In this paper we try to study some aspects in the evolution of the concept of philosophy in Eriugena's thought. Two moments that have been differentiated, are mainly defined by the concepts of reason and unity, and by those of intellect and infinity respectively.

This article propose some ret1ections about the existential significance of the eriugenian concept of original sin. This, together with the divine grace, permits John Scot to understand the historical and worldly configuration of the existence and the possibility of realization in it and from it of the natural human condition of imago Dei.

8 March, now known as International Women’s Day, is a day for feminist claims where demonstrations are organized in over 150 countries, with the participation of millions of women all around the world. These demonstrations can be viewed as collective rituals and thus focus attention on the processes that facilitate different psychosocial effects. This work aims to explore the mechanisms involved in participation in the demonstrations of 8 March 2020, collective and ritualized feminist actions, and their correlates associated with personal (...) well-being and collective well-being, collective efficacy and collective growth, and behavioral intention to support the fight for women’s rights. To this end, a cross-cultural study was conducted with the participation of 2,854 people from countries in Latin America and Europe, with a retrospective correlational cross-sectional design and a convenience sample. Participants were divided between demonstration participants and non-demonstrators or followers who monitored participants through the media and social networks. Compared with non-demonstrators and with males, female and non-binary gender respondents had greater scores in mechanisms and criterion variables. Further random-effects model meta-analyses revealed that the perceived emotional synchrony was consistently associated with more proximal mechanisms, as well as with criterion variables. Finally, sequential moderation analyses showed that proposed mechanisms successfully mediated the effects of participation on every criterion variable. These results indicate that participation in 8M marches and demonstrations can be analyzed through the literature on collective rituals. As such, collective participation implies positive outcomes both individually and collectively, which are further reinforced through key psychological mechanisms, in line with a Durkheimian approach to collective rituals. (shrink)

A lo largo de la historia, el devenir de los acontecimientos ha hecho que determinados autores, que quizá en su época gozaron de fama y popularidad, hayan caído en el olvido o hayan sido forzados al ostracismo. Un caso clásico sería el del poeta y narrador estadounidense William Gilmore Simms quien, antes de la Guerra de Secesión, disfrutó de los laureles de la fama y la admiración de sus contemporáneos. Sin embargo, su apoyo a la causa confederada ha hecho de (...) él un autor prácticamente olvidado hoy en día. El caso de Joseph de Maistre es similar, pues también se enmarca dentro del apoyo a las causas perdidas o, más concretamente, a las causas que, andando el tiempo, no han resultado las vencedoras. Su apoyo a la causa contrarevolucionaria en el momento en que Europa se abría a la contemporaneidad social y política lo ha convertido en una isla en el pensamiento moderno, a pesar de que en su momento fuera un intelectual conocido y un pensador político respetado en los círculos conservadores. Como bien pone de manifiesto la Dra. Guerrero en su introducción, habría que esperar hasta 2007, para que la figura del senador saboyano volviera a los círculos académicos franceses, cuando Philippe Sollers escribió su ya clásico “Elogio de un maldito”. [...]. (shrink)

The philosopher's paper Alonso, Ángel Castigo y derecho sin libre albedrío ni responsabilidad Punishment and law without free will and no responsibility López Corredoira, Martín De los metarrelatos a la "muerte de los intelectuales". Una mirada al "Humanismo impenitente" desde la reconstrucción neonietzscheana postmoderna From meta - reports to the "demise of intellectuals". A view of "impenitent humanism" from post-modern neo-Nietzschean deconstruction Mora García, José Pascual Kant y el método de trascender en la filosofía de Karl Jaspers Kant (...) and the transcendental method in the Karl Jaspers philosophy Portuondo Pajón, Gladys L. La creatio ex Nihilo y sus implicaciones fenomenológicas en Levitas La creatio ex Nihilo and it's phenomenology implications in Levinas Ramírez, Gustavo ¿Qué significa meditar? What does it mean to meditate? Ramis Muscato, Pompeyo Sobre la violencia: Orígenes y antídoto Regarding violence: Origens and antidotes Vasquez, Eduardo Interdisciplinares Louis Kahn: Filosofía, arte y arquitectura Louis Kahn: Philosophy, arte and architecture Arellano Spinetti, Leonardo La oligarquía venezolana en el siglo XXI: Del estereotipo al anacronismo The Venezuelan oligarchy in the XXI century: From the stereotype to the anachronism Varela Manrique, Luz Coromoto Traducciones El arte de pensar Maurois, André Friedrich Nietzsche. 1844-1900. (shrink)

La primera parte del presente estudio (J.M. Panea) aborda el pensamiento de Giambattista Vico en torno a conceptos como utopía, historia y deber; y muestra cómo Vico nos abre a una concepción trágica de la acción. La segunda parte (F.H. Llano) pretende realizar, desde un marco iusfilosófico, un análisis introspectivo que ponga de manifiesto los principales hitos y fundamentos del pensamiento jurídico viquiano, destacando en particular aquellos aspectos que, por su incidencia en la actual Teoría del Derecho, presentan un mayor (...) interés científico. (shrink)

The author discusses the argument between alan r white and gilbert ryle concerning whether or not one can talk of the use of a sentence. His contention is that they did not notice that there are two types of 'what for' questions, And therefore white's argument against ryle does not hold. (staff).

The assembly of products or components by operators in industries is a complex task with recurring problems. In these processes, operators often make errors that can lead to defective products. Therefore, they need to be inspected later to verify their correct assembly. The main problems are caused by several reasons including high employee turnover, lack of experience in manufacturing specific products or confusion in interpreting instructions to assemble similar components. In this paper, a novel structured language aimed to describe the (...) required actions to manufacture a product in industrial assembly environments is presented. The main contribution is to provide a formal language to feed automatic systems that can verify through visual control whether the actions performed by the operator are carried out following the standard described by this language. In general, the use of this formal language will allow to minimize the negative impact of errors during assembly and to reduce waste in many forms in the industry. (shrink)

José L. Zalabardo puts forward a new interpretation of central ideas in Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus concerning the structure of reality and our representations of it in thought and language. He presents the picture theory of propositional representation as Wittgenstein's solution to the problems that he had found in Bertrand Russell's theories of judgment. Zalabardo then attributes to Wittgenstein the view that facts and propositions are ultimate indivisible units, not the result of combining their constituents. This is Wittgenstein's solution to (...) the problem of the unity of facts and propositions. Finally, Zalabardo shows that Wittgenstein's views on the analysability of everyday propositions as truth functions of elementary propositions arise from his views on the epistemology of logic: this offers a new perspective on the nature of Tractarian analysis. (shrink)

José L. Zalabardo defends a pragmatist account of what grounds the meaning of central semantic discourses--ascriptions of truth, of propositional attitudes, and of meanings. He argues that it is the procedures that regulate acceptance and rejection that give the sentences of these discourses their meanings, and explores the application of the pragmatist template to ethical discourse. The pragmatist approach is presented as an alternative to representationalist accounts of the meaning grounds of declarative sentences, according to which a sentence has (...) the meaning it has as a result of links with the bits of the world that it purports to represent. Zalabardo develops a version of the open-question argument to support the claim that the meaning grounds of the discourses he focuses on cannot receive representationalist accounts. It is generally assumed that a declarative sentence cannot perform the function of representing the world unless it has a representationalist meaning ground. Zalabardo rejects this assumption, arguing that sentences with pragmatist meaning grounds can represent the world in exactly the same sense that sentences with representationalist meaning grounds do. This requires that there are states of affairs that the target sentences represent as obtaining, and Zalabardo develops an account of the nature of the states of affairs that can play this role for sentences with pragmatist meaning grounds. Pragmatist Semantics concludes by developing the suggestion that the meaning grounds of all our representational discourses might be ultimately pragmatist. (shrink)

Psychologists have demonstrated the value of diversity – particularly diversity of viewpoints – for enhancing creativity, discovery, and problem solving. But one key type of viewpoint diversity is lacking in academic psychology in general and social psychology in particular: political diversity. This article reviews the available evidence and finds support for four claims: (1) Academic psychology once had considerable political diversity, but has lost nearly all of it in the last 50 years. (2) This lack of political diversity can undermine (...) the validity of social psychological science via mechanisms such as the embedding of liberal values into research questions and methods, steering researchers away from important but politically unpalatable research topics, and producing conclusions that mischaracterize liberals and conservatives alike. (3) Increased political diversity would improve social psychological science by reducing the impact of bias mechanisms such as confirmation bias, and by empowering dissenting minorities to improve the quality of the majority's thinking. (4) The underrepresentation of non-liberals in social psychology is most likely due to a combination of self-selection, hostile climate, and discrimination. We close with recommendations for increasing political diversity in social psychology. (shrink)

Reliabilist accounts of knowledge are widely seen as having the resources for blocking sceptical arguments, since these arguments appear to rely on assumptions about the nature of knowledge that are rendered illegitimate by reliabilist accounts. The goal of this book is to assess the main arguments against the possibility of knowledge, and its conclusions challenge this consensus. The book articulates and defends a theory of knowledge that belongs firmly in the truth-tracking tradition, and argues that although the theory has the (...) resources for blocking the main standard lines of sceptical reasoning, there is a sceptical argument against which the theory offers no defence, as it doesn’t rely on any assumptions that the theory would render illegitimate. The book ends with the suggestion that the problem might have a metaphysical solution—that although the sceptical argument may make no illegitimate epistemological assumptions, it does rest on a questionable account of the nature of cognition. (shrink)

In Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Saul Kripke rejects some of the most popular accounts of what meaning facts consist in on the grounds that they fail to accommodate the normative character of meaning. I argue that a widespread interpretation of Kripke's argument is incorrect. I contend that the argument does not rest on the contrast between descriptive and normative facts, but on the thought that speakers' uses of linguistic expressions have to be justified. I suggest that the line (...) of reasoning that I attribute to Kripke can be seen as putting pressure on the idea that predicate satisfaction is to be explained in terms of a relation between predicates and properties. (shrink)

The subject matter of this paper is the view that it is correct, in an absolute sense, to believe a proposition just in case the proposition is true. I take issue with arguments in support of this view put forward by Nishi Shah and David Velleman.

In the recent literature on confirmation there are two leading approaches to the provision of a probabilistic measure of the degree to which a hypothesis is confirmed by evidence. The first is to construe the degree to which evidence E confirms hypothesis H as a function that is directly proportional to p and inversely proportional to p . I shall refer to this as the probability approach. The second approach construes the notion as a function that is directly proportional to (...) the true-positive rate – the probability of the evidence if the hypothesis is true, p – and inversely proportional to the false-positive rate – the probability of the evidence if the hypothesis is false, p . These reverse conditional probabilities – of the evidence on the truth or falsehood of the hypothesis – are sometimes known as likelihoods. I shall refer to the approach to confirmation that uses them as the likelihood approach.For each of these approaches, there are two obvious options as to how to define the confirmation function. The first is to define it as the difference between the magnitude that is treated as increasing confirmation or p ) and the magnitude that is treated as decreasing confirmation or p ). The second is to define confirmation as the quotient of these two magnitudes.This yields four different measures of confirmation, represented in the following table: Differences RatiosProbabilities PD = p – p1 PR = Graphic2Likelihoods LD = p – p3 LR = Graphic4All these measures agree on whether or not E provides some support for H. Intuitively, we want to say that E provides some support for H just in case learning that E is true would make us assign a higher probability to H, i.e. when p(H …. (shrink)

The paper argues against Sosa’s claim that sensitivity cannot be differentially supported over safety as the right requirement for knowledge. Its main contention is that, although all sensitive beliefs that should be counted as knowledge are also safe, some insensitive true beliefs that shouldn’t be counted as knowledge are nevertheless safe.

The paper deals with a version of the principle that a belief source can be a knowledge source only if the subject knows that it is reliable. I argue that the principle can be saved from the main objections that motivate its widespread rejection: the claim that it leads to skepticism, the claim that it forces us to accept counterintuitive knowledge ascriptions and the claim that it is incompatible with reliabilist accounts of knowledge. I argue that naturalist epistemologists should reject (...) these claims. I introduce my treatment of the principle by considering the analogous situation posed by the closure principle. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I argue that some of the central doctrines of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus can be seen as addressing the twin problems of semantic unity and...

Understanding compositional practices is a major goal of musicology and music theory. Compositional practices have been traditionally viewed as disembodied and idiosyncratic. This view makes it hard to integrate musical creativity into our understanding of the general cognitive processes underlying meaning construction. To overcome this unnecessary isolation of musical composition from cognitive science, in this conceptual analysis, we approach compositional processes with the analytic tools of blending theory, material anchoring, and enaction. Our case study is Iannis Xenakis’ use of sieves (...) for distributing rhythmic patterns inPsappha. Though disregarded in previous accounts, the timeline and the gearwheel provide crucial conceptual templates for anchoring Xenakis’ idea of time for this score. This case study of conceptual integration templates for temporal representation seeks to gain insight into musical creativity, embodiment, and blending, especially into how virtual interactions with material structures facilitate the construction of complex meanings. (shrink)

I discuss the account of logical consequence advanced in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. I argue that the role that elementary propositions are meant to play in this account can be used to explain two remarkable features that Wittgenstein ascribes to them: that they are logically independent from one another and that their components refer to simple objects. I end with a proposal as to how to understand Wittgenstein's claim that all propositions can be analysed as truth functions of elementary propositions.

James Shaw has written an excellent book on Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations. It manages to provide fresh perspectives on a topic on which it seemed.

I take issue with Robert Brandom’s claim that on an analysis of knowledge based on objective probabilities it is not possible to provide a stable answer to the question whether a belief has the status of knowledge. I argue that the version of the problem of generality developed by Brandom doesn’t undermine a truth-tracking account of noninferential knowledge that construes truth-tacking in terms of conditional probabilities. I then consider Sherrilyn Roush’s claim that an account of knowledge based on probabilistic tracking (...) faces a version of the problem of generality. I argue that the problems she raises are specific to her account, and do not affect the version of the view that I have advanced. I then consider Brandom’s argument that the cases that motivate reliabilist epistemologies are in principle exceptional. I argue that he has failed to make a cogent case for this claim. I close with the suggestion that the representationalist approach to knowledge that I endorse and Brandom rejects is in principle compatible with the kind of pragmatist approach to belief and truth that both Brandom and I endorse. (shrink)

Este trabajo pretende mostrar las líneas generales de la propuesta humeana de una teoría de la evolución de las instituciones en clave utilitarista; en segundo lugar, analizará la objeción interna a esta teoría que supone la existencia de posibles sujetos no cooperadores pero inteligentes, en tercer lugar, intentará también defender dicha teoría de la acusación externa de no tener un auténtico carácter normativo; y al no haber desarrollado el propio Hume con detalle su contestación al problema del conflicto Moral/Racionalidad, tal (...) y como surge en el contexto de su discusión de la Knavery, finalmente, y en cuarto lugar, este trabajo, yendo en un cierto sentido algo más allá de lo propuesto por Hume, ensayará un argumento post-humeano en torno a ese conflicto, basado, por una parte, en el reconocimiento de la multidimensionalidad de la Moral, así como en la paralela aceptación de la necesidad de un ajuste contextual de ésta, asentado sobre consideraciones primaria, que no exclusivamente, utilitaristas. (shrink)

The paper deals with the interpretation of Wittgenstein's views on the power of occurrent mental states to sort objects or states of affairs as in accord or in conflict with them, as presented in the rule-following passages of the Philosophical Investigations. I shall argue first that the readings advanced by Saul Kripke and John McDowell fail to provide a satisfactory construal of Wittgenstein's treatment of a platonist account of this phenomenon, according to which the sorting power of occurrent mental states (...) is to be explained by reference to the mind's ability to grasp universals. I contend that the argument that Kripke extracts from Wittgenstein's discussion doesn't succeed in undermining the platonist position. Then I argue that McDowell's reading exhibits a more serious shortcoming: the position that he ascribes to Wittgenstein is indistinguishable from the platonist account. Then I put forward a proposal as to how to articulate the relationship between Wittgenstein's views and the platonist position. (shrink)

To the sceptic's contention that I don't know that I have hands because I don't know that there is an external world, the Moorean replies that I know that there is an external world because I know that I have hands. Crispin Wright has argued that the Moorean move is illegitimate, and has tried to block it by limiting the applicability of the principle of the transmission of knowledge by inference—the principle that recognising the validity of an inference from known (...) premises generates knowledge of the conclusion. I argue that, in the presence of some plausible assumptions, blocking the Moorean move does not require limiting the applicability of the transmission principle. Then I argue against Jim Pryor's contention that the Moorean argument transmits evidential support from its premises to its conclusion. (shrink)

To the sceptic's contention that I don't know that I have hands because I don't know that there is an external world, the Moorean replies that I know that there is an external world because I know that I have hands. Crispin Wright has argued that the Moorean move is illegitimate, and has tried to block it by limiting the applicability of the principle of the transmission of knowledge by inference—the principle that recognising the validity of an inference from known (...) premises generates knowledge of the conclusion. I argue that, in the presence of some plausible assumptions, blocking the Moorean move does not require limiting the applicability of the transmission principle. Then I argue against Jim Pryor's contention that the Moorean argument transmits evidential support from its premises to its conclusion. (shrink)

In this paper I assess the two central ingredients of Laurence BonJour’s position on empirical knowledge that have survived the transition from his earlier coherentist views to his current endorsement of the doctrine of the given: his construal of the problem of the epistemic regress and his rejection of an internalist solution to the problem. The bulk of the paper is devoted to a critical assessment of BonJour’s arguments against externalism. I argue that they fail to put real pressure on (...) externalism, as they rely on a highly questionable conception of epistemic rationality and responsibility. Then, more briefly, I take issue with BonJour’s endorsement of the irrelevance thesis—the claim that even if externalism were true it would not offer a satisfactory solution to the epistemic regress problem. I contend that he is not entitled to subscribe this thesis unless he is prepared to abandon his construal of the problem. (shrink)

I provide a construal of the epistemic regress problem and I take issue with the contention that a foundationalist solution is incompatible with an internalist account of warrant. I sketch a foundationalist solution to the regress problem that respects a plausible version of internalism. I end with the suggestion that the strategy that I have presented is not available only to the traditional versions of foundationalism that ascribe foundational status to experiential beliefs. It can also be used to generate a (...) version of internalist foundationalism based on reliabilist principles. (shrink)

The main aim of the present study is to identify which mental footnotes (related to Adam Smith’s Capitalism) have more weight in the current cognitive processing of participants. We used the “Wealth of Nations” as the main source of the concepts from this author. An experimental design (based on a previous qualitative research) was carried out to test the influence of mental footnotes on the citizens’ decision on the validity of the concepts. The findings point out that there are strong, (...) current, mental footnotes related to the Adam Smith’s concept of price. People mostly understand that, for every product, the entrepreneur has to recover their initial investment and to gain a profit. On the other hand, the fact that entrepreneurs have to pay some expenditures and they need to have profits determines the price of products. (shrink)

I use some ideas of Keith DeRose's to develop an (invariantist!) account of why sceptical reasoning doesn't show that I don't know that I'm not a brain in a vat. I argue that knowledge is subject to the risk-of-error constraint: a true belief won’t have the status of knowledge if there is a substantial risk of the belief being in error that hasn’t been brought under control. When a substantial risk of error is present (i.e. beliefs in propositions that are (...) false in nearby worlds), satisfying the constraint requires bringing the risk under control. This is achieved either by sensitivity, i.e. you wouldn’t have the belief if it were false, or by identifying evidence for the proposition. However, when the risk of error is not substantial (i.e. beliefs in propositions that are not false in nearby worlds), the constraint is satisfied by default. My belief that I am not a brain in a vat is insensitive and I have no evidence for it, but since it is not false in nearby worlds, it satisfies the constraint by default. (shrink)

An introduction to the basic concepts and results of contemporary logic, including a discussion of the basic mathematical tools needed to master the technical aspects of the subject.

I argue that our procedures for determining whether ascriptions of a predicate represent things as being a certain way are ultimately pragmatic. Pragmatic procedures are not subject to validation by the referential procedure – determining whether there is a property playing the role of its referent. Predicates can represent even if we can't provide an independent identification of its referent. For these predicates, the speakers’ knowledge of how they represent objects as being would have to be construed in terms of (...) the ascription practices they associate with the predicates. The same approach can be applied to semantic predicates, such as ‘is representational’ or ‘refers to’. They can be treated as representational even if we can't provide an independent identification of their referents. The availability of this position undermines accounts of the referents of semantic predicates in naturalistic terms. (shrink)

The paper addresses the question whether semantic naturalism is undermined by the thought that semantic concepts are normative.

Many interpreters of the Tractatus accept that the book endorses an argument for simples based on the reflection that, since complexes exist only contingently, if names referred to complexes the propositions in which they figure would lack sense if their referents went out of existence. More specifically, most interpreters read 2.0211-2.0212 as putting forward this argument. My main goal in this paper is to attack this reading and to put forward an alternative. I argue that there is no good reason (...) for thinking that the Tractatus advances this argument. I argue that 2.0211-2, in particular, should not be read in this way, and put forward an alternative reading of the passage. (shrink)

Information theoretic semantics proposes to construe predicate reference in terms of nomological relations between distal properties and properties of representational mental events. Research on the model has largely concentrated on the problem of choosing the nomological relation in terms of which distal properties are to be singled out. I argue that, in addition to this, an information theoretic account has to provide a specification of which properties of representational mental events will play a role in determining reference, qua bearers of (...) nomological relations. I contend that this task poses a serious additional challenge to the viability of the model. (shrink)

The paper develops an account of semantic notions which occupies a middle ground between antirealism and traditional forms of realism, using some ideas from the work of John McDowell. The position is based on a contrast between two points of view from which we might attempt to characterize our linguistic practices from the cosmic exile s point of view and from the midst of language as a going concern. The contrast is drawn in terms of whether our characterization of our (...) linguistic practices is taken to result from engagement in the very same practices that we are trying to characterize. The position takes realism to be correct when understood as an account from the internal perspective, but incorrect when taken as an account from the external perspective. However, the intelligibility of the question as to what our practices would look like from the cosmic exile s point of view is presented as problematic. (shrink)

The paper deals with our ability to classify objects as being of a certain kind on the basis of information provided by the senses (empirical classification) and to ascribe empirical predicates to objects on the basis of these classificatory verdicts (empirical predication). I consider, first, the project of construing the episodes in which this ability is exercised as involving universals. I argue that this construal faces epistemological problems concerning our access to the universals that it invokes. I present the empiricist (...) strategy for dealing with these problems by appeal to sensory qualities, and argue that it rests on a mistake. Then I turn to sketching an account of our faculty of empirical classification and predication which doesn't invoke universals. The account takes as its starting point the nominalist construal of sense experience to be found in the work of C. I. Lewis and Nelson Goodman. I argue that this construal has the resources for explaining some of the central features of the practice of empirical predication. There are those who feel that our ability to understand general terms ... would be inexplicable unless there were universals as objects of apprehension. And there are those who fail to detect, in such appeal to a realm of entities over and above the concrete objects in space and time, any explanatory value. W. V. O. Quine, ‘Logic and the Reification of Universals’. (shrink)

According to actualism, modal reality is constructed out of valuations (combinations of truth values for all propositions). According to possibilism, modal reality consists in a set of possible worlds, conceived as independent objects that assign truth values to propositions. According to possibilism, accounts of modal reality can intelligibly disagree with each other even if they agree on which valuations are contained in modal reality. According to actualism, these disagreements (possibilist disagreements) are completely unintelligible. An essentially actualist semantics for modal propositional (...) logic specifies which sets of valuations are compatible with the meanings of the truth-functional connectives and modal operators without drawing on formal resources that would enable us to represent possibilist disagreements. The paper discusses the availability of an essentially actualist semantics for modal propositional logic. I argue that the standard Kripkean semantics is not essentially actualist and that other extant approaches also fail to provide a satisfactory essentially actualist semantics. I end by describing an essentialist actualist semantics for modal propositional logic. (shrink)

I offer an interpretation of Wittgenstein's claim that Russell's theory of judgment fails to show that it's not possible to judge nonsense.

Propaganda has been historically used for the benefit of certain social groups faced up to another. This propaganda is not always ethical at all. It is based on misconceptions, lies, and fallacies. We have analyzed (by using an experimental Psychology task) the presence and cognitive weight of certain mental footnotes and their influence on the Reasoning of Hispanic-Americans (Ecuadorian). These mental footnotes have been extracted from the classical work “A brief account of the destruction of the Indies” of Bartolomé de (...) las Casas in 1552. The most relevant and significant finding of this study is the clear evidence that nowadays we can still find these historical falsehoods in the current cognitive system of Ecuadorian people which are product of a well-planned and maliciously orchestrated propaganda. We conclude that all the contents of the Spanish black legend are the consequences of the aspirations of some social sectors to boycott the Spanish culture. (shrink)

We begin by highlighting some points related to Kuhn’s later thoughts on the incommensurability thesis and then show to what extent the standard version of the thesis given by the structuralist metatheory allows us to capture Kuhn’s ideas. Our main aim is to establish what constitutes the basis of comparability between incommensurable theories, even in cases of incommensurability with respect to theoretical and non-theoretical terms. We propose that comparability between incommensurable theories requires some connection between their respective ontologies that can (...) be captured by means of an ontological non-reductive relation. At this point, the structuralist notion of “echeloned partial substructure” may be of help. When the incommensurability is very drastic, the existence of ontological connections between the theories involved may only be evident by common terms of their non-characteristic vocabularies. So, this notion of non-characteristic vocabulary becomes relevant in our proposal. (shrink)