Fernando Arancibia-Collao

This article analyzes the historical evolution of ADHD and its close relationship with the use of psychostimulants, showing how diagnostic changes, clinical evidence, and social pressures have shaped their contemporary understanding. Although stimulants reduce symptoms and risks associated with ADHD, their neurobiological basis remains uncertain, and diagnostic expansion has led to overdiagnosis and medicalization. Non-medical, especially in educational and work context, highlights a central bioethical dilemma: the growing blurring between treatment and performance optimization. Epistemic critiques of clinical trials, the influence of the pharmaceutical industry, the identity effects of diagnosis, and the tensions between autonomy, justice, and care are examined. The article proposes strengthening institutional ethics that limit commercial interests, ensure transparency in diagnostic construction, and promote a broader understanding of attention disorders, integrating biological, social, and cultural dimensions.

En este artículo se propone una noción de bienestar social fundado en el bien común. Para ello se argumenta a favor de una hipótesis de trabajo que posibilite el vínculo entre ética y economía en general, y una fundamentación del bienestar social en el bien común en particular. Se expone los elementos centrales de la ética de la ley natural, los bienes humanos básicos y los principios de razonabilidad práctica, y las diversas concepciones del bien común. Finalmente, se desarrolla una concepción de la función de bienestar social basada en el bien común.

The La Polar case is a major financial scandal in Chile involving unethical credit practices. The department store unilaterally rescheduled customers' credit card debts without consent, inflating debts with additional interest and charges. This misconduct led to a significant drop in La Polar's stock value and a public trust crisis in Chile's financial system. Legal actions included criminal prosecutions and stricter corporate governance regulations. The ethical breaches involved a lack of transparency, misuse of insider information, and executive opportunism. Executives manipulated financial statements to inflate profits, boosting bonuses and stock options. The board of directors failed in their oversight role, ignoring audit warnings, and neglecting internal controls. Audit firm PwC was also criticized for not detecting the irregularities, spotlighting flaws in auditing practices. Through ethical frameworks like utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics, the scandal reveals the profound impact of unethical behavior on financial integrity, governance, and market trust. It highlights the need for stronger corporate governance, transparency, and accountability to ensure ethical conduct within organizations and maintain a stable financial system.

This paper examines the ethics of vulnerability and the central role of empathy as a virtue in responding to extreme human suffering of the Palestinian population in Gaza. First, it analyzes various dimensions of vulnerability—physical, emotional, and cognitive, ontological, and circumstantial—in the context of armed conflict and systemic dehumanization. The discussion incorporates sentimentalist virtue ethics, to argue that empathy is both an essential social bond and a moral obligation, especially when addressing the suffering caused by genocide. The paper distinguishes between strong and weak empathy, proposing that the former is necessary to counteract the indifference and schadenfreude observed in some responses to Gaza’s plight. By emphasizing the interplay between ontological and circumstantial vulnerabilities, the analysis extends beyond care ethics, positioning empathy as a cardinal virtue for fostering moral accountability, advocating for care policies, and reinforcing global social bonds. Finally, it argues that empathy has intrinsic value and it has a role as a foundational moral trait, with its absence marking moral failure and, in some cases, wickedness.

This entry presents an exploration of Aristotle’s perspectives on economics, underscoring his seminal influence on economic thought and his distinctive approach that intertwines economics with ethics and moral philosophy. Aristotle defines economics (oikonomia) as “household management”, focusing on household organization and the production and consumption of goods. A pivotal aspect of Aristotle’s economic thought is the intrinsic linkage between ethics and economics, with ethics pertaining to the individual aspects of behaviour, like virtue, profit and its relation to happiness (eudaimonia). Aristotle’s approach is normative, encompassing reflections on actions and alternatives, considering both facts and values. He emphasizes moderation as the guiding principle of ethical virtues related to economics, advocating for the avoidance of extremes in the pursuit of wealth and in economic transactions.

In this paper we distinguish, from other sanctions, specific targeted sanctions—namely those imposed on particular individuals and sanctions on goods that facilitate the violation of human rights. We ask if these sanctions satisfy the three of the principles of Just War Theory (JWT): chance of success, proportionality and discrimination. We argue that while there is not enough empirical evidence to make a claim about specific targeted sanctions and chance of success, these sanctions do meet the principles of proportionality and discrimination, which are not met by other sanctions. Our ultimate conclusion is that comprehensive sanctions, and some types of targeted sanctions—e.g., those that target sectors of the economy or dual-goods such as oil—cannot be justified, since there is another type of sanctions, namely specific targeted sanctions, that meet the principles of JWT, and hence, are fairer.

Resumen En este artículo se argumenta a favor de la relevancia moral de los lazos biológicos en la parentalidad. En primer lugar, se realiza un estado del arte en base a dos cuestiones: 1) la importancia de hecho que poseen los lazos biológicos en la caracterización de la relación parental; 2) la relevancia moral de estos lazos. Se argumenta que los lazos biológicos son importantes para establecer el paradigma de la parentalidad, que este es condición de posibilidad de la moralidad de la parentalidad, pero que esto no implica superioridad del modelo bionormativo respecto de otros modelos.In this article, we argue in favor of biological ties' moral relevance in the parental relationship. In the first place, we review the state-of-art literature in two respects: 1) the factual importance that biological ties have in the characterization of the parental relationship; 2) the moral relevance of these ties. We argue that biological ties are essential to establish the parenting paradigm. This paradigm is a condition of possibility for parenting morality, but that this does not imply the superiority of the bionormative model over other models.

La filosofía de D. Hume ha sido tradicionalmente vinculada con el positivismo y con el subjetivismo moral. Si bien es innegable su explicita influencia en estas escuelas de pensamiento, ello no obsta a la existencia efectiva de relaciones de armonía entre propuestas tradicionalmente opuestas a la filosofía humeana. En el presente trabajo se presentarán sus convergencias con la ética de la ley natural, particularmente la desarrollada por la llamada New Natural LawTheory. Se argumentará el vínculo a partir de la importancia de la vida común, de la experiencia y del rol de la filosofía en el comportamiento humano.