According to a popular narrative, in 1932 von Neumann introduced a theorem that intended to be a proof of the impossibility of hidden variables in quantum mechanics. However, the narrative goes, Bell later spotted a flaw that allegedly shows its irrelevance. Bell’s widely accepted criticism has been challenged by Bub and Dieks: they claim that the proof shows that viable hidden variables theories cannot be theories in Hilbert space. Bub’s and Dieks’ reassessment has been in turn challenged by Mermin and (...) Schack. Hereby I critically assess their reply, with the aim of bringing further clarification concerning the meaning, scope and relevance of von Neumann’s theorem. I show that despite Mermin and Schack’s response, Bub’s and Dieks’ reassessment is quite correct, and that this reading gets strongly reinforced when we carefully consider the connection between von Neumann’s proof and Gleason’s theorem. (shrink)

In 1991 Larry Laudan and Jarret Leplin proposed a solution for the problem of empirical equivalence and the empirical underdetermination that is often thought to result from it. In this paper we argue that, even though Laudan and Leplin’s reasoning is essentially correct, their solution should be accurately assessed in order to appreciate its nature and scope. Indeed, Laudan and Leplin’s analysis does not succeed in completely removing the problem or, as they put it, in refuting the thesis of underdetermination (...) as a consequence of empirical equivalence. Instead, what they show is merely that science possesses tools that may eventually lead out of an underdetermination impasse. We apply their argument to a real case of two empirically equivalent theories: Lorentz’s ether theory and Einstein’s special relativity. This example illustrates the validity of Laudan and Leplin’s reasoning, but also shows the importance of the reassessment we argue for. (shrink)

If God knew I were going to write this paper, was I able to refrain from writing it this morning? One possible response to this question is that God's knowledge does not take place in time and therefore He does not properly fore-know. According to this response, God knows absolutely everything, it's just that He knows everything outside of time. The so-called timeless solution was one of the influential responses to the foreknowledge problem in classical Christian Theology. This solution, however, (...) seemed to lose support in the recent debate. For example, Pike claims that "the doctrine of God's timelessness entered Christian Theology because Platonic thought was stylish at the time" and Hasker catalogues this as one of the minor solutions to the problem. One possible source for this general attitude towards timelessness is the thought that the very idea of timelessness is incoherent. In this paper I argue that that the timeless solution to the foreknowledge problem is congenial with the supervaluationist theory of branching time and that this formal framework provides, in fact, a precise characterization of the timeless solution to the foreknowledge problem. The views presented in this paper are in line with those of Kretzmann and Stump, Leftow and De Florio and Frigerio. (shrink)

En este artículo, me propongo mostrar que el concepto de mística salvaje tal y como fue desarrollado por Michel Hulin—en una obra que cumple treinta años desde su publicación—apunta a una dimensión clave del fenómeno religioso que debe ser tomada en cuenta por las disciplinas dedicadas a su estudio (filosofía, teología, antropología, etc.), especialmente si la cuestión estudiada es aquello que llamamos “mística” (“misticismo”, o “contemplación”). Intento mostrar también que Hulin utiliza el concepto de lo salvaje en tres sentidos interrelacionados: (...) el psicológico (que es el que abre toda la reflexión), el existencial y el hermenéutico. A partir de aquí, sostengo finalmente que la contribución de Hulin justifica una reflexión más amplia sobre lo salvaje en la mística que se extiende a consideraciones sobre cierto tipo de conversión religiosa, y sobre la idea de la gracia como espontaneidad divina y acontecimiento, tratados aquí en el contexto de la mística cristiana. (shrink)

Frecuentemente se atribuye al empirismo apelar a principios no empíricos para defender el conocimiento empírico, por ello se le ha acusado de incurrir en cierta clase de autorrefutación. Con el advenimiento del empirismo lógico, esta objeción tomó la forma de cuestionamiento al criterio empirista de significado, señalando que, al no tratarse de una proposición lógica ni empírica, no cumple con sus propias condiciones de significatividad. En este artículo pretendo mostrar que dentro del empirismo lógico se desarrollaron respuestas a estas críticas, (...) lo suficientemente consistentes como para resistir la objeción de autorrefutación. Asimismo, defiendo que la afirmación de autorrefutación del criterio empirista de significado parte de comprensión inadecuada de los niveles lingüísticos involucrados en su formulación, así como de algunos supuestos no explícitos respecto de su estatus. Empiricism has frequently been said to appeal to non-empirical principles to defend empirical knowledge, which is why it has been accused of falling into some form of self-refutation. With the advent of logical empiricism, this objection became a questioning of the empiricist criterion of meaning, noting that since it is neither a logical nor an empirical proposition, it does not fulfill its own conditions of meaningfulness. This paper intends to show that responses to this criticism, consistent enough to resist the objection of self-refutation, have been developed whithin logical empiricism. In addition, the article claims that the assertion that the empiricist criterion of meaning is self-refuting is based on an inadequate understanding of the linguistic levels involved in its formulation, as well as on some unspecified assumptions regarding its status. (shrink)

El problema de la obligación política es tratado tempranamente en la filosofía política por parte de Platón, quien en distintos diálogos presenta argumentos que sostienen la existencia de dicha obligación, así como sus límites, con lo que constituye un antecedente clave de las elaboraciones teóricas modernas sobre este tema. En el presente trabajo abordo de forma analítica las diferentes fundamentaciones ofrecidas en tres textos del autor, Apología, Critón y República, mostrando no sólo la variedad de argumentos teóricos que se encuentran (...) en su obra -consecuencialistas, voluntaristas, de gratitud-, sino también la concepción del problema de la obligación política como uno de doble vía, que involucra no únicamente la justificación teórica del deber de obedecer sino también la del de mandar para ciertos individuos que, en razón de su conocimiento y aptitudes, deben gobernar; en República, se trata del filósofo. (shrink)

The general aim is to present and clarify the notion of grounding, and promote its application to different debates in the philosophy of science. Along the way, I digress about a few specific questions regarding the metaphysics of grounding. As a result, my title ‘Grounding in the Philosophy of Science' is deceiving in at least two ways. First, it suggests a level of argumentative unity that is typical of monographs, when the present dissertation lumps together a series of almost independent (...) arguments. Secondly, it implies a restriction of field to the philosophy of science, when much of the content extends far beyond these confines. (shrink)

Los conflictos paterno-filiales han constituido desde los inicios del cine un recurso inagotable para los relatos fílmicos. Tomando como referencia una serie de películas de autor contemporáneas, este texto aborda una serie de motivos comunes –aunque no exclusivos– que refieren la crisis de la paternidad. En concreto, las cuatro categorías que se toman en consideración son: el arquetipo del “ídolo caído”, el padre autoritario, el padre melancólico y la separación o el abandono de los padres como una experiencia traumática para (...) los hijos. Como evidencia este último modelo argumental, la crisis del padre tiene unos efectos sobre sus vástagos, de ahí que un buen número de las películas que se analizan se configuren como relatos de iniciación. (shrink)

Este artículo presenta un análisis de los argumentos que Ibn Ḥazm de Córdoba expone, principalmente en su Kitāb al-Fiṣal, con el fin de refutar un conjunto de ideas atribuidas a los “Antiguos” relativas a la naturaleza y las facultades del alma, y su relación con el cuerpo y el intelecto. Su tratamiento del alma no es sistemático ni sus consideraciones son expuestas mediante referencias directas a la tradición filosófica griega o a los falāsifa como fundamento de su doctrina. De modo (...) que nos enfocaremos en la identificación de los principios filosóficos que fundamentan tanto los argumentos que Ibn Ḥazm pretende refutar como su propia doctrina acerca del alma. (shrink)

Los veinte años que van desde fines de los setenta hasta fines de los noventa del siglo pasado, presenciaron la influencia del pensamiento de Donald Davidson en casi todas las áreas de la filosofía. Aunque el propio autor no se propuso construir un sistema, el proyecto que comenzó con algunas anotaciones técnicas en semántica formal y teoría de la acción fue ampliándose progresivamente para incorporar intuiciones en muchas otras áreas. Si bien los detalles técnicos del proyecto han recibido severos cuestionamientos, (...) muchas de esas intuiciones siguen siendo válidas. En este texto me propongo reseñar y discutir las tesis centrales del libro de Karina Pedace con el objetivo de evaluar esas intuiciones, más allá de si algunos de sus críticos se han concentrado en detalles que podrían ser poco relevantes para entender los objetivos principales del proyecto. (shrink)

This chapter explores a generation of philosophers that emerged in Peru and became interested in positivism at the end of the nineteenth century. This generation that embraced positivism included Manuel Gonza´lez Prada, Alejandro Deustua, Jorge Polar, Mariano H. Cornejo, Carlos Lisson, Javier Prado, and Manuel Vicente Villara´n. The chapter addresses the interesting parallel that the first consolidated generation of Peruvian philosophers appeared at the end of a tragic and extremely devastating war, similar to the United States in the Civil War (...) era and the origins of pragmatism. (shrink)

El texto se propone discutir el análisis wittgensteiniano de la autonomía de la voluntad, con el objetivo de mostrar sus raíces en el pragmatismo clásico. Estas raíces se pueden encontrar fundamentalmente en la concepción de la voluntad que William James desarrolla en sus Principles of Psychology. También se desea mostrar que las intuiciones wittgensteinianas elaboradas sobre concepciones pragmatistas, irían en la dirección de lo que se suele llamar la teoría del doble aspecto. Finalmente, el texto se propone formular la teoría (...) del doble aspecto de una manera que colabore en aclarar el problema de la autonomía de la voluntad. (shrink)

Este artículo trata de sentar las bases de una aproximación arquitectónica a la mereología. A tal fin elaboramos un acercamiento intuitivo (y literario) a la idea de concreción fenomenológica y a la estructura del fenómeno en sentido fenomenológico, accediendo a una primera noción, provisional, de lo que habrían de ser las concrescencias hiperbólicas. Nos centramos luego en la teoría transcendental del método, habiéndonoslas con una primera comparecencia del Genio Maligno. En una última parte tratamos de elucidar el sentido de la (...) arquitectónica como parte de la teoría transcendental del método. (shrink)

An interdisciplinary examination of the legacies of the global 1968 uprisings from the vantage point of the current crisis of neoliberal hegemony.

The origins of ‘alternative comedy’ are difficult to pinpoint, though it coincided with the rise of Thatcher as Prime Minister in 1979 – that year saw the appearance of something called ‘alternative cabaret’, a term usually associated with Tony Allen, who combined activism and comedy. The acts this article will focus on are those which took a critical approach to comedy and/or politics – ‘alternative’ comedy, therefore, as seeming to promise change through critical awareness. This paper will discuss parody as (...) a means of critical engagement and transformation, in relation to context, and to influences such as punk. Altcom demonstrates an apparent eschewal of approaches which rely on irony and ambiguity, in favour of more ‘direct’ political engagement. It will be argued however that such ‘direct’ approach does not cancel out critical distance, but rather seeks alternative routes to establish it – namely comic and parodic overstatement, and the problematisation of ‘trust’. This entails the key questions of whether parody may take up critical distance without irony, as well as of the political implications of an approach which seeks to eliminate ambiguity. This more ‘direct’ approach however still depends on a balance of engagement and disengagement, requiring distancing from pre-established codes. (shrink)

In this inductive, exploratory study, we explore how emotions affect the agency of vulnerable persons and their engagement in social innovation to challenge oppressive institutional constraints. By presenting the in-depth case of a successful entrepreneur from a shantytown, we show how emotions affect the construction of a self that contributes to the reproduction of social order rather than change, and how effective interventions can break the cycle of poverty and hopelessness that is dominant among excluded people. We find that this (...) process is fragile and contingent on the presence of known strangers—that is, a web of actors that contributes not only resources but also emotional engagement that helps the emergence and development of low-power actors’ projectivity. We identify mechanisms for and provide a model of the development and emergence of the projective self that is necessary to engage in future-oriented agency. (shrink)

The first Latin American molecularbiology laboratory came onto the scientificscene in Argentina in early 1957, only to bedismantled in 1962, following a ministerialchange. This paper explores the social,political, institutional, and cognitiveinteractions present in this short experience,and assesses their importance in understandingthe development of a new scientific field in a`peripheral context'.

A propósito del libro de Roy A. Medvedev y Zhores A. Medvedev, El Stalin desconocido, Planeta de Agostini, Barcelona 2006, traducido por Javier Alfaya y Javier Alfaya McShane.

Background: The literature has shown a significant association between traumatic experiences and eating psychopathology, showing a greater symptomatology in patients with trauma history. Less is known about the associations between trauma and cognitive schemas, and personality traits and the differences between childhood and adulthood trauma experiences. Thus, this paper aims to assess the clinical and psychological characteristics of eating disorder (ED) patients, looking for differences between patients without a history of trauma and patients with trauma experiences, as well as at (...) possible differences between exposure in childhood, adulthood, or repeated events. Another aim of the paper is to evaluate the possible mediation role of cognitive schemas and personality traits in the relationship between early trauma and eating psychopathology.Methods: From January to November 2020, 115 consecutive inpatients admitted for a specific multidisciplinary ED treatment in a dedicated Unit were evaluated for trauma, differentiating between trauma occurring in childhood and adulthood. The subjects were evaluated for early maladaptive schemas (EMS), personality traits, trauma symptomatology, quality of life, and specific psychopathologies linked to EDs. Mediation analyses between childhood and adulthood trauma and eating psychopathology were performed, with EMS and personality traits as mediators.Results: Patients with a history of trauma showed higher physical and psychological symptomatology scores, with a more impaired clinical profile in patients with both childhood and adulthood trauma exposure. The mediation analysis showed a specific mediator role for the “disconnection and rejection (DR)” EMS factor in the relationship between childhood trauma (cT) and eating psychopathology.Conclusion: Trauma experiences are associated with more severe clinical symptomatology in EDs and may need a specific assessment in patients with failed outpatient standard treatments. Specific cognitive schemas linked to DR domain should be evaluated in treatments for ED patients with history of trauma due to the mediation role between trauma and eating psychopathology. The need for outcome studies about treatment approaches for ED patients with history of trauma is discussed. (shrink)

Esta conversación tuvo lugar durante una visita de varios días de Pablo Posada Varela a la casa de Marc Richir en Haut-Vaucluse en junio de 2012. He aquí tres extractos (de extensión variable) de una conversación del 8 de junio, y algunos otros fechados el 10 de junio.

Human dignity: social movements invoke it, several national constitutions enshrine it, and it features prominently in international human rights documents. But what is it, why is it important, and what is its relationship to human rights and social justice? Pablo Gilabert offers a systematic defence of the view that human dignity is the moral heart of justice. In Human Dignity and Human Rights (OUP 2019), he advanced an account of human dignity for the context of human rights discourse, which (...) covers the most urgent, basic claims of dignity. This book extends the dignitarian approach to more ambitious claims of maximal dignity of the kind encoded in democratic socialist conceptions of social justice. In particular, this book focuses on the just organization of working practices. It recasts in a dignitarian format the critique of capitalist society as involving exploitation, alienation, and domination of workers, and revamps a neglected but inspiring socialist principle. In its dignitarian interpretation, the Abilities/Needs Principle (‘From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs!’) yields reasonable and feasible requirements on social cooperation geared to empowering each human being to lead a flourishing life. While Human Dignity and Human Rights offered the first systematic philosophical account of human dignity in human rights discourse, Human Dignity and Social Justice presents the first systematic application of the dignitarian framework to the core ideals of democratic socialism. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate a semantics for first-order logic originally proposed by R. van Rooij to account for the idea that vague predicates are tolerant, that is, for the principle that if x is P, then y should be P whenever y is similar enough to x. The semantics, which makes use of indifference relations to model similarity, rests on the interaction of three notions of truth: the classical notion, and two dual notions simultaneously defined in terms of it, (...) which we call tolerant truth and strict truth. We characterize the space of consequence relations definable in terms of those and discuss the kind of solution this gives to the sorites paradox. We discuss some applications of the framework to the pragmatics and psycholinguistics of vague predicates, in particular regarding judgments about borderline cases. (shrink)

This paper presents and defends a way to add a transparent truth predicate to classical logic, such that and A are everywhere intersubstitutable, where all T-biconditionals hold, and where truth can be made compositional. A key feature of our framework, called STTT (for Strict-Tolerant Transparent Truth), is that it supports a non-transitive relation of consequence. At the same time, it can be seen that the only failures of transitivity STTT allows for arise in paradoxical cases.

It is common in political theory and practice to challenge normatively ambitious proposals by saying that their fulfillment is not feasible. But there has been insufficient conceptual exploration of what feasibility is, and very little substantive inquiry into why and how it matters for thinking about social justice. This paper provides one of the first systematic treatments of these issues, and proposes a dynamic approach to the relation between justice and feasibility that illuminates the importance of political imagination and dynamic (...) duties to expand agents’ power to fulfill ambitious principles of justice. (shrink)

Do we have positive duties to help others in need or are our moral duties only negative, focused on not harming them? Are any of the former positive duties, duties of justice that respond to enforceable rights? Is their scope global? Should we aim for global equality besides the eradication of severe global poverty? Is a humanist approach to egalitarian distribution based on rights that all human beings as such have defensible, or must egalitarian distribution be seen in an associativist (...) way, as tracking existing frameworks such as statehood and economic interdependence? Are the eradication of global poverty and the achievement of global equality practically feasible or are they hopelessly utopian wishes? -/- This book argues that there are basic positive duties of justice to help eradicate severe global poverty; that global egalitarian principles are also reasonable even if they cannot be fully realized in the short term; and that there are dynamic duties to enhance the feasibility of the transition from global poverty to global equality in the face of nonideal circumstances such as the absence of robust international institutions and the lack of a strong ethos of cosmopolitan solidarity. The very notion of feasibility is crucial for normative reasoning, but has received little explicit philosophical discussion. This book offers a systematic exploration of that concept as well as of its application to global justice. It also arbitrates the current debate between humanist and associativist accounts of the scope of distributive justice. Drawing on moral contractualism (the view that we ought to follow the principles that no one could reasonably reject), this book provides a novel defense of humanism, challenges several versions of associativism (which remains the most popular view among political philosophers), and seeks to integrate the insights underlying both views. (shrink)

Substructural approaches to paradoxes have attracted much attention from the philosophical community in the last decade. In this paper we focus on two substructural logics, named ST and TS, along with two structural cousins, LP and K3. It is well known that LP and K3 are duals in the sense that an inference is valid in one logic just in case the contrapositive is valid in the other logic. As a consequence of this duality, theories based on either logic are (...) tightly connected since many of the arguments for and objections against one theory reappear in the other theory in dual form. The target of the paper is making explicit in exactly what way, if any, ST and TS are dual to one another. The connection will allow us to gain a more fine-grained understanding of these logics and of the theories based on them. In particular, we will obtain new insights on two questions concerning ST which are being intensively discussed in the current literature: whether ST preserves classical logic and whether it is LP in sheep’s clothing. Explaining in what way ST and TS are duals requires comparing these logics at a metainferential level. We provide to this end a uniform proof theory to decide on valid metainferences for each of the four logics. This proof procedure allows us to show in a very simple way how different properties of inferences (unsatisfiability, supersatisfiability and antivalidity) that behave in very different ways for each logic can be captured in terms of the validity of a metainference. (shrink)

The idea of dignity is pervasive in political discourse. It is central to human rights theory and practice, and it features regularly in conceptions of social justice as well as in the social movements they seek to understand or orient. However, dignity talk has been criticized for leading to problematic exclusion. Critics challenge it for undermining our recognition of the rights of non-human animals and of many human individuals (such as children, the elderly, and people with disabilities). I argue that, (...) on a plausible articulation of it, the idea of dignity does not lead to these exclusions and that it in fact helps defend an appropriately inclusive moral and political treatment of all individuals. Difficult issues about equality and diversity indeed arise, but a dignitarian approach can provide good answers to them or at least help make them clearer and more tractable. (shrink)

To what degree can language be acquired from linguistic input alone? This question has vexed scholars for millennia and is still a major focus of debate in the cognitive science of language. The complexity of human language has hampered progress because studies of language–especially those involving computational modeling–have only been able to deal with small fragments of our linguistic skills. We suggest that the most recent generation of Large Language Models (LLMs) might finally provide the computational tools to determine empirically (...) how much of the human language ability can be acquired from linguistic experience. LLMs are sophisticated deep learning architectures trained on vast amounts of natural language data, enabling them to perform an impressive range of linguistic tasks. We argue that, despite their clear semantic and pragmatic limitations, LLMs have already demonstrated that human-like grammatical language can be acquired without the need for a built-in grammar. Thus, while there is still much to learn about how humans acquire and use language, LLMs provide full-fledged computational models for cognitive scientists to empirically evaluate just how far statistical learning might take us in explaining the full complexity of human language. (shrink)

What should our theorizing about social justice aim at? Many political philosophers think that a crucial goal is to identify a perfectly just society. Amartya Sen disagrees. In The Idea of Justice, he argues that the proper goal of an inquiry about justice is to undertake comparative assessments of feasible social scenarios in order to identify reforms that involve justice-enhancement, or injustice-reduction, even if the results fall short of perfect justice. Sen calls this the “comparative approach” to the theory of (...) justice. He urges its adoption on the basis of a sustained critique of the former approach, which he calls “transcendental.” In this paper I pursue two tasks, one critical and the other constructive. First, I argue that Sen’s account of the contrast between the transcendental and the comparative approaches is not convincing, and second, I suggest what I take to be a broader and more plausible account of comparative assessments of justice. The core claim is that political philosophers should not shy away from the pursuit of ambitious theories of justice (including, for example, ideal theories of perfect justice), although they should engage in careful consideration of issues of political feasibility bearing on their practical implementation. (shrink)