En el presente trabajo se analiza la conexión existente entre la etapa marxista de juventud y la neoaristotélica de madurez en el pensamiento de Alasdair MacIntyre, enfatizando el problema que representa para él la posibilidad de criticar y justificar racionalmente una teoría moral. A través de una lectura comparativa de obras de ambos períodos se muestra cómo la incapacidad para dar una respuesta satisfactoria a esta preocupación temprana es una de las razones que llevan al abandono de la tradición marxista, (...) y cómo su formulación aristotélica madura busca superar esta dificultad, manteniendo constantes otros presupuestos y compromisos teóricos previos. (shrink)

Philosophical hermeneutics has become an unavoidable reference in the field throughout the twentieth century but has seldom been extended to draw conclusions in the area of political theory. Two intellectuals that have contributed to such a project are Charles Taylor and Gianni Vattimo, although they exhibit some important differences in key aspects of this enterprise, both at the level of the conceptual premises and at that of the prescribed policies and objectives. Here I examine these thinkers’ notion of tradition – (...) an essential feature of hermeneutical theories – its ontological underpinnings, and the place each of them assign to it in sociopolitical decision-making, especially in the context of multicultural societies. In the end, I argue for the superiority of Taylor’s model of understanding and employing tradition in current political and moral debates. (shrink)

This essay aims to recover the conflictive nodes in T. Hobbes’ theory regarding language, science and truth. Revisiting the diverse and contradictory readings that have arisen around these areas of his work we intend to point out the tensions inherent to Hobbes’ scientific project. No definitive answer is given to close the discussion; instead we aim to offer hints to identify the author’s positions that are hard to reconcile. Thus we intend to contribute to a deeper understanding of the multiple (...) possibilities the Hobbesian text offers. (shrink)

Resumen: En este artículo se presenta la posición de dos filósofos asociados a la hermenéutica, Gianni Vattimo y Charles Taylor, respecto del status del conocimiento científico en el mundo contemporáneo. Mediante una somera exposición de los rasgos fundamentales de sus respectivas ontologías y epistemologías, se busca realizar una comparación crítica. En la conclusión, se defiende la superioridad del planteo de Taylor, en la medida que permite discutir la primacía del modelo científico natural sin abandonar una concepción realista del mundo y (...) de la categoría de verdad. Abstract: In this paper I present the position of two philosophers associated with the hermeneutic tradition, Gianni Vattimo and Charles Taylor, about the status of scientific knowledge in our contemporary world. Through a brief exposition of the fundamental features of their respective ontologies and epistemologies, I seek to offer a critical comparison. In the conclusion, I defend the superiority of Taylor’s formulation, inasmuch it allows to put in question the primacy of the natural science model without abandoning a realist conception of the world and of the category of truth. (shrink)

Are properties universal or particular? According to Universalism, properties are universals because there is a certain fundamental tie that makes properties capable of being shareable by more than one thing. On the opposing side, Particularism is the view that properties are particulars due to the existence of a fundamental tie that makes properties incapable of being shared. My aim in this paper is to critically examine the connections between the notions of the fundamental tie and universality and particularity. I argue, (...) first, that universality and particularity can characterize a property if and only if there is a universalist or a particularist fundamental tie, and, second, that it is unclear that these should be the fundamental ties that connect ordinary and scientific properties to their respective bearers. Then I develop an alternative approach to properties and the fundamental tie, which is neutralist because it dispenses with universality and particularity as features of properties, and naturalist because it naturalizes the possession of properties by replacing metaphysical fundamental ties with a scientific one, in particular, a physical process. I show how this approach improves our understanding of properties and instantiation. (shrink)

Categories play a major role in contemporary metaphysics. They have not only been invoked in a number of philosophical theories but are themselves objects of epistemological and metaphysical scrutiny. In this article, we will discuss the following questions: How do we know when something belongs to a certain category? Is there a fundamental category of the world? Can we give a satisfactory account of the number of categories and the completeness of systems of categories? Are categories the genuine subjects of (...) ontology? (shrink)

1. Categories and the Scientific Turn of Metaphysics: The Notion of World-Fundamentality What are the fundamental inhabitants of the world? This question, as old as it is new, is about the fundamental structure of our world. Is our world a world of Aristotle's ordinary substances, Locke's physical substances, Husserl's wholes, Wittgenstein's facts, Sellars's processes, or Quine's sets? In order to distinguish the sort of metaphysical fundamentality at stake in this discussion from other possible types of fundamentality, I shall call it (...) from now on "world-fundamentality." In this article I want to make a proposal in the context of this metaphysical dispute. The proposal is the addition of a new criterion of world-fundamentality to the existing catalog of independence and simplicity, among some other prominent classical examples. I call this criterion "the materialist criterion of world-fundamentality" because it states that metaphysicians should not decide the question of whether our world is a world of facts rather than a world of sets or other categories without considering the explanatory power of such categories to account for the relation between "the manifest image" and "the scientific image," to use the words of Wilfrid Sellars. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to defend a naturalistic approach to instantiation and the Principle of Instantiation. I argue that the instantiation of an ordinary property F consists of two coordinated relationships at the levels of the manifest and scientific images, namely, constituency and entailment. Also, I offer an account of the Principle of Instantiation related to this conception of instantiation based on the notion of scientific prediction.

The aim of this paper is to offer two novel solutions to two perennial problems of categorial ontology, namely, the problem of the categorial structure: how are the categories related to one another? And the problem of categorial completeness: how is the completeness of a proposed list of categories justified? First, I argue that a system of categories should have a structure such that there is a most basic category that is a bearer of all other categories and that has (...) what I shall call “combinatorial conditions”. To do so, I compare this approach to categorial structure with the approaches given by substantialist, mereological, factualist, and geo ontologies. Second, I argue that the problem of categorial completeness is only a problem for certain ontologies. In this connection, I explore views on categorial completeness proposed by substantialists and geo-ontologists. Lastly, I conclude that factualism does a better job of accounting for categorial structure and categorial completeness than other categorial ontologies. (shrink)

A general view in philosophy of science says that the appropriateness of an object to act as a surrogate depends on the user’s decision to utilize it as such. This paper challenges this claim by examining the role of surrogative reasoning in high-throughput sequencing technologies as they are used in contemporary microbiome science. Drawing on this, we argue that, in technology-driven surrogates, knowledge about the type of inference practically permitted and epistemically justified by the surrogate constrains their use and thus (...) puts a limit to the user’s intentions to use any object as a surrogate for what they please. Ignoring this leads to a serious epistemic misalignment, which ultimately prevents surrogative reasoning. Thus, we conclude that knowledge about the type of surrogate reasoning that the technologies being used allow is fundamental to avoid misinterpreting the consequences of the data obtained with them, the hypothesis this data supports, and what these technologies are surrogates of. (shrink)

The Sellarsian task of ontology is to reconcile two seemingly divergent images of ordinary objects such as persons, tomatoes and tables, namely, the manifest image of common sense and the scientific image provided by fundamental physics (Sellars, Science, Perception, and Reality, 1963). Can the genuine categories of the ontologies of Substantialism (Heil, The World as We Find It, 2012), Structural Realism (Ladyman and Ross,Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized, 2007; French, The Structure of the World: Metaphysics and Representation, 2014), and (...) Factualism (Cumpa, ‘A Materialist Criterion of Fundamentality’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 2014), such as ‘substance’, ‘structure’, and ‘fact’, help us to solve the problem of the reconciliation of the two images of ordinary objects? In this paper I defend the thesis that the ontology of Factualism does a better job of reconciling the manifest and the scientific images of ordinary objects than other ontologies. (shrink)

El siguiente texto intenta exponer algunas de las ideas básicas de la tercera de las tres partes que componen Meditaciones del Quijote: la “Meditación primera. Breve tratado de la novela”. En las no muchas páginas que ocupa el texto de Ortega, se ofrece una visión sobre el inmortal libro de Cervantes que no puede dejar indiferentes a los filósofos.

Ortega trasladó sus ideas pedagógicas a su quehacer como profesor universitario. Muchos de sus discípulos y colaboradores han dejado constancia de ello, como aquí se refiere. Fue para ellos, sobre todo ejemplo, ejemplo de vida, de orientación vital, de sinceridad intelectual en su quehacer filosófico. En este artículo no analizamos la filosofía de Ortega, lo que hemos hecho en otros textos, sino el impacto que causó la «persona» Ortega en sus colaboradores y discípulos. Aunque es algo estudiando, nunca se ha (...) presentado de esta forma sintética que muestra la envergadura del impacto que Ortega produjo en el mundo intelectual de la Edad de Plata de la cultura española. (shrink)

Intelligent Transportation Systems are expected to automate how parking slots are booked by trucks. The intrinsic dynamic nature of this problem, the need of explanations and the inclusion of private data justify an agent-based solution. Agents solving this problem act with a Believe Desire Intentions reasoning, and are implemented with JASON. Privacy of trucks becomes protected sharing a list of parkings ordered by preference. Furthermore, the process of assigning parking slots takes into account legal requirements on breaks and driving time (...) limits. Finally, the agent simulations use the distances, the number of trucks and parkings corresponding to the proportions of the current European Union data. The performance of the proposed solution is tested in these simulations with three different distances against an alternative with complete knowledge. The difference in efficiency, the number of illegal breaks and the traveled distances are measured in them. Comparing the results, we can conclude that the nonprivate alternative is slightly better in performance while both alternatives do not produce illegal breaks. In this way the simulations show that the proposed privacy protection does not impose a relevant handicap in efficiency. (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)

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)

Esta breve exposición del pensamiento de Lévinas presentará el esquema de las ideas nucleares para que el lector tenga una idea del potencial del pensamiento de Lévinas para la realidad económica. Lévinas señala el camino para superar los reduccionismos económicos: integrar la libertad humana dentro del Ser, dentro de su relación con el Otro. Para desarrollar una teoría económica que aspire a ser parte de una filosofía política completa que integre la paz, la libertad y la justicia como integrantes del (...) Bien Común con la aspiración de la persona al Bien, la Verdad y la Virtud. La economía como proceso de innovación y creación es una ampliación de satisfacción de necesidades y una ampliación de posibilidades de acción. Hay una retención de posibilidades que se plasman en las instituciones y se transmiten culturalmente. Estas posibilidades de acción ya institucionalizadas se transmiten a las personas para que realicen sus proyectos. (shrink)

From XIX Century, the controversy over the authenticity of the Metaphysics’ Kappa has been a constant in the context of studies on the Metaphysics. In regard to the redaction of the aporias of K 1-2, the differences in style and content are remarkable. However, after analyzing the differences, we can assert quite safely that the author of K 1-2 is Aristotle. Indeed, K 1-2 do not contains non-Aristotelian philosophy in approach of the aporias nor in the doctrines involved in them. (...) In this sense, the differences may be explained by the renewed interest of Aristotle for the supersensible, in the face of its research on Λ 6-10. Secondly, with respect to the redaction of aporias, researches on style and morphometry show that the use of some expressions change significantly from one work to another, so differences in style, use of particles and unusual expressions in K 1-2 can be understood as normal. (shrink)

El sentimiento de destino ha marcado la historia. Sin embargo, la historiografía de las emociones no le ha dedicado suficiente atención. En la época clásica se tomaba en cuenta para la toma de decisiones. Posteriormente hallamos ricas reflexiones sistemáticas: Maquiavelo, Montaigne, Smith, Tolstói, Weber, Geertz y Adorno, entre otros. Tras estudiar estos testimonios, analizamos el caso de Gandhi y su voz interior. Revitalizar la discusión sobre el sentimiento de destino contribuye a comprender fenómenos como el populismo. No es posible hacer (...) política solo con razones: hay que tener en cuenta las emociones y, entre ellas, el entusiasmo. (shrink)

En el presente artículo, se describen y analizan las características de la metáfora como herramienta retórica y epistemológica desde la perspectiva de Mariano Iberico (1892-1974) en su _Estudio sobre la metáfora_ (1965). Para el filósofo peruano, la metáfora es una instancia mediadora entre lo que sucede fuera del hombre y lo que sucede dentro de él. Es este rasgo mediador el que se revela como posibilidad epistemológica con consecuencias éticas, ya que el conocimiento metafórico se produce a través de mediaciones (...) y aproximaciones que “postulan la existencia de una comunidad espiritual y anímica” entre las diversas esferas de la realidad. Para el análisis, serán útiles la noción de Paul Ricoeur del ser humano como ente mediador y las propuestas sobre la imaginación poética de Gastón Bachelard. (shrink)

El presente trabajo pretende evidenciar algunos de los elementos centrales de la ley natural a la luz del pensamiento de Santo Tomás. Al plantear la existencia de una ley natural, nuestro autor tiende a establecer distinciones en el modo que esta ópera en los seres creados, siendo una diferencia sustancial la distinción entre seres racionales e irracionales. Inevitablemente, la ley natural trae consecuencias prácticas, en el sentido que esta, por lo menos dentro del pensamiento de Santo Tomás, suele derivar en (...) normas de carácter ético, de ahí que sea posible considerar que la ley natural tiene cierta orientación de carácter práctico, aunque debemos notar que en el caso particular del hombre y a pesar de que se encuentra “sometido” a estas orientaciones este tiene la posibilidad de negar sus inclinaciones, producto tanto de su naturaleza racional como de su libertad, no obstante, negar la ley natural lo llevaría a actuar contra su propia naturaleza. (shrink)

In the first part of my paper, we will journey through the general structure of the first volume of Ideas, from which we will be able to deduce the position of Volume II. After carrying out a general analysis of the noesis/noema correlation structure in Section III and having provided, in Section IV, the basics of a phenomenology of reason, the second volume of Ideas should study the general fields in which the objects of transcendental experience appear: the world, the (...) animal being, and the spiritual or cultural being. The third, unwritten volume should have been devoted to the study of the superior products of culture, and science. Thus, the second part of this paper will show the place of Ideas’ second volume. The third part, the decisive one, will inquire into the position of the world and the place of the body and culture. Specifically, it will ask whether the experience of the body is understood to be an objective genitive or whether it is also understood, necessarily, as a subjective genitive. The same question will be asked about culture. An understanding of one as objective or subjective genitive radically alters the meaning of the pure ego. (shrink)

While punishment is a longstanding object of philosophical scrutiny, other controversial aspects of the justice system, such as policing, have flown under the radar. In this paper, we consider possible reasons why philosophers interested in crime and punishment have neglected policing. We make the case for a broader account of the political morality of the justice system, with a particular emphasis on policing. We sketch the outlines of an egalitarian version of such a theory, highlighting parallels between policing and the (...) welfare state. Finally, we turn to recent calls for police abolition. Evaluating such radical claims requires, we argue, going beyond the traditional confines of the philosophy of punishment and considering a more holistic and interdisciplinary theory of criminal justice. (shrink)

en el presente escrito se revisa el análisis existencial que Heidegger hizo del aburrimiento. Tras una breve introducción, expongo la efracción heideggeriana del aburrimiento, intentando mostrar su efectuación y procedimiento. Una vez hecho esto, repaso las relaciones del abu-rrimiento con los tres conceptos de tiempo característicos de nuestra tradición grecolatina. Por último, como ejercicio de una reactualización fenomenológica y hermenéutica del aburrimien-to, arrojo algunas consideraciones sobre los efectos y posibilidades del mismo en algunas prácticas sociales de nuestro presente actual.

Este artículo considera algunas de las indagaciones de Søren Kierkegaard como aportaciones de primer orden que tuvieron eco entre pensadores clave en el siglo XX, entre los que podemos contar a Martin Heidegger y a Walter Benjamin. Más que una exposición histórica, el artículo se centra sobre todo en dos puntos. Por una parte, analiza la noción del pecado original, reconstituye su sentido como condición ontológica más allá de un ámbito religioso y describe su función específica para la construcción de (...) la subjetividad. Por otra parte, describe una idea de la temporalidad de este filósofo que se desprende de su estrategia de lenguaje, y muestra de qué forma Kierkegaard buscaba con ello llevar a cabo el paso de la teoría a la experiencia. This paper aims at interpreting certain arguments developed by Søren Kierkegaard as eminent discoveries for his day, and that had a huge impact on major 20th-century thinkers, such as Martin Heidegger and Walter Benjamin. More than a historical synthesis, this paper focuses on two issues. on the one hand, it analyzes the notion of original sin, restructuring its meaning out of a religious context and describing its specific function for the construction of subjectivity. on the other hand, it describes a concept of time that derives from the philosopher's specific use of language, showing thus how Kierkegaard sought to work out an explicit transition from theory to experience. (shrink)

In this study I aim to develop a cognitive evaluation of how semantically-driven and rule-based diagrammatic reasoning were psychologically plausible for partic-ular cases of scientific practice: an actual trackless path reconstruction in bubble chamber experiments, as reported by Galison (1997). I will propose “cognitive imagery projection and manipulation” (CIPM) as the most plausible psychologi-cal (perceptual/attentional/cognitive) mechanism matching the specific explanatory requirements for the case study, outlining the most significant current theories about this mental phenomenon (Shimojima; 2011).

In the economical changing and political disturbing times we are living a question concerns us all: Is this the society I want to live in? What are the opportunities I have to pursue in my socio-cultural environment? Which echoes the ancient Greek ethical questions: What is the best city to live in? What do I want to do with my live? In this book the author goes back to the primary reality of our lives: human action. From the analysis of (...) the anthropological elements of human action -culture, society, individual action- the book will help the reader to understand the construction of our economic reality and how to approach the perennial ethical question: How can I develop excellence in my life? (shrink)

Scholarship has tended to focus on the deleterious impacts of chronic exposure to violence, to the detriment of understanding how residents living in dangerous contexts care for themselves and one another. Drawing on 30 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines two sets of practices that residents exercise in the name of protecting themselves and their loved ones. The first set (“making toast”) includes the mundane, “small acts,”—often embedded in routine—that residents draw on in an effort to form connections and (...) create order in a fundamentally chaotic and stressful environment. The second set (“splitting apples”) involves the teaching and exercise of violence in the name of protecting daughters and sons from further harm. Using interviews and field notes, we argue that both sets of practices, when viewed in situ, reveal an “ethics of care.” Resisting the urge to either romanticize or sanitize these efforts, we engage with the difficult question of what it means when an expression of “care” involves the (re)production of violence, especially against a loved one. (shrink)

La inferencia ecológica intenta estimar la conducta individual desde datos agregados. En este artículo, la nueva metodología de King para tratar con la inferencia ecológica se aplicará para estimar la proporción de obreros que votaron por Perón en 1946. Se usarán los datos del censo nac..