar cómo una reformulación ontológica que busque salir de los presupuestos antropocéntricos puede suponer un cambio material efectivo en nuestra percepción, generando cambios en nuestras sensibilidades y disponibilidades. Comprender los límites ontológicos desde el dinamismo y como zona de contacto nos permite acceder o materializar otro tipo de realidades aún (...) por conocer. Poniendo en juego algunas ideas de Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Karen Barad y Alfred Whitehead se busca un desarrollo conceptual y una reformulación ontológica como un intento de comprendernos en un mundo más-que-humano. (shrink)

El proyecto “filosófico-literario” de Martha Nussbaum presenta dúas grandes fases o momentos. En el primero, la literatura y la filosofía moral dialogan; mientras que, en el segundo, se proponen “usos políticos” de la literatura: esta tiene que ser una parte central, nunca la única, de la formación del ciudadano. De este modo, el proyecto de Nussbaum aparece como una forma de criticismo ético. El artículo se propone analizar y rechazar una de las críticas de Richard Posner a toda forma de (...) criticismo ético: su negación de que la evaluación ética sea legítima al abordar la literatura y su afirmación de que el contenido moral de las obras es un asunto poco relevante. Se busca argumentar en contra de esta posición autonomista radical (o de desapego-estético) de Posner y mostrar cómo el proyecto de Nussbaum, incluso, resulta compatible con una posición autonomista, pero moderada. (shrink)

Con Spinoza, la filosofía moderna alcanza una nueva comprensión de la subjetividad. Sobre la base de la crítica del racionalismo, Spinoza descubre, por primera vez, la afectividad para la filosofía. El filósofo reflexiona sobre la repercusión de los afectos en la formación del sujeto ético y piensa que el mayor conocimiento posible sobre los propios afectos redunda en la utilidad colectiva de la humanidad toda. Sostengo que, en la teoría general de los afectos que explica la naturaleza, principios y fundamentos (...) de los fenómenos afectivos, Spinoza anida una oportuna teoría del autoconocimiento. (shrink)

This book examines the concept of “ Neurosemantics”, a term currently used in two different senses: the informational meaning of the physical processes in the neural circuits, and semantics in its classical sense, as the meaning of language, explained in terms of neural processes. The book explores this second sense of neurosemantics, yet in doing so, it addresses much of the first meaning as well. Divided into two parts, the book starts with a description and analysis of the mathematics of (...) the brain, including computational units, representational mechanisms and algorithmic principles. This first part pays special attention to the neural architecture which has been used in developing models of neurosemantics. The second part of the book presents a collection of models, and describes each model reproducing specific aspects of the semantics of language. Some of these models target one of the core problems of semantics, the reference of nouns, and in particular of nouns with a strong perceptual characterization. Others address the semantics of predicates, with a detailed analysis of colour attributes. While this book represents a radical shift from traditional semantics, it still pursues a line of continuity that is based on the idea that meaning can be captured, and explained, by a sort of computation. (shrink)

Sobre el libro: Con el siglo XX ha finalizado una época de la historia. Las dos guerras mundiales acentúan las tensiones que abren paso a un orden que sucumbe en 1989 con la caída del muro de Berlín. El desarrollo de la técnica y la aparición de la televisión anulan la distancia entre sujeto y objeto característica del pensamiento moderno. Las nuevas tecnologías se convierten en plataforma de importantes cambios sociales cuando comienza un nuevo milenio. Los analistas de tendencias descubren (...) el nacimiento de una nueva sensibilidad que busca pensar de otro modo al hombre, el mundo y la cultura. Romano Guardini anticipó algunos de los problemas que recibía el siglo XX y que debían encontrar una nueva orientación. En 1918 afirma la primacía del Logos sobre el Ethos subrayando cómo el respeto al ser, a la verdad y al sentido de la realidad protegen al hombre. Desde una profunda confianza en la capacidad humana de conocer, ofrece como respuesta a los problemas que plantea la tradición intelectual que le precede un modo de contemplar al hombre desde la revelación que puede ayudar a pensar el curso de la cultura contemporánea. Sobre la autora: Mónica Codina es profesora de la Facultad de Comunicación de la Universidad de Navarra. Entre sus publicaciones hay que destacar El sigilo de la memoria. Tradición y nihilismo en la narrativa de Dostoyevski (Pamplona, 1997), una visión de la antropología subyacente a la narrativa de Dostoyevski; De la ética desprotegida. Ensayos sobre deontología de la comunicación (Pamplona, 2001), sobre la dimensión ética de las profesiones ligadas a la comunicación; y Jornalism for Integration. The Muhammad Cartoons, en colaboración con Jordi Rodríguez-Virgili, publicado en Javnost-The Public, vol. 14 (2007), nº 2, donde se discute el concepto europeo de libertad de expresión. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explain Scotus’s transformation of the Aristotelian view on the difference between rational and irrational potencies. In Metaphysics 9, 2 Aristotle establishes the distinction between rational and nonrational powers and explains their difference in terms of their being ad opposita and ad unum, respectively. In his interpretation Scotus concludes that the most basic division between active principles is the difference between nature and will, rather than the difference between univocal and equivocal agents. Thus, the (...) Aristotelian distinction between rational and non-rational powers has now become a distinction between nature and will. And the criterion for such a difference no longer lies in the contrast between ad unum and ad opposita, but rather is based on the twofold way the potencies can elicit their acts. Therefore, according to Scotus, the key difference between nature and will is the distinction between autonomy and heteronomy. (shrink)

The debate between internalism and externalism dominates Angloamerican epistemology. Some authors consider Aquinas’epistemology as a kind of internalist foundationalism; by contrast, others frame his theory of knowledge inside the externalism as a theistic reliabilism. This paper offers a critical analysis about these views on Aquinas thought.

This article considers the imago Dei from the perspective of paleoanthropology. We identify structural, functional, and relational elements of the imago Dei that emerged mosaically during human evolution. Humans are unique in their ability to relate to each other and to God, and in their membership of cultural communities where shared attention, the transmission of moral norms, and symbolic behavior are important elements. We discuss similarities between our approach and the concept of theosis adopted in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

In his discussion of our idea of time in the Treatise, Hume makes the perplexing claim that unchanging objects cannot be said to endure. While Hume is targeting the Newtonian conception of absolute time, it is not at all clear how his denial that unchanging objects are in time fits with this target. Moreover, Hume diagnoses our belief that unchanging objects endure as the product of a psychological fiction, but his account of this fiction is also riddled with puzzling claims (...) about our experience of unchanging objects. In this paper, we argue that Hume’s claims are a lot less baffling and indeed, much more sophisticated than they appear. We do so by considering his arguments as a response to Locke’s specific approach to the concept of absolute time. (shrink)