International studies focus on the successful transition into higher education, which is considered crucial for both the students and the educational institution in the context of students' learning and adjustment in higher education. The aim of the current study was to identify student profiles that include cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational aspects of learning, but also aspects of resilience, emotion dysregulation, and anxiety. The sample consists of 316 Greek undergraduate students. The results showed four different -cognitive-emotional learner profiles: the emotionally stable (...) and highly adaptive learner; the emotionally dysregulated and at risk learner; the emotionally dysregulated and highly adaptive learner; the emotionally stable and at risk learner. Emotionally dysregulated and at risk learner has a lower GPA than the emotional stable and highly adaptive learner, the emotionally dysregulated and highly adaptive learner and the emotionally stable and at risk learner. (shrink)

Neuroethics, in its modern form, investigates the impact of brain science in four basic dimensions: the self, social policy, practice and discourse. In this study, we analyzed a set of 461 peer-reviewed articles with neuroethics content, published by authors from 32 countries. We analyzed the data for: (1) trends in the development of international neuroethics over time, and (2) how challenges at the intersection of ethics and neuroscience are viewed in countries that are considered developed by International Monetary Fund (IMF) (...) standards, and in those that are developing. Our results demonstrate a steady increase in global participation in neuroethics from 1989 to 2005, characterized by an increase in numbers of articles published specifically on neuroethics, journals publishing these articles, and countries contributing to the literature. The focus from all countries was on the practice of brain science and the amelioration of neurological disease. Indicators of technology creation and diffusion in developing countries were specifically correlated with increases in publications concerning policy implications of brain science. Neuroethics is an international endeavor and, as such, should be sensitive to the impact that context has on acceptance and use of technological innovation. (shrink)

Feasting on a plethora of social media platforms, news aggregators, and online marketplaces, recommender systems (RSs) are spreading pervasively throughout our daily online activities. Over the years, a host of ethical issues have been associated with the diffusion of RSs and the tracking and monitoring of users’ data. Here, we focus on the impact RSs may have on personal autonomy as the most elusive among the often-cited sources of grievance and public outcry. On the grounds of a philosophically nuanced notion (...) of autonomy, we illustrate three specific reasons why RSs may limit or compromise it: the threat of manipulation and deception associated with RSs; the RSs’ power to reshape users’ personal identity; the impact of RSs on knowledge and critical thinking. In our view, however, notwithstanding these legitimate concerns, RSs may effectively help users to navigate an otherwise overwhelming landscape. Our perspective, therefore, is not to be intended as a bulwark to protect the _status quo_ but as an invitation to carefully weigh these aspects in the design of ethically oriented RSs. (shrink)

Philosophers traditionally distinguish between excuses and exemptions. We can excuse someone and still see them as a participant in normal human relationships, but when we exempt someone, we see them as something to be managed and handled: we take an objective attitude to them. Madness is typically assumed to ground exemptions, not excuses. So far, the standard philosophical picture. Seeing other people as objects to be managed and handled rather than as persons with whom one can have relationships is, however, (...) ethically problematic. If I am mad myself, consistently seeing myself this way becomes downright unsustainable. A better option, I will argue, is to fully appreciate my own difficulties and learn to show myself compassion and understanding. I, then, can excuse myself on those grounds. Furthermore, a compassionate self-excusing attitude leaves room for both nuance and improvement in a way that total exemption does not. Finally, I will argue that many mad actions ought to be considered justifiable and justified rather than in need of exemption or excuse. (shrink)

It has been argued that a retributivist criminal justice system treats offenders with a respect lacking in alternative criminal justice systems; retributivism presumably recognizes that offenders are fellow members of the moral community who can be held responsible for their actions. One version of the respect argument builds on P.F. Strawson’s moral responsibility theory. According to Strawson, we may take either a participant or objective attitude toward other people. The former is the default attitude when interacting with other adults, whereas (...) the latter is fit for children and the mentally disabled or ill, whom we merely try to manage and handle as best we can. The participant attitude also involves holding people responsible when they do wrong. Supposedly, a retributivist criminal justice system functions as a natural continuation of our everyday, participant, and responsibility-holding practices, unlike alternative systems that adopt an objective attitude toward offenders. I argue that this is wrong. The participant attitude requires reciprocity and, usually, some level of equality too. Even an idealized retributivist system has little room for this, not to mention the flawed versions of this system we see in reality. (shrink)

In political theory it goes without saying that the constitution of government raises a claim for legitimacy. With the constitution of the people, however, it is different. It is often dismissed as a historical question. The conviction is that since the people cannot decide on its own composition the boundaries of democracy must be determined by other factors, such as the contingent forces of history. This article critically assesses this view. It argues that like the constitution of government, the constitution (...) of the people raises a claim for legitimacy. The failure to see this is what makes many theorists run into the arms of history. They submit the legitimacy of the people to the arbitrary and asymmetrical forces of the present. (shrink)

Proof requires a dialogue between agents to clarify obscure inference steps, fill gaps, or reveal implicit assumptions in a purported proof. Hence, argumentation is an integral component of the discovery process for mathematical proofs. This work presents how argumentation theories can be applied to describe specific informal features in the development of proof-events. The concept of proof-event was coined by Goguen who described mathematical proof as a public social event that takes place in space and time. This new meta-methodological concept (...) is designed to cover not only “traditional” formal proofs but all kinds of proofs and inference steps, including incomplete or purported proofs. Our approach attempts to make proof-events more comprehensive to express the complete trajectory of a mathematical proof-event until the ultimate validation of the proving outcome. Thus, we advance an extended version of proof-event calculus which is built on argumentation theories designed to capture the internal and external structure of collaborative mathematical practice and highlight the relationship between proof, human reasoning, and cognitive processes. In addition, another area in which argumentation can make a significant contribution is dealing with the defeasible knowledge of the Web which is a product of its open and ubiquitous nature. This approach seems to be sufficient for the presentation of Web-based proving processes as manifested in the case of the Mini-Polymath 4 project. (shrink)

A síndrome de burnout é um fenómeno psicossocial que resulta de uma tensão emocional crónica, vivenciada pelos profissionais cujo trabalho envolve o relacionamento intenso e frequente com pessoas que necessitam de algum tipo de cuidado. O objectivo deste estudo foi comparar a prevalência e os factor..

Addressing a gap in political thought, this book examines the interplay between ethos and practical reason in everyday life. It suggests that the burgeoning literature on the ‘ethotic’ dimension of democracy leaves untreated the issue of practical reason and how it infuses political judgment and action.

In a special issue of “Ethics and Information Technology” (September 2012), various philosophers have discussed the notion of online friendship. The preferred framework of analysis was Aristotle’s theory of friendship: it was argued that online friendships face many obstacles that hinder them from ever reaching the highest form of Aristotelian friendship. In this article I aim to offer a different perspective by critically analyzing the arguments these philosophers use against online friendship. I begin by isolating the most common arguments these (...) philosophers use against online friendship and proceed to debunk them one by one by pointing out inconsistencies and fallacies in their arguments and, where needed, offering empirical findings from media and communication studies that offer a more nuanced view on online friendships. I conclude my analysis by questioning the correctness of the application of the Aristotelian theory of friendship by the critics of online friendship: in my view, the critics are applying the Aristotelian theory to online friendships in a rather narrow and limited way. Finally, I conclude my thesis by proposing that in the rapidly changing online landscape, a one-size-fits-all application of the Aristotelian theory on friendship is not sufficient to accurately judge the multitude of relationships that can exist online and that the various positive and valuable elements of online friendships should also be acknowledged and analyzed. (shrink)

Pre-reflective Consciousness: Sartre and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind delves into the relations between the current debates on consciousness within analytical philosophy and the debates taking place in continental philosophy in the twentieth century and in particular within the work of Sartre. Examining the return of the problem of subjectivity in philosophy of mind and the idea that phenomenal consciousness could not be reduced to functional or cognitive properties this volume aims to rethink borders between what counts as ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ (...) when the nature of the mental is at stake. (shrink)

American philosopher Cora Diamond's view of the materials admissible in moral philosophy is bound to strike many analytic philosophers as too broad: they wouldn't dream of thinking of them (namely of literature) as 'part of their job'. This, of course, assumes a conception of the nature of the such job, one in regard to which Diamond expresses doubts of several kinds. In this paper I search for different reasons for those doubts and then try to make the connection clear between (...) Diamond's proposal of a change in 'the way we want to do moral philosophy' and her reading of Wittgenstein on ethical non-sense. Finally, I suggest that although Diamond has a strong case when she defends that the dismissal of literary materials in moral philosophy marks an untenable neutrality ideal, not every aspect of her view of the role of literature in moral philosophy is equally compelling. She recruits literature for two different purposes: countering the prevailing 'blindness to blindness' and countering the lack of awe and the obliviousness to the 'difficulty of reality' in moral thinking. Since these are different purposes, philosophers might be rejecting any of various things when they do not dream of counting literature as part of their job. A concepção dos materiais admissíveis em filosofia moral da filósofa americana Cora Diamond certamente parecerá a muitos filósofos analíticos demasiado lata: muitos são aqueles que nem sonhariam contar materiais literários como 'parte do seu trabalho'. Ora isto presume urna concepção da natureza de tal trabalho, e é quanto a essa concepção que Diamond exprime dúvidas de vários tipos. Neste artigo procuro identificar as diferentes razões para tais dúvidas. Procuro também explicitar a relação da proposta de Diamond de uma alteracão na 'forma como queremos fazer filosofia moral' com a sua leitura de Wittgenstein acerca de nonsense ético. Finalmente, sugiro que se é certo que Diamond tem um caso sólido quando defende que a rejeição de materiais literários na filosofia moral é marca de um indefensável ideal de neutralidade, nem todos os aspectos da sua forma de ver o papel da literatura na filosofia moral são igualmente convincentes. Uma vez que ela recruta a literatura para propósitos distintos - para contrariar a 'cegueira à cegueira' mas também para contrariar a falta de assombro no pensamento moral, que torna este estanque à 'dificuldade da realidade' -, os filósofos que nem sonhariam contar a literatura como parte do seu trabalho podem estar a rejeitar coisas completamente diferentes quando rejeitam o papel da literatura na filosofia moral. (shrink)

Ante el panorama político doctrinario del siglo XIX caracterizado por dos filosofías opuestas y predominantes, como eran el liberalismo y el socialismo, en el presente artículo se sistematiza, por medio de una reconstrucción histórica y filosófica, la evolución del movimiento político de la Democracia Cristiana en Europa, en particular en Francia y Alemania, a través de las obras y acciones políticas de sus pioneros. Esta corriente ideológica se presenta como una �vía intermedia o alternativa� para un proyecto político fundado sobre (...) una visión cristiana de la vida y del hombre, equidistante de las posiciones del liberalismo y del socialismo radicales. (shrink)

Is our logical form of thought merely one among many, or must it be the form of thought as such? From Kant to Wittgenstein, philosophers have wrestled with variants of this question. This volume brings together nine distinguished thinkers on the subject, including James Conant, author of the seminal paper "The Search for Logically Alien Thought.".

Aesthetic experience is original, dynamic and ever-changing. This article covers three research questions (RQs) concerning how immersive installation artworks can elicit emotions that may contribute to their popularity. Based on Yayoi Kusama’s and Peter Kogler’s kaleidoscopic rooms, this study aims to predict the emotions of visitors of immersive installation art based on their Twitter activity. As indicators, we employed the total number of likes, comments, retweets, followers, followings, the average of tweets per user, and emotional response. According to our evaluation (...) of emotions, panic obtained the highest scores. Furthermore, compared to traditional machine learning algorithms, Tree-based Pipeline Optimization Tool (TPOT) Automated Machine Learning used in this research yielded slightly lower performance. We forecast that our findings will stimulate future research in the fields of data analysis, cultural heritage management and marketing, aesthetics and cultural analytics. (shrink)

The international media recently reported the case of Eluana Englaro, a 38-year-old woman in a permanent vegetative state who died in February 2009 following withdrawal of her feeding tube. At the time of her death, she had been unconscious for 17 years. For many years, her father had been seeking permission to allow her to die. His request was rejected by the courts several times on different grounds, until the Italian Supreme Court finally granted it. The case caused considerable political (...) turmoil. The government, the president, the Constitutional Court, and the European Court of Human Rights got involved. This paper gives an account of the history of the case, enriched by personal communications with the people directly involved and a memoir by the father of Eluana. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to determine the psychological meaning of coauthorship for a group of scientists, based on the assumption that the meaning of a concept is related to experience on “how a person behaves in a situation, depending on what the situation signifies to him”. The semantic meaning provides for an interpretation of action in beliefs, goals and intentions, following the idea that semantic meaning is a basis for inferring intentions to perform action. We used the Natural (...) Semantic Networks Method. We interviewed 162 scientists in the physical and natural sciences. Results show a cluster of the semantic meaning of coauthorship in which collaboration, teamwork, work, common interest, discussion and others, are retrieved from memory and represented as a natural semantic network of the concept of coauthorship. Collaboration and teamwork are the two concepts that have the highest semantic value and this holds true for various disciplines although teamwork is the most elicited word associated to coauthorship. We propose a model in which coauthorship represents the result of the experience, attitudes and behavior of a group process concerning collaboration and teamwork in science. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I argue for what I call “practical perspective compatibilism”. According to this thesis, an agent with practical freedom is sufficiently free to be a moral agent and morally responsible for his or her actions. The concept of practical freedom is originally found in the writings of Kant. Kant argued that we can view the world from either a theoretical or a practical perspective. The theoretical perspective is that of causal explanation and prediction, whereas the practical perspective is (...) that of choosing what to do and how to act. We see that we are free when we view things from a practical perspective. Determinism cannot threaten our practical freedom, since from a practical perspective we must choose what to do even if everything ultimately is determined. I argue that practical freedom is sufficient freedom-wise for moral agency and moral responsibility because morality is action-guiding. Right and wrong are concepts to be employed in deliberation and advice. This is a strong reason to regard factors irrelevant to deliberators and advisers as irrelevant when making judgements of right and wrong, and whether somebody had some other kind of freedom than practical freedom is irrelevant to deliberators and advisers. There are also prima facie reasons to regard moral responsibility as tied to rightness and wrongness, so that agents are blameworthy when they did wrong and praiseworthy when they did right. I also show that no classic arguments for incompatibilism about determinism and moral responsibility work when directed against practical perspective compatibilism. Finally, this thesis discusses metaethics in relation to compatibilism. Since competing theories imply the falsity of some respected metaethical positions, metaethical considerations lend further support to practical perspective compatibilism. (shrink)

Increased work complexity and financial strain in the health care sector have led to higher demands on staff to handle ethical issues. These demands can elicit stress reactions, that is, moral distress. One way to support professionals in handling ethical dilemmas is education and training in ethics. This article reports on a controlled prospective study evaluating a structured education and training program in ethics concerning its effects on moral distress. The results show that the participants were positive about the training (...) program. Moral distress did not change significantly. This could be interpreted as competence development, with no effects on moral distress. Alternatively, the result could be attributed to shortcomings of the training program, or that it was too short, or it could be due to the evaluation instrument used. Organizational factors such as management involvement are also crucial. There is a need to design and evaluate ethics competence programs concerning their efficacy. (shrink)

This study explores positive migrant storytelling in non-governmental organizations’ advocacy campaigns. We focus on the practices and implications of leveraging storytelling towards charity organizations’ institutional goals. Drawing upon critical discourse studies and narrative studies, we propose a critical storytelling approach that pays attention to the specific nature of storytelling as a discourse practice in itself. We focus on a UNHCR human-interest story of refugee displacement and subsequent integration into the UK. We employ the heuristic concept of positioning that calls for (...) analysis at different, though interrelated levels of narrative activity, to explore how affect is mobilized and the specific identity categories and affect types that are created for migrants and their hosts. We then situate these identity positions in wider dominant discourses of migrant integration. We show that the story foregrounds emblematic refugees, worthy of hosts’ support as well as relationships of dependence between migrants and the host society as requisites to successful integration. We argue that the ways in which an individual refugee story gets mobilized as an exemplary story reveals canonized forms of positive migrant storytelling emerging in the UK context that end up invoking dominant power asymmetries in relation to migration and British integration. (shrink)

There are few concepts as relevant as that of intentional action in shaping our sense of self and the interaction with the environment. At the same time, few concepts are so elusive. Indeed, both conceptual and neuroscientific accounts of intentional agency have proven to be problematic. On the one hand, most conceptual views struggle in defining how agents can adequately exert control over their actions. On the other hand, neuroscience settles for definitions by exclusion whereby key features of human intentional (...) actions, including goal-directness, remain underspecified. This paper reviews the existing literature and sketches how this gap might be filled. In particular, we defend a gradualist notion of intentional behaviour, which revolves around the following key features: autonomy, flexibility in the integration of causal vectors, and control. (shrink)

Harming other people is prima facie wrong. Unless we can be very certain that doing so is justified under the circumstances, we ought not to do it. In this paper, I argue that we ought to dismantle harsh retributivist criminal justice systems for this reason; we cannot be sufficiently certain that the harm is justified. Gregg Caruso, Ben Vilhauer and others have previously argued for the same conclusion; however, my own version sidesteps certain controversial premises of theirs. Harsh retributivist criminal (...) justice can only be morally right if the following three propositions are true: Moral responsibility exists, retributivism is right, and we can find out how much punishment offenders deserve for their crimes. Suppose that we initially assign a high credence to each of the three propositions; I assume for the sake of argument that there are good arguments in support of each. Nevertheless, these arguments ultimately depend on intuitions. Since we have philosophical peers whose intuitions differ from ours, we ought to downgrade our credence in each. However, even slightly less credence in each proposition means far less credence in a conjunction of all three. Since the stakes are high and there are morally safer options for a criminal justice system, we ought to dismantle harsh retributivist ones. (shrink)

Place is central to many research projects in the social sciences, but it is often taken by researchers as a given. Recently, discourse analysts have devoted more attention to the construction of place in interaction. We focus on one aspect of this construction, the process of drawing inferences from place categories and place names, in transcripts of oral history interviews. We apply membership categorization analysis to descriptions of house types and houses, showing how some categories are presented as being shared (...) and recognizable, and how inferences are projected. Then we apply a similar approach to the ways inferences are drawn from place names, focusing especially on proximity. Participants’ categories can be investigated by examining the ways they are used in question–answer pairs, and in the construction of turns using elaborations, contrasting pairs, negatives and qualifications. This analysis shows the work these place references do for the participants, for instance, in categorizing themselves and others and giving accounts for behaviour. (shrink)

A filósofa americana Cora Diamond, especialista em Frege e Wittgenstein, que os lê dando especial atenção à filosofia da linguagem, do pensamento, da lógica e da matemática, tem também coisas importantes a dizer, a partir da maneira wittgensteiniana de ver a filosofia, acerca de filosofia moral. Em particular, ela é fortemente crítica de uma certa forma de conceber a natureza da filosofia moral, muito comum hoje entre os filósofos analíticos, como exclusivamente centrada na acção e na decisão de agentes e (...) em argumentos acerca daquilo que é racional fazer. Foi essa crítica, que podemos considerar feita de um ponto de vista metodológico, que fez Diamond entrar em polémica, há cerca de trinta anos, com autores muito influentes em ética como Peter Singer e Tom Regan, mesmo se partilha com eles muitas intuições. Neste artigo pretendo simplesmente descrever a posição de Diamond acerca da natureza do pensamento moral e do que pensamos que fazemos quando fazemos filosofia moral. Por trás da análise do papel da imaginação moral em ética, está a questão mais geral da natureza do método flosófico. (shrink)

Robots are increasingly being studied for use in education. It is expected that robots will have the potential to facilitate children’s learning and function autonomously within real classrooms in the near future. Previous research has raised the importance of designing acceptable robots for different practices. In parallel, scholars have raised ethical concerns surrounding children interacting with robots. Drawing on a Responsible Research and Innovation perspective, our goal is to move away from research concerned with designing features that will render robots (...) more socially acceptable by end users toward a reflective dialogue whose goal is to consider the key ethical issues and long-term consequences of implementing classroom robots for teachers and children in primary education. This paper presents the results from several focus groups conducted with teachers in three European countries. Through a thematic analysis, we provide a theoretical account of teachers’ perspectives on classroom robots pertaining to privacy, robot role, effects on children and responsibility. Implications for the field of educational robotics are discussed. (shrink)

Reseña del libro Evil online de Dean Cocking y Jeroen van den Hoven.

Background In the Netherlands, using drugs to deliberately end the life of a severely defective newborn baby who is in extreme suffering can be permissible under very precise circumstances. This does not mean that all Dutch neonatologists are willing to engage in such behaviour. This paper discusses the use of neuromuscular blockers (NMBs) in connection with abstention decisions in neonatology and the boundaries between ‘deliberate ending of life’ and other end-of-life decisions. These boundaries are of paramount importance because, of all (...) end-of-life decisions, only ‘deliberate ending of life’ must be reported by the responsible doctor and exposes him to the risk of being prosecuted. Methods 14 Dutch neonatologists were presented with a hypothetical case of a severely asphyxiated baby who faces a long dying process after withdrawal of ‘medically futile’ (zinloos) life-sustaining ventilation. Doctors were asked whether it is acceptable to administer NMBs in this situation and whether such behaviour should be reported. Results and conclusions Doctors' responses were heterogeneous, showing that the acceptability of using NMBs in certain situations and the boundaries between end-of-life decisions are currently a subject of discussion among Dutch neonatologists. Many respondents reported feeling threatened by the potential involvement of the criminal law authorities in the system of control over ‘deliberate ending of life’. (shrink)

This study examines the ethical dilemmas and difficulties encountered by Portuguese school psychologists. As part of a larger survey, participants were asked about ethical issues faced in daily practice and asked to describe ethical incidents. Of the 477 respondents, 274 reported 441 ethically troubling or challenging situations. Responses were coded into a six-category system based on the code of ethics of Portuguese psychologists. Most of the reported dilemmas concerned privacy and confidentiality principles. Results are discussed in light of relevant literature (...) and international findings. Implications for the development of the profession and future research are provided. (shrink)

One of the most influential arguments against compatibilism is Derk Pereboom’s four-case manipulation argument. Professor Plum, the main character of the thought experiment, is manipulated into doing what he does; he therefore supposedly lacks moral responsibility for his action. Since he is arguably analogous to an ordinary agent under determinism, Pereboom concludes that ordinary determined agents lack moral responsibility as well. I offer a hard-line reply to this argument, that is, a reply which denies that this kind of manipulation is (...) responsibility undermining. I point out that fully fleshed-out manipulated characters in fiction can seem morally responsible for what they do. This is plausibly because we identify with such characters, and therefore focus on their options and the reasons for which they act rather than the manipulation. I further argue that we ought to focus this way when interacting with other agents. We have no reason to trust the incompatibilist intuitions that arise when we regard manipulated agents from a much more detached perspective. (shrink)

This article considers an international sample of venture capital and private equity funds to assess the role of law, corruption, and culture in setting fund manager fees. With better legal conditions, fixed fees are lower, carried interest fees are higher, clawbacks are less likely, and share distributions are more likely. Countries with lower levels of corruption have lower fixed fees and higher performance fees, and are less likely to have clawbacks and cash-only distributions. Hofstede's measure of power distance is negatively (...) related to fixed fees and the use of cash-only distributions, but positively related to performance fees and clawbacks. Overall, the data strongly indicate that corruption, culture, and legal settings are much more significant in determining fees than fund manager characteristics and/or market conditions. (shrink)

This article presents the development, validation and application of an instrument to measure everyday moral distress in different health care settings. The concept of moral distress has been discussed and developed over 20 years. A few instruments have been developed to measure it, predominantly in nursing. The instrument presented here consists of two factors: level of moral distress, and tolerance/openness towards moral dilemmas. It was tested in four medical departments and three pharmacies, where 259 staff members completed a questionnaire. The (...) two factors were found to be reliable. Differences in levels of moral distress were found between pharmacies and clinical departments, and between the youngest and oldest age groups; departmental staff and the youngest group experienced higher levels of moral distress. Departments reported less tolerance/openness towards moral dilemmas than pharmacies. The instrument needs to be tested further, but its strengths are the focus on everyday ethical dilemmas and its usefulness in different health care settings. (shrink)

En medio del constante replanteo que la filosofía y las ciencias humanas en general han venido haciendo de nociones básicas como la de 'existencia', un horizonte de planteo intercultural permitirá acoger mejor las demandas de las sociedades contemporáneas cruzadas por diferentes centros histórico-culturales y por el fenómeno común de los movimientos sociales exigiendo cada uno reconocimiento de sus propios derechos. Se concibe tal planteo como una 'odisea de la libertad', ya que intenta perseguir el difícil camino de la libertad -en (...) tanto poder ser- hacia la realización de sí mismo, en relación al reconocimiento de sí y de los otros, en el ámbito comunitario y político. Sin olvidar la buena relación con la naturaleza y el cosmos y con lo que trasciende a cada realidad, en tanto abrigo de infinitud en el ámbito artístico y religioso. Se advierte entonces que el camino a la libertad atraviesa todo tipo de dificultades. Amid the constant reconsideration of basic notions such as "existence" by philosophy and human sciences, an intercultural proposal will give a better response to the demands of contemporary societies, which are crossed by different historical-cultural centers and by the common phenomenon of social movements claiming for their own rights. Such proposal is conceived as "an odyssey of freedom", since it pursues the hard path of freedom-as possibility to be-towards his own realization and regarding his own and others' acknowledgement in the community and political sphere, not forgetting the good relationship with nature and the cosmos and with what transcends each reality, as a shelter of infinity in the artistic and religious field. It is then noticed that the path to freedom undergoes all kinds of difficulties. (shrink)