Este artículo explora los artilugios conceptuales que utiliza la teoría de Bruno Latour para comprender y explicar la realidad natural y social. Asimismo, se exponen cuáles son los límites a su principio de “indeterminación radical” o principio de simetría generalizado. Este análisis muestra la posibilidad de un estudio normativo de la realidad social y tecnocientífica compatible con la evolución que se encuentra en el mismo Latour respecto del significado y funcíon políticos de la ciencia.This article explores the conceptual tools which (...) philosopher, sociologist and anthropologist Bruno Latour uses to understand and also to explain natural and social realities investigated by the sciences and by the philosophy of science. This text also sets the limits to Labour’s principle of radical indeterminacy, also known as the principle of generalized symmetry. As a result of this, the possibility of a normative study of social and techno-scientific realities is emphasized as a type of technoscientfic and social research, which is compatible with Latour’s own evolution of thought concerning the meaning and function of the politics of science. (shrink)

Background The birth plan is a tool that allows the self-learning and thoughtful analysis of the women during the birthing process, facilitating their making of decisions and participation, in agreement with the bioethical principles of autonomy and no malfeasance. Goal: To understand the perception and satisfaction of women who presented a birth plan. Methodology: Qualitative, descriptive, observational, retrospective and cross-sectional study. The population of the study was composed of 21 women who presented a birth plan regulated in a Hospital ever (...) since the recording of the presentation of the birth plan was started (2011) until 2015. Place: Cartagena (Murcia, Spain). Techniques/methods: Semistructured interview. Results-Discussion: Most women considered the plan as a useful self-learning tool on the meaning of the birthing process, as it favored the communication between the expectant mothers/health professionals. Our informants sought information related to the birthing process from informal sources; most perceived a level of respect of their wishes during the process of giving birth. The use of the birth plan did not imply the perception of loss of the degree of control during the birth, although attention to the written document could be improved. Conclusions The use of the birth plan is a very satisfactory and useful experience for their involvement in their self-care, although in some cases, the births did not proceed according to their plans. Nevertheless, the prevalence of the principle of Non-Malfeasance over Autonomy was evidenced. (shrink)

This article aims to pay heed to the rational and deliberative dimensions of moral agency within the project of moral enhancement. In this sense, it is presented how the technique of neurofeedback might contribute to the enhancement of moral deliberations and autonomy. Furthermore, this brain-computer interface is thought as a possible element of a Socratic moral assistant interested in improving moral enhancement within a model of full interaction between moral agents and such a moral assistant. This proposal does not embrace (...) the project of moral bioenhancement, centred in the improvement of moral emotions through neuropharmacology. Moreover it rejects the delegation of moral decision-making to moral artificial agents because this would mean that there is continuity between moral human and artificial moral agents. (shrink)

En este artículo analizo ciertos problemas que se derivan de los principios que se utilizan en el discurso ético sobre la «mejora humana», y que guardan relación con el positivismo. Comienzo esbozando las dos posiciones principales que configuran el debate sobre la mejora humana: la posición creativa, post-humanista o pro-mejora frente a la postura bio-conservadora u orientada a la gratitud. Mi objetivo es mostrar, primero, que el debate ético sobre la mejora humana proviene, especialmente en el bando pro-mejora, de una (...) visión demasiado optimista, casi ingenua, de la ciencia y de la tecnología; y segundo, que este debate ha prestado poca atención a las cuestiones epistemológicas, sociales y políticas que están en juego. (shrink)

Background: The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic caused a shortage of qualified nurses in Spain. As a result, the government authorized the hiring of senior students. Objectives: To explore the ethical dilemmas and ethical conflicts experienced by final-year nursing students who worked during the first outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain. Research design: A qualitative exploratory study was conducted using purposive sampling. Semi-structured interviews were carried out using a question guide. Interviews took place via a private video chat (...) room platform. A thematic, inductive analysis was performed of the information gathered. Participants and research context: Eighteen nursing students were recruited from two universities of Madrid, aged between 18 and 65 years old, enrolled in the fourth year of nursing studies and who were hired under a relief contract for health professionals during the pandemic. Ethical considerations: The present study was carried out in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the study was approved by the Local Ethics Committee of Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. Results: Three specific themes emerged: (a) coping with patient triage, (b) difficulties in providing end-of-life care, and (c) coping with patient death. Nursing students participated in the process of patient selection for resource allocation and ICU bed occupancy. They were shown how to care for patients who were not admitted to the ICU, in their last moments and were faced with the difficulties of applying end-of-life care. Finally, the nursing students were confronted with the death of their patients, in overwhelming numbers and under adverse conditions. Conclusions: These findings can help shed light on the ethical dilemmas and ethical conflicts faced by novice nursing students, incorporated into the workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, it was described that students may normalize the death due to the exhaustion and overwhelmed routine. (shrink)

The emergence of AI is posing serious challenges to standard conceptions of moral status. New non-biological entities are able to act and make decisions rationally. The question arises, in this regard, as to whether AI systems possess or can possess the necessary properties to be morally considerable. In this chapter, we have undertaken a systematic analysis of the various debates that are taking place about the moral status of AI. First, we have discussed the possibility that AI systems, by virtue (...) of its new agential capabilities, can be understood as a moral agent. Discussions between those defending mentalist and anti-mentalist positions have revealed many nuances and particularly relevant theoretical aspects. Second, given that an AI system can hardly be an entity qualified to be responsible, we have delved into the responsibility gap and the different ways of understanding and addressing it. Third, we have provided an overview of the current and potential patientist capabilities that AI systems possess. This has led us to analyze the possibilities of AI possessing moral patiency. In addition, we have addressed the question of the moral and legal rights of AI. Finally, we have introduced the two most relevant authors of the relational turn on the moral status of AI, Mark Coeckelbergh and David Gunkel, who have been led to defend a relational approach to moral life as a result of the problems associated with the ontological understanding of moral status. (shrink)

Delusions are one of the most classical symptoms described in schizophrenia. However, despite delusions are often emotionally charged, they have been investigated using tasks involving non-affective material, such as the Beads task. In this study we compared 30 patients with schizophrenia experiencing delusions with 32 matched controls in their pattern of responses to two versions of the Beads task within a Bayesian framework. The two versions of the Beads task consisted of one emotional and one neutral, both with ratios of (...) beads of 60:40 and 80:20, considered, respectively, as the “difficult” and “easy” variants of the task. Results indicate that patients showed a greater deviation from the normative model, especially in the 60:40 ratio, suggesting that more inaccurate probability estimations are more likely to occur under uncertainty conditions. Additionally, both patients and controls showed a greater deviation in the emotional version of the task, providing evidence of a reasoning bias modulated by the content of the stimuli. Finally, a positive correlation between patients’ deviation and delusional symptomatology was found. Impairments in the 60:40 ratio with emotional content was related to the amount of disruption in life caused by delusions. These results contribute to the understanding of how cognitive mechanisms interact with characteristics of the task in the context of delusional thinking. These findings might be used to inform improved intervention programs in the domain of inferential reasoning. (shrink)

El que en el presente libro se confronten "lenguaje" e "historia" pretende indicar que una parte especial de los que hemos sido se hace presente como "lenguaje"; pero, además, según se analiza en sus páginas, la función del historiador tuvo, en principio, algo elemental y simple. La misma etimología de la palabra significa alguien a quien se le pide consejo sobre un hecho porque "él vio lo que pasó". Al decir lo que ve, lo que interpreta, el historiador compromete la (...) veracidad de su propio ser. Colección Clásicos - Dykinson (títulos publicados)?Serie estudios?? - Sobre la democracia ateniense. Luis Gil Fernández. - Derecho natural y dignidad humana. Ernst Bloch. - Alejo Carpentier. Poética del Mediterráneo Caribe. Inmaculada López Calahorro. - P. Szondi. Teoría del drama moderno. Ensayo sobre lo trágico. - El concepto poíesis en la filosofía griega. Emilio Lledó. - Lenguaje e historia. Emilio Lledó.?Serie textos? - Heródoto. Historia. Libro I. Ed. bilingüe de J. M. Floristán. - Sófocles. Electra. Ed. bilingüe de Luis Gil Fernández. - Platón. Fedro. Ed. bilingüe de Luis Gil Fernández. - Aristóteles. Poética. Ed. bilingüe de Paloma Ortiz García. - Horacio. Arte poética. Ed. bilingüe de Luis Gil Fernández. - Boileau. El arte poética y otras sátiras. Ed. bilingüe de Alberto Torrego Salcedo. - Lezama Lima. Escritos de Estética. Ed. de Pedro Aullón de Haro. - República poética. Textos programáticos de la literatura española (siglos XVIII y XIX). Ed. de Germán Garrido Miñambres. (shrink)

In diesem Band werden Beiträge gesammelt, die sich nicht nur auf rein formal logische Aspekte, sondern auch auf Probleme beziehen, die mit der Erkenntnistheorie, der Naturphilosophie und der Dialektik in Verbindung stehen. Iván de los Ríos Gutiérrez stellt die Aristotelische Kontingenzlehre dar. Miguel García-Valdecasas erörtert die wissenschaftstheoretischen Fundamente der Aristotelischen Nous-Lehre. Joseph Li Vecchi entwickelt ein formales Modell für Inferenzen, die auf der Grundlage von analogischen Verhältnissen basieren. Niels Öffenberger charakterisiert die abgeleiteten Wahrheitswerte, die sich durch die Dichotomie der (...) schlichten Wahrheit und der schlichten Falschheit ergeben. Paloma Pérez-Ilzarbe und María Cerezo verteidigen durch eine Interpretation der Struktur der Assertion die Gültigkeit des Bivalenz prinzips im Rahmen der Aristotelischen Wahrheitstheorie. Gabriela Rossi präsentiert eine systematische Darstellung der Rolle der lysis als Instrument der Aristotelischen Dialektik. Mirko Skarica untersucht die zeitgenössische Rezeption der Aristotelischen Auffassung des einfachen prädikativen Satzes bei Vertretern sowohl der analytischen als auch der phänomenologischen Tradition. Alejandro G. Vigo charakterisiert das Aristotelische Modell der Kausalerklärung in der Naturphilosophie in Verbindung mit dem Begriff eines sog. Hintergrundsholismus. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Truth-conditions are systematically determined when they are the output of an algorithmic procedure that takes as input a set of semantic and contextual features. Truth-conditional sceptics have cast doubts on the thesis that truth-conditions are systematic in this sense. Against this form of scepticism, Schoubye and Stokke : 759–793) and Dobler : 451–474.) have provided systematic analyses of utterance truth-conditions. My aim is to argue that these theories are not immune to the kind of objections raised by truth-conditional sceptics. (...) In particular, I argue that the use of Questions Under Discussion and ways of being is problematic. (shrink)

The present article is the third part of a trilogy of papers, devoted to analysing the influence of semantic Platonism on contemporary philosophy of language. In Part I (Picazo 2021), the discussion was set out by examining a number of typical traces of Platonism in semantic theory since Frege. In Part II (Picazo 2021a), additional illustrations of such traces were provided, taken from a collection of recent commissioned essays on the philosophy of language (Schantz 2012). The present part (...) is devoted to providing yet additional illustrations of such traces, taken from a collection of classic essays on the subject: the book Modern Philosophy of Language, edited by Maria Baghramian in 1998. We shall, thus, describe a number of examples in which the influence of semantic Platonism on these essays can be felt. Prominent among these examples are the confusion between sentences and propositions (and related confusions), the avoidant attitude with respect to basic aspects of linguistic meaning, the overuse of analytic methodology for semantic research, the adoption of a background Platonic metaphysics of meanings and the overreaction against semantic Platonism and germane views, witnessing an inverse influence (‘by opposition’) from these views. (shrink)

One way to silence the powerless, Langton has taught us, is to pre-emptively disable their ability to do things with words. In this paper I argue that speakers can be silenced in a different way. You can let them speak, and obscure the meaning of their words afterwards. My aim is to investigate this form of silencing, that I call retroactive distortion. In a retroactive distortion, the meaning of the words of a speaker is distorted by the effect of a (...) subsequent speech act by a different speaker. After introducing this notion, I explore some reasons why retroactive distortions can be difficult to challenge and argue that, besides constituting a communicative injustice, they can eliminate topics from public consideration and therefore erode public debate. (shrink)

Pragmatic modulation makes contextual information necessary for interpretation. This poses a problem for homophonic reports and inter-contextual communication in general: of co-situated interlocutors, we can expect some common ground, but non-co-situated interpreters lack access to the context of utterance. Here I argue that we can nonetheless share modulated contents via homophonic reports. First, occasion-unspecific information is often sufficient for the recovery of modulated content. Second, interpreters can recover what is said with different degrees of accuracy. Homophonic reports and inter-contextual communication (...) are often successful because the reporting context does not demand full accuracy. (shrink)

The present article is the second part of a trilogy of papers, devoted to analysing the influence of semantic Platonism on contemporary philosophy of language. In Part I (Picazo 2021), the discussion was set out by examining a number of typical traces of Platonism in semantic theory since Frege. In a subsequent paper that shall be published elsewere, additional illustrations of such traces will be provided, taken from a collection of classic texts in the philosophy of language, also from (...) Frege onwards (Baghramian 1998). Then, the present paper is devoted to providing yet additional illustrations of those traces, but this time taken from a collection of recent commissioned essays on the subject: the book Prospects for Meaning, edited by Richard Schantz in 2012. We shall, thus, describe a considerable number of examples in which the influence of semantic Platonism on these essays can be felt. Prominent among these examples are the adhesion to pseudo-Platonism in the form of semantic mentalism; the typical limitations of avoidant and trivializing semantic accounts; the confinement to logico-philosophical analysis as the only methodology for semantic research; the excesses committed by some radical semantic anti-representationalists and some radical semantic biologists; and the adhesion to hardcore semantic Platonism itself. (shrink)

According to some views, natural language suffers from underdeterminacy, but thought doesn’t. According to the underdeterminacy claim, sentence types underdetermine the truth-conditions of sentence tokens. In particular, the semantics of a predicate type seems to underdetermine the satisfaction conditions of its tokens. By contrast, mental representation-types are supposed to determine the truth-conditions of its tokens. In this paper I critically examine these mixed views. First, I argue that the arguments supporting the indispensability of including in one’s theory mental representations that (...) are free of the underdeterminacy exhibited by natural language are not sound. As a result, the possibility that mental representation-types are as underdetermined as natural language sentence-types has not been ruled out. Second, I argue that Carston’s ad hoc concept-types are as underdetermined as word-types. I finish by arguing that mental representations are also underdetermined in a second sense—mental representation-tokens only determine a partial function from possible worlds to truth-values. (shrink)

The present article is the first of a trilogy of papers, devoted to analysing the influence of semantic Platonism on contemporary philosophy of language. In the present article, I lay out the discussion by contrasting semantic Platonism with two other views of linguistic meaning: the socio-environmental conception of meaning and semantic anti-representationalism. Then, I identify six points in which the impregnation of semantic theory with Platonism can be particularly felt, resulting in shortcomings and inaccuracies of various kinds. These points are (...) the following: the limitations of regarding logico-philosophical analysis as the only working methodology; the tendency to avoid investigating a number of aspects of linguistic meaning; the recurring confusion between sentences, statements, and propositions; the weakness of transcendent assumptions about meaning; the weakness of meaning assumptions adopted on the basis of pure intuition; and inconsistencies caused by some over-eager attempts to escape semantic Platonism. (shrink)

The starting point of this paper is the idea that linguistic representation is the result of a global process: a process of interaction of a community of cognitive-linguistic agents, with one another and with the environment. I maintain that the study of truth, meaning and related notions should be addressed without losing perspective of this process, and I oppose the ‘static’ or ‘analytic’ approach, which is fundamentally based on our own knowledge of the conventional meaning of words and sentences, and (...) the ability of using them that we have as competent speakers. I argue that the analytic perspective is responsible for five recurring difficulties in truthmaker theory: (1) the lack of attention to the difference of explanatory role between the distinct notions proposed as primary truthbearer; (2) the adscription of purely extra-linguistic truthmakers to ‘synthetic truths’, ignoring the contribution of the linguistic factor; (3) the adscription of purely linguistic truthmakers to ‘logical’ and ‘analytic truths’, ignoring the contribution of the worldly factor; (4) the difficulties in the search for minimal truthmakers; (5) the problems in the treatment of ‘negative facts’ and of other ‘logically complex facts’. I do not provide an account of how to solve these difficulties, but I do show how the ‘process model’ helps to clear up confusion regarding them. (shrink)

McGowan has provided a linguistic mechanism that explains how speech can constitute harm. Her idea is that utterances routinely enact s-norms about what is permissible in a given context. My aim is to argue that these s-norms are sensitive to the conversational standing of the speaker. In particular, I claim that the strength of the norm enacted depends on the standing of the speaker. In some cases, the speaker might even lack the standing required to enact new s-norms.

The paper reviews proposals by Abell, Predelli, and others on the semantics of fiction, focusing on the discourse through which fictions are created. Predelli develops the radical fictionalism of former writers like Kripke and van Inwagen, on which that discourse is contentless and does not express propositions. This paper offers reasons to doubt these claims. It then explores realist proposals like Abell’s in which singular terms in fictions refer to fictional characters, understood as socially created representational artifacts, and irrealist alternatives (...) in which the discourse is fully meaningful even though those terms fail to refer. (shrink)

There is a largely unrecognized ambiguity concerning the nature of a trope. Disambiguation throws into relief two fundamentally different conceptions of a trope and provides two ways to understand and develop each metaphysical theory that put tropes to use. In this paper I consider the relative merits that result from differences concerning a trope’s ability to ground the character of ordinary objects. I argue that on each conception of a trope, there are unique implications and challenges concerning character-grounding.

Greenwood (2019) casts doubts upon whether a certain view about social groups (the view that social groups persist throughout changes in their membership, by virtue of the maintenance of their structure or function) is a fundamental metaphysical truth about social groups, rather than a theoretical truth about some or many social groups. In this note, I introduce a distinction between absolute and relative metaphysics, and argue that there are no 'fundamental metaphysical truths‘ (as Greenwood conceives of them) at all. If (...) there is one thing that should not persist here, it is absolute metaphysics. (shrink)

Two objections are raised against Oliver and Smiley’s analysis of the collective–distributive opposition in their 2016 book: They take it as a basic premise that the collective reading of ‘baked a cake’ corresponds to a predicate different from its distributive reading, and the same applies to all predicate expressions that admit both a collective and a distributive interpretation. At the same time, however, they argue that inflectional forms of the same lexeme reveal a univocity that should be preserved in a (...) formal representation of English. These two assumptions sit uneasily. In developing their analysis, Oliver and Smiley come to the conclusion that even a singular predication such as ‘Tom baked a cake’ must be regarded as ambiguous between a collective and a distributive reading. This is so artificial that it hardly makes sense, and yet there seems to be no way out of the difficulty unless we are prepared to give up the basic premise just mentioned. (shrink)

In recent decades, plural logic has established itself as a well-respected member of the extensions of first-order classical logic. In the present paper, I draw attention to the fact that among the examples that are commonly given in order to motivate the need for this new logical system, there are some in which the elements of the plurality in question are internally singularized (e.g. ‘Whitehead and Russell wrote Principia Mathematica’), while in others they are not (e.g. ‘Some philosophers wrote Principia (...) Mathematica’). Then, building on previous work, I point to a subsystem of plural logic in which inferences concerning examples of the first type can be adequately dealt with. I notice that such a subsystem (here called ‘discrete plural logic’) is in reality a mere variant of first-order logic as standardly formulated, and highlight the fact that it is axiomatizable while full plural logic is not. Finally, I urge that greater attention be paid to discrete plural logic and that discrete plurals are not used in order to motivate the introduction of full-fledged plural logic—or, at least, not without remarking that they can also be adequately dealt with in a considerably simpler system. (shrink)

In this article, I explore the consequences of two commonsensical premises in semantics and epistemology: (1) natural language is a complex system rooted in the communal life of human beings within a given environment; and (2) linguistic knowledge is essentially dependent on natural language. These premises lead me to emphasize the process-socio-environmental character of linguistic meaning and knowledge, from which I proceed to analyse a number of long-standing philosophical problems, attempting to throw new light upon them on these grounds. In (...) particular, I criticize the use of expressions such as ‘absolute truth’, ‘absolute existence’ and ‘the thing in itself’, arguing that they lead to what I call ‘the ultralinguistic paradox’ (a fatal antinomy). In the same way, I review a number of mainstream topics in philosophical semantics, epistemology and metaphysics, reformulating them in terms much more naturalistic – and less mysterious – than usual. (shrink)

In this note I present a solution to Kripkenstein’s paradox, based on a very simple argument: (1) natural language and rule-following are empirical phenomena; (2) no case has been described, in real life, of a person who behaves as Wittgenstein’s or Kripke’s fictional character; (3) therefore, the discussion of such a case is completely devoid of interest. I lay out the example of a ‘Kripkensteinian apple’, which has a normal weight on even days and is weightless on odd days, in (...) order to highlight the contrast between a genuinely empirical perspective, such as that of physics, and the logical-analytical perspective, under which Kripkenstein’s paradox has attracted so much attention. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the idiosyncrasy of linguistic competence fosters semantic conceptions in which meanings are taken for granted, such as the one that Quine calls ‘uncritical semantics’ or ‘the myth of the museum’. This is due to the degree of automaticity in the use of language which is needed for fluent conversation. Indeed, fluent conversation requires that we speakers instinctively associate each word or sentence with its meaning (or linguistic use), and instinctively resort to the conceptual repertoire (...) of our language, without calling into question that the meaning of a particular word, or the conceptual repertoire of our language, could have been different than they are. This habit of taking meanings for granted, inherent to our linguistic ability, sometimes interferes with our semantic research, hampering it. In order to illustrate this problem, I pinpoint four places in Quine’s work where, despite his acknowledged analytical rigour, and despite his congenital aversion to the habit of taking meanings for granted, he himself appears to slip into this habit, inadvertently. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a conception of meaning in natural language that I call the ‘process model’. According to this conception, meaning must be regarded as the result of a process of interaction in a community of cognitive-linguistic agents, with one another and with the environment. Drawing on this understanding, I argue that the study of meaning should no longer focus on logical analysis, but rather on an empirical perspective similar to the one in the other social sciences. I (...) briefly compare this view with semantic Platonism, as well as with Wittgenstein’s and Quine’s approaches to meaning. Finally, I outline a way in which this approach could be applied to two current problems in the philosophy of language: the treatment of linguistic vagueness and the definition of truth. The treatment of all these questions is very cursory, as a sort of travel guide for a future more detailed research. (shrink)

Singular terms used in fictions for fictional characters raise well-known philosophical issues, explored in depth in the literature. But philosophers typically assume that names already in use to refer to “moderatesized specimens of dry goods” cause no special problem when occurring in fictions, behaving there as they ordinarily do in straightforward assertions. In this paper I continue a debate with Stacie Friend, arguing against this for the exceptionalist view that names of real entities in fictional discourse don’t work there as (...) they do in simple-sentence assertions, but rather as fictional names do. (shrink)

This paper offers new arguments to reject the alleged dream of immortality. In order to do this, I firstly introduce an amendment to Michael Hauskeller’s approach of the “immortalist fallacy”. I argue that the conclusion “we do not want to live forever” does not follow from the premise “we do not want to die”. Next, I propose the philosophical turn from “normally” to “under these circumstances” to resolve this logical error. Then, I review strong philosophical critiques of this transhumanist purpose (...) of immortality in the literature. There are two key questions related to the possibility of fulfilling this goal: the hard problem of consciousness and the personal identity dilemma. Finally, I defend a specific type of indefinite life and justify that it is more desirable than our current limited life. (shrink)

My general aim in this paper is to shed light on the controversial concept of a bare particular. I do so by arguing that bare particulars are best understood in terms of the individuative work they do within the framework of a realist constituent ontology. I argue that outside such a framework, it is not clear that the notion of a bare particular is either motivated or coherent. This is suggested by reflection on standard objections to bare particulars. However, within (...) the framework of a realist constituent ontology, bare particulars provide for a coherent theory of individuation—one with a potentially significant theoretical price tag, but one that also has advantages over rival theories. (shrink)

Argumentation represents a way of reasoning over a knowledge base containing possibly incomplete and/or inconsistent information, to obtain useful conclusions. As a reasoning mechanism, the way an argumentation reasoning engine reaches these conclusions resembles the cognitive process that humans follow to analyze their beliefs; thus, unlike other computationally reasoning systems, argumentation offers an intellectually friendly alternative to other defeasible reasoning systems. LogicProgrammingisacomputationalparadigmthathasproducedcompu- tationallyattractivesystemswithremarkablesuccessinmanyapplications. Merging ideas from both areas, Defeasible Logic Programming offers a computational reasoning system that uses an argumentation engine (...) to obtain answers from a knowledge base represented using a logic programming language extended with defeasible rules. This combination of ideas brings about a computationally effective system together with a human-like reasoning model facilitating its use in applications. (shrink)

Los resultados que aquí presentamos forman parte del proyecto “Riesgo de fracaso y abandono escolar en Secundaria Obligatoria. Los contextos educativos, familiares y socioculturales. Un estudio cualitativo” (Código: SEJ 2664) y tiene como objetivo analizar y comprender en Andalucía qué factores determinan que el alumnado que han estado en situación de riesgo y/o abandono en ESO retomen sus estudios y vuelvan a ingresar dentro del sistema educativo. Todo ello realizado desde la propia voz de las personas protagonistas, poniéndolas en el (...) centro de la investigación para así aproximarnos a su realidad; vivida y percibida de forma individual y particular. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Peacocke (2001) continues an ongoing debate with McDowell and others, providing renewed arguments for the view that perceptual experiences and some other mental states have a particular kind of content, nonconceptual content. In this article I want to object to one of the arguments he provides. This is not because I side with McDowell in the ongoing debate about nonconceptual content; on the contrary, given the way I understand it, my views are closer to Peacocke’s, and (...) have been strongly influenced by him. It is just that I am not persuaded by the particular argument I will be questioning here. (shrink)

UNICEF España ocupa un local bastante amplio en Mauricio Legendre, a espaldas de la estación de Chamartín y a poca distancia de la Plaza de Castilla en la capital madrileña. Un local que luce, dentro y fuera, el característico azul de la organización. Se respira, en esta sede, un ambiente de intenso trabajo� entusiasmante. Da la impresión de que quienes están en la tarea lo hacen con ilusión, con ganas. Lacalidez de la acogida y el clima de confianza facilitan una (...) entrevista muy cordial y amigable. Paloma Escudero es quien dirige estos laboriosos equipos. Una mujer joven y animosa, que llegó a UNICEF tras una larga trayectoria de éxito profesional pero también de aventuras como voluntaria alrededor del mundo� Me pregunto, sin embargo, si realmente estas organizaciones son eficaces en países como España, el los que la infancia no parece malnutrición y parece estar bien atendida en todos los aspectos. Es lo primero que planteo�. (shrink)

El título de esta intervención, que es obra de los organizadores del ciclo, debo advertirlo, nos obliga, por lo menos a primera vista, a colocar el punto de partida de nuestras reflexiones en el momento de la entrada en vigor de la Constitución, toda vez que es en ella donde España se organiza como Estado social y democrático de derecho. Sin embargo, tal vez convenga ir un poco más atrás. Ante todo, porque en materia jurídica los cambios no se producen (...) nunca milagrosamente por obra de los textos normativos. Sólo cuando éstos son recibidos por un terreno que está previamente abonado, tienen efectividad.…. (shrink)

In this paper I draw a distinction between a special and a general version of the Gettier problem. I argue that the special problem is partially a logical problem, as well as an epistemological one, and I show that it is very easy to solve. This is interesting, since most of the Gettier-style examples that appear in the literature fall under the special problem, and hence as they stand they too are very easy to solve.

El objetivo general de esta investigación se ha basado en analizar y comprender una parte de los resultados de una investigación mayor que se centra en el propio sujeto como actor principal de su relato. Se indaga el papel que la música desempeña dentro de los contextos de aprendizaje no formales e informales como vía para crear relaciones de empoderamiento de aquel alumnado en situación de abandono escolar, para así procurar medidas de renganche positiva con el sistema educativo a partir (...) de sus experiencias fuera del mundo curricular. (shrink)

English Title: "The Ineffability of Natural Language"Resumen: Los casos de variación en las condiciones de satisfacción de enunciados sin deícticos, junto con la asunción de un principio de proposicionalidad, han llevado a filósofos como Carston a defender la idea de que nuestros pensamientos son inefables, esto es, no codificables en lenguaje natural. En contra de este enfoque argumentaré (i) que esta teoría no se aplica al pensamiento consciente, (ii) que, contra el argumento de la desambiguación, el principio de proposicionalidad no (...) es obligatorio y (iii) que podemos explicar tanto los casos exitosos de comunicación como aquellos en los que es necesario que el hablante precise qué quería decir sin recurrir a pensamientos inefables. Abstract: Cases of variation in the satisfaction-conditions of non-indexical sen- tences, together with a principle of propositionality, have led some philosophers, as Carston, to defend the idea that our thoughts are ineffable, i.e., they cannot be articulated in natural language. Against this view I will argue (i) that this theory cannot be applied to conscious thought, (ii) against the disambiguation argument, the principle of propositionality is not mandatory and (iii) we can explain successful instances of communication as well as those cases in which the speaker needs to make clear what he means without having recourse to ineffable thoughts.Palabras clave: infradeterminación, contextualismo, conceptos ad hoc, efabilidad, Carston, Travis.Keywords: underdeterminacy, contextualism, ad hoc concepts, effability, Carston, Travis. (shrink)

In this article I examine the compatibility of a leading trope bundle theory of substance, so-called Nuclear Theory, with trope theory more generally. Peter Simons (1994) originally proposed Nuclear Theory (NT), and continues to develop (1998, 2000) and maintain (2002/03) the view. Recently, building on Simons’s theory, Markku Keinänen (2011) has proposed what he calls the Strong Nuclear Theory (SNT). Although the latter is supposed to shore up some of NT’s weaknesses, it continues to maintain NT’s central tenet, the premise (...) that tropes are variously existentially interdependent. I argue that the central tenet of NT frustrates several important aims of trope theory. If my arguments go through, they also implicate SNT. Because of this, I largely set aside other aspects of NT and SNT and focus on their shared central tenet. (shrink)

This paper discusses the proper taxonomy of the semantics-pragmatics divide. Debates about taxonomy are not always pointless. In interesting cases taxonomic proposals involve theoretical assumptions about the studied field, which might be judged correct or incorrect. Here I want to contrast an approach to the semantics-pragmatics dichotomy, motivated by a broadly Gricean perspective I take to be correct, with a contemporary version of an opposing “Wittgensteinian” view. I will focus mostly on a well-known example: the treatment of referential uses of (...) descriptions and descriptive uses of indexicals. The paper is structured as follows. I will start by characterizing in the first section the version of the Gricean approach I favor; in the second section, I will illustrate the differences between the two views by focussing on the example, and in the third section I will object to what I take to be the main Wittgensteinian consideration. (shrink)

The general concept of a trope – that of a non-shareable character-grounder – admits of a distinction between modifier tropes and module tropes. Roughly, a module trope is self-exemplifying whereas a modifier trope is not. This distinction has wide-ranging implications. Modifier tropes are uniquely eligible to be powers and fundamental determinables, whereas module tropes are uniquely eligible to play a direct role in perception and causation. Moreover, each type of trope theory faces unique challenges concerning character- grounding. Modifier trope theory (...) faces challenges concerning the inscrutability of predication and the incompatibility with bundle theory, whereas module trope theory faces challenges concerning character overdetermination and a collapse into austere nominalism. These differences indicate that the modifier/module distinction divides the advantages of general trope theory and thus presents the trope theorist with a pivotal choice. (shrink)