El objetivo de este artículo es poner de relieve que fue Roma la responsable de denominar Hispania al espacio geográfico que cuenta con los Pirineos y las costas mediterránea, atlántica y cantábrica como fronteras naturales. También de dotar a la palabra de una identidad propia. Este es el mismo término que a lo largo del tiempo evolucionó en tantos y tantos contextos históricos, administrativos, políticos y culturales y que terminó denominando a la España actual. El término fue asimilado por sus (...) habitantes ya desde cronología republicana, independientemente de si eran nacidos en Corduba, en Emerita Augusta, en Lucus Augusti, en Tarraco, o cualquier otra pequeña localidad de sus respectivas provincias. Esta asimilación no fue idéntica en todas las escalas sociales, y evolucionó a lo largo del tiempo. Finalmente, se entra en detalle en la utilización de la fórmula natione Hispanus/a presente en la epigrafía romana. (shrink)

In this article, we shed light on the debate about the financial performance of socially responsible investment (SRI) mutual funds by separately analyzing the contributions of before-fee performance and fees to SRI funds' performance, and by investigating the role played by fund management companies in the determination of those variables. We apply the matching estimator methodology to obtain our results and find that in the period 1997–2005, US SRI funds had better beforeand after-fee performance than conventional funds with similar characteristics. (...) The differences, however, are driven exclusively by SRI funds run by management companies specialized in SRI. While these funds significantly outperform similar conventional funds, funds run by companies not specialized in SRI underperform their matched conventional funds. We find no significant differences in fees between SRI and conventional funds except in one case: SRI funds are cheaper than conventional funds run by the same management company. (shrink)

La presente obra indaga sobre la tenue línea divisoria entre los discursos de lo que hemos llamado filosofía y literatura. Cuestión de frontera, de imagen no siempre visible, en este libro se sostiene la idea de la casi identificación entre las funciones cognoscitivas, estéticas, referenciales y de cierta aplicabilidad. Del poder de los discursos de la filosofía y la literatura. La última consecuencia del giro lingüístico del pensamiento, y de nuestros hábitos culturales alrededor de la enorme profusión de textos filosófico-literarios (...) o literario-filosóficos, se interpreta así como la posible, acaso provocada, disolución de los géneros discursivos. Un lenguaje que se distingue por su continuidad, contingencia y siempre problemática referencialidad, es lo que el autor pone en juego al querer leer como casos paradigmáticos de esta disolución discursiva a Borges, Cortázar, R. Arenas o Kafka, pero también a Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida o Deleuze. (shrink)

This paper offers an exploration of the socialist principle “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.” The Abilities/Needs Principle is arguably the ethical heart of socialism but, surprisingly, has received almost no attention by political philosophers. I propose an interpretation of the principle and argue that it involves appealing ideas of solidarity, fair reciprocity, recognition of individual differences, and meaningful work. The paper proceeds as follows. First, I analyze Marx’s formulation of the Abilities/Needs Principle. Second, (...) I identify the principle’s initial plausibility, but show that it faces serious problems that cannot be addressed without developing a fresh interpretation of it. Third, I provide an interpretation of the principle that highlights demands concerning opportunities for self-realization in work, positive duties of solidarity, sensitivity to individual differences, and mechanisms of fair reciprocity. Fourth, I discuss a possible institutional implementation of the Abilities/Needs Principle. Finally, I identify some normative puzzles about the transition from capitalism to socialism, and suggest how the Abilities/Needs Principle might gain motivational traction by mobilizing the powerful idea of human dignity. (shrink)

When we speak about different interpretations of quantum mechanics it is suggested that there is one single quantum theory that can be interpreted in different ways. However, after an explicit characterization of what it is to interpret quantum mechanics, the right diagnosis is that we have a case of predictively equivalent rival theories. I extract some lessons regarding the resulting underdetermination of theory choice. Issues about theoretical identity, theoretical and methodological pluralism, and the prospects for a realist stance towards quantum (...) theory can be properly addressed once we recognize that interpretations of quantum mechanics are rival theories. (shrink)

An emotion-based lengthening effect on the perception of durations of emotional pictures has been assumed to result from an arousal-based mechanism, involving the activation of an internal clock system. The aim of this study was to systematically examine the arousal effect on time perception when different discrete emotions were considered. The participants were asked to verbally estimate the duration of emotional pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). The pictures varied either in arousal level, i.e., high/low-arousal, for the same (...) discrete emotion (disgust or sadness) or in the depicted emotion, e.g., disgust/fear for pictures matched for arousal (high-arousal). The results systematically revealed a lengthening effect on the perception of the duration of the emotional compared to the neutral pictures and indicated that the magnitude of this effect increased with arousal level. Nevertheless, variations in time perception were observed for one and the same arousal level, with the duration of disgust-inducing pictures (e.g., body mutilation) being judged longer than that of fear-inducing pictures (e.g., snake). These results suggest that arousal is a fundamental mechanism mediating the effect of emotion on time perception. However, the effect cannot be reduced to arousal, since the impact of the content of pictures also plays a critical role. (shrink)

Feelings are conscious mental events that represent body states as they undergo homeostatic regulation. Feelings depend on the interoceptive nervous system (INS), a collection of peripheral and central pathways, nuclei and cortical regions which continuously sense chemical and anatomical changes in the organism. How such humoral and neural signals come to generate conscious mental states has been a major scientific question. The answer proposed here invokes (1) several distinctive and poorly known physiological features of the INS; and (2) a unique (...) interaction between the body (the ‘object’ of interoception) and the central nervous system (which generates the 'subject' of interoception). The atypical traits of the INS and the direct interactions between neural and non‐neural physiological compartments of the organism, neither of which is present in exteroceptive systems, plausibly explain the qualitative and subjective aspects of feelings, thus accounting for their conscious nature. (shrink)

Most research studying the corporate social performance –corporate financial performance link has utilized developed country samples. Also, this literature has generally focused on a wide variety of industries, ignoring the fact that certain sectors – such as controversial industries – have graver social and environmental issues. Hence, a gap exists in this tradition when it comes to emerging markets and controversial industries. This paper attempts to fill this void by providing preliminary evidence and insight on the matter. Based on an (...) exploration in six Latin American countries and five controversial industries, we find a negative bidirectional association between CSP and CFP. These results tend to contradict the mainstream conclusion of a positive bidirectional link, suggesting that institutional and market-level forces play a major role in shaping this relationship. (shrink)

This article investigates the concept of the ground truth as both an epistemic and technical figure of knowledge that is central to discussions of machine vision and media techniques of visuality. While ground truth refers to a set of remote sensing practices, it has a longer history in operational photography, such as aerial reconnaissance. Building on a discussion of this history, this article argues that ground truth has shifted from a reference to the physical, geographical ground to the surface of (...) the images echoing earlier points raised by philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy that there is a ground of the image that is central to the task of analysis beyond representational practices. Furthermore, building on the practices of pattern recognition, composite imaging, and different interpretational techniques, we discuss contemporary practices of machine learning that mobilizes geographical earth observation datasets for experimental purposes, including tests such as “fake geography” as well as artistic practices, to show how ground truth is operationalized in such contexts of AI and visual arts. (shrink)

Se presenta a continuación un estudio comparativo entre Theodor W. Adorno y Guy Debord a través del tratamiento de los puntos nucleares de su pensamiento, abarcando desde sus respectivas críticas al modo de producción capitalista hasta el problema de la organización y la praxis, pasando por otras cuestiones de índole más filosófica como la dialéctica sujeto-objeto o ciertas consideraciones estéticas. El eje articulador de la comparación será, por su parte, la influencia de la obra de Karl Marx en estos autores (...) a la hora de tratar las problemáticas mentadas. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is analyzing to which extent the multiverse hypothesis provides a real explanation of the peculiarities of the laws and constants in our universe. First we argue in favor of the thesis that all multiverses except Tegmark’s “mathematical multiverse” are too small to explain the fine tuning, so that they merely shift the problem up one level. But the “mathematical multiverse" is surely too large. To prove this assessment, we have performed a number of experiments with (...) cellular automata of complex behavior, which can be considered as universes in the mathematical multiverse. The analogy between what happens in some automata (in particular Conway’s “Game of Life") and the real world is very strong. But if the results of our experiments can be extrapolated to our universe, we should expect to inhabit—in the context of the multiverse—a world in which at least some of the laws and constants of nature should show a certain time dependence. Actually, the probability of our existence in a world such as ours would be mathematically equal to zero. In consequence, the results presented in this paper can be considered as an inkling that the hypothesis of the multiverse, whatever its type, does not offer an adequate explanation for the peculiarities of the physical laws in our world. (shrink)

In this essay I will explore the important connection between conformism as an adaptive psychological strategy, and the emergence of the phenomenon of ethnicity. My argument will be that it makes sense that nature made us conformists. And once humans acquired this adaptive strategy, I will argue further, the development of ethnic organization was inevitable. Understanding the adaptive origins of conformism, as we shall see, is perhaps the most useful way to shed light on what ethnicity is—at least when examined (...) from the functional point of view, which is to say from the point of view of the adaptive problems that ethnicity solves. I shall begin with a few words about our final destination. (shrink)

Why should we become posthuman? There is only one morally compelling answer to this question: because posthumanity will be a more beneficial state, better than present humanity. This is the Posthuman Beneficence Argument, the centerpiece of the liberal transhumanist defense of “directed evolution.” In this article, I examine PBA and find it deficient on a number of lethal counts. My argument focuses on the writings of transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom, who has developed the most articulate defense of PBA and disclosed (...) its metaethical framework. I begin by locating PBA in the context of wider transhumanist claims for the desirability of posthumanity. I identify two crucial components: a model of deliberative rationality, requiring reasons to endorse claims; and the reasons themselves. I examine these two conditions, in turn, specifying the claims that they ask us to accept. Following Bostrom, I argue that there is a need for a foundationalist approach that assures us of some universality in the process of valuation. This is required to appropriately ground the moral continuity and appeal to universality that PBA demands. I examine the reasons why this approach ultimately fails, leaving posthumanity as an unintelligible concept with no moral force. I conclude by identifying a more mature approach to the debate on human enhancement, one that forfeits the grandiose but baseless claims too often found in transhumanist defenses of directed evolution. In short, posthumanity may be a good science fiction trope, but it has no normative force in the moral philosophy of human enhancement. (shrink)

We continue the work of Blok and Jónsson by developing the theory of structural closure operators and introducing the notion of a representation between them. Similarities and equivalences of Blok-Jónsson turn out to be bijective representations and bijective structural representations, respectively. We obtain a characterization for representations induced by a transformer. In order to obtain a similar characterization for structural representations we introduce the notions of a graduation and a graded variable of an M-set. We show that several deductive systems, (...) Gentzen systems among them, are graded M-sets having graded variables, and describe the graded variables in each case. In the last section we show that, for a sentential logic, having an algebraic semantics is equivalent to being representable in an equational consequence. This motivates the extension of the notion of having an algebraic semantics for Gentzen systems, hypersequents systems, etc. We prove that if a closure operator is representable by a transformer, then every extension of it is also representable by the same transformer. As a consequence we obtain that if one of these systems has an algebraic semantics, then so does any of its extensions with the same defining equations. (shrink)

A course in professional ethics for civil engineers was taught for the first time in Spain during the academic year 2007/08. In this paper a survey on the satisfaction and expectation of the course is presented. Surprisingly the students sought moral and ethical principles for their own ordinary lives as well as for their profession. Students were concerned about the law, but in their actions they were more concerned with their conscience, aware that it can be separate from the law.

The title of the present essay repeats, word for word, the title of an article that the British philosopher U.T. Place published in 1956: “Is Consciousness a Brain Process?”.

We present a systematic study of join-extensions and join-completions of partially ordered algebras, which naturally leads to a refined and simplified treatment of fundamental results and constructions in the theory of ordered structures ranging from properties of the Dedekind–MacNeille completion to the proof of the finite embeddability property for a number of varieties of lattice-ordered algebras.

En el presente texto, se pregunta por el pasaje del idealismo trascendental de Immanuel Kant al empirismo trascendental de Gilles Deleuze. Sostendremos dos hipótesis: en primer lugar, que el principal elemento distintivo del segundo con respecto al primero es la ausencia de una condición de concordancia entre los flujos de las diferentes facultades; en segundo lugar, que la escena que Deleuze construye para dar cuenta de una síntesis disyuntiva entre elementos heterogéneos está a su vez inspirada en Kant, más específicamente (...) en la Analítica de lo sublime. Deleuze reelabora esta escena, en su primer sistema filosófico propio, para construir un encuentro que violenta la sensibilidad y fuerza a las diferentes facultades a un ejercicio autónomo que rompe con el sentido común y, sin embargo, encuentra una armonía en el fondo de la discordancia. (shrink)

En 1947, Emmanuel Levinas publica un breve ensayo titulado “Ser judío” (“Être juif”) en la revista Confluences. A partir de una reflexión sobre la “cuestión” o “problema judío” (Judenfrage), se pregunta por la “razón de ser” o justificación de la existencia judía. Su ensayo ha sido objeto de una reapropiación por parte de algunos intérpretes que hacen de la afirmación de Levinas de “ser judío” el punto de apoyo para una conversión ontológica o heideggerianización de su pensamiento. El presente artículo (...) analiza críticamente una de estas perspectivas hermenéuticas, la lectura de Sarah Hammerschlag, atendiendo a dos cuestiones decisivas abiertas por el texto de Levinas: la de la identidad judía y la del judaísmo en la historia. Expone una aproximación alternativa al texto de 1947 que supone otro modo de comprender el sentido de los análisis de Levinas sobre ser judío. (shrink)

Tomasello et al. argue that cultural cognition derives from humans' unique motivation to share psychological states. We suggest that what underlies this motivation is children's propensity to seek out the underlying causes of behavior. This propensity, combined with children's competence at it, makes them especially skillful at acquiring the intentional, conventional, and reliable forms that constitute culture.

Los Anales de la Cátedra Francisco Suárez se encuentran hoy de fiesta. No puede ser de otro modo. No hay, lamentablemente, muchas revistas de alto impacto jurídico y político que hayan sido capaces de traspasar la barrera de los cincuenta números. Los Anales han librado grandes batallas, no siempre han acatado “lo políticamente correcto”, e incluso se han movido por la tenue línea de la intuición que promueve cambios filosófico-jurídicos. Digamos que la vida de Los Anales no ha sido fácil, (...) pero sí honesta a su vocación de cambio y honrosa en su apuesta por el mismo. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper we study consequence relations on the set of many sided sequents over a propositional language. We deal with the consequence relations axiomatized by the sequent calculi defined in [2] and associated with arbitrary finite algebras. These consequence relations are examples of what we call Gentzen systems. We define a semantics for these systems and prove a Strong Completeness Theorem, which is an extension of the Completeness Theorem for provable sequents stated in [2]. For the special case (...) of the finite linear MV-algebras, the Strong Completeness Theorem was proved in [10], as a consequence of McNaughton's Theorem. The main tool to prove this result for arbitrary algebras is the deduction-detachment theorem for Gentzen systems. (shrink)

Espero defender la tesis de que la lingüística contemporánea se ha ido consolidando como una ciencia estable. Para ello analizaré, en los conocidos términos de Hempel, casos concretos de explicaciones nomológico-deductivas y probabilístico-inductivas brindadas por la teo-ría generativa y por la teoría sistémico-funcional. Estas explicaciones so-bre hechos del lenguaje son muy superiores a las “no-científicas” : Se sostienen en leyes universales y probabilísticas, cumplen con los requi-sitos de contrastabilidad y pertinencia explicativa y, fundamentalmente, sirven para establecer o comprender las predicciones. (...) Finalmente, el problema de la incompatibilidad manifiesta entre los supuestos de una teoría “biologista” y los de una teoría “sociológica” , puede interpretarse en función de la vieja idea de que en la ciencia no hay experimentos cruciales.In this paper I shall argue that contemporary linguistics has developed as a stable science. I will use Hempel’s well known concep-tual apparatus in my analysis, and apply it to concrete examples of no-mologic-deductive and probabilistic-inductive explanations provided both by the generative and the systemic-functional theory. The expla-nations of concrete linguistic facts yielded by these theories are much better than “non-scientific” explanations : they are based on universal and probabilistic laws, they satisfy the requirements of contrastability and explicative relevance and, more importantly, they are useful in es-tablishing or understanding predictions. Finally, the manifest incom-patibility between the assumptions of a “biologist” theory and those of a “sociologic” theory can be analyzed in terms of the old idea that there are no crucial experiments in science. (shrink)

Anthropogenic changes in the biosphere, driven mainly by human cultural habits and technological advances, are altering the direction of evolution on Earth, with ongoing and permanent changes modifying uncountable interactions between organisms, the environment, and humankind itself. While numerous species may go extinct, others will be favored due to strong human influences. The Bio-Evolutionary Anthropocene hypothesizes that directly or indirectly human-driven organisms, including alien species, hybrids, and genetically modified organisms, will have major roles in the evolution of life on Earth, (...) shifting the evolutionary pathways of all organisms through novel biological interactions in all habitats. We anticipate that, in future scenarios, novel organisms will be continuously created, and contemporary native organisms with no obvious economic use will decline—while anthropogenic-favored and novel organisms will spread. The Bio-Evolutionary Anthropocene hypothesis therefore predicts that humankind and novel organisms will interact within a strong evolutionary bias that will lead to unexpected, and probably irreversible, outcomes for the evolution of life on our planet. (shrink)

In a note introduced into the second edition of Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1794), Kant assigns a systematic role to the General Remarks at the end of each Part of his book. He calls those Remarks, “as it were, parerga to religion within the boundaries of pure reason; they do not belong within it yet border on it” (RGV 6:52). As Kant sees them, the parerga are only a “secondary occupation” that consists in removing transcendent obstacles. This (...) paper is skeptical of Kant's view. It proposes an alternative account, according to which the parerga are essential to our moral education, since they force human reason to confront its own limitations and resist the urge to take refuge in spurious religious beliefs. That urge, I argue, is linked to the propensity to evil, and uses religious orthodoxy to undermine moral religion. By clipping our dogmatic wings, the parerga encourage reason to face its own dialectical tendencies and direct its speculative interest to immanent practical use. This redirection counteracts the debilitating effects of the propensity to evil and plays a key role in our moral regeneration. To consider the parerga “derivative,” as Kant himself does, is therefore a grave mistake. (shrink)

Customary interpretations state that Tractarian thoughts are pictures, and, a fortiori, facts. I argue that important difficulties are unavoidable if we assume this standard view, and I propose a reading of the concept taking advantage of an analogy that Wittgenstein introduces, namely, the analogy between thoughts and projective geometry. I claim that thoughts should be understood neither as pictures nor as facts, but as acts of geometric projection in logical space. The interpretation I propose thus removes the root of the (...) identified difficulties. Moreover, it allows important clarification concerning some central aspects of the Tractarian theory of representation, and it yields a unifying elucidation regarding Wittgenstein’s remarks on the solipsistic thesis. (shrink)

Resumen Hace 78 años, en “Un Mundo Feliz”, el escritor Aldous Huxley, en un prodigioso tono satírico, se anticipó con asombrosa precisión a los grandes temas de la agenda científica y política del Siglo XXI: la reproducción controlada, el choque de civilizaciones y la clonación humana, entre otros. Hace unos días, a mediados de mayo de 2010, el J. Craig Venter Institute anunció que había producido la primera célula sin historia genética creada en un laboratorio a partir de un genoma (...) sintetizado químicamente. Hoy, describiendo el estado “posthumano” de la historia, Francis Fukuyama afirma: “Huxley tenía razón”. Palabras clave: bioética; ingeniería genética; democracia; totalitarismo; biotécnica; eugenesia ;utopías; distopias. Huxley’s Prophecy and the Biotech Century: Post-human society is reaching usSeventy-eight years ago, in “A Happy World”, the writer Aldous Huxley, in a prodigious satiric tone, anticipated with astonishing accurateness the big topics of the XXI Century’s scientific and political agenda: controlled reproduction, civilization clash and human cloning, among others. Some days ago, in mid-May 2010, the J. Craig Venter Institute announced that it had produced the first genetic history free cell created in a laboratory from a chemically synthesized genome. Today, in describing the “post-human” state of history, Francis Fukuyama asserts: “Huxley was right”. Keywords: Bioethics;Genetic Engineering; Democracy; Totalitarianism; Biotechnology;Eugenics ; Utopias; Dystopias. (shrink)

Sobre el libro: Isaiah Berlin ha sido, además de un original e intuitivo historiador de las ideas y autor de numerosos conceptos teórico-políticos, un reconocido teorizador de la libertad y defensor acérrimo del pluralismo. Rasgos que lo han convertido en un innegable referente intelectual en nuestra época. Sobre el editor: El Editor de la presente obra, Pablo Badillo O'Farrell, con motivo del centenario del nacimiento de Berlin, ha reunido un número de contribuciones de estudiosos italianos y españoles que ofrecen, (...) desde muy diferentes perspectivas, un amplio abanico de miradas diversas sobre la obra y el pensamiento del autor, que van desde el análisis y confrontación del pluralismo valorativo y la ética de la libertad, al de la interculturalidad o la identidad personal y el nacionalismo, pasando por la confrontación de historicismo, historia de las ideas y contra-corriente. (shrink)

L’action est morale si elle est voulue en toute circonstance. Selon la Typique de la faculté de juger pratique, la loi fournit le modèle pour le passage à l’universel. Si ce modèle convient à la première formule del’impératif catégorique, il ne suffit à fonder ni la seconde, ni la troisième. On met en lumière les apories de la pensée kantienne pour indiquer ensuite que la position du problème de la « justice » par Rawls apporte peut-être un principe de solution.

We used 7,415 advertisements published in Spain to analyze traits sought/offered by men and women from different age groups. Findings regarding age, socioeconomic status, and physical attractiveness requirements support evolutionary predictions about mate preferences. However, changes in trait preferences among women under 40 appear to be contingent on Spain’s socioeconomic transformation. Women under 40 seek mainly physical attractiveness in men, whereas those over 40 seek mainly socioeconomic status. The trait most sought by men in all age groups is physical attractiveness. (...) Traits sought and offered by advertisers may be conditioned by the personal situation of the advertiser. Mean age of advertisers (around their forties) and Spain’s social indicators suggest that the majority of advertisers have been unsuccessful in the mating arena at the conventional age. (shrink)