El 17 de abril se cumplen cinco años del fallecimiento de Fray Antonio Royo Marín, OP. A lo largo de estos años hemos recibido numerosas muestras de admiración sobre los escritos publicados en vida por el Padre Royo. Instituciones religiosas, Escuelas de Teología, Grupos de reflexión teológica, catequistas, animadores de grupos cristianos, laicos anónimos, ... siguen consultando y estudiado sus libros, especialmente aquellos que versan sobre moral y espiritualidad. Muchas personas han demandado una biografía del gran predicador. Otras un resumen (...) sistemático sobre sus estudios teológicos, especialmente aquellos que hacen referencia a la espiritualidad cristiana. Ambos contenidos han sido publicados en la Revista como homenaje a quien fuera, en su día, un gran orador en su transmisión de la Palabra de Dios. Ofrecemos el recuerdo vivo de su memoria. Nos ayuda, para ello, la excelente biografía que escribió en Ciencia Tomista el profesor de Historia de lglesia José Barrado Barquilla, OP. Al final de la misma el lector podrá encontrar un elenco de las principales obras del P. Royo.También está a disposición en la red el artículo del Profesor Manuel Ángel Martínez Juan sobre 'La perfecciòn cristiana en el pensamiento de Antonio Royo Marín, OP', publicado igualmente en la Revista. (shrink)

El 17 de abril se cumplen cinco años del fallecimiento de Fray Antonio Royo Marín, OP. A lo largo de estos años hemos recibido numerosas muestras de admiración sobre los escritos publicados en vida por el Padre Royo. Instituciones religiosas, Escuelas de Teología, Grupos de reflexión teológica, catequistas, animadores de grupos cristianos, laicos anónimos, ... siguen consultando y estudiado sus libros, especialmente aquellos que versan sobre moral y espiritualidad. Muchas personas han demandado una biografía del gran predicador. Otras un resumen (...) sistemático sobre sus estudios teológicos, especialmente aquellos que hacen referencia a la espiritualidad cristiana. Ambos contenidos han sido publicados en la Revista como homenaje a quien fuera, en su día, un gran orador en su transmisión de la Palabra de Dios. Ofrecemos el recuerdo vivo de su memoria. Nos ayuda, para ello, la excelente biografía que escribió en Ciencia Tomista el profesor de Historia de lglesia José Barrado Barquilla, OP. Al final de la misma el lector podrá encontrar un elenco de las principales obras del P. Royo.También está a disposición en la red el artículo del Profesor Manuel Ángel Martínez Juan sobre 'La perfecciòn cristiana en el pensamiento de Antonio Royo Marín, OP', publicado igualmente en la Revista. (shrink)

Este artículo reseña: Harold BERTOT TRIANA, Estudios sobre jurisprudencia de la Corte Interamericana de derechos humanos. Cavilaciones al hilo de temas actuales del sistema interamericano de derechos humanos.

The subject of “The Other”, the different one always generated conflicts more or less serious in the history of humanity, without proposals of any resolution. In the measure in that The Other questions, by similitude or by difference, the identity in which the subject is sustained, that questioning make unstable that precarious construction, and because of this, it converts itself in the opposer. In this study, we will find, in the text of Il Visconte Dimezzato by Italo Calvino, the subject (...) of the Otherness/Alterity, analyzing from the semiotic point of view the reactions and behaviors of each one of the two characters and of the members of the society in which they live. The starting point of the story by Italo Calvino is that in a war between Austria and the Turks, the Viscount Medardo di Terralba as a consequence of a canon shot remains divided vertically into two halves and both halves survive. One of the two halves is very bad and the other is very good. Each one of the two halves sees in the other one “The Other”, feeling itself “The One” but incomplete and desiring to turn to be “The Same” as it was before being divided by the canon shot. (shrink)

Philosophical accounts of self-deception can be divided into two broad groups – the intentionalist and the anti-intentionalist. On intentionalist models what happens in the central cases of self-deception is parallel to what happens when one person intentionally deceives another, except that deceiver and deceived are the same person. This paper offers a positive argument for intentionalism about self-deception and defends the view against standard objections.

In this concise, witty critical study, Merquior examines Foucault's work on madness, sexuality, and power and offers a provocative assessment of Foucault as a "neo-anarchist." Merquior brings an astonishing breadth of scholarship to bear on his subject as he explores Foucault using insights from a range of fields including philosophy, sociology, and history.

In this article, we propose a philosophical exploration on the main problems involved in two neurorights that concern autonomous action, namely free will and cognitive liberty, and sketch a possible solution to these problems by resourcing to a holistic interpretation of human actions. First, we expose the main conceptual and practical issues arising from the neuroright to “free will,” which are far from minor: the term itself is denied by some trends participating in the neurorights debate, the related concept of (...) ultimate control is also disputed, the understanding of free will depends on cultural context, and the exercise of being free to act in several domains may be covered by other regulations. Second, we analyze the historical origin of cognitive liberty, its current status, and its relation with free will. Third, we criticize the concept of decision in mainstream action theory and propose to conceive action as a unified process constituted by three explanatory, non-sequential dimensions: intention, decision, and action realization. Fourth, we discuss two possible cases involving neurotechnologies and suggest ways to interpret them according to a unified framework in which free will and cognitive liberty fall under a single neuroright to personal autonomy. Finally, we outline a recommendation to introduce freedom of thought and personal autonomy as complementary neurorights to protect both the internal and external dimensions of thought and action. (shrink)

While in the movies or reading a novel, how can we feel terrified by monsters, ghosts, and fictional serial killers? And how can we feel sad or outraged by depictions of cruelty? After all, we know that the imagined threats that we fear do not exist and, therefore, pose no real threat to us; and we know that the instances of cruelty that bring tears to our eyes have not happened. And yet, the fear, the sadness, or the outrage experienced (...) in our imaginations feels very real. This is the so-called paradox of "fictional emotions." This and related paradoxes have become recalcitrant problems for a purely representational approach to the imagination that tries to accommodate the imagination in a belief-desire psychology, explaining our imaginings as mental states that are similar to beliefs or desires in some ways but not others—as "quasi-beliefs" or "quasi-desires." This representational approach can be seen, for example, in Kendall Walton's influential account of the imagination as "make-believe," or in Shaun Nichols and Stephen Stich's boxological account of the imagination as a "pretend box," which is in close interaction with the suspiciously similar "belief box". (shrink)

This paper describes a one-day workshop format for introducing ethics into the engineering curriculum prepared at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRM). It responds to the ethics criteria newly integrated into the accreditation process by the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET). It also employs an ethics across the curriculum (EAC) approach; engineers identify the ethical issues, write cases that dramatize these issues, and then develop exercises making use of these cases that are specially tailored to mainstream (...) engineering classes. The different activities and strategies employed in this workshop are set forth. Specific references are made to the cases and exercises developed as a result of these workshops. The paper ends by summarizing the different assessments made of the workshop by addressing the following questions: how did it contribute to the overall ABET effort at UPRM; could other universities benefit from a similar activity; and how did the participants evaluate the workshop? (shrink)

Emotional intelligence (EI) stands at the nexus between intelligence and emotion disciplines, and we outline how EI research might be better integrated within both theoretical frameworks. From the former discipline, empirical research focused upon whether EI is an intelligence and what type of intelligence it constitutes. It is clear that ability-based tests of EI form a group factor of cognitive abilities that may be integrated into the Cattell–Horn–Carroll framework; less clear is the lower order factor structure of EI. From the (...) latter discipline, research linking EI with theoretical frameworks from emotion research remain relatively sparse. Emotion regulation and appraisal theory may be key to explain how EI may reflect different processes. We propose a research agenda to advance the EI study. (shrink)

Este artículo propone a la Filosofía para Niños y Jóvenes (_Philosophy for Children_) como revulsivo contra los discursos del odio. Comienza describiendo la naturaleza de estas prácticas discursivas. Posteriormente, indaga los cinco pilares de la Filosofía para Niños/Jóvenes que vacunan contra ellas: pensamiento crítico y creativo, pensamiento cuidadoso, material narrativo y comunidad de indagación. Finalmente, explora la utilidad de estos elementos para los fines propuestos.

This article studies the differences between traditional financial intermediaries (commercial banks, savings banks and cooperative banks) and ethical banks based on property rights, in which the owner decides the ideology, principles, standards and objectives of the organisation. In ethical banking, affinity centres on positive social and ethical values. The article consequendy focuses on an index proposed both to differentiate ethical banks from other types of banks, and also to pinpoint the differences between the various ethical banks themselves.This is the Radical (...) Affinity Index (RAI), which groups banks together in terms of their stance on ethical commitment, concentrating on ethical ideology and principles (information transparency, placement of assets, guarantees and participation) and using a sample of 114 European banks. The evidence shows that transparency of information and placement of assets are factors that differentiate ethical banks from other financial intermediaries.Guarantees and participation are characteristics specific to ethical banks; these variables, however, do not offer clear evidence to our analysis. (shrink)

1 Domains of application 2 Formulating the conceptual/nonconceptual distinction 3 Is there such a thing as nonconceptual content? 4 Developing the account of nonconceptual content .

Despite the importance of network analysis in biological practice, dominant models of scientific explanation do not account satisfactorily for how this family of explanations gain their explanatory power in every specific application. This insufficiency is particularly salient in the study of the ecology of the microbiome. Drawing on Coyte et al. (2015) study of the ecology of the microbiome, Deulofeu et al. (2021) argue that these explanations are neither mechanistic, nor purely mathematical, yet they are substantially empirical. Building on their (...) criticisms, in the present work we make a step further elucidating this kind of explanations with a general analytical framework according to which scientific explanations are ampliative, specialized embeddings (ASE), which has recently been successfully applied to other biological subfields. We use ASE to reconstruct in detail the Coyte et al.’s case study and on its basis, we claim that network explanations of the ecology of the microbiome, and other similar explanations in ecology, gain their epistemological force in virtue of their capacity to embed biological phenomena in non-accidental generalizations that are simultaneously ampliative and specialized. (shrink)

Education is essential to life, and the epidemic affected everything. Parents want to get their kids the most important teaching. However, since COVID-19 has affected schools and other institutions, providing education has become the most significant issue. Online learning pedagogy uses technology to provide high-quality learning environments for student-centered learning. Further, this study explores the experiences and challenges faced by Filipino tertiary students regarding the lack of gadgets amidst online learning. Employing the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, the findings of this study (...) were: Some college students still have difficulty with online learning. Attending online classes is difficult, especially for students with limited resources. Smartphones, other gadgets, and internet connections play a significant role in online classrooms because they are the ones that students utilize while learning online, which is essential for successful participation in online higher education as well as for solving a variety of other difficulties in the new normal. Further, College students face similar health challenges. Having an online learning setup is not just about students' struggles with learning resources but also about their health issues. When our respondents used their smartphones for an extended period, they reported eye aches and blurred vision. They also said that some of their body parts, such as their legs and back, are aching, and feel pressured because they tend to overthink things in their surroundings, which causes them incredible difficulty in performing their best in attending online classes. Even though college students continue to suffer from a lack of learning resources during online sessions, they do their best to manage their needs and the scarcity of learning resources. Students have unique coping methods for dealing with difficulties in online classes. (shrink)

Una consecuencia de la revolución digital es la aparición del big data, que puede ser considerado como un elemento fundamental para la constitución de eso que autores como Byung-Chul Han denominan “psicopolítica”. Según Han, la sociedad en que vivimos tiene dos fundamentales características que se complementan entre sí: la nuestra es una “sociedad de la transparencia” y también una “sociedad digital”. Estas dos características tienen negativas consecuencias para los humanos. Siguiendo a Foucault y Deleuze, Han considera que el ser humano (...) será capaz de escapar de la esclavitud impuesta por él mismo si logra transformar el peso cualitativo de sus acciones. Es decir, si consigue que estas, en lugar de ser perfectamente predecibles y calculables, pasen a ser acontecimientos, en el pleno sentido de esta palabra: creaciones impredecibles que contribuyan, en términos nietzscheanos, a su autosuperación y, por ende, a hacer de su vida una obra de arte. (shrink)

How to embed reflexivity in public participation in techno-science and to open it up to the agency of publics are key concerns in current debates. There is a risk that engagements become limited to “laboratory experiments,” highly controlled and foreclosed by participation experts, particularly in upstream techno-sciences. In this paper, we propose a way to open up the “participation laboratory” by engaging localized, self-assembling publics in ways that respect and mobilize their ecologies of participation. Our innovative reflexive methodology introduced participatory (...) methods to public engagement with upstream techno-science, with the public contributing to both the content and format of the project. Reflecting on the project, we draw attention to the largely overlooked issue of temporalities of participation, and the co-production of futures and publics in participation methodologies. We argue that many public participation methodologies are underpinned by the open futures model, which imagines the future as a space of unrestrained creativity. We contrast that model with the lived futures model typical of localized publics, which respects latency of materials and processes but imposes limits on creativity. We argue that to continue being societally relevant and scientifically important, public participation methods should reconcile the open future of research with the lived futures of localized publics. (shrink)

This paper considers how best an eliminativist might argue for the radical falsity of commonsense psychology. I will be arguing that Paul Churchland’s “official” arguments for eliminative materialism (in, e.g., Churchland 1981) are unsatisfactory, although much of the paper will be developing themes that are clearly present in Churchland’s writings. The eliminativist needs to argue that the representations that feed into action are fundamentally different from those invoked by propositional attitude psychology. The “springs of action” are representations of features that (...) are much more finely grained than those encoded within the vocabulary that we employ to specify the content of propositional attitudes. The eliminativist’s most promising strategy is to argue that, whatever we might think about why we behave the way we do, careful experimental work will show that we are in fact acting in virtue of representations of properties and microfeatures that fall completely outside the ambit of propositional attitude psychology. The paper considers a number of examples of how this eliminativist strategy might be developed, ranging from the implications of the two visual systems hypothesis to research in social psychology into the role that situational factors play in controlling action. (shrink)

The current economic crisis is forcing us to reflect on where we have gone wrong in recent years. In the search for responsibilities some have looked to Business Schools and Administration Departments. It is surprising that this situation has come about despite the fact that Business Ethics and Social Corporate Responsibility have been taught in business schools for years. Without wanting to place all the blame on higher education institutions, but from a critical perspective and assuming responsibility, we believe it (...) is necessary to reflect rigorously on how to train leaders for the future and how we can best educate responsible Managers. In this article our objective is to reflect on the two factors which influence the training of responsible Managers: management discourse theory and the ethos of the institutions training future Managers. The central point of our article will be to argue for the need to develop an institutional ethos in Administration Faculties and business schools which is consistent with the responsibility discourse we propose and with the aim of providing high quality technical and moral training. Our central argument is that institutional ethos has enormous educational power and that the moral climate of an institution has a major influence on students' ideas, values and behaviours. The second argument for this main point is that corporate ethos can be managed and modulated. It is a process of cultural change which requires time and the setting up of specific initiatives to achieve the organisation that we want. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to define the logical system Sm4 characterised by the degree of truth-preserving consequence relation defined on the ordered set of values of Smiley’s four-element matrix MSm4. The matrix MSm4 has been of considerable importance in the development of relevant logics and it is at the origin of bilattice logics. It will be shown that Sm4 is a most interesting paraconsistent logic which encloses a sound theory of logical necessity similar to that of Anderson and (...) Belnap’s logic of entailment E. Intuitively, Sm4 can be described as a four-valued expansion of the positive fragment of Lewis’ S5 or, alternatively, as a four-valued version of S5. (shrink)

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.

This is a critical discussion of selected chapters of the first volume of Scott Soames's _Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century. It is argued that this volume falls short of the minimal standards of scholarship appropriate to a work that advertises itself as a history, and, further, that Soames's frequent heuristic simplifications and distortions, since they are only sporadically identified as such, are more likely to confuse than to enlighten the student. These points are illustrated by reference to Soames's discussions (...) of Russell's logical system and the place of the theory of descriptions in his ontological development. It is then argued that Soames's interpretation of the point of G. E. Moore's famous 'proof' of an external world, while not straightforwardly undermined by the textual evidence, is nonetheless questionable, and plausibly overlooks what is novel in Moore's discussion. This, it is argued, in his attempt to offer a common sense 'refutation of idealism', rather than (as is more commonly supposed) an antiskeptical argument 'from differential certainty'. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.

Giacomo Zabarella es considerado uno de los aristotélicos más prestigiosos y más influyentes del siglo XVI. Su obra lógica, sus escritos sobre física y sus comentarios, publicados póstumamente, tuvieron un enorme impacto especialmente en las primeras décadas del siglo XVII, y sirvieron como verdaderos manuales con los que se formaron muchos universitarios europeos. Este artículo analiza la figura de Zabarella centrándose en su obra sobre física, el De rebus naturalibus libri XXX, editado en 1590, apenas unos días antes de su (...) muerte. (shrink)

Reason and Nature investigates the norms of reason--the standards which contribute to determining whether beliefs, inferences, and actions are rational. Nine philosophers and two psychologists discuss what kinds of things these norms are, how they can be situated within the natural world, and what role they play in the psychological explanation of belief and action. Current work in the theory of rationality is subject to very diverse influences ranging from experimental and theoretical psychology, through philosophy of logic and language, to (...) metaethics and the theory of practical reasoning; this range is well represented here. (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 we study collective identity functions that deal with formation of clubs. Usually the choice offered to individuals is to cast a vote in favor of qualification or not, and the final outcome is qualification or non-qualification. In this context we show that independent collective identity functions are naturally characterized by voting rules, and in particular, consent rules can be represented by one single collection of weighted majorities. In addition, we consider the extended model where voters are allowed (...) to abstain and we distinguish between disqualification and a neutral outcome. We show that this environment allows agents to act in different capacities that cannot be distinguished in the original formulation of the problem. (shrink)

La lectura de mapas es una competencia pendiente para los estudiantes universitarios. Es el caso de los del Grado en Turismo de las universidades de Las Palmas de G.C., en España, y Autónoma de Juárez, en México, que usan los mapas para la comprensión de la realidad turística sin que hayan adquirido una alfabetización cartográfica suficiente.Esta comunicación presenta un diagnóstico del pensamiento geográfico de este alumnado centrado en las capacidades de localización, interpretación y análisis relacional de variables territoriales. Se ha (...) corroborado que solo alcanzan un nivel descriptivo y que es necesario poner en macha estrategias didácticas específicas. (shrink)

Habermas (2023) analisa uma nova mudança estrutural da esfera pública. Em razão disso, supomos uma esfera pública processual em mutação. Para argumentar, optamos pela leitura do Código de Processo Civil (CPC) em sintonia com Habermas (2023). No plano normativo, o processo é regulado pela Constituição Federal e pelo Código de Processo Civil. Em termos físicos, ele é composto de peças processuais redigidas em papel ou de peças processuais digitalizadas, pois a maioria dos tribunais brasileiros adotou o processo 100% digital. Em (...) termos funcionais, os tribunais adotam o processo como instrumento da jurisdição (devido processo legal). Nesse contexto, a regulação dos atos digitais importa para a existência válida e regular do processo. Por outro lado, a nova esfera pública processual regula a participação dos sujeitos processuais (autor, réu, juiz, servidores, promotores, advogados e defensores públicos, etc.). Essa participação vem sofrendo coerções normativas do tipo: interpretação conforme valores e normas fundamentais estabelecidas na Constituição Federal, solução consensual de conflitos, solução integral do mérito, comportamento de acordo com a boa-fé, dever de cooperação entre si, paridade de tratamento, ônus de argumentação das partes e ônus de avaliação dos argumentos pelo juiz. Podemos acrescentar a utilização das provas digitais e as audiências telepresenciais. Com esse aporte normativo e teórico, intuímos o processo como instrumento dessa esfera pública processual, na qual participam sujeitos com ônus argumentativos e a possibilidade de influenciar o convencimento e as deliberações judiciais. Portanto, a nova esfera pública processual denota o direito de participação e de influência, tal como deduzimos em Habermas. (shrink)

In this paper, we contend that the “Smith case” in Gettier’s attempt to refute the justified true belief (JTB) account of knowledge does not work. This is because the said case fails to satisfy the truth condition, and thus is not a case of JTB at all. We demonstrate this claim using the framework of Donnellan’s distinction between the referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions. Accordingly, the truth value of Smith’s proposition “The man who will get the job has (...) ten coins in his pocket” partly depends on how Smith uses the definite description “the man who will get the job” when he utters the proposition. Since, upon uttering the proposition, Smith has in mind a particular individual, namely Jones, and not just whoever will fit the attribute specified in the definite description, Smith uses the definite description referentially. And so when it turns out that it is Smith who eventually gets the job, the definite description fails to refer to Jones as intended by Smith, thereby making Smith’s proposition false. To think that Smith’s proposition is still true, in this regard, is to use the definite description attributively—that it is about whoever will fit the definite description. Apparently, when Gettier claims that Smith’s proposition is still true, to demonstrate that it is a case of JTB, he, in effect, imposes his attributive understanding of Smith’s usage of the definite description on Smith’s own epistemic situation. (shrink)

The distinction between potentiality and possibility in Aristotle’s modal teleology is sometimes conflated by the implicative conjunction that potentiality implies possibility and possibility implies potentiality. In his unpublished doctoral dissertation Richard Rorty warns that trying to pin down Aristotle’s definition of potentiality often leads to treating the term as a “mere façon de parler.” Consonant with Rorty, this paper observes that the definition of possibility in Aristotle’s works is not without its own share of semantic snags. Subsequently, I abide by (...) Rorty’s caveat not only to resist the lure of expressive convenience some commentators have taken in describing potentiality, but also to elucidate possibility’s two-fold field of modal application. Consequently, this paper aims to present a nuanced account of how notions of potentiality and possibility are presented in Aristotle’s treatises for the sake of demonstrating that both sides of the potentiality/possibility conjunction do not mutually imply. (shrink)

Since at least the second half of the 19th century, the U.S. federal government has enjoyed “plenary power” over its immigration policy. Plenary power allows the federal government to regulate immigration free of judicial review and thereby, with regard to immigration cases, minimize the Constitutional protections afforded to non-citizens. The justification for granting the U.S federal government such broad powers comes from a certain understanding of sovereignty; one where limiting sovereign authority in cases like immigration could potentially undermine its legitimacy (...) and thereby lead to something like a Hobbesian “state of nature.” One of the potential downsides of allowing the federal government to have such broad powers, however, is the potential to place non-citizens in a situation analogous to what Giorgio Agamben has called the “state of exception.” This situation appears to leave us with the following dichotomy: without something like the plenary power doctrine a political community will end up with a state of nature, but with something like the plenary power doctrine they end up with a state of exception. This essay offers a two-part response to this dilemma. First, it argues that the plenary power doctrine goes against the spirit of the U.S. Constitution, specifically the Fourteenth Amendment. Non-citizens, even undocumented immigrants, are entitled to more Constitutional protections than they currently enjoy. Second, since extending these protections is more consistent with the spirit of the Constitution, I argue that curtailing the federal government’s power over matters of immigration does not undermine its sovereignty, but promotes it. In short, with regard to immigration, it is a false but seductive dichotomy that constitutional democracies must choose between a state of nature and a state of exception. (shrink)

Re-activating the philosophical quest for real definitions, I dare propose that its fulfillment is most convincingly represented, close to home, where one probably least expects it, notably in the first half of Section 36 of Word and Object, in the pages of Quine. Aristotle must inevitably remain our guide even as we insist on respecting Quine's anti-essentialism, and I must then explain how Aristotle, truncated, can be put here to use. Well, we may begin, appropriately, with a definition or with (...) what, nearly enough, smacks of being one, namely the Aristotelian slogan, definitio fit per genus proximum et differentiam specificam. Although that may be itself a real definition (of real definition), I shall not pursue this scholastic point, preferring to concentrate on my principal task which I take to be to vindicate the feasibility of formulating a real definition of some mind-independent reality. Such a vindication can scarcely succeed today unless it is recognized from the outset that we have here at hand one of those cases where the very (logical) possibility of a problematic thing can be established only by having recourse to the modal principle that actuality entails possibility. Nothing less than a concrete instance of a real definition will then suffice, and I thus expect my sceptical reader (I count on her scepticism) to be in doubt whether the scholastic bit of jargon 'real definition' picks out one of the concepts in her repertoire. (shrink)