Slippery slope arguments (SSAs) are used in a wide range of philosophical debates, but are often dismissed as empirically ill-founded and logically fallacious. In particular, leading authors put forward a meta-SSA which points to instances of empirically ill-founded and logically fallacious SSAs and to the alleged existence of a slippery slope leading to such SSAs to demonstrate that people should avoid using SSAs altogether. In this paper, I examine these prominent calls against using SSAs and argue that such calls do (...) not withstand scrutiny. I then identify several types of mechanisms leading to slippery slopes in real-life contexts to demonstrate that both the strength of SSAs and the justifiability of using SSAs are best assessed on a case-by-case basis. This result does not exempt the proponents of SSAs from the task of vindicating their use of SSAs. However, if correct, it undermines the often-made claim that people should avoid using SSAs altogether. (shrink)

The problem of universals is one of the main philosophical issues. In this book the author reconstructs the history of the problem from Boethius to John of Salisbury, considering a selection of medieval representative texts.

In this paper we present BTC, which is a complete logic for branchingtime whose modal operator quantifies over histories and whose temporal operators involve a restricted quantification over histories in a given possible choice. This is a technical novelty, since the operators of the usual logics for branching-time such as CTL express an unrestricted quantification over histories and moments. The value of the apparatus we introduce is connected to those logics of agency that are interpreted on branching-time, as for instance (...) Stit Logics. (shrink)

In this work, I have used many sources because this theme is very complex and it is very useful to follow tracks already well used by other authors who have ventured with these themes. The Gender report is a report on equality. No company will ever be expected to be right if it does not foresee includesive actions rather than excludents. The social constructions of the same company will have to contend with a reality of reference that embraces all the (...) universes and respects the personal values. Everything, therefore, aimed at the growth of Society as a non-arithmetic group of People who, with their history and their characteristics, increase the collective share capital. (shrink)

The alleged neural basis of empathic responses to artworks is only of marginal relevance for aesthetics and for cognitive theories of art.

Desde una perspectiva que parte de las ideas de Iván Illich sobre la noción de proporcionalidad, el presente artículo hace referencia a la idea de límites o umbrales como un elemento necesario para la reconstrucción de un mundo multicultural. Pero, igualmente bajo la inspiración de Illich, se desmarca de las prácticas científico-profesionales que producen enunciados ajenos a las prácticas populares. Desde afuera y desde arriba no se puede reconstruir “un mundo en el que quepan muchos mundos”. Esto no implica que (...) la búsqueda de nuevos paradigmas sociales sea algo simple. Por el contrario, la profundidad de la búsqueda nos lleva incluso a retomar la vivencia de lo sagrado, como lo describe Mircea Eliade en las sociedades tradicionales, como principio epistémico para ese “otro” mundo posible. (shrink)

La relación entre la filosofía y la mística pareciese complicada y que no tendría lugar en las discusiones académicas, especialmente en pleno siglo xxi. Lo anterior es, sin duda, un error, porque han existido importantes filósofos que han incursionado y hablado sobre los misterios de la mística. En este artículo se verá que, a pesar de las diferencias, hay similitudes entre la experiencia mística y la filosofía, puntos de unión y de retroalimentación, especialmente haciendo referencia a la importancia del silencio (...) como un elemento inherente a la experiencia de lo sagrado. El Maestro Eckhart, filósofo y teólogo de la Baja Edad Media, y Martin Heidegger, exponente de la filosofía contemporánea, serán quienes nos hagan ver que la filosofía tiene atisbos de mística, y esta última no está tan alejada de la primera como se ha querido pronunciar axiomáticamente en la modernidad. (shrink)

Cuidados paliativos: solución ética acorde con la dignidad humana al final de la vida Cuidados paliativos: solução ética de acordo com a dignidade humana no final da vida It is said that passing laws to legalize euthanasia is absolutely necessary but, in my opinion, it is more pressing to enact a law for the patient to access a universal palliative care service at the end of their life than a law on euthanasia. This article discusses the difference between euthanasia and (...) palliative care. It is affirmed that being in favor of the latter does not mean wanting the patient to be in pain and to suffer, nor extending their life unreasonably. However, opting for palliative care is, on the one hand, what the physician can ethically do as a health worker and, on the other, the only morally acceptable alternative to the natural end of human beings that is appropriate to their dignity. Therefore, palliative care immerses us in an anthropological reflection about our own limitation and fragility, since respect for human life and palliative care dignify the process of dying. Para citar este artículo / To reference this article / Para citar este artigo Zurriaráin RG. Cuidados paliativos: solución ética acorde con la dignidad humana al final de la vida. Pers Bioet. 2019; 23: 180-193. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5294/pebi.2019.23.2.2 Recibido: 08/04/2019 Aceptado: 24/07/2019. (shrink)

For some while we have been witnessing a series of destructive phenomena which seem to indicate a full-fledged return to the negative on the world stage – from terrorism and armed conflict to the threat of environmental catastrophe. At the same time, politics seems increasingly impotent in the face of these threats. In this book, the leading Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito reconstructs the genealogy of the reciprocal intertwining of politics and negation. He retraces the intensification of negation in the (...) thought of various thinkers, from Schmitt and Freud to Heidegger, and examines the negative slant of some of our fundamental political categories, such as sovereignty, property and freedom. Against the centrality of negation, Esposito proposes an affirmative philosophy that does not negate or repress negation but radically rethinks it in the positive cipher of difference, determination and opposition. The result is a rigorous and original pathway which, in the tension between affirmation and negation, recognizes the disturbing traumas of our time, as well as the harbingers of what awaits at its limits. This highly original and timely book will be of great value to students and scholars in philosophy, cultural theory and the humanities more generally, and to anyone interested in contemporary European thought. (shrink)

El presente texto efectúa un estudio narratológico de la novela de Jorge Volpi No será la Tierra. Se analiza la estructura contradictoria del libro, la multiplicidad de tramas, el narrador polifónico, el tiempo posapocalíptico, el espacio antiutópico y desencantado y los personajes, coprotagonistas del siglo XX. Todas estas características antes mencionadas contribuyen, en el ámbito de la desterritorialización, a desalojar posturas que tienden a anquilosarse en conceptos fijos y sin movimiento, por lo que los distintos rasgos narratológicos en las novelas (...) híbridas --aquellas que están compuestas por una yuxtaposición de subgéneros-- siempre estarán emparentados con las nociones de heterogeneidad, diversidad y pluralidad, en el marco de la caída de los grandes relatos del siglo XX. This text makes a narrative study of the novel by Jorge Volpi No será la Tierra.We analyze the contradictory structure of the book, the multiple frames, the polyphonic narrator, the post-apocalyptic time, the antiutopic and disenchanted space, and the characters, co-protagonists of the twentieth century. All these features contribute, in the field of deterritorialization, to vacate positions that tend to stiffen in fixed and motionless concepts, so that different narratologic features in hybrid novels --those that consist of a juxtaposition of subgenera-- always be related to the notions of heterogeneity, diversity and plurality, as part of the fall of the great stories of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Can desert be the foundation of justice? Recent attempts to redefine distributive justice in the light of the notions of desert and merit depend largely upon how much independent moral force can be attributed to these notions. This is why a number of theorists, following in Joel Feinberg’s wake, assume desert to be a natural feature (of an action, or a person, or a performance), independently of the institutions that may reward it, and of the socio-political background against which it (...) stands out. This article criticizes such a view, trying to establish that desert cannot exist but ‘in the eyes’ of some person or group who already possesses some system of values. Thus, the concept lacks the moral force for defining the rightness of a society. In the last section, David Miller’s thesis that there is one specific, right pattern for rewarding desert will be examined. (shrink)

En este ensayo se presenta la tesis de la Indeterminación de la Traducción Radical (IT) de Quine aplicándola al campo de la epistemología clínica abierto por la crítica del constructivismo a la psicoterapia tradicional. A fin de mostrar la relevancia de la tesis IT como programa vigente de compr..

Para el realismo nomológico, la mejor explicación del mundo afirma la existencia de leyes naturales que lo fundamentan. Si el estatuto de estas es controvertido, sus partidarios coinciden en que implican una adición de ser con respecto a las regularidades de Hume. Se busca mostrar cómo el argumento nomológico, que todos ellos utilizan de alguna forma, se asemeja en su estructura a diversos argumentos teístas, como el de la quinta vía de Tomás de Aquino. Ante el carácter no conclusivo del (...) argumento, se sostiene que la adopción de un realismo nomológico proviene de una mera preferencia subjetiva. According to nomological realism, the best explanation of the world is one that appeals to the existence of natural laws which ground it. Althought there are controversies regarding the status of such laws, those who defend this position agree they involve a plus of being regarding Hume's regularities. In this paper we show how the nomological argument, which they all use somehow, has a structural similarity with various theistic arguments such as Thomas Aquina's fifth way. Finally, in the absence of conclusiveness of the argument, we hold that the adoption of a nomological realism comes from a mere subjective preference. (shrink)

A través del análisis del concepto de duración a lo largo de la filosofía de Henri Bergson, se propone una particular filosofía del tiempo como modelo de temporalidad intensiva, vivida, heterogénea y antitética de toda explicación mecanicista, en aras de situar dicha filosofía del tiempo en una necesaria interlocución con el planteamiento teórico acerca del tiempo desde un punto de vista fenomenológico. Para ello, nos serviremos de nociones claves del pensamiento de Henri Bergson, como son: memoria intuición o vida, en (...) su necesaria interrelación con el fenómeno de la duración, que dará cuenta de la coherencia interna del pensamiento bergsoniano y permitirá esclarecer mejor el carácter intensivo de la temporalidad. (shrink)