One of the dominating themes in the first part is the negative treatment that Marx’s concept of labor has received by late critical theorists, particularly Habermas. While supportive of the rejection of Marx’s economic functionalism entailed by Habermas’s adoption of communicative action as the basic category of critical theory, Honneth worries about the indifference towards the normative potential of labor that he sees in most twentieth-century social theory. Honneth agrees with critics of reductionism that labor is neither the only form (...) of social reproduction, nor a primary source of emancipatory consciousness, as the fragmentation and depolitization of a working class that has suffered the effects of Taylorism clearly manifests. But Honneth is still convinced that the experience of recognition is to a large extent associated with work, and that Habermas tends to understand interaction in terms of instrumental action, making the concept of interaction inadequate to capture the sort of normative claims expressed by workers who do not see themselves sufficiently recognized in the labor they do. Although Honneth acknowledges that he has not settled how to navigate between these competing interests, the clarity of the call for a more complex concept of labor justifies the inclusion of these papers in the volume. (shrink)

In his influential paper Legal Reasons, Sources and Gaps' reprinted in The Authority of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), Raz says that legal gaps only exist when law speaks with uncertain voice or when it speaks with many voices, but there are no gaps when law is silent. In this later case, rules of closure, which are analytically true, prevent from the occurrence of gaps. According to Raz, if there is a gap in a legal system, then both the (...) claim that there is a conclusive legal reason to perform a certain action, and its negation are neither true nor false. Therefore, one of the Raz's most important contributions to the solution of the problem of legal gaps is to remark that legal discourse is not altogether governed by the principle of bivalence. However, philosophers often claim that the denial of bivalence leads to a logical inconsistency. If this claim were true, then Raz's solution to the problem of gaps would be seriously threatened. In this paper we show ‐ with the aid of a sophisticated analytical tool, i.e. von Wright's Truth Logic ‐ that the rejection of bivalence only commits us to accept the trivial conclusion that propositions can lack truth‐values. For this reason, Raz's paper can still be regarded as a good starting‐point for analyzing the relationships among norms, practical reasoning and legal gaps. However, we also show that in order to admit propositions which are neither true nor false, Raz's theses must be reformulated. Otherwise, the claim that there is no gap when law is silent would not be compatible with the rejection of bivalence. (shrink)

En "Legal Reasons, Sources and Gaps", Raz señala que las lagunas jurídicas existen sólo cuando el derecho habla con voz incierta o cuando habla con muchas voces, pero que no hay lagunas cuando el derecho guarda silencio. En este último caso habría reglas de clausura, analíticamente verdaderas, que impiden la ocurrencia de esas lagunas. Según Raz, si hay una laguna en un sistema jurídico, entonces no es verdadero ni falso que exista una razón concluyente para ejecutar cierta acción. Así, una (...) de las contribuciones más importantes de Raz a la solución del problema de las lagunas jurídicas es subrayar que el discurso jurídico no está completamente controlado por la bivalencia. Sin embargo, a menudo se sostiene que el rechazo de la bivalencia conduce a contradicciones. Si esta afirmación fuese verdadera, entonces la solución de Raz al problema de las lagunas jurídicas se vería seriamente amenazada. En este artículo mostramos, con ayuda de una herramienta analítica sofisticada, i.e., la lógica de la verdad de G.H. von Wright, que el rechazo de la bivalencia sólo nos compromete a aceptar la conclusión trivial de que puede haber proposiciones que no son verdaderas ni falsas. Por esta razón, el trabajo de Raz todavía puede ser considerado un buen punto de partida para analizar las relaciones entre normas, razonamiento práctico y lagunas jurídicas. Sin embargo, también mostramos que para admitir proposiciones que no son verdaderas ni falsas, las tesis de Raz deben ser reformuladas. De otra manera, la tesis de que no existen lagunas cuando el derecho guarda silencio no sería compatible con el rechazo de la bivalencia. /// In his paper "Legal Reasons, Sources and Gaps", Raz says that legal gaps only exist when law speaks with uncertain voice or when it speaks with many voices, but there are no gaps when law is silent. In this later case, rules of closure, which are analytically true, prevent from the occurrence of gaps. According to Raz, if there is a gap in a legal system, then both the claim that there is a conclusive legal reason to perform a certain action, and its negation are neither true nor false. Therefore, one of the Raz's most important contributions to the solution of the problem of legal gaps is to remark that legal discourse is not altogether governed by the principie of bivalence. However, philosophers often claim that the denial of bivalence leads to a logical inconsistency. If this claim were true, then Raz's solution to the problem of gaps would be seriously threatened. In this paper we show--with the aid of a sophisticated analytical tool, i.e., von Wright's truth-logic--that the rejection of bivalence only commits us to accept the trivial conclusion that propositions can lack truth-values. For this reason, Raz's paper can still be regarded as a good starting-point for analyzing the relationships between norms, practical reasoning and legal gaps. However, we also show that in order to admit propositions which are neither true nor false, Raz's theses must be reformulated. Otherwise, the claim that there is no gap when law is silent would not be compatible with the rejection of bivalence. (shrink)

Human dignity: social movements invoke it, several national constitutions enshrine it, and it features prominently in international human rights documents. But what is human dignity, why is it important, and what is its relationship to human rights? -/- This book offers a sophisticated and comprehensive defence of the view that human dignity is the moral heart of human rights. First, it clarifies the network of concepts associated with dignity. Paramount within this network is a core notion of human dignity as (...) an inherent, non-instrumental, egalitarian, and high-priority normative status of human persons. People have this status in virtue of their valuable human capacities rather than as a result of their national origin and other conventional features. Second, it shows how human dignity gives rise to an inspiring ideal of solidaristic empowerment, which calls us to support people's pursuit of a flourishing life by affirming both negative duties not to block or destroy, and positive duties to protect and facilitate, the development and exercise of the valuable capacities at the basis of their dignity. The most urgent of these duties are correlative to human rights. Third, this book illustrates how the proposed dignitarian approach allows us to articulate the content, justification, and feasible implementation of specific human rights, including contested ones, such as the rights to democratic political participation and to decent labour conditions. Finally, this book's dignitarian approach helps illuminate the arc of humanist justice, identifying both the difference and the continuity between the basic requirements of human rights and more expansive requirements of social justice such as those defended by liberal egalitarians and democratic socialists. -/- Human dignity is indeed the moral heart of human rights. Understanding it enables us to defend human rights as the urgent ethical and political project that puts humanity first. (shrink)

The essay addresses the well‐known idea that there has to be a place for intuition, thought of as a kind of non‐inferential rational insight, in the epistemology of basic logic if our knowledge of its principles is non‐empirical and is to allow of any finite, non‐circular reconstruction. It is argued that the error in this idea consists in its overlooking the possibility that there is, properly speaking, no knowledge of the validity of principles of basic logic. When certain important distinctions (...) are observed, for instance that between recognising that Modus Ponenes is sound and recognising that it is proof against the competent discovery of basic counterexamples, the case for thinking that there is indeed no space for genuine recognition of the validity of Modus Ponens becomes increasingly impressive. It is argued however that, the impossibility of knowledge notwithstanding, we are, in an important sense, entitled to take it that Modus Ponens is sound and that this notion of entitlement can help break the trichotomy ‐ intuition, inference, experience ‐ which imprisons our ordinary thinking about logical knowledge. (shrink)

The book is a defence of scientific realism. Its primary aim is to argue that it is possible to establish scientific realism without Inference to the Best Explanation. The idea that plays the central role in the book is an "Eddington-inference". Arthur Eddington once considered a hypothetical ichthyologist who concluded from the fact that his net contained no fish smaller than the holes in his net that there were in the sea no fish smaller than the holes in his net. (...) Although Eddington himself defended the inference, the author of the present volume argues on probabilistic grounds that it is likely such an inference is flawed. He generalises the argument to develop a probabilistic justification for scientific realist claims about the existence of unobservable entities. (shrink)

Se analizan y confrontan las técnicas empleadas por Teodoro de Pafo y por el reelaborador anónimo de su obra, relativas a la caracterización de los personajes, con el fin de determinar semejanzas, diferencias e intenciones particulares. Ambos autores emplean las mismas estrategias básicas, pero el metafrasta las modifica para subrayar distintas cualidades y una situación de época diversa.

Estudios de lingüística ugarítica: Una selección. By Gregorio del Olmo Lete. Aula Orientalis-Supplementa, vol. 30. Barcelona: Editorial Ausa, 2016. Pp. ii + 383.

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

The ‘paradoxes of coincidence’ are generally taken as an important factor for deciding between rival views on persistence through time. In particular, the ability to deal with apparent cases of temporary coincidence is usually regarded as a good reason for favouring perdurantism (or ‘four-dimensionalism’) over endurantism (or ‘three-dimensionalism’). However, the recent work of Gilmore ( 2007 ) and McGrath ( 2007 ) challenges this standard view. For different reasons, both Gilmore and McGrath conclude that perdurantism does not really obtain support (...) from the puzzles of temporary coincidence. In this paper, I will evaluate their arguments and defend the opposite view: that the paradoxes of coincidence do give some support to perdurantism. However, the way in which they do so is rather unexpected. As we will see, there are different ways in which coincidence scenarios may be thought to support perdurantism, some of which have not yet been sufficiently explored. Thus, my immediate goal is to explore one of those directions, bringing into focus a new argument from coincidence to perdurantism. And although I motivate my discussion by examining the arguments in the work of Gilmore and McGrath, the merits of this argument can be independently assessed. More generally, my overall purpose is to contribute to our general understanding of how the topics of coincidence and persistence bear on each other. (shrink)

Author Robert Wright shows how Buddhist meditative practice can loosen the grip of anxiety, regret, and hatred, and deepen your appreciation of beauty and other people." -- Adapted from book jacket.

My contention is that virtue ethics offers an important critique of traditional philosophical conceptions of moral status as well as an alternative view of important moral issues held to depend on moral status. I argue that the scope of entities that deserve consideration depends on our conception of the demands of virtues like justice; which entities deserve consideration emerges from a moral view of a world shaped by that conception. The deepest disputes about moral status depend on conflicting conceptions of (...) justice. I advocate a conception of the virtue of justice that can account for the cases that pose problems for the legalistic views of moral status and discuss what ideal moral debate looks like on this view. (shrink)

The continental drift controversy has been deeply analysed in terms of rationalist notions, which seem to find there a unique topic to describe the weight of evidence for reaching consensus. In that sense, many authors suggest that Alfred Wegener’s theory of the original supercontinent Pangea and the subsequent continental displacements finally reached a consensus when irrefutable evidence became available. Therefore, rationalist approaches suggest that evidence can be enough by itself to close scientific controversies. In this article I analyse continental drift (...) debates from a different perspective which is based on styles of thought. I’ll argue that continental drift debate took much longer than it was usually recognized with two styles of thought coexisting for hundreds of years. These were fixism and mobilism and they were always confronting their own evidence and interpretations and functioning as general frameworks for the acceptability of a specific theory. Therefore, this text aims to bring much broader sociological elements than usually involved in the analysis of the continental drift theory. (shrink)

One problem that has formed the focus of much recent discussion on personal identity is the Fission Problem. The aim of this paper is to offer a novel solution to this problem.

Mastering how to convey meanings using language is perhaps the main challenge facing any language learner. However, satisfactory accounts of how this is achieved, and even of what it is for a linguistic item to have meaning, are hard to come by. Nick Chater was one of the pioneers involved in the early development of one of the most successful methodologies within the cognitive science of language for discovering meaning: distributional semantics. In this article, we review this approach and discuss (...) its successes and shortcomings in capturing semantic phenomena. In particular, we discuss what we dub the “distributional paradox:” how can models that do not implement essential dimensions of human semantic processing, such as sensorimotor grounding, capture so many meaning-related phenomena? We conclude by providing a preliminary answer, arguing that distributional models capture the statistical scaffolding of human language acquisition that allows for communication, which, in line with Nick Chater's more recent ideas, has been shaped by the features of human cognition on the timescale of cultural evolution. (shrink)

This article elaborates on a view of human subjectivity as open and intersubjectively constituted and discusses it as a presupposition for student's participation in educational situations. It questions the traditional persistent concept of subjectivity as inner and private, the homo clausus, which puts self realization before recognition of the other and individual cognition before mutual meaning. From the perspective of homo clausus participation is thus limited to mere situated activity. A concept of human subjectivity as open and plural, homines aperti, (...) makes it possible to conceptualize educational situations relationally and to take the in‐between as point of departure for understanding pedagogical relationships. Participation can then be understood in terms of involvement in meaning making, knowledge construction and mutual will formation. The relevance of analyzing discrepancies between concepts in educational theory is that they direct our interest and our attention differently. This is also how theoretical understandings work in the praxis of teaching; teachers’ actions are certainly not guided by their theories, but their conceptions about such basic issues as subjectivity and self make some actions and decisions seem more intelligible than others. (shrink)

El problema de la alteridad puede plantearse en dos ámbitos: a) el de la alteridad absoluta, que Descartes desarrolla en la Tercera Meditación cuando el ego descubre su finitud como una negación y una aspiración de infinito; b) el de la alteridad relativa que me distingue de mi semejante. En primer lugar, arriesgamos una síntesis de los modos en que el alter ego pierde su alteridad al ser concebido como objeto de representación o de deseo. En segundo lugar, proponemos que (...) Descartes piensa la alteridad en sentido puramente ético, como capacidad de bien y de mal. Nuestra tesis es, primero: el amor puro (sin deseo) es el amor paterno —el único dirigido al otro sí mismo por sí mismo y que abre la posibilidad de la donación de sí, el sacrificio; segundo: los textos de Descartes adquieren todo su sentido si se los compara con la noción ética de alteridad en la filosofía de Emmanuel Levinas. (shrink)

Este trabalho pretende investigar como uma série de metamorfoses em nossos regimes de visibilidade constituem o que chamamos de populismo algorítmico e subjetivação ptolomaica. Recorremos, inicialmente, aos conceitos de disciplina, espetáculo e transparência – trabalhados respectivamente por Foucault, Debord e Han – para melhor compreendermos a formação de certos regimes de visibilidade e sua conexão com o modo de produção capitalista. Em seguida, trazemos o campo da tecnopolítica como superfície de inscrição privilegiada das novas formas de visibilidade e lançamos atenção (...) aos efeitos da filtragem algorítmica que produzem o que Pariser chamou de bolha-dos-filtros: a progressiva personalização dos conteúdos políticos, imagens e propagandas na internet. Argumentamos que esta ação de filtragem algorítmica está na base dos novos populismos, conforme as análises de Mouffe e Laclau. A partir de um sistema de equivalência de demandas insatisfeitas, as formas de laço social postas pelo atual populismo algorítmico se dão muito mais por uma frustração ou por um inimigo em comum do que por formas de idealização, tal qual nos mostravam a psicologia das massas analisada por Le Bon e Freud. Por fim, com o conceito de subjetivação ptolomaica, que consiste na produção tecnopolítica de um sujeito autocentrado e intolerante a tudo o que destoe do universo único a que o algoritmo deu exclusiva visibilidade, reencontramos os importantes temas do dogmatismo e do egocentrismo, trabalhados respectivamente por Kant e Piaget – o que, por sua vez, conecta o campo da Tecnopolítica ao campo da Filosofia da Educação no importante e atual tema das metamorfoses da visibilidade. (shrink)