What different relativist claims about a given domain are to be distinguished? Which of them is best placed to account for intuitive facts about disagreement in that domain? In a recent paper in this journal, ‘Indexical Relativism versus Genuine Relativism’ (2004), Max Kölbel distinguishes two forms of relativism, andargues that one of them, indexical relativism, faces problems in accounting for disagreement. In the first part of this discussion I present my own taxonomy of relativist positions in a given domain, which (...) is based on David Lewis’s 1980 essay, and I compare it with Kölbel’s and other recent suggestions. In the second part, I argue that the presuppositional defence of indexical relativism against related objections that I have elaborated elsewhere is also effective against Kölbel’s recent charges. (shrink)

In our everyday moral deliberations, we attend to two central types of considerations – outcomes and moral rules. How these considerations interrelate is central to the long-standing debate between deontologists and utilitarians. Is the weight we attach to moral rules reducible to their conduciveness to good outcomes (as many utilitarians claim)? Or do we take moral rules to be absolute constraints on action that normatively trump outcomes (as many deontologists claim)? Arguments over these issues characteristically appeal to commonsense intuitions about (...) various cases. As a result, an important portion of the debate involves empirically tractable questions — questions that can be investigated by probing for people’s judgments in cases in which the two types of considerations come into conflict with one another. (shrink)

This volume offers novel and provocative insights into vulnerability and exclusion, two concepts crucial for the understanding of contemporary political agency. In twelve critical essays, the contributors explore the dense theoretical content, complex histories and conceptual intersection of vulnerability and exclusion. A rich array of topics are covered as the volume searches for the ways that vulnerable and excluded groups relate to each other, where the boundary between the excluded and the included arises, and what the stakes of ‘invulnerability’ might (...) be. Drawing on the works of Hegel, Helmuth Plessner and Hannah Arendt to situate the project in a solid historical context, the volume likewise tackles pressing and contemporary issues such as the state of human capital under neoliberalism, the flawed nature of democracy itself, and the vulnerability inherent in extreme precarity, extreme violence, and interdependence. The contributions come from philosophers with a range of backgrounds in social philosophy and critical social sciences, who use related conceptual tools to tackle the political challenges of the 21st century. Together, they present a ground-breaking overview of the main challenges which social exclusion presents to contemporary global societies. (shrink)

Este artigo revisa a idéia de filosofia “medieval” and põe ênfase na variedade de significados daquela palavra. O autor crê que necessitamos de uma nova terminologia para aquele período da história do pensamento e sugere, por razões históricas, as expressões “United Age” e “Formation Age”. Em todo o artigo prevalece uma tentativa de compreender a natureza da atividade filosófica e da história da filosofia.

Nurses have their own ways of talking about their experiences of injustice in healthcare organizations. The aim of this article is to describe how nurses talk about their work‐life experiences and discuss the discursive effects that arise from nurses' use of language regarding their political agency. To this end, we present the findings garnered from a study focused on exploring how nurses deploy their political agency to project their idea of social and political justice in public healthcare organizations and how (...) they face the challenges and uncertainties of (re)thinking their institutional order when it does not resonate with their professional ethos. We then discuss the implications that nurses' use of language has in relation to their ability to deploy their political agency to oppose the forms of injustice they face in their daily practice. We conclude by stating that careful attention should be placed on understanding the discursive implications of nurses' use of language on their individual and collective emancipation in healthcare organizations. (shrink)

The Air Quality Index (AQI) shows the state of air pollution in a unique and more understandable way. This work aims to forecast the AQI in Algeciras (Spain) 8 hours in advance. The AQI is calculated indirectly through the predicted concentrations of five pollutants (O3, NO2, CO, SO2 and PM10) to achieve this goal. Artificial neural networks (ANNs), sequence-to-sequence long short-term memory networks (LSTMs) and a newly proposed method combing a rolling window with the latter (LSTMNA) are employed as the (...) forecasting techniques. Besides, two input approaches are evaluated: using only the data from the own time series of the pollutant in the first case or adding exogenous variables in the second one. Several window sizes are employed (24, 28 and 72 hours) with ANNs and LSTMNAs. Additionally, several feature ranking methods are applied in the exogenous approach to select the most relevant lagged variables to feed the models. Results show how the proposed exogenous approach increases the performance of the prediction models. Besides, the newly proposed method LSTMNA provides the best performances in most of the cases evaluated. Hence, it constitutes an exciting alternative to standard LSTMs and ANNs to predict pollutants concentrations and, consequently, the AQI. (shrink)

Certain results of observational cosmology cast critical doubt on the foundations of standard cosmology but leave most cosmologists untroubled. Alternative cosmological models that differ from the Big Bang have been published and defended by heterodox scientists; however, most cosmologists do not heed these. This may be because standard theory is correct and all other ideas and criticisms are incorrect, but it is also to a great extent due to sociological phenomena such as the "snowball effect" or "groupthink". We might wonder (...) whether cosmology, the study of the Universe as a whole, is a science like other branches of physics or just a dominant ideology. (shrink)

After the end of their time as a caregiver, former caregivers have needs and feelings that have been subject to little study to date. The aim of the study is to determine and analyse the feelings, perceptions and practices of former caregivers in the reconstruction of their daily lives. This is a qualitative study based on the Grounded Theory developed by Charmaz. The study involved 14 former caregivers who had cared for their relative for more than 2 years and who (...) had stopped caring for them more than 2 years previously. Fourteen in-depth interviews were conducted and data were collected over 13 months between 2015 and 2017. Data were analysed using the Grounded Theory Method. In addition, this study was approved by the ethics committee of the Institut Universitari d’Investigació en Atenció Primària Jordi Gol. The former caregiver experiences a transition, which begins in the days before the death of their relative and may continue for more than 3 years. Three critical moments in the post-caring transition were found: the post-caring emptiness; the end of the period as a caregiver; and the movement towards a new life. Family and professional support is needed during this transition. Former caregivers experience a transition in the rebuilding of their daily lives; furthermore, former caregivers may be a source of support for other caregivers, which is linked to positive mental health factors. Healthcare organisations need to acknowledge the emotional, psychosocial and psychological health of former caregivers. (shrink)

Lukowski argued that four typical examples of inferences used to show that human beings’ natural reasoning is nonmonotonic do not reveal that. Lukowski’s analyses support the idea that those inferences are actually monotonic deductions. My aim here is to check whether a particular non-axiomatic logic is consistent with the habitual conclusions people draw in those kinds of inferences. This is relevant because that nonaxiomatic logic is the logical structure of a computer program. So, if the logic is coherent with the (...) usual conclusions in those types of inferences, the computer program is also compatible with them. (shrink)

Actualmente se estudia la compleja relación existente entre el campo y la ciudad. Sin embargo, campo y ciudad son, en realidad, modos de vida urbanos. Esto se puede inferir a partir de unas palabras de Vico, concretándose en el estudio de los mitos urbanos. De ahí se obtiene que lo que en realidad se contrapone es la vida selvática a la vida urbana El hombre como ser urbano es el ser que posee palabra, a la vez que el ser que (...) tiene historia. Contemplando esto a la luz del modelo viquiano comprendemos que nos acecha la barbarie de la razón. (shrink)

According to Jackson, Pettit & Smith , “restricted particularism” is not affected by their supervenience-based consideration against particularism but, they claim, suffer from a different difficulty, roughly that it would violate the platitude about moral argument that, in debating controversial moral issues, a central role is played by various similarity claims. I present a defense of “restricted particularism” from this objection, which accommodates the platitudinous character of the claim that ordinary participants in conversations concerning the evaluative are committed to descriptive (...) similarities and differences being relevant in the way described by Jackson, Pettit and Smith, to moral similarities and differences. My defense exploits a presuppositional component congenial to response-dependent proposals such as Lewis’s. (shrink)

Kilimanjaro is a paradigmatic mountain, if any is. Consider atom Sparky, which is neither determinately part of Kilimanjaro nor determinately not part of it. Let Kilimanjaro(+) be the body of land constituted, in the way mountains are constituted by their constituent atoms, by the atoms that make up Kilimanjaro together with Sparky, and Kilimanjaro(–) the one constituted by those other than Sparky. On the one hand, there seems to be just one mountain in the vicinity of Kilimanjaro. On the other (...) hand, both Kilimanjaro(+) and Kilimanjaro(–)—and indeed many other similar things—seem to have an equal claim to be a mountain: all of them exhibit the grounds for something being a mountain—like being an elevation of the earth’s surface rising abruptly and to a large height from the surrounding level,1 or whathaveyou—; and there seems to be nothing in the vicinity with a better claim. Hence, the problem of the many. (shrink)

In ecology, if the considered area or space is large, the spatial distribution of individuals of a given plant species is never homogeneous; plants form different patches. The homogeneity change in space or in time (in particular, the related change-point problem) is an important research subject in mathematical statistics. In the paper, for a given data system along a straight line, two areas are considered, where the data of each area come from different discrete distributions, with unknown parameters. In the (...) paper a method is presented for the estimation of the distribution change-point between both areas and an estimate is given for the distributions separated by the obtained change-point. The solution of this problem will be based on the maximum likelihood method. Furthermore, based on an adaptation of the well-known bootstrap resampling, a method for the estimation of the so-called change-interval is also given. The latter approach is very general, since it not only applies in the case of the maximum-likelihood estimation of the change-point, but it can be also used starting from any other change-point estimation known in the ecological literature. The proposed model is validated against typical ecological situations, providing at the same time a verification of the applied algorithms. (shrink)

We love people because of who they are, but can the idea of “who they are” be explained through a property that everyone has, such as agency? David Velleman believes this to be the case, and argues that love is an appraisal of a person’s incomparable value, which disarms the lover’s emotional defences. Modelling love on Kantian respect, Velleman claims that love is a response to a person’s rational nature, indirectly perceived though her empirical persona—her observable traits and behaviours, which (...) are imperfect representations of the value of rational nature. An important problem for Velleman’s account is that it seems incompatible with two widely shared assumptions about love: that love is personal (so it cannot be analogous to impersonal respect) and that love is selective (so it cannot be based on a property shared by all individuals). Here, I propose a re-formulation of Velleman’s view that avoids those objections while preserving the idea that love is an evaluation of the loved person’s agency. Specifically, love is an evaluation of a person’s inner narrator, which is also a person’s capacity to act for reasons—to make actions intelligible to herself. The inner narrator is perceived through that person’s observable narrative: her actions and interpretations in interaction, which are a product, and not an imperfect representation, of the inner narrator. In the re-formulated view, love is both personal and selective, but still an agential process that involves both the lover and the loved person’s capacities to make sense of the world. (shrink)

There is a puzzle about why self-deception, a process that obscures the truth, is so pervasive in human behavior given that tracking the truth seems important for our survival and reproduction. William von Hippel and Robert Trivers argue that, despite appearances, there is good reason to think that self-deception is an adaptation by arguing: self-deception leads to a positive self-perception and a positive self-perception increases an individual’s fitness. D.S. Neil Van Leeuwen, however, gives persuasive arguments against both steps. In response, (...) we will defend both propositions, thereby supporting the conclusion that self-deception indeed has adaptive value. The first premise will be bolstered by a survey of the philosophical literature and empirical work on self-deception, whereas the second will be strengthened by empirical research on a behavioral phenomenon known as the winner effect. (shrink)

The aim of this study is twofold: one, to determine the presence and function of scientific knowledge when it is required by such cases as `mad cow' disease, when the crisis breaks in the press; and two, to explore the role of scientific information through the analysis of quoted speech used by journalists in their discourse. Citation is the most explicit form of inclusion of other-discourse in one's-discourse. Within the framework of the theory of énonciation, in combination with a critical (...) view of discourse, we analyse the following: the identity of agents of reference chosen by journalists; the specific linguistic choices made in the pre-citation segment where the agents are introduced, that is, identification of discourse procedures and use of specific verbs of communication. The study shows the proportion of scientific and non-scientific voices, the different ways of representing science agents in the process of news communication as well as the use of citation by journal writers not just to confer authority and legitimation to their discourse but to set the scene of the conflict. The scientific role is not presented as a decisive social role capable on its own of reassuring public alarm and journalists fail to secure appropriate credibility for the scientific community. (shrink)

The concept of engineering is problematic. Despite of the ancient practices of engineering, may be as old as humanity, engineering recently appeared as an academic discipline: engineering studies in universities can be traced back to the nineteenth century. Engineering has been defined as a practice, a process, a profession, and the application of scientific knowledge. However, if engineering is the application of scientific knowledge, there is a tacit assertion of the impossibility to count with proper engineering knowledge, leading to the (...) impossibility, or at least the difficulty, for engineering to own a proper body of knowledge and the rational possibility of doctoral studies in engineering. The main concern in this research is to state a conceptual definition of engineering enough strong that serves as a building block for ontological and epistemological research in philosophy of engineering. It is shown that science and engineering pursue different objectives and produces different results. Therefore, it is possible to make a distinction between one and the other. In this dissertation, epistemological elements of engineering are set apart from ontological elements that compose the concept of engineering to emphasize its nature and the genuine possibility to produce new knowledge of engineering independent of scientific knowledge. However, it is also recognized that even methodologically different, science and engineering are intertwined and interdependent, therefore scientific knowledge does not necessarily precede engineering knowledge. Consequently, there is no hierarchical relationship between science and engineering. (shrink)

El objetivo de esta investigación consiste en indagar, desde una óptica interdisciplinar entre la sociología, la psicología, el derecho y la historia, la gestión de la crisis del coronavirus, la cual en el caso español se asienta en lógicas autoritarias lounge dure enraizadas en el XIX y el absolutismo. Con el uso de medidas impuestas por las autoridades y asumidas por una ciudadanía aterrorizada, los gobiernos y medios de comunicación han generado un punto de inflexión que ha desarticulado el tejido (...) asociativo y los movimientos sociales emergidos como respuesta al estallido de la burbuja inmobiliaria ocurrido en el Estado español. (shrink)

En el siglo XVII, el fundador de la filosofía moderna, René Descartes, se basó en su teoría metafísica del dualismo de sustancias para afirmar que jamás podrían recrearse mediante disposiciones de la sustancia material dos cualidades exclusivas de la sustancia pensante: la capacidad para el lenguaje natural y la flexibilidad para habérselas con problemas de todo tipo. Casi cuatro siglos después, el pronóstico de Descartes todavía se cumple, y las dos cualidades por él señaladas se resisten a los intentos de (...) duplicación de la inteligencia artificial (IA) contemporánea. El presente artículo analiza las causas del acierto del filósofo francés. (shrink)

El presente artículo se encamina a analizar la que consideramos la filosofía en la que ha culminado toda pretensión sistematizadora e instrumentalizadora de la realidad: la dialéctica hegeliana. Con base en ello, plantearemos una tentativa, a través de Adorno, de una dialéctica negativa que permita hacer de la realidad un lugar abierto, fluyente e indeterminado, un lugar compuesto por unos individuos capaces de hacerse cargo de la realidad en la medida en que se hacen cargo de sí mismos. La subjetivación (...) de los individuos, por tanto, una subjetivación profunda, responsable y compleja, será el punto culminante de esta investigación, y será presentada como la vía a través de la cual una realidad en constante cambio puede llegar a buen puerto. (shrink)

Estudiamos varios conceptos clave en la obra del franciscano Fray Juan de Pineda, especialmente el concepto de ‘gracia justificante’, que se opone teológicamente a las ideas luteranas pero que desarrolla un pensamiento erasmista, afín a Fray Luis de Granada, a Francisco de Osuna y a Bartolomé de Las Casas. Estudiamos también su concepto de ‘lavacro’, procedente de San Pablo y su relación con la interpretación del Padre Nuestro, lo que apunta de lleno a la polémica doctrinal entre Carranza y Melchor (...) Cano. Finalmente hacemos ver la identidad de planteamientos erasmistas con el Lazarillo de Tormes, cuya geografía (Salamanca, Escalona, Maqueda y Almorox) coincide con el área de predicación de Fray Juan de Pineda a partir de 1544. Dada la coincidencia léxica, biográfica, doctrinal y de estilo entre el Lazarillo y la obra de Fray Juan de Pineda, sostenemos que esta novela picaresca corresponde a la intención reformadora del pensamiento erasmista franciscano del siglo XVI. (shrink)

According to the World Bank, 767 million people, 10.7 percent of the world’s population, live on less than 1.9 dollars a day, and around 2 billion, 28,7 percent of humankind, on less than 3.2 dollars a day.1 About 815 million are undernourished. About 155 million children will suffer from stunted growth.

En este artículo analizaremos el impacto que el libro de Alasdair MacIntyre Tras la virtud ha tenido en el ámbito de la filosofía del deporte. Nuestro punto de partida será que los filósofos del deporte han diferenciado entre propuestas internalistas y externa-listas del deporte siguiendo la distinción de MacIntyre entre bienes internos y externos a las prácticas sociales. Con el fin de mostrar si esta apropiación del lenguaje de MacIntyre es adecuada, responderemos a la pregunta de si el deporte actual (...) puede ser considerado una práctica social en sentido macintyreano. Defenderemos que sólo el deporte amateur encaja con la definición de “práctica social” de modo que nuestro deporte contemporáneo no puede ser considerado como tal. Según esto, defenderemos que, en tanto que el paradigma internalista y externalista es una consecuencia de la recepción de la obra de MacIntyre, la filosofía del deporte debe ir más allá de este paradigma dualista hacia uno que no esté fundado en los conceptos de práctica social y bienes internos del filósofo escocés. (shrink)

La presente investigación ciñe su interés en llevar a cabo un análisis del pensamiento hegeliano-kantiano utilizado para construir el concepto de sustancia como sujeto y su relación con la formación del conocimiento real dentro de la conciencia. Por tanto, comenzamos teorizando desde el postulado de la filosofía kantiana dónde se desarrolla el significado de nóumeno y sus consecuencias en el terreno práctico visto desde su obra Crítica de la razón pura. Partimos de este escenario porque, consideramos que gran parte de (...) la explicación epistemológica de la Fenomenología del espíritu enunciada por Hegel, se edifica a raíz de su confrontación con el criticismo de Kant. En conclusión, la especificidad de los problemas y controversias que ambas filosofías comparten, hacen necesario reflexionar y esclarecer sus apreciaciones acerca de la concepción del conocimiento, aunado a que, para educadores, psicólogos y sociólogos es imprescindible desentrañar las formas en que se concibe el conocimiento y, por tanto, la constitución de lo real desde ambas posturas epistemológicas. (shrink)

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has brought many of the best-known Marvel Comics stories to the big screen. But just because they use these stories it doesn’t mean they reproduce them faithfully. As it has been seen over the years, Marvel Studios’ film projects follow their own storylines that do not correspond to the main narrative of the comics. Starting from this premise, this research aims to study the evolution to Thor: Love and Thunder (Waititi, 2022) from the comic book series (...) Thor: The Butcher of Gods (Aaron, 2018) on which it is based. Focusing both on what aspects they share and the differences that make Thor: Love and Thunder a standalone project. (shrink)

Para llevar a cabo un análisis sobre los elementos que pueden resultar determinantes para la creación artística, así como para la experiencia que la obra o el objeto artístico producen en el espectador, resulta necesario tomar en cuenta aquello que constituye el concepto mismo de arte. La pregunta acerca de qué es el arte, en nuestros días ha sido, en cierto sentido, dejada de lado, dada la gran cantidad de manifestaciones que son concebidas como artísticas.

Over the past century, Buddhism has come to be seen as a world religion, exceeding Christianity in longevity and, according to many, philosophical wisdom. This volume provides a unique introduction to Buddhism by examining categories essential for a nuanced understanding of its traditions.

An extension of the Quantified Propositional Calculus1 obtained by the addition of two binary propositional functions is put forward as an inheritor of E. Schröder's “Algebra der Logik”. The formal system is itself not new, in fact it forms part of A. P. Morse's “A Theory of Sets”; although the latter is considered as a first-order system. Since the additional propositional functions are not invariant under the logical biconditional, this system–and many others naturally obtained from it–give us a collection of (...) examples of non-standard, but mathematically meaningful, propositional systems. (shrink)

I analyze some traditional distinctions around euthanasia. In contrast to those who most discuss the justification of active versus passive, or direct versus indirect euthanasia. I claim, following and expanding a Holly Smith´s argument, that the possibility of active and/or direct euthanasia cannot be morally excluded, once we have accepted passive and/or indirect euthanasia, even though we assume the asymmetry between killing and letting die, or between killing someone intentionally as a means and doing that as an undesired side-effect . (...) I evaluate then some objections and limits of the argument and make a shorter reference to the problem of voluntariness. (shrink)

Este trabajo pretende colaborar a facilitar la tarea docente del profesorado, que debe desarrollar a través de sus decisiones de departamento, la enseñanza del hecho religioso como alternativa a unas enseñanzas de las religiones confesionales, en los dos últimos cursos de la ESO y en el primer curso del Bachillerato. Este aspecto nos orienta a desarrollar el currículo de esta nueva materia, preferentemente, hacia el vector cultural y social del hecho religioso, reservado a las enseñanzas comprometidas con una determinada crrencia (...) religiosa -voluntariamente elegida por el alumnado- la preferencia en el desarrollo de los contenidos confesionales de la religión. (shrink)