The relation between conceptual analysis and empirical observations when ascribing or denying concepts and beliefs to non-human animals is not straightforward. In order to reflect on this relation, I focus on two theoretical proposals and one empirical case, the three of which are permanently discussed and considered in the literature on animal cognition. First, I review briefly Davidson’s arguments for denying thought to non-linguistic animals. Second, I review Allen’s criteria for ascribing concepts to creatures capable of correcting their discriminatory powers (...) by taking into account their previous errors. Allen affirms that this is an empirical proposal which offers good reasons, but not necessary or sufficient conditions, for concept attribution. Against Allen, I argue that his important proposal is not an empirical, but a conceptual one. Third, I resort to vervet monkeys to show that Allen’s criteria, and not Davidson’s, are very relevant for ascribing first-order and denying second-order beliefs to this species and thus make sense of the idea of animal cognition. (shrink)

En primer lugar, recuerdo algunos episodios relevantes en la generación de la burbuja inmobiliaria y el estallido de la crisis en 2008, con la mirada puesta en el cambio de ciclo político que se produjo en EEUU en 2009 y la sorprendente continuidad de la dirección y la política económica. En segundo lugar, expongo brevemente la estructura del principio de precaución, que está adquiriendo un protagonismo creciente en las disposiciones legislativas y reguladoras en otros ámbitos, particularmente en el ambiental, y (...) me pregunto si puede arrojar luz sobre este dramático episodio político. Finalmente, me refiero, desde esta perspectiva, a otras políticas de gran relevancia desde el punto de vista de la justicia a nivel global o local, en las que la idea de precaución puede ser una gran coartada para la inacción y el mantenimiento del status quo. (shrink)

Se examina la relevancia de los análisis filosóficos para la conceptualización y para la realización de los derechos humanos, a partir de dos episodios concretos: la elaboración de la declaración universal de los derechos humanos y los planteamientos recientes sobre la justicia global. Se propone que la fuerza y la autoridad moral de los derechos humanos no depende de que se haya llevado a cabo un examen exhaustivo de esta noción, pero también que esa autoridad no es compatible con cualquier (...) teoría sobre ello. Y se defiende la relevancia del análisis filosófico de la idea de justicia global y la irrelevancia de la filosofía para su realización. (shrink)

Se examina la conexión establecida por Kant entre Ilustración y publicidad y la concepción de las capacidades humanas de Amartya Sen, que ha sido interpretada como una propuesta ilustrada. Se propone que la apelación ilustrada de Sen a la discusión pública es una deficiencia de su teoría, pues las capacidades formales se deben completar con nociones cuyo contenido desborda esa concepción estrecha de la ilustración, como bienestar, valor y justicia social.

Las teorías contemporáneas de las necesidades y el desarrollo humano se presentan como ilustradas y emancipatorias. En este artículo se sostiene que esta apelación a ideas ilustradas es debida a tres razones: 1) la propuesta de una concepción renovada del progreso social, 2) la confianza en la intervención racional sobre la vida social, y 3) el énfasis en la autonomía de los individuos. Además se sostiene que, aunque el pensamiento económico y social no tenga en consideración las críticas filosóficas a (...) la Ilustración, la filosofía debe hacerse cargo de las apelaciones a la Ilustración y el progreso procedentes de otros ámbitos intelectuales. (shrink)

Kants Argument zugunsten der Idealität und Subjektivität des Raumes stellt eine Erklärung dar für die Möglichkeit, Geometrie für die Kenntnis der Natur anzuwenden. Gemäß dem transzendentalen Idealismus können geometrische Sätze, die notwendig und a priori sind, auf empirische Objekte angewendet werden, weil der Raum auf das Subjekt zurückgeht. Kant entwickelte seine Konzeption des synthetischen Charakters der Geometrie im Gegensatz zu Leibniz' analytischer Auffassung, aber der Verfasser argumentiert, dass die Einführung nichteuklidischer geometrischer Strukturen eher Leibniz' als Kants geometrischer Konzeption entspricht. Der (...) Verfasser behauptet weiter, dass Kants Theorie nach Einführung des Begriffs des physikalischen Feldes und der Anwendung nicht-euklidischer Raumstrukturen in der Relativitätstheorie vollkommen unhaltbar wird. Gegenwärtig kann nicht behauptet werden, dass ein euklidischer Raum, von dem wir sicherlich tin a priori Wissen haben, gleichzeitig die Struktur eines physikalischen Raumes bietet. Zudem widerlegt diese Schlussfolgerung Kants Theorie des Raumes als eine a priori Form menschlicher Anschauung. (shrink)

Ethical theory examines human action in general terms, whereas moral judgment takes place in particular situations. These situations often cannot be subsumed easily under general norms and call for a delicate balance of norms and circumstances. I describe situations where opposing courses of action seem morally reasonable and I call them states of deliberative equilibrium. I review Aristotle’s and Kant’s conceptions of moral judgment and I offer a rule for stepping from deliberation to judgment in many situations of equilibrium.

From Homeric heroes, Lucifer and Faust to the phenomenology of individual and social emotions, this book unfolds historical dimensions, literary recreations and philosophical analyses of the most ambivalent emotion of pride, from worst of sins to noblest feeling.

Reseña de la obra de Parellada, Ricardo. El orgullo ¿vicio o virtud? Madrid: Síntesis, 2019.

When an English translation of Being and Event appeared in 2005, Alain Badiou took the opportunity to reminisce about the initial French publication some twenty years before: “at that moment I was quite aware of having written a ‘great’ book of philosophy.” He located that greatness in four “affirmations” and one “radical thesis.”.

Mathematics is a critical part of much scientific research. Physics in particular weaves math extensively into its instruction beginning in high school. Despite much research on the learning of both physics and math, the problem of how to effectively include math in physics in a way that reaches most students remains unsolved. In this paper, we suggest that a fundamental issue has received insufficient exploration: the fact that in science, we don’t just use math, we make meaning with it in (...) a different way than mathematicians do. In this reflective essay, we explore math as a language and consider the language of math in physics through the lens of cognitive linguistics. We begin by offering a number of examples that show how the use of math in physics differs from the use of math as typically found in math classes. We then explore basic concepts in cognitive semantics to show how humans make meaning with language in general. The critical elements are the roles of embodied cognition and interpretation in context. Then, we show how a theoretical framework commonly used in physics education research, resources, is coherent with and extends the ideas of cognitive semantics by connecting embodiment to phenomenological primitives and contextual interpretation to the dynamics of meaning-making with conceptual resources, epistemological resources, and affect. We present these ideas with illustrative case studies of students working on physics problems with math and demonstrate the dynamical nature of student reasoning with math in physics. We conclude with some thoughts about the implications for instruction. (shrink)

Singer’s much-discussed replaceability argument states that non-self-conscious animals may be killed and replaced by new animals that will lead equally valuable lives. If sound, this argument can be used to justify the cycle of raising and killing animals for food. Thus, many have argued that Singer’s theory, and utilitarianism in general, while committed to this argument, offers inadequate protection to animals. However, some utilitarians reject the argument and Singer himself was rather tentative in preventing its additional application to self-conscious beings. (...) This tension, within utilitarianism, about how to best deal with the argument is the core of what I call ‘the problem of replaceability’. My main goal here is to provide a precise description of this problem. Firstly, I distinguish between the general question of replacement permissibility and the specific question of whether (a certain version of) utilitarianism implies the replaceability argument. Focusing on the specific question I set the problem apart from other known objections to utilitarianism, like the value receptacles objection and some replacement-like difficulties. I also compare two versions of the replaceability argument and advance a better one. Finally, I point out how different interpretations of the argument affect the way out of the problem. I hope this understanding of the problem offers helpful insight to possible solutions and to further investigate its importance to animal food production and animals’ moral status. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta a teoria supervalorativista da vagueza e discute a objecção, que frequentemente lhe é dirigida, segundo a qual essa teoria não consegue dar conta do fenómeno da vagueza de ordem superior.

The semantic paradoxes are a family of arguments – including the liar paradox, Curry’s paradox, Grelling’s paradox of heterologicality, Richard’s and Berry’s paradoxes of definability, and others – which have two things in common: first, they make an essential use of such semantic concepts as those of truth, satisfaction, reference, definition, etc.; second, they seem to be very good arguments until we see that their conclusions are contradictory or absurd. These arguments raise serious doubts concerning the coherence of the concepts (...) involved. This article will offer an introduction to some of the main theories that have been proposed to solve the paradoxes and avert those doubts. Included is also a brief history of the semantic paradoxes from Eubulides to Tarski and Curry. (shrink)

In order to show how formal analogies between different physical systems play an important conceptual work in physics, this paper analyzes the evolution of Einstein’s thoughts on the structure of radiation from the point of view of the formal analogies he used as “lenses” to “see” through the “black box” of Planck’s blackbody radiation law. A comparison is also made with his 1925 paper on the quantum gas where he used the same formal methods. Changes of formal points of view (...) are most of the time taken for granted or passed over in silence in studies on the mathematization of physics as if they had no special significance. Revisiting Einstein’s classic papers on the nature of light and matter from the angle of the various theoretical tools he used, namely entropy and energy fluctuation calculations, helps explain why he was in a unique position to make visible the particle structure of radiation and the dual nature of light and matter. Finally, this case study calls attention to the more general question of the surprising creative power of formal analogies and their frequent use in theoretical physics. This aspect of intellectual creation can be useful in the teaching of physics. (shrink)

This paper suggests the democratic direction in which the right of freedom of expression should be conceived and applied. In the first two sections it suggests some counter-examples to, and diagnoses of, the libertarian and liberal conceptions of freedom of expression, taking Scanlon (1972) and Scanlon (1979), respectively, to be their chief proponents. The paper suggests that these conceptions cannot take into account clear examples, like fraudulent propaganda, which should not be legal. The democratic conception takes it to heart that (...) the pillars upon which the right of freedom of expression is founded are individual and collective autonomy, the right to know facts of public interest and information necessary for effective democratic control of government. The paper suggests that in a time when private powers seriously threaten these pillars, it is correct for the government to step in to provide the framework in which genuine discussion geared toward fulfilling the objectives of these pillars can take place. (shrink)

Most words in natural language are vague, that is to say, they lack sharp boundaries and, hence, they have (actual or potential) borderline cases, where the word in question neither definitely applies nor definitely fails to apply. Vagueness gives rise to paradoxes, the best known of which is the sorites (concerned with how many grains of sand are needed to make a heap). Besides offering a solution to such paradoxes, a theory of vagueness should systematically describe how the truth conditions (...) of sentences with vague terms are determined; and it should also define the right logical principles for reasoning with such sentences. This article offers an introduction to the main theories of vagueness and to the problems they have to face. (shrink)

O presente artigo objetiva discutir a interpretação da filosofia de Nietzsche empreendida por Hans Vaihinger na obra Philosophie des Als Ob. De acordo com Vaihinger, ao longo de sua obra Nietzsche desenvolve uma “teoria da aparência valor das ficções frente à vida prática, na trilha deixada por Kant e Lange. Em virtude disso, a filosofia de Nietzsche pode ser considerada como o esboço da metafísica do “como se”, postura ficcionalista e pragmática desenvolvida por Vaihinger.

[ES] ¿Cómo caracteriza Aristóteles a la episteme teoretiké? Aristóteles consideraba a toda ciencia como un sistema S de enunciados que responden varios cánones, por ejemplo, aquellos que se refieren a un tipo o clase particular de objetos, los que son verdaderos, lo que refieren a sus consecuencias lógicas, lo que se aceptan sin definición, y los que que se aceptan sin demostración. Es así que, en este trabajo, por una parte reconstruiré los argumentos que Aristóteles da para sostener dicho sistema, (...) y por otra, analizaré la vigencia de tales argumentos. La hipótesis que manejaré, es que si se suponen verdaderos los requisitos que Aristóteles prescribió para el conocimiento científico se arriba a conclusiones que en la mayoría de los casos están en pugna con las tesis centrales de la metodología y de las ciencias contemporáneas. [EN] How does Aristotle characterize the episteme teoretiké? Aristotle considered all science as a system S of statements that answer to various canons, for example, those that refer to a particular type or class of objects, those which are true, those which refer to their logical consequences, those which are accepted without definition, and those that are accepted without demonstration. Thus, in this work, on the one hand I will reconstruct the arguments Aristotle gives to support this system, and on the other, I will analyze the validity of such arguments. The hypothesis that I will handle is that if the requisites that Aristotle prescribes for scientific knowledge are assumed to be true, then conclusions are reached that in most cases are in conflict with the central theses of the methodology and contemporary sciences. (shrink)

This paper aims to conduct a conceptual analysis of induction, starting with the issue of inductive ambiguities. We will argue that there are two equally valid approaches to addressing these ambiguities. By examining certain logical aspects of the two concepts of plausibility that emerge from these approaches, we can clarify much of the debate surrounding inductive ambiguities. Key to this analysis is the relationship between these notions of inductive plausibility and the concepts of paraconsistency and paracompleteness. Our exploration is grounded (...) in a paraconsistent and paracomplete modal logic designed to address the fundamental elements of both approaches to induction. To illustrate the controversy and our proposed solution, we focus on a notable example of inductive inconsistencies: the lottery paradox. (shrink)

Mediante a análise da coletânea de notas “Zur Teleologie” este artigo sugere a existência de um “proto-perspectivismo” na concepção ficcionalista de organismo formulada por Nietzsche no final da década de 1860. Nossa investigação se inicia com uma exposição da oposição entre mecanicismo e teleologia na modernidade, analisa brevemente as posições de Kant e Schopenhauer sobre ela e então as contrasta com a posição de Nietzsche.

El trabajo analiza el vínculo entre afectos y manipulación tal como ha sido concebido por uno de los abordajes canónicos sobre el fenómeno peronista –el de Gino Germani– y por la teoría del populismo de Ernesto Laclau. En ese marco, se ofrece una serie de precisiones conceptuales que sitúan distintos aspectos de los debates suscitados por ambas obras e interrogan el estatuto conceptual de la afectividad en los procesos de subjetivación. Asimismo, se repasan ciertas premisas del pensamiento de Jacques Lacan (...) al revisar críticamente no solo aquellas perspectivas que explican al populismo como lo otro de la democracia debido a la supuesta dimensión manipuladora del líder, sino también a las propias reflexiones de Laclau, cuya ponderación de los afectos como vía de explicación de las identidades colectivas parece implicar la disolución de la singularidad de los sujetos, reabriendo así la conexión entre autoritarismo y populismo. (shrink)

For more than a century the notion of a pre-established harmony between the mathematical and physical sciences has played an important role not only in the rhetoric of mathematicians and theoretical physicists, but also as a doctrine guiding much of their research. Strongly mathematized branches of physics, such as the vortex theory of atoms popular in Victorian Britain, were not unknown in the nineteenth century, but it was only in the environment of fin-de-siècle Germany that the idea of a pre-established (...) harmony really took off and became part of the mathematicians’ ideology. Important historical figures were in this respect David Hilbert, Hermann Minkowski and, somewhat later, Albert Einstein. Roughly similar ideas can be found also among British theorists, among whom Arthur Eddington, Arthur Milne, and Paul Dirac are singled out. Although largely limited to the period 1870–1940, the paper also considers Max Tegmark’s recent hypothesis of the universe being a one-to-one reflection of mathematical structures. (shrink)

An economic crisis is an unexpected phenomenon with strong consequences for nations, institutions and people's wealth, habits, and behaviors. It departs from the ‘normal’ evolution of the affairs foreseen by economic theory. It makes the claim for new theoretical explanations. It surprises the economic agents that try to ascertain what kind of phenomenon they are facing in order to decide the appropriate actions to undertake. It calls for revisions of theory, plans and expectations. Overall, a crisis calls for an explanation (...) which clarifies its causes. (shrink)

No primeiro caderno do cárcere, Gramsci sugeriu que o conhecimento científico poderia ser decomposto em dois domínios: um cognitivo e um ideológico; e por essa razão, não era necessário opor a ciência burguesa, uma ciência do proletariado, pois estes poderiam se apropriar do conteúdo cognitivo das ciências burguesas, sem se comprometer com o conteúdo ideológico. Nesse ensaio, propomos elevar a proposta de Gramsci de que todo saber é o produto de uma relação dialética e dialógica entre domínios cognitivo e um (...) ideológico a categoria de dispositivo de análise epistemológica que permite caracterizar e analisar teorias científicas. Utilizamos esse dispositivo de análise epistemológica para estudar a Teoria da Relatividade Especial e propor soluções para algumas divergências meta-científicas associadas a ela. Portanto, esse ensaio pretende ser uma contribuição para a epistemologia, com possibilidades de aplicações à axiologia das ciências, bem como uma alternativa as abordagens positivistas-cientificistas e relativistas. (shrink)

Este trabajo discute la aproximación que Burkhardt Lindner establece entre las concepciones del arte de Walter Benjamin y Martin Heidegger. Reexaminando las tesis de "Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit" y "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes", contrapone los argumentos por medio de los cuales en estos textos se rechaza la autonomía del arte, mostrando las distintas constelaciones teóricas que componen en ellos los conceptos de estética y arte, tékhne y phýsis, Erfahrung y Erlebnis. Finalmente, amplía su análisis a otros textos (...) de Benjamin y Heidegger y compara las interpretaciones divergentes que ambos autores ofrecen acerca de algunos fenómenos artísticos. This paper discusses the approach Burkhardt Lindner established between the conceptions of art of Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger. Revisiting the ideas of "Das Kunstwerk im technischen Zeitalter seiner Reproduzierbarkeit" and "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes", it contrasts the arguments by which each of these texts reject the autonomy of art, showing the different theoretical constellations that compose the concepts of aesthetics and art, tékhne and phýsis, Erfahrung and Erlebnis. Finally, it extends its analysis to other texts of Benjamin and Heidegger and compares the diverging interpretations both authors offer about some artistic phenomena. (shrink)

Schanuel's Conjecture is the statement: if x 1 ,…,x n ∈ C are linearly independent over Q , then the transcendence degree of Q ,…, exp ) over Q is at least n . Here we prove that this is true if instead we take infinitesimal elements from any ultrapower of C , and in fact from any nonarchimedean model of the theory of the expansion of the field of real numbers by restricted analytic functions.

Este trabajo se propone, como un paso final, el examen del argumento de Carlos Nino a favor de la existencia de una obligación moral de obedecer al derecho producido por un gobierno democrático. Este argumento vendría a mostrar además que la democracia es la única forma de gobierno moralmente legítima. En la idea de Nino ambas cuestiones son equivalentes y una respuesta positiva es considerada necesaria para determinar la posibilidad de justificación de las decisiones de los jueces. La tesis en (...) cuestión se apoya en una compleja concepción acerca de dimensión justificatoria del derecho y su conexión con la moral, como una condición necesaria. Por ello, se revisa las nociones de las que depende esa propuesta de Nino, especialmente las ideas de razón para la acción, justificación, principio moral y norma jurídica y se formula un interrogante acerca del éxito del argumento, si se acepta esa concepción general. This paper attempts to examine Carlos Nino’s argument supporting the existence of a moral obligation to obey the law produced by a democratic government. This argument also goes on to show that democracy is the only morally legitimate form of government. In Nino’s conception, both issues are equivalent, and a positive response is considered necessary to determine the possibility to justify judges’ decisions. The thesis in question rests on a complex conception regarding the law’s justificatory dimension, and its connection with morality as a necessary condition. This is why the notions upon which Nino’s proposal rests are examined, above all the ideas of reason for action, justification, moral principle and legal norm. If we accept this general conception, then we should ask about the success of the argument. (shrink)