Durante varias décadas Paul Ricoeur ha desarrollado un pensamiento filosófico que escucha el discurso religioso (símbolos, mitos, textos), pero que se mantiene en la autonomía de un pensamiento responsable, es decir, dentro de los límites de la razón y según las exigencias internas de la filosofía. La cuestión que se plantea aquí es: ¿cómo surge la autonomía de este pensamiento responsable que es capaz de lograr una productividad filosófica a partir de la interpretación de significados ya expresados en un lenguaje (...) no filosófico? Lo que investigamos aquí es cómo está compuesta la racionalidad de Ricoeur y cómo determina ésta los alcances y limitaciones de su pensamiento filosófico. (shrink)

Con apoyo en las observaciones de L. Wittgenstein sobre la magia y la religión, se examina críticamente la idea de que las creencias religiosas, como las empíricas, versan acerca de cuestiones de hecho; entendidas así, ellas serían, según Wittgenstein, supersticiones. Y se examinan maneras alternativas de comprender la creencia religiosa, al relacionarla con la práctica y la forma de vida del creyente, para señalar algunos aspectos problemáticos.

We study whether robots can satisfy the conditions of an agent fit to be held morally responsible, with a focus on autonomy and self-control. An analogy between robots and human groups enables us to modify arguments concerning collective responsibility for studying questions of robot responsibility. We employ Mele’s history-sensitive account of autonomy and responsibility to argue that even if robots were to have all the capacities required of moral agency, their history would deprive them from autonomy in a responsibility-undermining way. (...) We will also study whether humans and technological artifacts like robots can form hybrid collective agents that could be morally responsible for their actions and give an argument against such a possibility. (shrink)

En muchas cosas, Quito resulta frágil, obscura y desconocida, sobre todo cuando se trata del origen indígena en su escala preinca. No obstante, en otros campos es evidente su influencia en lo que hoy es América Latina, por ejemplo, cuando se transformó en eje del Imperio del Tahuantinsuyo. Para los incas, Quito era un centro de articulación interregional. Este rol continuó con los españoles, que fundaron aquí una urbe colonial en 1534. Y a principios del siglo XIX se fundó Ecuador (...) y se estableció a Quito como su capital.Así, Quito es plural, milenaria y multiétnica, siendo esto su formación histórica. (shrink)

"Philosophical discussion of the notion of existence, or being, has centered on two main problems which have not always been very clearly distinguished. First, there is the problem of what we are to say about the existence of fictitious objects, such as centaurs, dragons, and Pegasus; second, there is the problem of what we are t o say about the existence of abstract objects, such as qualities, relations, and numbers. Both problems have tempted philosophers to say that there are inferior (...) sorts of existence a s well as the ordinary straightforward sort, and they therefore often suggest that we use the word "being" to cover both kinds but restrict "existence" to "being" of the common, non-fictitious, non-abstract sort. (Sometimes the term "reality" is proposed for "existence" or for "being.") T he problems of fiction and abstraction are different, how ever, for there are both real and fictitious abstractions. For example, the integer between two and four is real, but the integer between two and three is fictitious. On the other hand, there are both concrete and abstract fictions; for example, the winged horse of Bellerophon and the integer between two and three. Accordingly, philosophers have often dealt with the two problems in quite different ways and perhaps ought to do so. While these are the two main problems, there are others, f or example, that of what we are to say of the being of objects which have not yet begun, or have now ceased, to exist. The history of this subject, moreover, has been tangled with theological issues, to which it will be necessary to refer at certain points.". (shrink)

We first show that the Generalized Sharing mechanism which is exhaustive, allows a team of identical members voluntarily supplying the observable effort to attain Pareto efficient production under increasing returns provided team size is allowed to vary. We then show that where true effort is imperfectly observable (moral hazard) Pareto efficient production under nonconstant returns to scale is still attainable by varying team size.

On salue ici la naissance d’une nouvelle collection, Estudios Helénicos, consacrée au monde grec, que publient conjointement les presses universitaires de la Universidad de Sevilla et celle de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. L’A. de ce volume inaugural, maîtresse de conférences à la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, ainsi que les directeurs de la collection précitée, César Fornis Vaquero et José Pascual González, ont développé de solides carrières de recherche axées sur des sujets très di...

Various sources in the literature claim that the deduction theorem does not hold for normal modal or epistemic logic, whereas others present versions of the deduction theorem for several normal modal systems. It is shown here that the apparent problem arises from an objectionable notion of derivability from assumptions in an axiomatic system. When a traditional Hilbert-type system of axiomatic logic is generalized into a system for derivations from assumptions, the necessitation rule has to be modified in a way that (...) restricts its use to cases in which the premiss does not depend on assumptions. This restriction is entirely analogous to the restriction of the rule of universal generalization of first-order logic. A necessitation rule with this restriction permits a proof of the deduction theorem in its usual formulation. Other suggestions presented in the literature to deal with the problem are reviewed, and the present solution is argued to be preferable to the other alternatives. A contraction-and cut-free sequent calculus equivalent to the Hubert system for basic modal logic shows the standard failure argument untenable by proving the underivability of DA from A. (shrink)

I argue that from a very weak recombination principle and plausible assumptions about the nature of parthood and location it follows that it's possible that the mereological structure of the material world and that of spacetime fail to correspond to one another in very radical ways. I defend, moreover, that rejecting the possibility of such failures of correspondence leaves us with a choice of equally radical alternatives. I also discuss a few ways in which their possibility is relevant to various (...) debates in metaphysics. (shrink)

One of the key problems the field of Machine Consciousness is currently facing is the need to accurately assess the potential level of consciousness that an artificial agent might develop. This paper presents a novel artificial consciousness scale designed to provide a pragmatic and intuitive reference in the evaluation of MC implementations. The version of ConsScale described in this work provides a comprehensive evaluation mechanism which enables the estimation of the potential degree of consciousness of most of the existing artificial (...) implementations. This scale offers both well defined levels of artificial consciousness and a method to calculate an orientative numerical score . A set of architectural and cognitive criteria is considered for each level of the scale. This permits the definition of a cognitive framework in which MC implementations can be ranked according to their potential capability to reproduce functional synergies associated with consciousness. The probability of the implementations having any phenomenal states related to the assessed functional synergy is not specifically addressed in this paper; nevertheless, it could be thoughtfully discussed elsewhere. (shrink)

El artículo presenta una caracterización epistemológica de la ética, en clave aristotélica, en la que se la entiende como como un saber práctico que estudia las distintas formas de vida en procura del bien o de la felicidad; centrado por ello en la consideración de las acciones y de las decisiones humanas, vistas en relación con los modos de ser anclados en complejos mundos vitales comunitarios. De allí que se insista en que lo determinante es la puesta en uso de (...) la racionalidad práctica. Una racionalidad práctica que tiene como modelos a los razonamientos dialécticos que aparecen tanto en la retórica como en la poética; en la que las operaciones claves son la argumentación, la interpretación y la narración y en la que se concede importancia a las pasiones o emociones, porque se las considera determinantes en el esfuerzo por hacernos buenos. (shrink)

Raúl Arrabales, Int. J. Mach. Conscious., 06, 1 (2014). DOI: 10.1142/S1793843014400010.

The search for a systems‐level picture of metabolism as a web of molecular interactions provides a paradigmatic example of how the methods used to characterize a system can bias the interpretation of its functional meaning. Metabolic maps have been analyzed using novel techniques from network theory, revealing some non‐trivial, functionally relevant properties. These include a small‐world structure and hierarchical modularity. However, as discussed here, some of these properties might actually result from an inappropriate way of defining network interactions. Starting from (...) the so‐called bipartite organization of metabolism, where the two meaningful subsets (reactions and metabolites) are considered, most current works use only one of the subsets by means of so‐called graph projections. Unfortunately, projected graphs often ignore relevant biological and chemical constraints, thus leading to statistical artifacts. Some of these drawbacks and alternative approaches need to be properly addressed. (shrink)

I give shape to a neglected debate in metaphysics, the debate over the ontological priority between individuality and collectivity. I distinguish the debate from more familiar ones in the recent literature and articulate what I call ontological collectivism, the view that collectivity is prior to individuality. I defend the in-principle intelligibility of the view from forceful general objections and argue that not only is it coherent but also of significant interest to the literature: it allows for overlooked alternatives on a (...) variety of central discussions. (shrink)

Epistemic justification of non-summative group beliefs is studied in this paper. Such group beliefs are understood to be voluntary acceptances, the justification of which differs from that of involuntary beliefs. It is argued that whereas epistemic evaluation of involuntary beliefs can be seen not to require reasons, justification of voluntary acceptance of a proposition as true requires that the agent, a group or an individual, can provide reasons for the accepted view. This basic idea is studied in relation to theories (...) of dialectical justification in which justification is taken to require ability to justify. Since the reasons offered can in principle always be challenged, there is no ultimate end to the dialectical chain of justification. This makes justification of acceptance, and thus group belief, social and, in a way, contextual, but this does not seem to entail strong forms of epistemic relativism. (shrink)

El ámbito decisional y la representación ciudadana encuentran nuevos desafíos en el contexto de la deflación de la subjetividad moderna y el desmoronamiento del fundamento político. Con la aparición del Big Data y el _machine learning_ aplicado al espacio de las decisiones políticas aparecen nuevas modalidades de la administración de la vida, las que, a su vez, generan nuevos registros de control sobre los cuerpos en una sociedad pos-disciplinaría que convive con la tecnología. Siguiendo a E. Sadin, J. Danaher y (...) K. O’Neil, se expondrán argumentos en contra de la ideológica creencia que confiaría en que la toma de decisiones algocráticas sería capaz de eliminar el prejuicio humano y el fallo en las decisiones políticas. De este modo, la Algocracia instancia una tensión a nivel político-normativo frente a diferentes teorías de la democracia, no reconociendo la opacidad de las fórmulas con las que se pretende tomar decisiones en el plano de lo social. _Palabras clave: _Decisiones políticas, representación ciudadana, gobernanza, algocracia, sociedad post-disciplinaria. (shrink)

La razón fundamental por la que, según cierto modelo historiográfico el Parménides platónico constituye un diálogo de crisis en el desarrollo del pensamiento de Platón, es la supuesta presencia en él de una crítica de la Teoría de las Ideas del período medio –Fedón, Banquete, República. La insuficiencia de esa teoría consistiría en una concepción de las Ideas como unidades absolutamente simples y completamente aisladas que les impediría cumplir la función para la cual habrían sido concebidas. Esa función solo podría (...) ser cumplida por una nueva concepción relacional de las Ideas que estaría sugerida en el Parménides y desarrollada en el Sofista. Así pues, por contraste con la que yo llamaría una estrategia del silencio, quisiera 1) insistir en que la noción de koinōnía es fundamental e imprescindible para el proyecto de la República, pues su tema central, la noción de justicia, es impensable sin la noción de koinōnía entre las Ideas; y 2) hacer notar el uso de esa noción de justicia en el Parménides, precisamente en conexión con la cuestión de la interrelación eidética y la concepción de la Idea como un todo “que ha surgido como un uno a partir de todos las partes – ἐξ ἁπάντων ἓν τέλειον γεγονός”. (shrink)

Endorsing the idea of group knowledge seems to entail the possibility of group belief as well, because it is usually held that knowledge entails belief. It is here studied whether it would be possible to grant that groups can have knowledge without being committed to the controversial view that groups can have beliefs. The answer is positive on the assumption that knowledge can be based on acceptance as well as belief. The distinction between belief and acceptance can be seen as (...) a refinement of the ordinary language concept of belief, and it may be useful in understanding the nature of epistemic justification and classifying various types of epistemic subjects. (shrink)

The use of human language is a hallmark of human consciousness, even when it is not used publicly. Inner speech is the way humans consciously communicate with themselves and arguably a key factor contributing to the formation of more self-aware selves. From the perspective of cognitive science and artificial cognitive architectures, inner speech can be also seen as a meta-management system that modulates some cognitive processes of the subject. In this paper, we describe a preliminary version of a computational model (...) of inner speech generation based on the cognitive architecture CERA-CRANIUM. This inner speech generation method is illustrated using a video game non-player character as the subject of the first-person narratives to be produced. We also use this model of inner speech generation to discuss the possibilities of using such a first-person narrative stream as a meta-control input to the artificial cognitive architecture. We argue that this verbal input might be used as an integrated self-explanation of the agent in the world and thus contribute to the formation of self. (shrink)