Jim Sterba’s Is a Good God Logically Possible? looks to resurrect J. L. Mackie’s logical argument from evil. Sterba accepts the general framework that theists seeking to give a theodicy have favored since Leibniz invented the term: the search for some greater good provided or greater evil averted that would justify God in permitting the type and variety of evil we actually observe. However, Sterba introduces a deontic twist, drawing on the Pauline Principle (let us not do evil that good (...) may come) to introduce three deontic side constraints on God’s choice of action. He then splits the possible goods into four categories: first- vs. second-order goods, goods to which we have a right, and goods to which we do not have a right. He argues that his deontic constraints rule out each combination, thereby showing that no God-justifying good is on offer. To defuse the argument, I draw on a pair of ideas from Marilyn McCord Adams: (i) God is outside the bounds of morality, and (ii) God can defeat evils by incorporating them into an incommensurately valuable friendship with each human. Properly appreciated, these show that the new logical argument relies on a false premise that is not easily repaired. (shrink)

New Proposals for New Questions Nuevas propuestas para nuevas cuestiones In six sections, the volume deals with different questions of political philosophy. The first section focuses on democratic theories, the second on conceptual debates, discussing topics such as collective rights, the terrorist phenomenon, Libertarianism and conceptions of freedom. In a third section on contemporary debates, perspectives on sovereignity and legitimacy as well as discourse theory versus political liberalism are discussed. The volume also features essays on democracy and law, and in (...) a section entitled oJudicial construction of democracyo papers on constitutional reviews by judges in the Netherlands as well as the construction of democracy in the context of Latin-American democracies. Finally, in the last section the volume deals with the European Constitutional Treatise, analysing the arguments and examining the legitimacy crisis and the main objections displayed against this treatise. Contents I. On Democratic theory / Teoria de la democracia: Eerik Lagerspetz: The Problem of the Common Good in Democratic Theory Sergiy Maksymov: The Kantian Project of the Law Governed Society and New Democracies II. Conceptual debates / Debates conceptuales: Martin Blanchard: Recognition and the Case of Indigenous Reparations: A Habermasian Critique of Habermas Bronik Matwijkiw: The failed Model of Terrorism Susumu Morimura: The Libertarian View of Human Nature Jonathan E. Soeharno: Freedom as Second Nature. Exploring the value of Hegel's concept of Autonomous Personality for Global institutional theory Hashimoto Tsutomu: On the Concept of Positive and Negative Liberty III. Contemporary debates / Debates contemporaneos: Terhi Kiiskinen: Sovereignty Revisited: On Inalienable Constitutional Power Luiz B. Leite Araujo: A Decade of Debate: Discourse Theory versus Political Liberalism IV. Democracy and law / Democracia y derecho: Kenneth E. Himma: Does it really mather whether a Judicial Decision is morally Legitimate? The practical implications of Judicial Illegitimacy in a otherwise Legitimate State Carl Lebeck: Commitments, Rules and the limits of Constitutionalism Oliver W. Lembcke: Exception Rules? Freedom and the Order in a State of Exception Bart van Klink: Does Necessity knows no Laws? Application of Law in a State of Exception Costanza Margiotta: Ideas and Values of the oLegalo State Jiri Priban: Constitution-Making. Morality and Legal Symbolism: on Identity, Temporality and Differentiation of the legal, political and moral Systems V. Judicial construction of democracy / Construccion judicial de la democracia: Maurice Adams: Judging the Constitution: the Third Way. Some reflections on the introduction of Constitutional Review by Judges in The Netherlands Larry Alexander: What is the Problem of Judicial Review? Roberto Corona Copado: Las reglas del juego democratico. La Suprema Corte de Justicia de Mexico en la solucion de controversias entre organos del poder politico desde 1995 Jose de J. Ibarra Cardenas: La construccion judicial de la Democracia en Iberoamerica VI. Deliberation on European constitutional norm / Deliberacion sobre la nueva constitucion europea: Olaf Tans: Deliberating European Constitucional Norms. An Analysis of arguments Carla M. Zoethout: The Court and the Charter or Who Guards the Court of Justice of the EU under the new Constitution?. (shrink)

Al llibre ¿Què ens fa humans? (2022), Salvador Macip explora la pregunta del títol a través d’un diàleg fructífer entre la ciència i la filosofia. Ara bé, Macip diu que no està interessat en tota la filosofia, sinó només en «la part de la filosofia que ha aplicat el mètode científic » (p. 159). A quina part de la filosofia fa referència exactament? Repassarem les idees principals del llibre de Macip fent especial esment dels filòsofs que es mencionen. Així, podrem (...) tenir una idea més precisa de quina mena de filosofia és la que interessa a Macip. També revisarem breument les referències artístiques incloses al llibre de Macip, ja que el mateix autor afirma que «ciència i art no s’haurien de veure com dues entitats separades (i gairebé antagòniques) […], sinó com components del mateix concepte, el de la cultura humana» (p. 35). (shrink)

Qualsevol que es llegeixi aquest llibre s'adonarà que molts d'aquests mites amb els quals ens han promès la felicitat no són ni tan sòlids, ni tan certs, ni tan "progres" com sembla. Amb lúcida ironia, Ignasi Riera reflexiona sobre algunes de les qüestions que actualment saturen els mitjans de comunicació i que, com a polític i periodista, l'han preocupat al llarg de la seva vida: la idealització del món rural, l'obsessió per la salut, però també el maniqueisme de certes (...) actituds pseudodemocràtiques, les paradoxes de la societat del benestar o el fals esquerrisme. La crítica de fons és doblement interessant: marcada pel to satíric i desenfadat que el caracteritza, Riera ens proposa la deconstrucció d'un concepte viciat com és el de la felicitat, enganyós, mercantil i utilitari, i d'aquestes formes de pensament dirigit que, segons ens diuen alguns, són el camí per arribar-hi. La conclusió és clara: els que pretenem lluitar contra la felicitat, hem de canviar de sentit tota la nostra vida així com el conjunt de les nostres creences: tirar al foc moltes de les que semblen veritats eternes.IGNASI RIERA, escriptor, articulista, comentarista radiofònic i polític, ha conreat tots els gèneres literaris. Ha estat guardonat amb els premis Octubre, Ramon Llull i Pere Quart d'Humor i Sàtira. És autor de llibres de narrativa breu, de novel·les, de pamflets, dels llibres de no ficció: El meu oncle Pere Quart, Un patriota exemplar, Els catalans de Franco, Viatgers de Barcelona, Jordi Pujol. Llums i ombres ; de la biografia, Lluís Llach: companys no és això i de Llibre d'hores del ben menjar. A Edicions 62 ha publicat: Pàries, sindicalistes, demagogs, Diccionari de la Cuina Catalana i Un català a Madrid. (shrink)

In the last few years, biologists and computer scientists have claimed that the introduction of data science techniques in molecular biology has changed the characteristics and the aims of typical outputs (i.e. models) of such a discipline. In this paper we will critically examine this claim. First, we identify the received view on models and their aims in molecular biology. Models in molecular biology are mechanistic and explanatory. Next, we identify the scope and aims of data science (machine learning in (...) particular). These lie mainly in the creation of predictive models which performances increase as data set increases. Next, we will identify a tradeoff between predictive and explanatory performances by comparing the features of mechanistic and predictive models. Finally, we show how this a priori analysis of machine learning and mechanistic research applies to actual biological practice. This will be done by analyzing the publications of a consortium—The Cancer Genome Atlas—which stands at the forefront in integrating data science and molecular biology. The result will be that biologists have to deal with the tradeoff between explaining and predicting that we have identified, and hence the explanatory force of the ‘new’ biology is substantially diminished if compared to the ‘old’ biology. However, this aspect also emphasizes the existence of other research goals which make predictive force independent from explanation. (shrink)

This article presents a summary of the key aspects of the Biocentric theory of psychology proposed and developed by Nathaniel Branden. The themes of the conscious and nonconscious aspects of the mind and their interplay in healthy and psychopathological human functioning are highlighted, with the development and maintenance of self-esteem as the centerpiece of this schema. Branden's cogent, in-depth analysis and synthesis of these issues, presented for the first time over fifty years ago, is discussed in relation to issues that (...) are being actively researched today. (shrink)

This study examines activities and processes through which projects of moral regulation are implemented as well as lived, transformed, and resisted by their targeted actors. Our ethnographic study focuses on discourses and practices of civic duty for orderly and hygienic conduct in the rehabilitation of marketplaces in Yaoundé, Cameroon. By drawing on the inhabited institutions approach and the literature on ethics as practice, our analysis extends research on moral work to put forward a perspective on moral regulation as a situated (...) practice. We show how moral work is built on individual reflections but is simultaneously negotiated through actors’ relationships, that is, responsibilities to family, interactions within the community, and personal history. (shrink)

Virtue and the Moral Life brings together distinguished philosophers and theologians with younger scholars of consummate promise to produce ten essays that engage both academics and students of ethics. This collection explores the role virtues play in identifying the good life and the good society.

Las cuestiones éticas vuelven a ocupar un lugar central en la preocupacioes del hombre contemporáneo. Se trata de la eclosión de una sensibilidad renovada que lleva a enfocar todos los asuntos humanos y sociales desde el punto de vista moral.

El més gran dels pensadors i el més petit dels homes”; amb aquestes paraules va referir-se Gadamer d'una manera molt punyent a la desconcertant figura del seu mestre, Martin Heidegger. L’autor d’Ésser i temps ens ha deixat en herència no només una obra filosòfica capaç d’exercir una grandíssima influència, sinó també el repte d’interpretar la tensió entre vida i pensament. Hem de creure que cal una gran vida per tal que hi hagi un gran pensament? O hem d’admetre que no (...) hi ha cap relació entre una cosa i l’altra i, per tant, que un gran pensador pot adherir-se de forma entusiasta a un dels règims polítics més abjectes de la història d’Europa sense comprometre la qualitat de la seva producció filosòfica? Heidegger és segurament un exponent d'una Europa contradictòria i angoixant: no només un representant excepcional de la millor tradició filosòfica, sinó també de les grans bogeries i pors del segle XX. (shrink)

v. 1. L'estudiant. Vida oculta.--v. 2. Cicle apologètic i social. Cicle polític i filosófic.--v. 3. Documents balmesians.

It is now the majority view amongst philosophers and theologians that any world could have been better. This places the choice of which world to create into an especially challenging class of decision problems: those that are discontinuous in the limit. I argue that combining some weak, plausible norms governing this type of problem with a creator who has the attributes of the god of classical theism results in a paradox: no world is possible. After exploring some ways out of (...) the paradox, I conclude that the classical theist should accept Marilyn Adams’s view that no norms apply to gods. (shrink)

This chapter will amount to a detailed exposition and exploration of one of the most prominent arguments against the existence of an unsurpassable world: the argument from addition. Endorsed by a variety of thinkers such as St. Thomas Aquinas, Alvin Plantinga, and William Rowe, the argument from addition uses the possibility of adding good things to a candidate unsurpassable world to argue that every world is surpassable. While widely endorsed, the argument has come under recent criticism. By carefully working through (...) a targeted version of the argument, I set out to establish the following: (i) that a world can always contain more good things; (ii) that a suitably restricted additive aggregation principle allows us to say that adding more good things in a certain way is an improvement, and (iii) that objections to the argument from widespread value incomparability fail. (shrink)

Epicurus (in)famously argued that death is not harmful and therefore our standard reactions to it (like deep fear of death and going to great lengths to postpone it) are not rational, inaugurating an ongoing debate about the harm of death. Those who wish to resist this conclusion must identify the harm of death. But not any old harm will do. In order to resist both the claim that death is not harmful and the claim that our standard reactions to it (...) are irrational, we must identify a harm associated with death that rationalizes our standard reactions. We can divide the potential harm properties death might have along two axes: intrinsic/extrinsic and instrumental/final. This gives us four places to search for the harm of death. I argue that it is nowhere to be found. (shrink)

Virtue and the Moral Life brings together distinguished philosophers and theologians with younger scholars of consummate promise to produce ten essays that engage both academics and students of ethics. This collection explores the role virtues play in identifying the good life and the good society.

Under the hypothesis that every attribution of responsibility rests on the fact that an expectation has been breached, the author proposes to understand expectations as standards adopted by a community to evaluate specific events and allow the members of the community to search for an explanation of the events which breach expectations. After presenting this way of understanding expectations, their relationship with responsibility is analyzed, having in mind the mentioned hypothesis. To close the paper, the relationship between responsibility and expectations (...) is explored as an alternative to the idea that every attribution of responsibility supposes the breach of an obligation, whether moral or legal, by who is held responsible. (shrink)

Recent work in the philosophy of religion has resurrected Leibniz’s idea that there is a best possible world, perhaps ours. In particular, Klaas Kraay’s [2010] construction of a theistic multiverse and Nevin Climenhaga’s [2018] argument from infinite value theory are novel defenses of a best possible world. I do not think that there is a best world, and show how both Kraay and Climenhaga may be resisted. First, I argue that Kraay’s construction of a theistic multiverse can be resisted from (...) plausible assumptions about set theory. Next, I argue against the value-theoretic assumptions that underlie Climenhaga’s argument and show how to give an infinite value theory where there is no best world. (shrink)

Molinists offer a tempting bargain: accept divine middle knowledge, and reap solutions to a number of philosophical/theological problems. The prime benefit we are meant to reap from middle knowledge is a solution to the problem of freedom and providence. I argue that they cannot deliver. Even if we make metaphysical and semantic assumptions that have generally been considered friendly to Molinism, Molinism is in danger of undermining divine providence altogether. This “collapse" persists despite fairly uncontroversial assumptions, and plagues the best (...) Molinist theories defended in the literature. (shrink)

En este artículo, se presentan los resultados obtenidos de las actividades transversales sobre la ética realizadas en las asignaturas de Supervisión del Trabajo social I y Trabajo Social en las Organizaciones impartidas en el grado de Trabajo Social de la Universidad de Barcelona. La reflexión teórico-práctica sobre la importancia de la ética en la profesión a través de la resolución de un caso en ambas asignaturas y en la VI Jornada de Trabajo Social y Ética y II de Transversalidad permite (...) reflexionar sobre los principios y valores profesionales y la ética en la intervención en el marco de las organizaciones. (shrink)

THIS ESSAY EXPLORES THE POSSIBILITIES FOR RETRIEVING THE CONCEPT OF moral cooperation with evil for Christian social ethics. It begins with an exploration of the history of the concept and then argues that while discussions of social sin in political and environmental ethics correctly identify the problem of complicity, they fail to provide a way to distinguish among competing goods. The reality of competing goods presses the difficulties of making choices in a complex world referable to a duty to identify (...) evil and avoid furthering its course. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to critically assess John Rawls' theory of interntional justice, by examining its evolution from A Theory of Justice to The Law of Peoples. Under its latest version, Rawls' theory turns maximalist in its justification, though in its application it turns minimalist. His minimalism proves basically correct as long as it considrs human rights, free from their liberal cover, as the fundamental core of morals and politics in international relations. Nonetheless, his maximalism is not convincing (...) when justifying human rights by arguing them as the common result of the deliberations held at the Original Position by the representatives both of liberal societies and of hierachical societies. (shrink)

Este ensayo practica una hermenéutica a Totalidad e infinitoa partir de cinco epígrafes, abocados todos a explorar los múltiples sentidos de la propuesta levinasianaen torno al fundamentotrascendental de lo ético.El primer apartado busca analizar la relación entre lo que Lévinas designa como lafaz del sery el concepto de totalidad; en el epígrafe siguiente se explicita la diferencia existente, en el interior de la comprensión temporal de lo total, entre lohistóricoy loescatológico; en eltercerepígrafe se analizan los móviles que llevan a Lévinas (...) a sustituir lo metafísico por lo ético, revelando a este segundo saber como filosofíaprimera; y, finalmente, el cuarto y el quinto epígrafe quedan dedicados a entender dos conceptos que, entrelazados, condensan la matriz conceptual desde donde Lévinas acentúa la originalidad de su propuesta: el rostro del Otroy la idea de infinito. (shrink)

Language and Theory of Mind come together in communication, but their relationship has been intensely contested. I hypothesize that pragmatic markers connect language and Theory of Mind and enable their co-development and co-evolution through a positive feedback loop, whereby the development of one skill boosts the development of the other. I propose to test this hypothesis by investigating two types of pragmatic markers: demonstratives and articles. Pragmatic markers are closed-class words that encode non-representational information that is unavailable to consciousness, but (...) accessed automatically in processing. These markers have been associated with implicit Theory of Mind because they are used to establish joint attention and mark shared knowledge. Here I develop a theoretical account of how joint attention is the basis for children’s later tracking of common ground. The developmental path from joint attention to common ground parallels language change, with demonstrative forms giving rise to definite articles. This parallel opens the possibility of modelling the emergence of Theory of Mind in human development in tandem with its routinization across language communities and generations of speakers. I therefore propose that, in order to understand the relationship between language and Theory of Mind, we should study pragmatics at three parallel timescales: during language acquisition, language use, and language change. (shrink)

One of the best known arguments against the connectionist approach to artificial intelligence and cognitive science is that neural networks are black boxes, i.e., there is no understandable account of their operation. This difficulty has impeded efforts to explain how categories arise from raw sensory data. Moreover, it has complicated investigation about the role of symbols and language in cognition. This state of things has been radically changed by recent experimental findings in artificial deep learning research. Two kinds of artificial (...) deep learning networks, namely the convolutional neural network and the generative adversarial network have been found to possess the capability to build internal states that are interpreted by humans as complex visual categories, without any specific hints or any grammatical processing. This emergent ability suggests that those categories do not depend on human knowledge or the syntactic structure of language, while they do rely on their visual context. This supports a mild form of empiricism, while it does not assume that computational functionalism is true. Some consequences are extracted regarding the debate about amodal and grounded representations in the human brain. Furthermore, new avenues for research on cognitive science are open. (shrink)

Erik Wielenberg [2014] and Mark Murphy [2017], [2018] have defended a series of arguments for the conclusion that creatures are not good intrinsically. In response, I take two steps. First, I introduce a conception of intrinsic value that makes created intrinsic value unproblematic. Second, I respond to their arguments in turn. The first argument is from the sovereignty-aseity intuition and an analysis of intrinsicality that makes derivative good extrinsic. I challenge the analysis. The second comes from a conception of perfection (...) where God exhausts all possibilities for goodness. I challenge this conception. The third comes from the contingency of creation and the internal logic of intrinsic value. I challenge the assumption that connects the two. I then present an argument from reference magnetism that the only conception of God, God's perfections, and religious language that makes it plausible that the sentence "God is intrinsically good and creatures are not" is true involves a strongly univocalist position. A view that is either unstatable or places strong demands on our conception of God, God's perfections and religious language thereby loses plausibility. (shrink)

Quine taught us the difference between a theory’s ontology and its ideology. Ontology is the things a theory’s quantifiers must range over if it is true, Ideology is the primitive concepts that must be used to state the theory. This allows us to split the theoretical virtue of parsimony into two kinds: ontological parsimony and ideological parsimony. My goal is help illuminate the virtue of ideological parsimony by giving a criterion for ideological innocence—a rule for when additional ideology does not (...) count against parsimony. I propose the expressive power innocence criterion: if the ideology of theory one is expressively equivalent to that of theory two, then neither is ideologically simpler than the other. In its favor I offer the argument from accuracy, showing that any account of a theoretical virtue that is supposed to make theories that have it more likely to be true than theories that do not must respect it. Next I consider its ramifications, eliminating rival views and passing judgment on some arguments from parsimony that can be found in the literature. Finally, I consider two objections. First: I address an objection arising from the possibility of languages with a ‘primitive’ operator that allows us to list a theory’s primitives in the object-language. Second: I address an objection raised by Nelson Goodman against attempts to reckon simplicity by expressive power. Both objections fail. (shrink)

This w ork ana l yses the response that the Spanish State as a Nation-State, is g i ving to int e g ration of the immi g rant as citizen. Contra r y to those w ho consider that residence has to be the access w a y to citizenship in the f ace of the crisis of the Nation-State and the ge o g raphical mobility that the global econ o m y imposes on people, here the political (...) rel e v ance of nationality is defende d , as an und i vided ind i vidual share of belonging to the constituent p ow er in a harmonious relation with the fl e xi b le concept of residence. This research is d i vided into f i v e sections, in w hich nationality and the constituent p ow e r , the w a ys of access to Spanish nationali t y , the conflict of Nation or State, the characteristics of original nationality and f inal l y , the criteria used b y States to select the potential immi g rant. Th e critical ana l ysis of the Spanish l e gislation on nationality and citizenship t o gether with the theoretical debates, h a v e ena b led us to conclude with a proposal of l e g e fe r enda focussed on a radical refo r m of the concept of nationali t y. (shrink)

In this article, the manuscript of Codex Madrid I, Leonardo da Vinci's workshop drawings collection, is reviewed and the main mechanisms that appear in the aforesaid codex are analysed. It begins with a short reference to Leonardo da Vinci works and, subsequently, Leonardo's manuscripts and Codex Madrid I, in particular, are placed in their historical context. After analysing the historical scope of Codex Madrid I, a compilation of the 100 main drawings of the manuscript is made, composing nine Mechanisms Drawings (...) Boxes. Each Mechanisms Drawings Box is a collage made up of 10 to 14 drawings of mechanical elements that appear in Codex Madrid I, with a brief description of each drawing. This compilation illustrates the wide range of mechanical elements and simple mechanisms of Codex Madrid I, forming, as a whole, a complete treatise on mechanisms, understanding mechanisms as basic elements of machines. (shrink)

Ames, Roger. Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2011. 332 pp.