The purpose of this paper is to explore the connection between expressivism and disagreement. More in particular, the aim is to defend that one of the desiderata that can be derived from the study of disagreement, the explanation of ‘crossed disagreements’, can only be accommodated within a semantic theory that respects, at the meta-semantic level, certain expressivistic restrictions. We will compare contemporary dynamic expressivism with three different varieties of contextualist strategies to accommodate the specificities of evaluative language –indexical contextualism – (...) truth-conditional pragmatics –, pragmatic strategies using implicatures, and presuppositional accounts. Our conclusion will be that certain assumptions of expressivism are necessary in order to provide a semantic account of evaluative uses of language that can allow us to detect and prevent crossed disagreements. (shrink)

Contemporary theories of consciousness are based on widely different concepts of its nature, most or all of which probably embody aspects of the truth about it. Starting with a concept of consciousness indicated by the phrase “the feeling of what happens” (the title of a book by Antonio Damásio), we attempt to build a framework capable of supporting and resolving divergent views. We picture consciousness in terms of Reality experiencing itself from the perspective of cognitive agents. Each conscious experience is (...) regarded as composed of momentary feeling events that are combined by recognition and evaluation into extended conscious episodes that bind cognitive contents with a wide range of apparent durations (0.1 secs to 2 or more secs, for us humans, depending on circumstances and context). Three necessary conditions for the existence of consciousness are identified: a) a ground of Reality, envisaged as an universal field of potentiality encompassing all possible manifestations, whether material or 'mental'; b) a transitional zone, leading to; c) a manifest world with its fundamental divisions into material, 'informational' and quale-endowed aspects. We explore ideas about the nature of these necessary conditions, how they may relate to one another and whether our suggestions have empirical implications. (shrink)

The fact that the permeability between family and work scopes produces work-family conflict (WFC) is well established. As such, this research aims to check whether the unequal involvement in household chores between men and women is associated with increased WFC in women and men, interpreting the results also from the knowledge that arise from gender studies. A correlational study was carried out by means a questionnaire applied to 515 subjects (63% men) of two independent samples of Spanish men and women (...) without emotional relationship, who lived with their heterosexual partner. As expected, results firstly show unequal involvement in household chores by women and men as it is higher in women that in men, and the perception of partner involvement is lower in women that in men. Secondly, those unequal involvements relate differently to men and women on different ways of work-family interaction. They do not increase WFC in women comparing to men, although there are tangentially significant differences in work conflict (WC) and statistically significant in family conflict (FC). However, perception of partner involvement on household chores increases WFC both in men and in women but not WC nor FC. Nevertheless, increase on marital conflict (MC) by domestic tasks neither affect in a significant way WFC in women nor in men, but increase WC in both women and men and FC only in women. Results also confirm that subject involvement on household chores is not a significant predictor of WFC in women nor in men, and that MC by domestic tasks is a statistically significant predictor in women of WFC and FC, but not in men. Thus, results show that traditional gender roles still affect the way men and women manage the work and family interaction, although the increased WFC due to involvement in housework is not exclusive to women, but also occurs in men. Personal and institutional recommendations are made on the basis of these results to cope with these conflicts. (shrink)

Jonathan Schaffer has provided three putative counterexamples to the transitivity of grounding, and has argued that a contrastive treatment of grounding is able to provide a resolution to them, which in turn provides some motivation for accepting such a treatment. In this article, I argue that one of these cases can easily be turned into a putative counterexample to a principle which Schaffer calls differential transitivity. Since Schaffer's proposed resolution rests on this principle, this presents a dilemma for the contrastivist: (...) either he dismisses the third case, which weakens the motivation for accepting his treatment of grounding, or else he accepts it, in which case he is faced with a counterexample to a principle that his proposed resolution to the original cases depends on. In the remainder of the article, I argue that the prima facie most promising strategy the contrastivist could take, which is to place some restriction on which contrastive facts are admissible so as to rule out the purported counterexample to differential transitivity, faces some important difficulties. Although these difficulties are not insurmountable, they do pose a substantial challenge for the contrastivist. (shrink)

Lewis has objected to Armstrong's notion of a structural universal on the grounds that it violates the Principle of Uniqueness of Composition (PUC), which says that given some parts, there is only one whole that they compose. This paper reviews Armstrong's case for structural universals, and then attempts to reconcile structural universals with PUC by arguing for the existence of arrangement universals. The latter are not only a key to defending structural universals against Lewis' objection, but are in fact essential (...) to Armstrong's conception of structural universals in general. Three objections to my proposal are deflected, and two alternative proposals are shown to be inferior to it. (shrink)

Kris McDaniel has recently defended a criterion for being an ontological pluralist that classifies the quantifier variantist as one. In this paper, I argue that this is a mistake. There is an important difference between the two views, which is sometimes obscured by a common view in the metaphysics of fundamentality. According to the simple analysis, a language is ideal—it allows for a maximally metaphysically perspicuous description of reality—just in case all its primitives are perfectly natural. I argue that this (...) analysis struggles to distinguish quantifier variance from ontological pluralism, and then I discuss various accounts that can do better. I then propose a criterion for being an ontological pluralist that does not misclassify the quantifier variantist. Finally, I discuss some additional advantages of my proposal. (shrink)

The paper reads Kant’s notion of radical evil as anticipating and clarifying problematic aspects of what Arendt called ‘the banality of evil’. By reconstructing Arendt’s varied analyses of this notion throughout her later writings, I show that the main theoretical challenge posed by it concerns the adjudication of responsibility for evil deeds that seem to lack recognisable evil intentions. In order to clarify this issue, I turn to a canonical text in which the relationship between evil and responsibility plays a (...) central role: Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. Relying on an interpretation of this writing by Arendt’s mentor Karl Jaspers published in 1935, in evident connection to National Socialism, I challenge Arendt’s own interpretation of Kant’s notion of radical evil, which, I argue, represents an antecedent, rather than a contrast, to ‘the banality of evil’. For Kant, radical evil consists in the destruction of the person’s sense of responsibility, thus producing a self-exculpatory... (shrink)

According to the cohabitation account, all the persons that result from a fission event cohabit the same body prior to fission. This article concerns a problem for this account. Suppose Manuel and Jimena are suffering from an equally painful migraine. Unlike Jimena, however, Manuel will undergo fission. Assuming you have a spare painkiller, whom should you give it to? Intuitively, you have no more reason to give it to one or the other. The problem is that the cohabitation account suggests (...) otherwise. According to the account, there are two persons cohabiting Manuel’s body, in which case you should arguably give them the pill, since doing so alleviates the pain of more beings. One response argues that the two persons cohabiting Manuel’s body share one pain. Thus, giving them the pill alleviates no more pain than giving it to Jimena, and therefore you have no more reason to do one or the other. The goal of this article is to show that this response fails. (shrink)

It is often thought that bets on the truth of known propositions become irrational if the losing costs are high enough. This is typically taken to count against the view that knowledge involves assigning credence 1. I argue that the irrationality of such extreme bets can be explained by considering the interactions between the agent and the bookmaker. More specifically, the agent’s epistemic perspective is altered by the fact that the bookmaker proposes that unusual type of bet. Among other things, (...) being willing to offer a bet with unnecessarily harmful losing costs is likely to undermine the baseline level of trustworthiness required for it to be rational to engage in betting exchanges. This sort of explanation does not require granting either that we assign credence lower than 1 to known propositions or that knowledge is sensitive to practical stakes. Moreover, I show that, in our ordinary lives, we frequently perform actions that we know would be disastrous if certain conditions did not obtain. This behaviour can be seen as a form of implicit extreme betting and, nevertheless, it is often rational. (shrink)

Pérez Carballo adopts an epistemic utility theory picture of epistemic norms where epistemic utility functions measure the value of degrees of belief, and rationality consists in maximizing expected epistemic utility. Within this framework he seeks to show that we can make sense of the intuitive idea that some true beliefs—say true beliefs about botany—are more valuable than other true beliefs—say true beliefs about the precise number of plants in North Dakota. To do so, however, Pérez Carballo argues that (...) we must think of the value of epistemic states as consisting in more than simply accuracy. This sheds light on which questions it is most epistemically valuable to pursue. (shrink)

Niels Bohr acuñó la idea de complementariedad porque se encontraba, a causa del postulado cuántico, ante representaciones heterogéneas que no accedían a síntesis final. La Modernidad se caracterizó por su razón totalizante. En la actualidad, la crisis de la Modernidad nos impele a dar paso a la diferencia, que expresa la plurivocidad de la experiencia humana. La complementariedad se presenta como un paradigma de pensamiento adecuado para dar respuesta, sin perder los logros de la Modernidad, a las demandas posmodernas. Aquí (...) se presentan algunas ideas que ayudan a la definición y prolongación del mismo. (shrink)

Traditional expressivists want to preserve a contrast between the representational use of declarative sentences in descriptive domains and the non-representational use of declarative sentences in other areas of discourse. However, expressivists have good reasons to endorse minimalism about representational notions, and minimalism seems to threaten the existence of such a bifurcation. Thus, there are pressures for expressivists to become global anti-representationalists. In this paper I discuss how to reconstruct in non-representationalist terms the sort of bifurcation traditional expressivists were after. My (...) proposal is that the relevant bifurcation can be articulated by appeal to the contrast between relativistic and non-relativistic assertoric practices. I argue that this contrast, which can be specified without appeal to representational notions, captures the core intuitions behind the expressivist bifurcation. (shrink)

La sostenibilidad, por sí misma, no es un criterio útil para evaluar la adecuación y moralidad de un acto, dado que se trata de un concepto abierto, necesitado de conexión con diversos elementos heterogéneos. Por su parte, el concepto de desarrollo sostenible carece de concreción, pues se define en términos de necesidades futuras de muy difícil predicción. Como guía de nuestras acciones será más útil el concepto de desarrollo humano sostenible, formulado en términos de capacidades, fundamentado filosóficamente en un enfoque (...) aristotélico. Dicho enfoque nos permite definir una teoría política del bien común, centrada en la persona, con toda su integridad y complejidad. (shrink)

This study investigates whether there is a relation between the semantics of linguistic expressions that indicate temporal distance and the spatial properties of their co-speech gestures. To this date, research on time gestures has focused on features such as gesture axis, direction, and shape. Here we focus on a gesture property that has been overlooked so far: the distance of the gesture in relation to the body. To achieve this, we investigate two types of temporal linguistic expressions are addressed: proximal (...) (e.g., near future, near past) and distal (e.g., distant past, distant future). Data was obtained through the NewsScape library, a multimodal corpus of television news. A total of 121 co-speech gestures were collected and divided into the two categories. The gestures were later annotated in terms of gesture space and classified in three categories: (i) center, (ii) periphery, and (iii) extreme periphery. Our results suggest that gesture and language are coherent in the expression of temporal distance: when speakers locate an event far from them, they tend to gesture further from their body; similarly, when locating an event close to them, they gesture closer to their body. These results thus reveal how co-speech gestures also reflect a space-time mapping in the dimension of distance. (shrink)

In einem Brief an Christiaan Huygens aus dem Jahre 1679 schlägt Leibniz eine neue von der Cartesischen Algebra verschiedene Characteristica geometrica vor. Dieser Entwurf wurde von einigen Wissenschaftshistorikern als ein Vorläufer der Analysis situs oder Topologie betrachtet. Im Jahre 1846 erhielt Graßmann einen Preis, der ausgesetzt worden war für die Konstruktion eines geometrischen Kalküls, der dem Leibnizschen ähnlich sein sollte. Im folgenden kritisierte ich die heute gemeinhin vertretene Auffassung, die Geometnsche Analyse von Graßmann sei die legitime mathematische Weiterentwicklung der geometrischen (...) Konzeptionen von Leibniz. Zunächst breite ich einige wenig bekannte historische Fakten bezüglich Leibniz und Graßmann aus und dann gehe ich dazu über, Kritik an Graßmanns Lektüre des Leibnizschen Textes zu üben. Die Frage nach dem wissenschaftlichen Wert der Gedanken, die Leibniz Huygens gegenüber äußert, möchte ich jedoch bis zur bald zu erwartenden Publikation zahlreicher Leibniz-Texte zu diesem Thema offen lassen. (shrink)

La muerte de Hegel es tomada frecuentemente por los intérpretes como el acontecimiento que marca el final de la metafísica. Lo que generalmente se asume con ello no es sólo una determinada periodización de la historia de la filosofía, sino también una muy determinada interpretación de su “final” como agotamiento de algo que ha llegado al final de sus fuerzas y se desvanece como algo caduco y obsoleto. Pero si esto es así, ¿cómo explicar entonces los constantes repuntes del hegelianismo (...) a lo largo del s. XX? ¿Son las últimas apariciones de una sombra del pasado que se deja ver por última vez antes de desvanecerse por completo? ¿O son más bien las manifestaciones de un espíritu vivo que se niega a ser enterrado como un “perro muerto”? ¿Es verdaderamente la muerte de Hegel como la del perro, o más bien como la de espíritu que mira a la muerte a los ojos y emerge renovado de ella? ¿Son las diversas reacciones contra Hegel que se suceden a lo largo del pensamiento postmetafísico la clara expresión histórica de una nueva conciencia filosófica que ha conseguido romper el lazo con la metafísica, o son más bien el síntoma de una nueva enajenación del espíritu destinada a escribir un nuevo capítulo de la Historia universal? El objetivo de este artículo es evidenciar el hegelianismo como el momento decisivo y final del despliegue del espíritu en el camino hacia la autoconciencia universal. (shrink)

Archaeology has been an important source of metaphors for some of the key intellectuals of the 20th century: Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Alois Riegl and Michel Foucault, amongst many others. However, this power has also turned against archaeology, because the discipline has been dealt with perfunctorily as a mere provider of metaphors that other intellectuals have exploited. Scholars from different fields continue to explore areas in which archaeologists have been working for over two centuries, with little or no reference to (...) the discipline. It seems that excavation, stratigraphy or ruins only become important at a trans-disciplinary level when people from outside archaeology pay attention to them and somehow dematerialize them. Meanwhile, archaeologists have been usually more interested in borrowing theories from other fields, rather than in developing the theoretical potential of the same concepts that other thinkers find so useful. The time is ripe for archaeologists to address a wider audience and engage in theoretical debates from a position of equality, not of subalternity. Reclaiming Archaeology explores how archaeology can be useful to rethink modernity's big issues, and more specifically late modernity (broadly understood as the 20th and 21st centuries). The book contains a series of original essays, not necessarily following the conventional academic rules of archaeological writing or thinking, allowing rhetoric to have its place in disclosing the archaeological. In each of the four sections that constitute this book (method, time, heritage and materiality), the contributors deal with different archaeological tropes, such as excavation, surface/depth, genealogy, ruins, fragments, repressed memories and traces. They criticize their modernist implications and rework them in creative ways, in order to show the power of archaeology not just to understand the past, but also the present. Reclaiming Archaeology includes essays from a diverse array of archaeologists who have dealt in one way or another with modernity, including scholars from non-Anglophone countries who have approached the issue in original ways during recent years, as well as contributors from other fields who engage in a creative dialogue with archaeology and the work of archaeologists. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against Armstrong’s recent truthmaking account of possibility. I show that the truthmaking account presupposes modality in a number of different ways, and consequently that it is incapable of underwriting a genuine reduction of modality. I also argue that Armstrong’s account faces serious difficulties irrespective of the question of reduction; in particular, I argue that his Entailment and Possibility Principles are both false.

I argue that if there are nondisabled reasons to believep, then there cannot be nondisabled reasons to believe something incompatible withp. I first defend a restricted version of the view, which applies only to situations where the relevant agent has complete evidence. Then, I argue for a generalized version of the view, which holds regardless of the agent's evidence. As a related result, I show that, given plausible assumptions, there cannot be nondisabled reasons to believe something false.

“The First Person” is the paper where G. E. M. Anscombe supports the thesis that “I” is not a referring word. Mainly I deal with her argument against the indexical view of “I” from the scenario of the “A” user, who refers to himself as the person who is under the special observation of the “A” user. On the one hand, I put forward that a use of “A” might have a guaranteed reference in a semantic sense: a referential use (...) of “A” as a definite description guarantees the one reference to oneself. On the other hand, the indexical view is left untouched: the reference of “A” is not fixed by the self-reference rule, and thus “I” and “A” are not indistinguishable referring words. Also I explore the idea that unlike “A”, “I” has a guaranteed reference in an epistemic sense, being immune to error through misidentification. (shrink)

Se critica la concepción de Jonas del principio de responsabilidad, dado que las tecnociencias contemporáneas están cambiando las sociedades, y no únicamente la naturaleza biofísica. Se consideran brevemente las nuevas tecnologías de la información y las comunicaciones (TIC) como un buen ejemplo de tecnociencia. El principio de Jonas se toma como principio axiológico cuya formulación imperativa es problemática. Por medio de la distinción entre diferentes subsistemas de valores relevantes para las tecnociencias, concluimos que hay diferentes nociones de responsabilidad, relacionadas con (...) esa pluralidad de tipos de valores. (shrink)

This paper sets out a number of reasons for thinking that the framework of possible worlds, even when construed non-reductively, does not provide an adequate basis for an explanation of modality. I first consider a non-reductive version of Lewis' modal realism, and then move on to consider the ersatzist approach of Plantinga et al. My main complaint is that the framework of possible worlds gets the semantics and metaphysics of ordinary modal discourse wrong. That is, possible worlds do not give (...) us an adequate answer to the semantic question of what ordinary modal claims mean, nor do they give us an adequate answer to the metaphysical question of what makes such claims true. (shrink)

_Abstract:_ This paper poses the following questions: What is pluralistic hegemony? What are its defining features? Can populism be seen to possess them? We draw on Laclau’s thought to examine whether antagonism and “the name of the leader” as an empty signifier are incompatible with pluralism. With reference to various different perspectives regarding the relationship between pluralism, hegemony and populism, we present our own particular understanding. Our conceptualization distances itself from the notion that pluralism involves an endless proliferation of difference (...) and the agonistic view that seeks to sublimate antagonism, and also from Laclau’s “the name of the leader” as an archetypal signifier of populism. Rather than the political frontier being the antithesis of pluralism, we see it as its precondition, with the empty signifier not representing a problem in itself, except when its name is pre-given. We perceive pluralism as being open to contingency, as a logic of the production and flow of differences. (shrink)

I develop a non-representationalist account of mathematical thought, on which the point of mathematical theorizing is to provide us with the conceptual capacity to structure and articulate information about the physical world in an epistemically useful way. On my view, accepting a mathematical theory is not a matter of having a belief about some subject matter; it is rather a matter of structuring logical space, in a sense to be made precise. This provides an elegant account of the cognitive utility (...) of mathematics. Further, it makes explicit how the brand of non-representationalism I develop is compatible with there being substantive rationality constraints on our mathematical theorizing. (shrink)

Agronomic science or technoscience has an important role in contemporary times and is the focus of necessary philosophical investigations. The present study aimed to relate Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics with the Laudanian concept of philosophy of science, also applied to the philosophy of technology within the agronomic context. The central question to be answered is: can Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics apply to the understanding of agronomy? Given this, central references and commentators were selected, dividing the dialogue between the authors and the argumentation (...) into the following points: sciences, technologies, and Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics; agronomic traditions and their Laudanian progress; reaching the final possibility of intersections between Gadamer and Laudan, when reflecting on agronomy, especially on the theme of traditions. (shrink)

The essential role of creativity has been highlighted in several human knowledge areas. Regarding the neural underpinnings of creativity, there is evidence about the role of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) on divergent thinking (DT) and convergent thinking (CT). Transcranial stimulation studies suggest that the left DLPFC is associated with both DT and CT, whereas left IFG is more related to DT. However, none of the previous studies have targeted both hubs simultaneously and compared (...) transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and random noise stimulation (tRNS). Additionally, given the relationship between cognitive flexibility and creativity, we included it in order to check if the improvement in creativity may be mediated by cognitive flexibility. In this double-blind, between-subjects study, 66 healthy participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups (N = 22) that received a transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS), or sham for 20 min. The tDCS group received 1.5 mA with the anode over the left DLPFC and cathode over the left IFG. Locations in tRNS group were the same and they received 1.5 mA of high frequency tRNS (100–500 Hz). Divergent thinking was assessed before (baseline) and during stimulation with unusual uses (UU) and picture completion (PC) subtests from Torrance Creative thinking Test, whereas convergent thinking was evaluated with the remote association test (RAT). Stroop test was included to assess cognitive flexibility. ANCOVA results of performance under stimulation (controlling for baseline performance) showed that there were significant differences in PC (F = 3.35, p = 0.042, np2 = 0.10) but not in UU (F = 0.61, p = 0.546) and RAT (F = 2.65, p = 0.079) scores. Post-hoc analyses showed that tRNS group had significantly higher scores compared to sham (p = 0.004) in PC. More specifically, tRNS showed higher performance in fluency (p = 0.012) and originality (p = 0.021) dimensions of PC compared to sham. Regarding cognitive flexibility, we did not find any significant effect of any of the stimulation groups (F = 0.34, p = 0.711). Therefore, no further mediation analyses were performed. Finally, the group that received tDCS reported more adverse effects than sham group (F = 3.46, p = 0.035). Altogether, these results suggest that tRNS may have some advantages over tDCS in DT. (shrink)

En el presente artículo se ensaya un diagnóstico crítico de la situación vigente en educación, desde la conjunción de la filosofía neoliberal con la tradición filosófica política de la educación latinoamericana, con el propósito de establecer e instanciar la pregunta por el rol del profesor y el quehacer de la pedagogía de la liberación en la actualidad latinoamericana. La investigación en su contexto más amplio -en cuya base se encuentra la _filosofía política de la educación nuestroamericana_- se propone propiciar un (...) diálogo participativo y reflexivo que sumerja la discusión actual en educación y política en una categoría como la esclavitud social y escolar, siempre con el imperativo de pensar _desde_ y _para _Latinoamérica. (shrink)

Resumen: Las políticas europeas de inmigración y refugio han sido criticadas por quienes las consideran emblemas de una concepción que pone en grave riesgo elementos básicos del Estado de Derecho y aun de la democracia. El epítome es la aparición de mercados de esclavos en Libia, a las puertas de la UE, un Estado fallido que la UE y sus Estados miembros se empeñan en elevar a la condición de partner privilegiado de sus políticas de externalización. Tomando como base los (...) análisis de Lochak, Agambem y Bauman y la concepción de la propuesta por el filósofo camerunés Mbembé, desarrollando tesis de Foucault (biopolítica), se proponen algunas alternativas que vienen presididas por la exigencia de reconocimiento y garantía de derechos básicos de inmigrantes y refugiados. Abstract: European immigration and refuge policies have been criticized by those who see them as emblems of a conception that puts in serious risk basic elements of the Rule of Law and even of democracy. The epitome is the emergence of slave markets in Libya (at the gates of the EU), a failed state that, nevertheless, the EU and its Member States are determined to raise to the status of privileged partner of their outsourcing policies. Based on the analysis of Lochak, Agambem and Bauman and the conception of the proposed by the Cameroonian philosopher Mbembé who develops Foucault's thesis about biopolitics, this text will propose some alternatives that are leaded by the requirement of recognition and guarantee of rights of immigrants and refugees. (shrink)

En “La religión dentro de los límites de la mera razón”, Kant afirma que “el hombre es malo por naturaleza”. Esta aseveración ha llevado a malentendidos en la literatura en varios niveles. Uno de estos se basa en la falta de atención dada al hecho que Kant intenta demostrar esta afirmación mediante una “investigación antropológica”. Por otro lado, es común interpretar este pasaje a través de lecturas como la de Allison, quien sostiene que la prueba es a priori y, por (...) ello, carece de elementos empíricos. Sin embargo, los defensores de ambas posiciones creen que tienen evidencia textual que respalda sus argumentos. En este sentido, basándonos en lo argüido por Forschner, se propone que la prueba es, de hecho, de naturaleza antropológica y que no hay evidencia textual ni sistémica que respalde posiciones como las de Allison. (shrink)

En este texto discutiremos dos elementos de la propuestas de Habermas sobre el rol de la religión en la esfera pública: la naturaleza especial del lenguaje religioso y las posibilidades de la traducción entre un lenguaje religioso y uno secular. Esto lo haremos a partir de las reflexiones de Wittgenstein sobre la naturaleza del lenguaje y sobre los diferentes sentidos de la comprensión. Mostraremos que estas últimas pueden ser valiosas para justificar por qué el lenguaje religioso necesita un análisis diferenciado (...) y para explicar por qué y cómo, a pesar de lo anterior, la traducción es posible. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the fundamental axiological claim of the New Natural Law Theory, according to which human life has an intrinsically valuable, cannot be defended within the framework assumed by the New Natural Law Theory itself, and further, that such a claim turns out to be false relative to a wider eudaimonistic framework that the Natural Law theorist is committed to accept. I do this this by adopting a dialectical standpoint which excludes any assumptions that could be (...) denied by the New Natural Law theorist, except for the axiological claim, and show that the New Natural Law theorist cannot argue for the axiological claim's plausibility, and moreover, that in such a setting the New Natural Law theorist is compelled to replace the axiological claim by the claim that human life is instrumentally valuable. La afirmación axiológica fundamental de la Nueva Ley Natural según la cual la vida humana tiene un valor intrínseco, no puede ser defendida dentro del marco teórico asumido por dicha teoría, y resulta ser falsa en un marco eudemonista más amplio, que debe ser aceptado por el teórico de la ley natural. Se asume una posición dialéctica que excluye cualquier suposición que pueda ser negada por el teórico de la NLN, con excepción de la afirmación axiológica, y se demuestra que él no puede mostrar la plausibilidad de la afirmación axiológica; más aún, que se ve forzado a reemplazar la afirmación axiológica por la aceptación de que la vida humana tiene un valor instrumental. (shrink)

Hay ciertas nociones dentro de la filosofía de Kant que desempeñan un papel clave, tales como “autoconciencia” (_Selbstbewusstsein_) y “autonomía” (_Autonomie_). Nuestro objetivo es ofrecer algunas indicaciones sobre cómo comprender estas nociones, en especial en cuanto a cómo ha de entenderse su prefijo ‘auto-’ (_Auto_-, _Selbst_-). A pesar de que en algún sentido pueda comprenderse que hay una relación reflexiva en estos actos, aquello no es el punto fundamental, sino el hecho de que tales actos son realizados por el sujeto (...) mismo, es decir, que son actos _propios_. Con la adición del prefijo ‘auto-’ no se está refiriendo a algo distinto de lo que designa la expresión sin el prefijo, sino al _modo_ o al _cómo_ del acto designado por esta última. (shrink)

En los tiempos actuales, una materia que viene estudiando la relación entre derecho y bioética es la que se conoce como bioderecho o biojurídica, la cual trata de ofrecer una respuesta a los problemas más polémicos de la ética de la vida. Para suministrar elementos al contenido de tal disciplina se exponen en este trabajo algunos argumentos del derecho natural clásico aristotélico-tomista, mostrando cómo la corriente positivista del derecho adolece de razonamientos fuertes y, sobre todo, reivindicando la idea de dignidad (...) de la persona humana basada en su naturaleza humana. Este dato ontológico es la clave para entender el bioderecho o biojurídica y, en general, los problemas de la bioética. (shrink)

En este texto comento el libro Hannah Arendt: libertad política y totalitarismo, de Fina Birulés. El libro presenta el pensamiento de Hannah Arendt en términos de una actividad imbricada en la praxis y en la experiencia. En este sentido, Birulés destaca dos elementos que marcaron la trayectoria intelectual de Arendt, el choque con la realidad del totalitarismo y el choque intelectual con sus maestros Karl Kaspers y Martin Heidegger. El acontecimiento político del totalitarismo lleva a la autora alemana y judía (...) a admitir que es necesaria una nueva comprensión de la política desvinculada de la filosofía política universalista y abstracta. Ésta es expresada por el término cristalización, en sintonía con Walter Benjamin. La vita activa requiere de un pensar autónomo, en el que es central la categoría de natalidad. (shrink)

Many think that expressivists have a special problem with negation. I disagree. For if there is a problem with negation, I argue, it is a problem shared by those who accept some plausible claims about the nature of intentionality. Whether there is any special problem for expressivists turns, I will argue, on whether facts about what truth-conditions beliefs have can explain facts about basic inferential relations among those beliefs. And I will suggest that the answer to this last question is, (...) on most plausible attempts at solving the problem of intentionality, ‘no’. (shrink)

El presente artículo propone una clave de lectura para entender el rol estructural de saber y verdad, expuesto por Hegel en la introducción de la Fenomenología del espíritu, a partir del principio de apercepción kantiano y la noción de múltiple sin más. Se verá que esto desemboca en una escisión originaria que Hegel primeramente rechaza en el escrito sobre la Diferencia, pero que luego debe suponer en la introducción de la Fenomenología para que este proyecto cobre consistencia.