Paul Karl Feyerabend Las proyecciones de la proliferación teórica en la relación ciencia-metafísica

La doctrina de la Proliferación teórica de Paul Karl Feyerabend ha sido interpretada por sus especialistas como un intento de salvaguardar el ideal del progreso científico. Aunque tales estudios hacen justicia, en parte, a la intencionalidad de nuestro filósofo no explicitan la crítica fundamental que implica para Feyerabend el pluralismo teórico. La proliferación teórica constituye en sí misma una reductio ad absurdum de los distintos intentos del positivismo lógico y del racionalismo crítico por definir la ciencia a expensas de lo metafísico. Este artículo presenta la proliferación teórica como una reivindicación del papel positivo que ocupa la metafísica en el quehacer científico. Se consigna la defensa que hace Feyerabend de la metafísica en cuanto que ésta constituye la posibilidad de superar el conservadurismo conceptual, aumentar de contenido empírico de la ciencia y recuperar el valor descriptivo de las teorías científicas.

'Regina v John Terry': The Discursive Construction of an Alleged Racist Event

This article explores the conformation in discourse of a verbal exchange and its subsequent mediatised and legal ramifications. The event concerns an allegedly racist insult directed by high profile English professional footballer John Terry towards another player, Anton Ferdinand, during a televised match in October 2011. The substance of Terry’s utterance, which included the noun phrase ‘fucking black cunt’, was found by a Chief Magistrate not to be a racist insult, although the fact that these actual words were framed within the utterance was not in dispute. The upshot of this ruling was that Terry was acquitted of a racially aggravated public order offence. A subsequent investigation by the regulatory commission of the English Football Association (FA) ruled, almost a year after the event, that Terry was guilty of racially abusing Ferdinand. Terry was banned for four matches and fined £220,000.

It is our contention that this event, played out in legal rulings, social media and print and broadcast media, constitutes a complex web of linguistic structures and strategies in discourse, and as such lends itself well to analysis with a broad range of tools from pragmatics, discourse analysis and cognitive linguistics. Amongst other things, such an analysis can help explain the seemingly anomalous - even contradictory - position adopted in the legal ruling with regard to the speech act status of ‘fucking black cunt’; namely, that the racist content of the utterance was not contested but that the speaker was found not to have issued a racist insult. Over its course, the article addresses this broader issue by making reference to the systemic-functional interpersonal function of language, particularly to the concepts of modality, polarity and modalisation. It also draws on models of verbal irony from linguistic pragmatics, notably from the theory of irony as echoic mention (c.f. Sperber and Wilson, 1981; Wilson and Sperber, 1992). Furthermore, the article makes use of the cognitive-linguistic framework, Text World Theory (c.f. Gavins, 2007; Werth, 1999) to examine the discourse positions occupied by key actors and adapts, from cognitive poetics, the theory of mind-modelling (c.f. Stockwell, 2009) to explore the conceptual means through which these actors discursively negotiate the event.

It is argued that the pragmatic and cognitive strategies that frame the entire incident go a long way towards mitigating the impact of so ostensibly stark an act of racial abuse. Moreover, it is suggested here that the reconciliation of Terry’s action was a result of the confluence of strategies of discourse with relations of power as embodied by the media, the law and perceptions of nationhood embraced by contemporary football culture. It is further proposed that the outcome of this episode, where the FA was put in the spotlight, and where both the conflict and its key antagonists were ‘intranational’, was strongly impelled by the institution of English football and its governing body both to reproduce and maintain social, cultural and ethnic cohesion and to avoid any sense that the event featured a discernable ‘out-group’.

Last Will and Testament - John Picard

Last Will and Testament of John Picard of the township of Niagara. He leaves his land which consists of part of Lot 113 in the township of Niagara to Annie Mariah Steel. The executors are John Stevens and Gilbert Anderson. The document was registered July 3, 1882 – instrument no. 1743, May 9, 1882.

Dialogue sur l'avenir de la démocratie libérale : John Rawls, Richard Rorty et Leo Strauss

Réalisé en cotutelle avec l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV).

Tratamiento del deslizamiento epifisiario capital femoral con fijación in situ versus luxación quirúrgica

Introducción: El Deslizamiento Epifisiario Capital Femoral es la enfermedad de la cadera más común en adolescentes entre los 9 y 16 años. Es de causa idiopática, más frecuente en hombres, se clasifica en 4 estadios según criterios clínicos y radiológicos. Se buscó evaluar la evolución de los deslizamientos moderados y severos tratados con una de las dos técnicas propuestas. Metodología Se realizó un estudio descriptivo con pacientes que fueron llevados a fijación in situ o luxación controlada entre 2008 y 2011. Resultados: Se incluyeron 26 pacientes, los cuales el 65.4% se les realizó luxación quirúrgica controlada y el 34.6% fijación in situ. El 70,6% de pacientes tenían DECF inestable y 70,5% tenían desplazamiento severo. La evaluación de la escala WOMAC para dolor, rigidez y capacidad funcional encontró mejores beneficios para el grupo de fijación in situ, estadísticamente significativos (p<0,05), no solo en términos de dolor, rigidez y capacidad funcional sino menor frecuencia de complicaciones. Las complicaciones más frecuentes en el grupo de luxación quirúrgica controlada fueron un caso de infección, 7 casos (41,2%) de necrosis avascular de cabeza femoral, 5 casos (29,4%) de condrolisis y 2 casos (11,8%) de pseudoartrosis; En el grupo de fijación in situ, solo 1 (11,1%) presentó Infección del Sitio Operatorio y 1 (11,1%) Condrolisis. Resultados significativos solo para necrosis avascular. Discusión: Los pacientes con deslizamientos moderados y severos manejados con fijación in situ tuvieron una mejor resultado con menor proporción de complicaciones.

Six new loci associated with body mass index highlight a neuronal influence on body weight regulation

Common variants at only two loci, FTO and MC4R, have been reproducibly associated with body mass index (BMI) in humans. To identify additional loci, we conducted meta-analysis of 15 genome-wide association studies for BMI (n > 32,000) and followed up top signals in 14 additional cohorts (n > 59,000). We strongly confirm FTO and MC4R and identify six additional loci (P < 5 x 10(-8)): TMEM18, KCTD15, GNPDA2, SH2B1, MTCH2 and NEGR1 (where a 45-kb deletion polymorphism is a candidate causal variant). Several of the likely causal genes are highly expressed or known to act in the central nervous system (CNS), emphasizing, as in rare monogenic forms of obesity, the role of the CNS in predisposition to obesity.

The rise of Western rationalism: Paul Feyerabend’s story

I summarise certain aspects of Paul Feyerabend’s account of the development of Western rationalism, show the ways in which that account is supposed to run up against an alternative, that of Karl Popper, and then try to give a preliminary comparison of the two. My interest is primarily in whether what Feyerabend called his ‘story’ constitutes a possible history of our epistemic concepts and their trajectory. I express some grave reservations about that story, and about Feyerabend’s framework, finding Popper’s views less problematic here. However, I also suggest that one important aspect of Feyerabend’s material, his treatment of religious belief, can be given an interpretation which makes it tenable, and perhaps preferable to a Popperian approach.