The ideas of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity have been widely applied to the relationship between sciences. This article is an attempt to discuss the reasons why scientific interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity pose specific problems. First of all, certain questions about terminology are taken into account in order to clarify the meaning of the word ?discipline? and its cognates. Secondly, we argue that the specificity of sciences does not lie in becoming disciplines. Then, we focus on the relationship between sciences, and between sciences (...) and technologies: we argue that multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity are a common practice among strict sciences and technologies. Finally, we discuss the different meanings of transdisciplinarity when it is applied to sciences. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the transformation from the human zygote to the implanted embryo under the prism of substantial change. After a brief introduction, it vindicates the Aristotelian ideas of substance and accident, and those of substantial and accidental change. It then claims that the transformation from the multicelled zygote to the implanted embryo amounts to a substantial change. Pushing further, it contends that this substantial change cannot be explained following patterns of genetic reductionism, emergence, and self-organization, and proposes Gustavo Bueno’s (...) idea of anamorphosis as a means to encapsulate criticism against such positions. (shrink)

What does it mean to trust the results of a computer simulation? This paper argues that trust in simulations should be grounded in empirical evidence, good engineering practice, and established theoretical principles. Without these constraints, computer simulation risks becoming little more than speculation. We argue against two prominent positions in the epistemology of computer simulation and defend a conservative view that emphasizes the difference between the norms governing scientific investigation and those governing ordinary epistemic practices.

Tras una breve introducción al materialismo filosófico de Gustavo Bueno y a su antropología, se expone su teoría acerca de la diferencia entre individuo humano y persona, y se distingue entre la muerte del individuo humano biológico y el fallecimiento de la persona humana. Se pasa, entonces, a presentar la diferencia entra las normas éticas, morales y políticas, con el objeto de discutir el significado de una muerte buena y un buen fallecimiento desde cada uno de esos tres sistemas axiológicos. (...) Por último, se expone y discute, tanto desde un punto de vista ético como político, la teoría de la «eutanasia procesal» propuesta por Gustavo Bueno. (shrink)

This paper opens by distinguishing between the multiple concepts of system and the philosophical idea of system. It then goes on to discuss the differences between systems and other proximate ideas, such as whole, set, aggregate and structure. Subsequently, it proposes a definition of system, and then lays out three classifications of systems. When elaborating a general definition of system, the main challenge is finding a general criterion with which to characterize both technical systems built by men, and scientific systems (...) independent of human subjects. The criterion proposed in the text solves this difficulty. Lastly, from the tenets of Gustavo Bueno’s hyperrealist philosophy of categorial closure, I put forward the consideration of the sciences as systems. (shrink)

We address some of the epistemological challenges highlighted by the Critical Data Studies literature by reference to some of the key debates in the philosophy of science concerning computational modeling and simulation. We provide a brief overview of these debates focusing particularly on what Paul Humphreys calls epistemic opacity. We argue that debates in Critical Data Studies and philosophy of science have neglected the problem of error management and error detection. This is an especially important feature of the epistemology of (...) Big Data. In “Error” section we explain the main characteristics of error detection and correction along with the relationship between error and path complexity in software. In this section we provide an overview of conventional statistical methods for error detection and review their limitations when faced with the high degree of conditionality inherent to modern software systems. (shrink)

This article analyzes certain aspects of the structure of bioethics as a discipline. It begins by arguing that bioethics is an academic discipline of a pragmatic nature and then puts forward a classification of the main problems, issues, and concerns in bioethics, using this classification as a way to outline the limits and framework of the field. Pushing further, it contends that comprehensive treatment of any topic in bioethics requires that three normative dimensions be taken into account. It concludes that (...) the classification of the issues and analysis of each issue's normative dimensions can provide valuable contributions toward understanding the sui generis structure of bioethics as a pragmatic discipline. (shrink)

In this paper, I touch on the holotic structure of the ideas of unity, identity and finality, using the word “holotic” to refer to a theory that includes both partonomic (or mereological) wholes and taxonomic (or diairological) wholes. In the second section, I expound on two classifications of wholes and two classifications of the types of parts I deem relevant to the ideas of unity, identity and finality. In the third and fourth sections, I discuss how these three ideas acquire (...) different significance depending on the type of totalities and parts involved. (shrink)

En este artículo presento una clasificación de las teorías éticas acerca del aborto provocado. En esa clasificación utilizo dos criterios que, aunque inseparables, se pueden tratar relativamente disociados uno del otro. En primer lugar, presento las teorías ordenadas según el estatuto ontológico y ético que otorgan a los gametos, cigotos, preembriones, embriones, fetos y neonatos, y discuto las teorías basadas en la idea de potencialidad. En segundo lugar, me refiero a las teorías centradas en la libertad de la madre. En (...) las consideraciones finales reconozco explícitamente el partidismo de la teoría de teorías propuesta. (shrink)

Resumen En este artículo discutiré cuáles son los rasgos específicos que distinguen las ciencias frente a otras instituciones históricas. Repasaré varias filosofías que conciben las ciencias a partir de rasgos que son constitutivos, pero son genéricos: así ocurre cuando se entiende la ciencia como explicación, como comprensión, como conocimiento, como descripción, como representación, como construcción, como institución cultural, como experimentación y elaboración de hipótesis, como teoría, y como instrumento de dominio e intervención sobre parcelas de la realidad. Propondré ciertos rasgos (...) específicos de los teoremas y de los campos científicos que permiten distinguir las ciencias de otras formaciones históricas.In this paper, I will discuss what specific traits distinguish sciences from other historical institutions. First I will review several philosophies conceiving sciences having in mind constitutive, but generic, features. This is the case when sciences are understood as explanation, as comprehension, as knowledge, as description, as representation, as construction, as cultural institution, as experimentation and elaboration of hypotheses, as theory, and as instrument of domination and intervention on reality. I put forward certain specific traits of theorems and scientific fields that allow us to distinguish sciences from other historical formations. (shrink)

Sobre el espacio antropológico y la verdad de la religión.

Respuesta a los artículos de Joaquín Robles en El Catoblepas y otras intervenciones en los foros de Nódulo.

En las congregaciones de auxiliis del siglo XVI se discutió acerca de la compatibilidad entre la omnisciencia de Dios y la libertad humana. La concordia entre el determinismo de la ciencia y la libertad de los sujetos viene siendo también objeto de polémica en la filosofía de las ciencias sociales del presente. Este artículo explora los paralelismos entre esas dos discusiones con el objeto de iluminar algunos problemas filosóficos actuales.

Se ofrece una exposición crítica del relativismo cultural desde la perspectiva del materialismo filosófico.

Se argumenta que la continuidad de los procesos biológicos es compatible con la determinación de un comienzo y un final en todo organismo humano individual.

Respuesta al comentario de Íñigo Ongay al debate sobre El animal divino.

Ponencia al Congreso Filosofía y Cuerpo: debates sobre la filosofía de Gustavo Bueno.

Las relaciones entre los principios de la ética y los requerimientos de la política no siempre son armónicas. En este artículo, en primer lugar, se propone una definición de los ámbitos propios de la ética y de la política. A continuación, se analizan dos ámbitos en los que se aprecia un conflicto inevitable, estructural, entre ética y política de modo que el bien político requiere el mal ético: los conflictos armados y las políticas de inmigración. A continuación, se hace referencia (...) a conflictos que pretenden estar justificados en la idiosincrasia histórica o cultural de ciertas naciones. Por último, se citan contextos donde la ética y la política persiguen fines comunes o, simplemente, se ignoran mutuamente. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall present a reasoned answer to the question about the usefulness of philosophy. I start by analyzing the meaning and intentionality of the question “philosophy: what for?” Next, I study the different meanings of the word “philosophy” in the context of that question. In the third section, I present some examples of certain answers given to the question “philosophy: what for?” as they can be studied from a historical and anthropological perspective. Next, I take into account (...) certain outstanding philosophical systems to see how they have answered the question about the usefulness of philosophy. Finally, I argue a reasoned answer to the question from the perspective of a Stoic, materialistic philosophy of the present. (shrink)

Complemento del artículo El problema de la verdad en las religiones del Paleolítico.

Three recent studies carried out in the Spanish regions of Madrid, Valencia, and Murcia have shown that medical residents at public hospitals are systematically required to work for more than 48 hours a week. This practice is institutionalised, and there are indicators suggesting that it also occurs in other public hospitals throughout Spain. The obligation to work excessive hours has been shown to have harmful consequences for workers’ physical and psychological health while jeopardizing residents’ and patients’ safety. I argue that (...) behaviours contrary to people’s health and safety imply bioethical and, in this case, institutional, malpractice. (shrink)

Philosophical Investigations, EarlyView.

In this paper, I will propose a classification of analogies based on their internal structure. Selecting the criteria used in that classification first requires discussing the minimal constitutive parts of any analogy. Accordingly, I will discuss the differences between analogy and similarity and between analogy and “synalogy,” and I will stress the importance of the analogy of operations and procedures. Finally, I will set forth a classification of the different types of analogies, which lends itself to a further understanding of (...) the differences between certain modulations of the general idea of analogy, such as archetypes, prototypes, models, simulations, parables, paradigms, canons, maps, thought experiments, myths, utopias, dystopias and fables. (shrink)

Sobre psicologismo y filosofía materialista de la religión.

Comentarios suscitados por el artículo de Javier Gimeno Perelló en El Catoblepas número 10.

Respuestas a Alfonso Fernández Tresguerres, José Manuel Rodríguez Pardo y Joaquín Robles.

The Spanish philosopher Gustavo Bueno coined the expression “substantive arts” to refer to those arts that do not serve any immediate, mundane or practical purpose. In this paper, I briefly present this idea and put forward a definition of the substantive arts as an alternative to those used until now. Starting from the assumption that since the end of the 18th century there has been a set of arts that have their own substantivity, I expound on certain criteria widely used (...) as distinctive features to define the substantive arts. I subsequently put forward an alternative intensional criterion to characterize the substantive arts. To end, I draw some corollaries following from the application of this criterion. (shrink)

Respuestas a Pelayo Pérez, Joaquín Robles y José Manuel Rodríguez Pardo.

Los autores no han tenido inconveniente en que se hagan públicas unas cartas que se cruzaron en 2001 discutiendo sus posiciones filosóficas.

ABSTRACT We consider in this work the problem of iterated belief revision. We propose a family of belief revision operators called revision with memory operators and we give a logical (both syntactical and semantical) characterization of these operators. They obey what we call the principle of strong primacy of update: when one revises his beliefs by a new evidence, then all possible worlds that satisfy this new evidence become more reliable than those that do not. We show that those operators (...) have a satisfying behaviour concerning the iteration of the revision process. Then we provide four particular operators of this family. (shrink)

A filter of a sentential logic ? is Leibniz when it is the smallest one among all the ?-filters on the same algebra having the same Leibniz congruence. This paper studies these filters and the sentential logic ?+ defined by the class of all ?-matrices whose filter is Leibniz, which is called the strong version of ?, in the context of protoalgebraic logics with theorems. Topics studied include an enhanced Correspondence Theorem, characterizations of the weak algebraizability of ?+ and of (...) the explicit definability of Leibniz filters, and several theorems of transfer of metalogical properties from ? to ?+. For finitely equivalential logics stronger results are obtained. Besides the general theory, the paper examines the examples of modal logics, quantum logics and Łukasiewicz's finitely-valued logics. One finds that in some cases the existence of a weak and a strong version of a logic corresponds to well-known situations in the literature, such as the local and the global consequences for normal modal logics; while in others these constructions give an independent interest to the study of other lesser-known logics, such as the lattice-based many-valued logics. (shrink)

Las tesis que aquí se presentan han sido elaboradas a partir del análisis del ensayo de Jan Mukarovsky: “Función, norma y valor estético como hechos sociales”. (Cfr. Jan Mukarovsky. Escritos de estética y semiótica del arte, pp. 44-121). Las mismas han sido enriquecidas como resultado del debate que, generación tras generación, sobre ellas hemos sostenido con los estudiantes —la mayoría de ellos hoy egresados del posgrado en Estética y Arte de la BUAP—. Es un trabajo que lleva su huella y (...) ningún marco mejor para incluirlo que el de este libro de la serie Academia y Egresados de la Colección La Fuente. Sirva su publicación, entonces, como reconocimiento a la participación activa y creativa de todos ellos en esos siempre gratificantes cursos de Estética y Teoría del Arte III. (shrink)

Essays by some of the world's leading educators provide a revolutionary portrait of new ideas and developments in education that can influence the possibility of social and political change. The authors take into account such diverse terrain as feminism, ecology, media, and individual liberty in their pursuit of new ideas that can inform the fundamental practice of education and promote a more humane civil society. The book consolidates recent thinking just as it reflects on emerging new lines of critical theory.

We generalize Priestley duality for distributive lattices to a duality for distributive meet-semilattices. On the one hand, our generalized Priestley spaces are easier to work with than Celani’s DS-spaces, and are similar to Hansoul’s Priestley structures. On the other hand, our generalized Priestley morphisms are similar to Celani’s meet-relations and are more general than Hansoul’s morphisms. As a result, our duality extends Hansoul’s duality and is an improvement of Celani’s duality.

Organizational purpose has flourished in the professional management literature, yet despite increased scholarly interest, academic knowledge and empirical research on the topic remain scarce. Moreover, studies that have been conducted contain important oversights including the lack of a clear conceptualization and misinterpretations that hinder the further development and understanding of organizational purpose. In view of these shortcomings, our interview study aimed to contribute to academic and societal conversations on the contemporary meaning and function of organizational purpose considering the voices and (...) perspectives of 44 global experts. Employing template analysis, we defined organizational purpose as “an organization’s reason for being characterized by significance, aspiration, direction, unification, and motivation.” Moreover, we proposed an explanatory conceptual model, including drivers and outcomes of purpose, important boundary conditions, and explanatory mechanisms. Drawing on self-determination theory, person–organization fit theory, job characteristics theory, and conservation of resources theory, we were able to explain how and under what conditions these concepts are related to organizational purpose. In doing so, our research contributes to advancing the knowledge and understanding of organizational purpose and its effects on human lives within and outside organizations. Our study thereby enhances the understanding of the role of organizations in society and helps in evaluating whether organizations take responsibility by living their purpose in the society they are part of. As such, our study provides important insights for theory development, scale development, and further empirical research on organizational purpose and its effects in different streams such as OB, HRM, marketing, leadership, and strategy. (shrink)

La pretensión fundamental de este ensayo es acercarnos al nexo existente entre dos conceptos que, por paradójico que pueda parecer, sólo raramente se asocian: la vida y los valores. Una reflexión sobre este vínculo es tanto más necesaria en un momento en que con toda evidencia muchos valores hacen crisis y la vida humana está en juego y enfrenta peligros antes insospechados. La tesis central es que la vida humana constituye el criterio fundamental de lo valioso, el sostén último que (...) permite definir y diferenciar lo que vale de lo que no vale o es anti-valioso. Y el camino que en esta ocasión hemos escogido para mostrar esa tesis es el del análisis evolutivo de aquellos procesos vitales que a la altura del ser humano han dado lugar a la aparición de los valores. Tal perspectiva apenas si ha sido tenida en cuenta por las diferentes teorías axiológicas que han intentado describir qué son los valores humanos. (shrink)

El artículo trata de mostrar las influencias de los ideales de la Ilustración en el pensamiento de John Stuart Mill. Así, puede comprobarse como en esos ideales de libertad, igualdad, tolerancia, respeto a la diferencia que propugna la Ilustración están presentes en el pensamiento de Mill y vertebran su filosofía.