Search

Introduction: Currently, the specialized literature agreed on the need to democratize knowledge in techno-cognitive decision-making. In particular, some participation mechanisms are questionated because are considered mere exercises used to legitimize preexisting decisions. This accounts for the need to outline new tools to analyze the participatory dynamics in the generation of projects and technologies for local development. Objective: This paper aims to propose an analytical framework to map participatory dynamics, applied to the analysis of local development projects promoted by research institutions through the design and apply of a specific typology. Methodology: This qualitative research is based on two case studies, which involved indepth interviews with relevant actors, documentary analysis and fieldwork in key participatory action research. To carry out the analysis, we use a theoretical-methodological approach based on the sociology of constructivist technology, which proposes to inquire the way in which society and technology are co-constructed. Results: The analysis of two case studies alowed to identify two different trajectories of social participation. The first case initiate with aa broad participation experience, but derived a form of expert control. The second case began with expert control, but participation broadened and intensified throughout the process. Conclusions: Finally, the paper propose some reflections on how participatory dynamics work in the promotion of interactive learning processes and capacity building in technoscientific projects for local development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to discuss the connections and the contradictions between human background and education in the public university to understand its development in the capitalist society. The human background is showed from the possibility that the humankind like a social being can be configured through the work like a basic category, while the role of the education imposes itself mainly against the capitalist society, where as a result of this contradiction it makes a rupture in this social being, so this education transfigures in preparation for the work. Hence, it comes about the necessity of the creation of several instances to accomplish this purpose; one of them is the public university as a contradictory space, by one side its objective is the background to satisfy a work market and by the other side, it allows the acquisition of universal knowledge that provides the social collective to take and reveal this basic comprehension for its development as a society. One of the mainly conclusions is the need as society of understanding these contradictions and its social roles in the creation and collectivization of the knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper was to explore and characterize the construction of knowledge based on the perceptions of prospective teachers. It is a qualitative study that attempts to understand and interpret the meanings and beliefs about teacher knowledge. The participants were the last semester students enrolled in Basic Integral Education at the University of Los Andes Dr. Pedro Rincón Gutiérrez in Táchira state-Venezuela. The techniques used to collect data were the interview and reflective diaries written by the participants during their field experiences. The software Atlas-ti version 6.0 was used to analyze data. As a result of the analysis the following categories emerged: Pedagogical knowledge, development of reflection as a competence, and formative experiences. These findings explain the dimensions about teacher knowledge from the prospective teachers' perspective. It is a complex and multidimensional process that comes from several sources and demands reflective processes that tell about their progress and limitations, so that prospective teachers reach higher levels of reflection that contribute to understand teaching as a task that demands disposition for long life learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is on the “resistance to change" facing organizations in the West Central Region (WCR), defined here as Knowledge Needs (NC), which hinder their internal performance and eventual development and that of the region, given the conditions that are imposed by the neoliberal process of globalization. These were identified in 60 research papers from the National Reality Seminars which were held at the University of Costa Rica West headquarters for over seven years. The analysis of each project allowed establishing that, of the 8 possible KN, the priority is in knowing: how to eliminate obstacles for efficient work, how to better include and satisfy people´s needs, how to take advantage of abilities and competences for group work, and how to bring forward a unified strategy. It is argued that, in spite of the importance for organizational development, the KN oriented know how to improve the way people identify with the objectives from the organization identified in only one case, and seeking to establish how KN foster new forms of leadership, not found in any of the research projects analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines a naturalist project defended by Michael Bishop and J. D. Trout. These philosophers claim that it is possible to construct a normative epistemology guided by a branch of cognitive science. I will defend that this project is flawed due to the nature and disagreements that occur in cognitive psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to provide some grounded criteria, based on principles from cognitive science and related theoretical positions, to address the concept of representation from a perspective that allows placing it in the context of knowledge construction processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the idea of reason as a constellation producer of knowledge and meaning is exposed under a gadamerian view. The aim is, with and from Hegel to overcome the dissociations found in the Kantian philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes Leibniz's criticisms of occult qualities. As Descartes and Boyle did before him, Leibniz rejects hidden qualities because they contradict the mechanist model of explanation, but also for other epistemological reasons. Leibniz's main argument aims to show that occult qualities are not simple forms, contrary to what Aquinas and Sennert maintain, but rather that they are relative elements that can be reduced to either metaphysical or physical principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine Leibniz' theory of knowledge in terms of its relationship to the aesthetic universe inaugurated by Baumgarten. Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-1762) is well known for having used the concept of Aesthetica as the name of a new and independent discipline focusing on a “special" type of knowledge (concerning with sensitivity), that is characteristic of art and artistic beauty. Baumgarten was trained in the Wolffian school, but he had to return to the works of Leibniz to find an epistemology that would serve as the basis for an approach to sensible knowledge science, that could become a philosophical knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I analize Leibniz's view on sense perception (sensus) in his middle years as an epistemological doctrine in which he combines the demands of external constraint (receptivity) and epistemic justification (normativity). The view is then related to his strategies to refute skeptic arguments concerning the justification of perceptual judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the relationship between science, technology and women. Thus, it resorts to the history of science and gender as a theorethical instrument because it provides a new way to interrogate reality, visualizing new analytical categories in order to explain aspects of reality that had not been taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There seems to be a contradiction between Leibniz's idea that we live in the best possible world and his constant efforts to improve human condition by proposing solutions to social problems. In this paper we explore some approaches to deal with this conflict between theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains Giambattista Vico's idea of progress in The New Science. For Vico, progress in history consists of stages with patterns and ideal eternal history as a reference point. Progress in The New Science is not linear and irreversible, but general and cyclical, with room for declines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about the cognitive revolution created by the scientific use of the telescope 400 years ago. After a brief incursion about its invention, and the invention of its scientific use, there is an analysis of the SIDEREUS NUNCIUS and the discoveries exposed in it. Special attention is dedicated to Jupiter's moons. Later discoveries are also considered, like the sun's spots and the phases of Venus, the alter a crucial one, according to Galileo, to resolve the opposition between the Copernican and the Ptolemaic System. Finally, in the case of a possible tricorporarl character of Saturn, Galileo shows his conviction of that the continuous improvements of the instrument would resolve the problem in a near future, which is a fundamental aspect of the incorporation of instruments in the cognitive process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns Baruj de Spinoza's theory of affections (=ethics) and liberty. The present contribution remarks the constructive character of spinozistic ethics and some difficulties intrinsic to the dutch philosopher's metaphysical theory of liberty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I attempt an analysis of the concept of victim of crimes against humanity. I analyze the moral epistemology of the concepts of damage and evil, in particular the notion of radical evil. I place the notion of victims of crimes against humanity in a manifestation of radical evil. I attempt to determine the empirical and rational dimensions of this concept, as well as their epistemic and ethic normativity. Once established the normative character of the notion, I move on to study some approaches to the moral reality of the victims of crimes against humanity, especially those that deny the victim's moral character. Some characteristics of survivors of crimes against humanity are useful to restore the ethical character of the notion. Lastly, these characteristics are also taken as the basis for three rights of the victims: truth, justice and repair. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

in this paper we analize a third period in Russell's ethics, from 1940 to 1970. Representative of this phase is his Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954). In his Autobiography Russell does not seem to be aware of the existence of this third phase, a fact that makes more valuable this investigation. In his 1954 book Russell tries to find a middle ground between reason and passion, subjectivity and objectivity in ethics, as well as between science and ethics. This period can also be characterized as a transition from ethical realism (19001914) to emotivism (1915-1940). We contend that Russell's answer to the problem of the relations between reason and passion are not entirely satisfactory. In addition, doubts and contradictions can be found in his writings of this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse the accounts of the common perceptibles in Filodemo's De Sensibus and Nemesio's De natura hominis and show that, although neither seems to answer to Aristotle's direct knowledge, both constitute relevant contributions for the clarification and the history of his theory of the common perceptibles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes that Kant introduced the subject of freedom in his Critique of Pure Reason, due more to anthropological and practical purposes than to epistemological ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with new categories that let us go into greater depths regarding the thesis that "we are a body", where the visible and the invisible, the tangible and the intangible, are recognized as corporeal dimensions closely interrelated, in opposition to the well-tried attitude of saying "to have a body", which reduces the corporeal to physical, concrete, temporal features that hold an alleged instrumental relationship with that which we call "self", "soul" or "subjectivity". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]