Richard McKirahan untersucht systematisch die aristotelische Diskussion des Denkens von Parmenides, Zeno und Melissus und bringt Licht in die obskureren und komplexeren Passagen. Er ergänzt seine Studie durch eine neuartige "aristotelisierende" Interpretation des Gedichts von Parmenides. Die Texte werden von einem umfassenden Essay der Herausgeber eingeleitet, der die Grundlinien des Bandes definiert und eine Bestandsaufnahme der Studien über die Beziehung zwischen Aristoteles und der Eleaticis vornimmt. Der zweite Teil des Bandes versammelt die Beiträge von neun Wissenschaftlern, die sich an einer (...) lebhaften Debatte über die von McKirahan angesprochenen Themen beteiligen. Mit Beiträgen von Alberto Bernabé | Mathilde Brémond | Bernardo Berruecos Frank | Néstor-Luis Cordero | Patricia Curd | Leonardo Franchi | Refik Güremen | Richard McKirahan | Massimo Pulpito | Barbara Sattler | Enrico Volpe. (shrink)

This study attempts to extend the literature in ethics research by developing and testing a model of an individual's ethical system which identifies the sources of influence on the decision process. The model is developed from an interdisciplinary literature review and includes six subsystems or spheres that exert influence on an individual: the workplace, family, religion, legal system, community, and profession. The study also examines the role of materiality in the decision-making process. Using this model, empirical tests identify the spheres (...) that exert the most influence on the decision-maker facing an ethical dilemma. In addition, the relative importance of the spheres and the interaction among the spheres is examined. Findings show that: (1) individuals rate variables at different levels of importance as the materiality of the breach changes and (2) the spheres that are considered most important for minor ethical breaches are different than the spheres considered most influential in a major ethical situation. Exploratory factor analysis suggests that the variables representing the spheres can be summarized by three factors. Further, it indicates that these factors change with materiality. (shrink)

This article offers a basic characterization and typology of contemporary theories of sex eliminativism while critically examining their scope and limitations. Through an analysis of the work by Evron, Watkins and DiMarco and Ciccia, I assess whether sex eliminativism constitutes a viable epistemological and ontological strategy. I argue that, while these approaches allow us to problematize the naturalization of sex and reveal its role in the reproduction of social hierarchies, they also face major theoretical and empirical challenges, particularly in their (...) most radical versions. Finally, I propose a minimal pluralist realism as an alternative that preserves the critical power of these approaches without falling victim to an empirically and epistemologically weak approach. (shrink)

Nos proponemos pensar una teoría de la acción implícita en la filosofía deleuziana del espacio. El concepto de profundidad, en el que se despliega el carácter de la intensidad como afirmación de la diferencia, funciona como presupuesto de esta teoría. A partir de dos textos de Ruyer y Simondon mencionados por Deleuze, los afectos aparecen como expresión de aquella dimensión espacial en el sujeto. La profundidad se articula a su vez con las síntesis temporales en un recorrido que encuentra en (...) la noción de pliegue el concepto adecuado para pensar un sujeto de la acción alternativo al yo sustancial. (shrink)

Organized medicine (OM) is an institution built to defend the American health care system of the 20th century. The institutional structures that it employed, however, operated mechanically and independently of its practitioner base, which drew from physician and nonphysician health professions. This article suggests that OM’s institutional structures were founded and defended by a “logic of confidence,” which initially served as a buffer against external socioeconomic pressures. The institutional structures of OM came to be treated systemically as rules (e.g.,“Trust me, (...) I’m a doctor” and “The doctor knows best”), biasing and guiding organizational decision making and activities. Such rules were inculcated through professional education and clinical practice and were promulgated to the public by OM’s practitioner and consumer base. OM so effectively promoted its rules that they were installed as powerful myths in the American psyche. So powerful were these myths that even OM was prevented from updating its identity to match its changing socioeconomic context. Instead, OM compartmentalized and sequestered its operational components from the public and from one another, effectively decoupling its identity from its activities and its context. In this manner, OM maintained an outmoded status quo when confronted by changing socioeconomic circumstances. The author explains how OM’s failure to adapt has impelled the strongest representatives of all health professions to resist top-down decoupling in favor of bottom-up identity maturation, applying a new “logic of appropriateness.” The logic of appropriateness is offered as a framework to guard against biased decision making and to ensure that institutional and individual identity, context, and decision making are coordinated and relevant. A new, public health-led, American health system is described in which the family physician and family nurse practitioner co-lead primary care practice and in which professional psychology has a vital role at every level. (shrink)

The ways human behavior is conceptualized need to be refined. Major stumbling blocks have been the reification of verbal descriptions of behavior and the construction of ill-defined clusters of dissimilar problems. The effect of behavior-modifying drugs can be completely dependent on situational details. Behavior is a complex product of many interacting factors and cannot be rigorously predictable as the same behavior may be arrived at in different ways. Thus similar-looking behaviors can be functionally different and conversely different-looking behaviors can be (...) functionally identical. More answerable questions about behavior need to be formulated. (shrink)

This paper addresses the general problem of how to rationally choose an algorithm for phylogenetic inference. Specifically, the controversy between maximum likelihood (ML) and maximum parsimony (MP) perspectives is reframed within the philosophical issue of theory choice. A Kuhnian approach in which rationality is bounded and value-laden is offered and construed through the notion of a Style of Modeling. A Style is divided into four stages: collecting remnant models, constructing models of taxonomical identity, implementing modeling algorithms, and finally inferring and (...) confirming evolutionary trees or cladograms. The identification and investigation of styles is useful for exploring sociological and epistemological issues such as individuating scientific communities and assessing the rationality of algorithm choice. Regarding the last point, this paper suggests that the values motivating ML and MP perspectives are justified but only contextually; these algorithms also have normative force because they can be therapeutic by allowing us to rationally choose among several competing trees, nonetheless this force is limited and cannot be used in order to decide the controversy tout court. (shrink)

San Francesco di Sales è comunemente considerato colui che ha saputo adattare la spiritualità monastica al contesto della vita quotidiana, in modo da rendere possibile a tutti la santità. L’autore esamina quest’innovazione spirituale attraverso la lente dell’Introduzione alla vita devota. In particolare dimostra come l’invito a ritornare al cuore (reditus ad cor), le cui radici affondano nella tradizione monastica, configuri un itinerario spirituale che è un’ascesi dell’amore. Francesco ha imparato dal Combattimento spirituale del teatino Lorenzo Scupoli che l’ascesi è necessaria (...) per sradicare i vizi, far crescere le virtù, consolidare la vita di preghiera. Si tratta anche di illuminare l’intelletto e regolare la volontà in modo da poter conoscere ed attuare ciò che Dio vuole da noi. La grazia amorosa di Dio vuole liberare il nostro cuore e noi collaboriamo liberamente a quest’opera di liberazione, attraverso l’ascesi per poter essere in grado di rispondere nell’amore al suo beneplacito. L’ascetica salesiana ci porta al mistero dell’interazione tra libertà e grazia: ascesi e mistica si incontrano nella profondità del cuore per conformarlo al cuore di Cristo e aprirlo alla comunione d’amore con Dio. (shrink)

Transcultural psychiatry is at the confluence of culture, mental health and illness. It places the patient at the centre of the relationship while respecting his or her individual and collective way of thinking and doing. Culture defines ontological representations, explanatory models and therapeutic practices which influence expressions of suffering and specific modes of coping and healing, as diverse as the cultures from which they arise. Yet, Western psychiatry is just as indivisible from the culture from which it emerged, which brings (...) up the question of mental suffering and care in transcultural situations. Transcultural psychiatry brings the clinician to question and widen his or her clinical practice with regards to social, geopolitical and historical issues which colour the bonds in the social fabric, in power imbalances and in access to health care for individuals of cultural minorities. How can we make our consultations with patients from different parts of the world and who speak different languages ethical? How should one care for patients when faced with cultural otherness? And what are the effects on the mental health of today’s youth, who are raised in global societies which generate complex identity challenges that can lead to radicalization? This article offers some answers to these clinical and ethical questions through the hybridization of representations, in order to ensure a harmonious coexistence and a renewed creativity, for an “ethos of solidarity” in mental health care. (shrink)

Choices rarely deal with certainties; and, where assertoric logic and modal logic are insufficient, those seeking to be reasonable turn to one or more things called “probability.” These things typically have a shared mathematical form, which is an arithmetic construct. The construct is often felt to be unsatisfactory for various reasons. A more general construct is that of a preordering, which may even be incomplete, allowing for cases in which there is no known probability relation between two propositions or between (...) two events. Previous discussion of incomplete preorderings has been as if incidental, with researchers focusing upon preorderings for which quantifications are possible. This article presents formal axioms for the more general case. Challenges peculiar to some specific interpretations of the nature of probability are brought to light in the context of these propositions. A qualitative interpretation is offered for probability differences that are often taken to be quantified. A generalization of Bayesian updating is defended without dependence upon coherence. Qualitative hypothesis testing is offered as a possible alternative in cases for which quantitative hypothesis testing is shown to be unsuitable. (shrink)