W niniejszym artykule pokrótce przedstawiam pojęcie determinizmu genetycznego, jego historię i wpływ na rozumienie niektórych zagadnień z zakresu genetyki, medycyny oraz bioetyki. W sposób szczególny interesuje mnie często podejmowany w dyskusjach naukowych oraz etycznych problem „natura czy środowisko”, jak również mity narosłe wokół kwestii dziedziczenia różnego typu cech oraz to, jaki wpływ na współczesne rozumienie tych zagadnień miał Projekt Sekwencjonowania Ludzkiego Genomu.

Plausibly, you should believe what your total evidence supports. But cases of misleading higher-order evidence—evidence about what your evidence supports—present a challenge to this thought. In such cases, taking both first-order and higher-order evidence at face value leads to a seemingly irrational incoherence between one’s first-order and higher-order attitudes: you will believe P, but also believe that your evidence doesn’t support P. To avoid sanctioning tension between epistemic levels, some authors have abandoned the thought that both first-order and higher-order evidence (...) have rational bearing. This sacrifice is both costly and unnecessary. We propose a principle, Evidential Calibration, which requires rational agents to accommodate first-order evidence correctly, while allowing rational uncertainty about what to believe. At the same time, it rules out irrational tensions between epistemic levels. We show that while there are serious problems for some views on which we can rationally believe, “P, but my evidence doesn’t support P”, Evidential Calibration avoids these problems. An important upshot of our discussion is a new way to think about the relationship between epistemic levels: why first-order and higher-order attitudes should generally be aligned, and why it is sometimes—though not always—problematic when they diverge. (shrink)

In defense of moral testimony Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-21 DOI 10.1007/s11098-012-9887-6 Authors Paulina Sliwa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116.

For many decades, access to human biological samples, such as cells, tissues, organs, blood, and sub-cellular materials such as DNA, for use in biomedical research, has been central in understanding the nature and transmission of diseases across the globe. However, the limitations of current ethical and regulatory frameworks in sub-Saharan Africa to govern the collection, export, storage and reuse of these samples have resulted in inconsistencies in practice and a number of ethical concerns for sample donors, researchers and research ethics (...) committees. This paper examines stakeholders’ perspectives of and responses to the ethical issues arising from these research practices. (shrink)

We are frequently confronted with moral situations that are unsettling, confusing, disorienting. We try to come to grips with them. When we do so, we engage in a distinctive type of moral inquiry: hermeneutical inquiry. Its aim is to make sense of our situation. What is it to make sense of one's situation? Hermeneutical inquiry is part of our everyday moral experience. Understanding its nature and its place in moral epistemology is important. Yet, I argue, that existing accounts of moral (...) inquiry do not give us the resources to do so. This paper develops a positive account of hermeneutical inquiry. I argue that when we engage in hermeneutical inquiry, we search for an apt perspective on our situation. (shrink)

Moral understanding is a valuable epistemic and moral good. I argue that moral understanding is the ability to know right from wrong. I defend the account against challenges from nonreductionists, such as Alison Hills, who argue that moral understanding is distinct from moral knowledge. Moral understanding, she suggests, is constituted by a set of abilities: to give and follow moral explanations and to draw moral conclusions. I argue that Hills’s account rests on too narrow a conception of moral understanding. Among (...) other things, it cannot account for the importance of first-personal experience for achieving moral understanding. (shrink)

This paper outlines and defends a processual theory of peoplehood. On our theory, a people is, roughly speaking, composed of two things. First, an unfolding series of events coordinated by the practices of constituting, governing, or changing a polity's authoritative institutions. Second, individual persons whose lives and interests are intensely affected by these events and institutions. We call this theory deep processualism. We outline the theory by showing how it would answer five questions: the questions of constituents, individuation, origination, termination, (...) and membership: What are the chief constituents of peoples? What individuates peoples? Under what conditions do peoples originate? Under what conditions do peoples cease to be? Under what conditions is a person a member of the people? We also consider alternative theories of the nature of peoples, theories due to Juergen Habermas, Bruce Ackerman, Philip Pettit, and James Fishkin. We defend our theory on the ground that it is not embarrassed by the difficulties that we pin on these alternative theories. (shrink)

Memories, dreams, thoughts is an autobiographical book by Carl Gustav Jung in which the author deliberates on his life not only as a famous psychotherapist, but also as a protestant, psychiatrist, traveler, philosopher and mystic. Jung shows the paths that lead him to creating his own analytical branch of depth psychology and to revolutionizing the approach to the mechanisms of working with patients of mental hospitals. Although the book could be read as an autobiography only, we can also find a (...) part of the history of psychiatry, journeys diaries, analyses of dreams and even some philosophical and mystical reflections. (shrink)

In the current study, we provided the evidence of satisfactory validity of the RS-14 scale in the Lithuanian adolescents’ sample, based on its internal structure, and relations to other variables. The results of the study indicated an acceptable model fit for a single-factor structure of the scale with a high internal consistency. We also confirmed the scalar measurement invariance across groups of adolescents in terms of their age and mental health profile as well as partial scalar gender invariance. Adolescents characterized (...) by high levels of socio-emotional problems reported lower levels of resilience, in comparison to adolescents that reported low levels of socio-emotional problems. However, the data indicated that adolescents from emotional problems and behavioral problems groups cannot be differentiated with the RS-14 scale. (shrink)

Irrespective of length of stay or voluntariness, (im)migration is the movement of individuals across borders. From national identity to labor markets, (im)migration affects various dimensions and spheres of social life. Currently, 3.6% of the global population are international (im)migrants, underscoring its profound significance in contemporary debates on humanitarianism, ethical governance, socioeconomic realities and sustainability. The analysis of (im)migration as a business is relevant since it raises important questions about precarious conditions and situations including marginalization, exploitation, and vulnerability in which (im)migrants (...) often find themselves, and about the much-needed policy and management and organizational practice responses needed to address them. This Special Issue aims to bring (im)migration to the attention of business and management researchers interested in ethics. The intention behind it is to enhance the current understanding of (im)migration in order to develop comprehensive policies, foster inclusive societal and organizational frameworks, and focus on the ethical issues raised by (im)migration for organizations and management, as well as the complex realities faced by (im)migrants all over the world. Moreover, we aim to call for new research perspectives and streams that would address the novel challenges that (im)migrants encounter as a result of technological advancements, climate (in)justice, the ‘dark side’ of the business of international (im)migration, and new—or the lack thereof—migration policies. (shrink)

To have moral worth an action not only needs to conform to the correct normative theory ; it also needs to be motivated in the right way. I argue that morally worthy actions are motivated by the rightness of the action; they are motivated by an agent's concern for doing what's right and her knowledge that her action is morally right. Call this the Rightness Condition. On the Rightness Condition moral motivation involves both a conative and a cognitive element—in particular, (...) it involves moral knowledge. I argue that the Rightness Condition is both necessary and sufficient for moral worth. I also argue that the Rightness Condition gives us an attractive account of actions performed under imperfect epistemic circumstances: by agents who rely on moral testimony or by those who, like Huckleberry Finn, have false moral convictions. (shrink)

My topic in this paper is the nature of faith. Much of the discussion concerning the nature of faith proceeds by focussing on the relationship between faith and belief. In this paper, I explore a different approach. I suggest that we approach the question of what faith involves by focussing on the relationship between faith and action. When we have faith, we generally manifest it in how we act; we perform acts of faith: we share our secrets, rely on other’s (...) judgment, refrain from going through our partner’s emails, let our children prepare for an important exam without our interference. Religious faith, too is manifested in acts of faith: attending worship, singing the liturgy, fasting, embarking on a pilgrimage. I argue that approaching faith by way of acts of faith, reveals that faith is a complex mental state whose elements go beyond doxastic states towards particular propositions. It also involves conative states and – perhaps more surprisingly – know how. This has consequences for the epistemology of faith: the role of testimony and experts, the importance of practices, and what we should make of Pascal’s advice for how to acquire faith. (shrink)

What is the relationship between understanding and knowing? This paper offers a defence of reductionism about understanding: the view that instances of understanding reduce to instances of knowing. I argue that knowing is both necessary and sufficient for understanding. I then outline some advantages of reductionism.

In recent years, there has been an increase in the establishment of biobanks for genetic and genomic studies around the globe. One example of this is the Human Heredity and Health in Africa Initiative (H3Africa), which has established biobanks in the sub‐region to facilitate future indigenous genomic studies. The concept of ‘broad consent’ has been proposed as a mechanism to enable potential research participants in biobanks to give permission for their samples to be used in future research studies. However, questions (...) remain about the acceptability of this model of consent. Drawing on findings from empirical research about the role of trust in decision‐making, we argue that an account of entrustment may be an appropriate way of addressing current challenges of seeking consent for biobank research in Africa. We propose a set of key points to consider that can support the proposed entrustment framework. (shrink)

Paulina Rivero’s paper is a description of a day lived in the shadow of the authentic danger that modern technique implies. It has taken us into a world that is merely functional, in which the forgetting of being leads to forgetting our own interiority. Rivero claims that a key phenomenon in..

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a paradigm that empowers residents to directly decide how a portion of the public budget is spent. Specifically, residents deliberate over spending priorities and vote over how the budget should be allocated to different public projects. As such it is a mechanism of top-down transfer of decisions on the part of budgetary expenditure to citizens. In recent years, PB has become a central topic of discussion and an important field of innovation for those involved in local (...) development, considered one of the most successful democratic innovations of the last 25 years. Participatory budgeting contributes significantly to participatory democracy, inclusiveness processes and placemaking, but some factors limit the scale of these aspects. However, a relatively simple idea – that “ordinary citizens” should have a direct say in public budgets that impact them – has travelled the world by the most unexpected routes and landed in unlikely sites. There is no precise model for PB programmes. While there are similar tenets and institutional mechanisms, PB programmes are structured in response to each city or state’s particular political, social and economic environment. Therefore, it is necessary to consider to what extent PB strengthens the discussed processes, whether it allows reaching new, inactive groups of citizens and includes them in the decision-making process regarding shaping public spaces. The popularity of this tool carries the risk that it will be used to build the image of local government instead of significantly increasing the participation of citizens in deciding on local public spaces. The chapter aims to present and analyse participatory budgeting practices in four European and North American countries (Switzerland, Poland, North Macedonia and the United States of America) to show the role of PB in placemaking processes by the levels and forms of participation, the analysis of representativeness of PB participants (inclusiveness), placemaking impact and its level of digitisation. The proposed comparative analysis allows for assessing the importance of the tool for increasing social participation, which is participatory budgeting, for understanding its limitations and suggesting directions for its improvement to shape more inclusive, friendly and open public spaces. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Genomic research and biobanking present several ethical, social and cultural challenges, particularly when conducted in settings with limited scientific research capacity. One of these challenges is determining the model of consent that should support the sharing of human biological samples and data in the context of international collaborative research. In this paper, we report on the views of key research stakeholders in Ghana on what should count as good ethical practice when seeking consent for genomic research and biobanking in (...) Africa. This study was part of a multi-country qualitative case study conducted in three African countries: Ghana, Uganda and Zambia under the auspices of the Human Heredity and Health in Africa initiative (H3Africa). Our study suggests that while participants are willing to give consent for their samples and associated data to be used for future research purposes, they expect to receive feedback about the progress of the research and about the kinds of research being undertaken on their samples and data. These expectations need to be anticipated and discussed during the consent process which should be seen as part of an ongoing communication process throughout the research process. (shrink)

What is it to take responsibility for a moral failure? This chapter investigates taking responsibility for wrongdoing. It starts by considering a prominent view in the literature: that to take responsibility for a wrong is to blame oneself for it. Contrary to the self-blame account, it is argued that taking responsibility and self-blame can come apart in various ways. Instead, the normative footprint account is defended. It is suggested that wrongdoing changes the normative landscape in systematic ways: it can create (...) duties to apologize, to acknowledge the wrong done, to make amends, to respond to the wronged party’s upset. To take responsibility for a wrong is to own the normative consequences of one’s wrong. (shrink)

When you don’t know what to do, you’d better find out. Sometimes the best way to find out is to ask for advice. And when you don’t know what the right thing to do is, it’s sometimes good to rely on moral advice. This straightforward thought spells serious trouble for a popular and widespread approach to moral worth: on this approach, agents deserve moral praise for a right action only if they are acting on right-making reasons. The first part of (...) this paper argues that cases of moral advice present right-making reasons accounts with a dilemma: depending on how we make the right-making relation precise, we either have to deny that agents who seek out and follow moral advice are morally praiseworthy or we have to credit morally wrong actions by unsavory characters with moral worth. This casts doubt on the claim that acting on right-making reasons can be both necessary or sufficient for moral worth. The second half of the paper explores an alternative proposal: what’s required for moral worth is moral knowledge. This idea has been unpopular in recent literature. My aim is to show that it deserves serious consideration. (shrink)

Can moral ignorance excuse? This chapter argues that philosophical debate of this question has been based on a mistaken assumption: namely that excuses are all-or-nothing affairs; to have an excuse is to be blameless. The chapter argues that we should reject this assumption. Excuses are not binary but gradable: they can be weaker or stronger, mitigating blame to greater or lesser extent. This chapter explores the notions of strength of excuses, blame miti- gation and the relationship between excuses and moral (...) responsibility. These ideas open up some principled middle-ground between the two positions staked out in the literature. Moral ignorance may well excuse but it does not exculpate. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre en El ser y la nada plantea una ontología basada en la dualidad fundamental del ser y una nada que, ante todo, se describe como un acto nihilizador. En virtud de una fuerte presencia de dinámicas activas en la ontología sartreana, esta investigación tiene por objetivo identificar el rol de la pasividad en la ontología y en la fenomenología sartreanas, con vistas a resaltar la necesidad de la dimensión pasiva en, al menos, dos fenómenos cruciales en la constitución (...) fáctica del para-sí, a saber, por un lado, la situación del cuerpo-para-sí y, por otro, el aparecer del otro a través de la mirada. Para este objetivo se recurrirá a la ontología merleaupontiana en torno a la pasividad expuesta en Lo visible y lo invisible a modo de guía. Con ello, la hipótesis a sostener es que hay un importante recurso a la pasividad en la fenomenología de la situación del cuerpo-para sí, agudizado con el aparecer del otro, el cual, no obstante, se ausenta en la exposición ontológica. (shrink)

In this article, I make an attempt to define terms such as: tragedy, absurdity, and paradox as conceived of by the German essayist Walter Hilsbecher. This is a task which is both difficult and interesting, mainly because of the fact that concepts from within speculative philosophy are relatively rarely subject to scrupulous definitions. The reason for this state of affairs lies in the difficulty to capture the meaning of these concepts within a rigid framework. These problems also appear in Hilsbecher’s (...) 1972 work titled Tragizm, absurd, paradoks [Tragedy, Absurd, Paradox]. The philosophy of the absurd – the methodological separation of which I propose – has the absurd for its central concept, but it is a concept which eludes sharp definitions, too. This article aims to reconstruct Hilsbecher’s vocabulary of concepts crucial to the philosophy of absurdity in reference to the tradition of contemporary speculative philosophy. By locating the German writer’s thought in the context of other authors working in a similar thematic and stylistic context, I will outline this specific strand of philosophy. (shrink)

Resumen En este trabajo presentamos una clasificación de las fuentes de procedencia y las estrategias que utilizan los autores de tesis y artículos de investigación para constatar el vacío de la investigación en Humanidades. Sobre la base de un estudio cualitativo, propusimos como objetivo determinar la variación de este acto comunicativo en Tesis y en Artículos de Investigación en Humanidades. A partir del análisis del corpus, los resultados muestran que la constatación del vacío se realiza en ambos géneros, aunque es (...) mucho más prominente en las Tesis, presumiblemente por su carácter evaluativo. Así también, independientemente del género, lo más frecuente es presentar un vacío propio. Por último, los datos evidencian que las estrategias específicas para constatar el vacío de investigación en Humanidades no son las mismas en los dos géneros analizados.In this paper we present a classification of sources and the strategies used by writers of theses and research papers in order to identify a research gap in Humanities. Based both on a qualitative study and a corpus analysis, we aim to determine the variation of such communicative act in theses and research papers in the Humanities. The results show that identifying a research gap is carried out in both genres, though it is more frequent in the theses, possibly due to its evaluative nature. Thus, regardless the genre, it is easy to present an own research gap. Finally, data show that specific strategies for identifying a research gap in the Humanities are not the same in both genres that are analyzed. (shrink)

Este trabajo analiza los discursos de las mujeres/garzonas, que trabajan en las salas de cerveza (schoperías) sobre la discriminación de género y los modelos relacionales que se establecen en estos espacios entre clientes y garzonas. Se postula que estos aspectos recién mencionados, coadyuvan a la permanencia de una identidad masculina hegemónica, que se intensifica en el contexto de la minería. Los antecedentes obtenidos muestran que las garzonas- en su mayoría mujeres oriundas de los países limítrofes y/o del sur de Chile-, (...) se encuentran afectadas por una situación de vulnerabilidad social y económica, precariedad laboral y, además, cargan con una serie de imaginarios sociales en torno a ellas, a los lugares en los que trabajan (schoperías) y a la ciudad en la que habitan. Es decir, son mujeres discriminadas. Estas trabajadoras se encuentran atrapadas entre el proceso de crecimiento económico y atracción que ofrece la industria minera en el norte del país y, a la vez, a las expectativas que tienen por mejorar su situación familiar. Asimismo, se ven confrontadas por la fuerza de un sistema sociocultural de sexo/género hegemónico que favorece relaciones de poder asimétricas y la subordinación femenina, lo que contribuye a reforzar identidades de género y modelos relacionales de inequidad, que son naturalizados en este entorno productivo. (shrink)

We argue that using a calendar-tracker to capture invisible labour in the academy comes with conceptual and ethical limitations, which might affect how successfully our tracker can provide academics with conceptual resources to understand their invisible work as work.

XIII Ogólnopolska Konferencja Naukowa pt. „Filozofia XVII wieku — jej źródła i kontynuacje. Klasycy filozofii XVII wieku i ich współczesna recepcja”.

V Ogólnopolska Konferencja Naukowa z cyklu „W kręgu pytań o człowieka: osoba, brak, byt?”.

W ramach badań nad emocjami w tańcu naukowcy koncentrują się głównie na ich ruchowej ekspresji. Niniejszy artykuł traktuje o konceptualizacji emocji w specyficznej praktyce ruchu — języku ruchu Gaga, stworzonej przez izraelskiego choreografa Ohada Naharina, która jest oparta na ruchowej interpretacji werbalnych instrukcji podczas improwizacji tanecznej. System werbalnej komunikacji odgrywa istotną rolę w praktyce Gaga. Emocje w ruchowych wskazówkach funkcjonują implicite i są ważnym elementem pracy z ruchem i ciałem tancerzy. Istotne w refleksji o funkcjonowaniu emocji w języku Gaga są (...) rozważania fenomenologiczne Edmunda Husserla oraz Marice’a Merleau-Ponty’ego na temat ciała, które wpłynęły również na współczesną koncepcję poznania ucieleśnionego. Kluczowym w analizie funkcjonowania emocji w języku ruchu Gaga jest zagadnienie dynamiki ujęte z perspektywy fenomenologicznej oraz językoznawczej. Celem niniejszego artykułu jest wykazanie, że: 1) emocje, choć nie pojawiają się bezpośrednio w instrukcjach Gaga, stanowią ważny element pracy twórczej tancerza; 2) ich funkcjonowanie, rozumienie i ruchowa interpretacja opiera się na metaforycznym rozumieniu różnych aspektów dynamiki; 3) dla zrozumienia funkcjonowania emocji podczas tańca istotne są fenomenologiczne analizy ciała. (shrink)

Daily function depends on an ability to mentally map our environment. Environmental factors such as visibility and layout, and internal factors such as psychological stress, can challenge spatial memory and efficient navigation. Importantly, people vary dramatically in their ability to navigate flexibly and overcome such challenges. In this paper, we present an overview of “schema theory” and our view of its relevance to navigational memory research. We review several studies from our group and others, that integrate manipulations of environmental complexity (...) and affective state in order to gain a richer understanding of the mechanisms that underlie individual differences in navigational memory. Our most recent data explicitly link such individual differences to ideas rooted in schema theory, and we discuss the potential for this work to advance our understanding of cognitive decline with aging. The data from this body of work highlight the powerful impacts of individual cognitive traits and affective states on the way people take advantage of environmental features and adopt navigational strategies. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary dialogue acts as a symbiosis for all the areas that participate and imply enormous projections for both art and science. This paper explores the potential of an interdisciplinary dialogue between Biology and Performance using as a case study the Performance Analfabeta created by the artist Paulina Bronfman. The work was shaped in the context of The Third Conference of the Nucleus of Artistic Research (NIA) of In/Inter/Disciplinary Laboratories hosted by the Faculty of Art of The Pontificia University of (...) Chile (LAB IID). The Lab was led by Chilean biologist Alejandra Zuñiga- Feest and the Brazilian artist Adriana Parente La Selva. This work aims to explore the questions: what does it mean, from the point of view of the arts and sciences, to develop an interdisciplinary laboratory? How is this done? This paper problematizes the creative process of collaboration between sciences and performance as well as the potential impact and link with society that this multidisciplinary dialogue can have. (shrink)

Excuses are commonplace. Making and accepting excuses is part of our practice of holding each other morally responsible. But excuses are also curious. They have normative force. Whether someone has an excuse for something they have done matters for how we should respond to their action. An excuse can make it appropriate to forgo blame, to revise judgments of blameworthiness, to feel compassion and pity instead of anger and resentment. The considerations we appeal to when making excuses are a motley (...) bunch: tiredness, stress, a looming work deadline, a wailing infant, poverty, duress, ignorance. What unifies these various considerations as a class? In virtue of what can they all excuse? And what does their normative force consist in? This paper aims to develop a unified account of excuses: what they are and what they do. In a nutshell, I argue that excuses are considerations that show that an agent’s wrongdoing does not manifest a specific motivational failing: namely, the lack of a morally adequate present-directed intention. What do excuses do? I suggest that they function as responsibility-modifiers. They alter how the wrongdoer, the wronged party, bystanders may morally respond to a wrong, without negating that it remains appropriate to respond in some way. (shrink)

Despite the fact that radio documentaries broadcast mainly strong emotions, news values of this genre are also its essential feature. Therefore, it is necessary to describe the potential of such works to deliver knowledge about the transcendent world, which could be significant for the listeners. The aim of this article is to show theses made by scholars as regards radio documentaries. Researchers’ analyses are related to the genre’s potential possibilities of to broaden people’s minds and influence the recipient’s perception.

W naszym obrazie świata przyzwyczailiśmy się do tego, że roślinność jest niema. Zestawienie pojęć dźwięku i rośliny przywołuje w pamięci szum drzew, odgłos suchych liści, wysokich traw czy łamiących się gałęzi. Wówczas świat flory pobudzony przez wiatr generuje dźwięki. Okazuje się jednak, że te wyobrażenia będą musiały ulec zmianie, ponieważ źródłem dźwięku może być także wnętrze otaczającej nas natury. Ostatnia dekada badań tej materii ujawniła nie tylko odbieranie i wytwarzanie sygnałów akustycznych, ale również reagowanie na muzykę jako właściwości roślin. Obserwacje (...) wskazują także na wzajemne komunikowanie się badanych obiektów. Audialne fenomeny o roślinnym pochodzeniu stanowią punkt wyjścia do rozważań na temat analizy dźwięków w oparciu o teorie semiotyki. Wobec poszerzającego się spektrum możliwości rejestracji i sposobów wykorzystania dźwięku dokonano próby umiejscowienia niestandardowych źródeł dźwięku w przestrzeni audialnej. Namysłowi towarzyszą pytania o funkcje i znaczenie dźwięku, relacje walorów estetycznych, komunikacyjnych i poznawczych oraz płaszczyzny interpretacji. (shrink)