En los procesos sociopolíticos de superación de los conflictos armados, la recuperación de la Memoria histórica está ocupando un lugar central debido al papel que está juega para una efectiva reconciliación donde la verdad, la reparación y el perdón forman parte de ese proceso. La experiencia cristiana, como comunidad de memoria tiene mucho que aportar en la medida que articule la reflexión crítica sobre qué memoria, desde dónde, desde quiénes; con el potencial liberador del Dios que se pone del lado (...) de las víctimas y desde ellas no deja que se olvide su dolor sino que busca transformarlo. Además incorporar la perspectiva de género, permite reconocer las diferencias genéricas que influyen en la recuperación de la memoria histórica. Mostrar la relevancia de estas articulaciones, es el propósito de este artículo con la invitación a transformar la pastoral urbana que pretende acompañar a las personas en situación de desplazamiento. In socio-political processes of overcoming armed conflict, the Historical Memory is taking a central point because of the role it plays for effective reconciliation where "truth, reparation and forgiveness" are part of that process. Christian experience, as memory community has much to contribute to articulate the critical reflection about what memory, from where, from whom; with the liberating potential of the God who takes the side of the victims and doesn’t allow to forget them neither their pain and seeks transformation. Besides, incorporate the gender perspective, allow to recognize the gender differences and their influences in the recovery of historical memory. Show the relevance of these articulations is the purpose of this article with an invitation to transform urban pastoral in order to support displaced people. (shrink)

G.E. Moore's philosophical legacy is ambiguous. On the one hand, Moore has a special place in the hearts of many contemporary analytic philosophers. He is, after all, one of the fathers of the movement, his broadly commonsensical methodology informing how many contemporary analytic philosophers practise their craft. On the other hand, many contemporary philosophers keep Moore's own substantive positions at arm's distance. According to many epistemologists, one can find no finer example of how to beg the question than Moore's case (...) against the sceptic. And, according to many moral philosophers, one can find no more vivid case of philosophical extravagance than Moore's non-naturalism. Given this ambiguity, one wonders: How should we assess Moore's legacy in epistemology and ethics – the two areas of philosophy in which Moore did most of his work?That is the task of this welcome collection of 16 essays. The list of contributors to the book is impressive: Crispin Wright, Ernest Sosa, Ram Neta, William Lycan, C.A.J. Cody, Paul Snowdon, Michael Huemer and Roy Sorenson consider Moore's work in epistemology. Stephen Darwall, Terry Horgan, Mark Timmons, Richard Fumerton, Charles Pigden, Robert Shaver, Joshua Gert, Jonathan Dancy and the editors of the book explore Moore's views in ethics. As one might expect, given this list of contributors, the quality of the essays is very high. Moreover, there is a decidedly constructive tone to many of them. While not willing to overlook Moore's mistakes, many of the essays endeavour to explore what is valuable in Moore's thought, critically engaging with positions that, not too long …. (shrink)

Hacia 1976 Michel Foucault señalaba que la literatura surge en la modernidad con el gran imperativo ético y político de sacar a la luz las oscuras existencias del mundo social al mismo tiempo que formaba parte de un complejo dispositivo de poder capaz de hacer entrar lo más banal e infame de una sociedad en el orden del discurso. Un par de décadas después será Jacques Rancière quien nos dirá que la aparición de la literatura inaugura un nuevo régimen estético (...) que cambiará para siempre la escritura de la historia y los tipos de composición de las artes al hacer hablar a aquellas existencias mudas e insignificantes. Desde esta perspectiva, Rancière nos revelaría que era esta política de la literatura la que estaba operando inconscientemente en el proyecto de una arqueología de las instituciones y de los saberes, al mismo tiempo que era este último filósofo quien heredaba parte del método foucaultiano, donde se descubrían las potencialidades estéticas y escriturales de la literatura como discurso que pone en juego el poder. (shrink)

When conflicts regarding industrial operations erupt between countries, relationships between corporations and stakeholders may be affected. We combine insights from stakeholder theory and studies on government and corporate social responsibility to investigate how intergovernmental politics shapes stakeholder engagement. Relying on attribution theory and a qualitative analysis of the Finnish Metsä-Botnia (hereafter Botnia) company during the intergovernmental conflict between Uruguay and Argentina, we explore the mediating role of political attributions—defined as the stakeholder network actors’ inferences regarding governmental motives—in the process by (...) which intergovernmental politics shapes stakeholder engagement. We induce three types of political attributions: instrumentalizing, which points to the undeclared instrumental motives of governments; radicalizing, which refers to the beliefs that governments immoderately intensify confrontation; and acting in bad faith, which relates to the perceptions that governments act in inconsistent and/or morally inappropriate ways. Our results show how these attributions combine in specific configurations to explain how intergovernmental politics shapes stakeholder engagement throughout the conflict. Our study theorizes the role of governments as stakeholders in stakeholder engagement and expands organizational studies of attribution to the stakeholder and global levels. (shrink)

Latin American philosophy is best understood as a type of applied philosophy devoted to issues related to the culture and politics of Latin America. This introduction provides a comprehensive overview of its central topics. It explores not only the unique insights offered by Latin American thinkers into the traditional pre-established fields of Western philosophy, but also the many 'isms' developed as a direct result of Latin American thought. Many concern matters of practical ethics and social and political philosophy, such as (...) Lascasianism, Arielism, Bolívarism, modest and immodest feminisms, republicanism, positivism, Marxism, and liberationism. But there are also meta-philosophical 'isms' such as originalism and perspectivism. Together with clear and accessible discussions of the major issues and arguments, the book offers helpful summaries, suggestions for further reading, and a glossary of terms. It will be valuable for all readers wanting to explore the richness and diversity of Latin American philosophy. (shrink)

Observations of animals engaging in apparently moral behavior have led academics and the public alike to ask whether morality is shared between humans and other animals. Some philosophers explicitly argue that morality is unique to humans, because moral agency requires capacities that are only demonstrated in our species. Other philosophers argue that some animals can participate in morality because they possess these capacities in a rudimentary form. Scientists have also joined the discussion, and their views are just as varied as (...) the philosophers’. Some research programs examine whether animals countenance specific human norms, such as fairness. Other research programs investigate the cognitive and affective capacities thought to be necessary for morality. There are two sets of concerns that can be raised by these debates. They sometimes suffer from there being no agreed upon theory of morality and no clear account of whether there is a demarcation between moral and social behavior; that is, they lack a proper philosophical foundation. They also sometimes suffer from there being disagreement about the psychological capacities evident in animals. Of these two sets of concerns—the nature of the moral and the scope of psychological capacities—we aim to take on only the second. In this chapter we defend the claim that animals have three sets of capacities that, on some views, are taken as necessary and foundational for moral judgment and action. These are capacities of care, capacities of autonomy, and normative capacities. Care, we argue, is widely found among social animals. Autonomy and normativity are more recent topics of empirical investigation, so while there is less evidence of these capacities at this point in our developing scientific knowledge, the current data is strongly suggestive. (shrink)

Some nineteenth-century liberals declare that the "principle of freedom", which articulates the form of State they propose, requires the complement of other principles. This revisionist claim leads us to wonder about the way in which this principle has been understood and what has been its field of individual, social and political interference. The inquiry leads us to establish a connection between the principle of freedom and the struggle to overcome the regime of authority typical of the Ancien Régime and, specifically, (...) with the universal possibility of being able to exercise an economic activity beyond "corporate" tutelage or vassalage. In this way, the principle of liberty is linked to the new economic regime, markedly modern, which tries to find its own laws, beyond the administrative aspect, through the new analytical field inaugurated by the new political economy of the eighteenth-century économistes. The principle of freedom is confused, then, with laissez faire, but this maxim does not mean, at first, to defend the rule of possessive individualism, but is equivalent to the possibility of restricting the interference of discretionary and arbitrary political power in people's lives. However, despite being the principle of freedom, thus understood, the mainstay of the configuration of modern subjectivity and the root of the expansion of personality, it gives rise to certain antisocial behaviors that a good part of the same liberals will try to remedy through the regulatory action of other principles. In summary, by means of various sources that have been concerned with delimiting the meaning of liberal principles, which respond to different periods and ideologically opposed schools, we attempt to define the principle of freedom and, in turn, to show the positive and negative consequences that different interpreters have attributed to its application. (shrink)

El presente artículo muestra cómo la preocupación del filósofo chileno Jenaro Abasolo por la justicia social, le lleva a proponer una teoría de la justicia que anticipa la forma del Estado social de derecho. Pues su propuesta política, manteniendo los rasgos esenciales del liberalismo, conecta de manera particular los fines sociales con los políticos, hasta llegar a defender la necesidad de establecer leyes que regulen la esfera económica y la libertad de industria. En consecuencia, la crítica de Abasolo a la (...) forma de Estado liberal, toca en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX a una serie de publicistas liberales, siendo José V. Lastarria el más prominente y quien sirve aquí de contraste. Y adquiere, además, dicha crítica una renovada importancia en el debate actual que intenta determinar la forma de Estado y, por tanto, qué teoría de la justica, es más admisible para las sociedades democráticas que no sólo aspiran al pluralismo sino, también, a la justicia social. (shrink)

Reconstructing the genetic traits of the Last Common Ancestor and the Tree of Life are two examples of the reaches of contemporary molecular phylogenetics. Nevertheless, the whole enterprise has led to paradoxical results. The presence of Lateral Gene Transfer poses epistemic and empirical challenges to meet these goals; the discussion around this subject has been enriched by arguments from philosophers and historians of science. At the same time, a few but influential research groups have aimed to reconstruct the LCA with (...) rich-in-detail hypotheses and high-resolution gene catalogs and metabolic traits. We argue that LGT poses insurmountable challenges for detailed and rich in details reconstructions and propose, instead, a middle-ground position with the reconstruction of a slim LCA based on traits under strong pressures of Negative Natural Selection, and for the need of consilience with evidence from organismal biology and geochemistry. We defend a cautionary perspective that goes beyond the statistical analysis of gene similarities and assumes the broader consequences of evolving empirical data and epistemic pluralism in the reconstruction of early life. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Subsystem Formation Driven by Double Contingency” by Bernd Porr & Paolo Di Prodi. Upshot: I acknowledge the value of Porr & Di Prodi’s piece for simulating Luhmann’s key process of subsystem formation and exploring how the concepts of “differentiation” and “binary code” relate to their model.

En este escrito, 1) hago una presentación del tipo de análisis conceptual quehace Wittgenstein en algunas obras posteriores al Tractaus; me refiero,específicamente, a una cierta manera de proceder que consiste en ladescripción de los diferentes usos de un concepto, y que tiene como finarrojar luz sobre las condiciones de funcionamiento de nuestro lenguaje para,así, llegar a la solución de un determinado problema filosófico. 2) Examinoalgunos pasajes de las Investigaciones en los que que Wittgenstein analizaconceptos psicológicos y señalo lo que considero (...) son algunas fallas de lasinterpretaciones naturalistas, externalistas y mentalistas de esos pasajes. 3)Presento una interpretación de la perspectiva de Wittgenstein en torno alproblema de la existencia y naturaleza de los estados y procesos psicológicos,que tiene en cuenta, tanto el tipo de análisis que Wittgenstein hace, comoalgunas afirmaciones suyas extraídas de las Investigaciones y de LosCuadernos Azul y Marrón. (shrink)

In this article I will analyze whether the so-called Extended Evolutionary Synthesis represents a synthesis and an extension with respect to its predecessor, Modern Synthesis. It will be argued that the MS proposes an externalist approach to evolution while the EES considers it necessary to overcome the internalism/externalism dichotomy by proposing more integrative approaches. It will be concluded that the EES cannot be considered an extension of MS and that the appeal to that extension is related to sociological aspects and (...) the epistemic value of theoretical unification that was always present in biological evolutionary thinking. (shrink)

Los famosos sueños de Descartes han constituido siempre para la historia de la filosofía un incómodo problema, pues dejaban la puerta abierta a la posibilidad de que el origen de la moderna racionalidad hubiese nacido de lo irracional. Superar este problema no fue fácil para el propio Descartes pasados los años ni lo ha sido para quienes desde entonces han mantenido que sus ideas marcaron el origen de una etapa de la filosofía y la ciencia caracterizada por el rechazo de (...) cualquier tipo de saber basado en la iluminación, la revelación o la inspiración mística. La mayoría de los autores han intentado marginar tal carácter irracional de los orígenes de la racionalidad realizando una lectura de los sueños cartesianos a la luz del posterior desarrollo del pensamiento cartesiano. Aquí se propone, en cambio, hacer una valoración de aquellos sueños en el contexto de las inquietudes intelectuales que el francés tenía en 1619. Hay elementos en la descripción de los sueños cartesianos, como la relevancia otorgada al «entusiasmo», o la revelación de una nueva ciencia «desde lo alto», que la vinculan estrechamente con una concepción de la verdad y la razón muy cercana a la de platónicos, filósofos y poetas que posteriormente la historia de la filosofía ha considerado en las antípodas de la moderna racionalidad. (shrink)

En este artículo damos a conocer la concepción de la “ciencia” del filósofo chileno Jenaro Abasolo (1833-1884) desde la indagación de algunas de sus deudas conceptuales contraídas con seis autores fuente. Fichte, Schelling, Krause, Ahrens, Darwin y Quinet son quienes le permiten a Abasolo establecer un particular intento de síntesis entre los descubrimientos de la ciencia positiva y los principios comunes a las formas de idealismo. Dichos principios sirven a Abasolo para mantener una perspectiva espiritualista que es compatible con los (...) nuevos hallazgos que las ciencias de la naturaleza aportan desde los datos sensibles. Como correlato, Abasolo considera que la filosofía tiene un rol fundamental cuando se trata de dar una visión unitaria del universo a partir de encontrar el nexo entre las relaciones cualitativas y cuantitativas de lo real. A su vez, se esboza la manera en que el análisis de la dimensión físico-natural aportaría a la interpretación del mundo humano de la libertad y cómo las ciencias permitirían hallar diversas coordenadas capaces de orientar adecuadamente al hombre en su desarrollo hacia la constitución de lo que Abasolo define como personalidad política. (shrink)

En este artículo se estudia el enfoque de las capacidades de Martha Nussbaum como un intento de fundamentar la inclusión de los anima les no humanos dentro de la dimensión cívica de los derechos. En esta perspectiva se pretende establecer ciertos «deberes directos de justicia» para los seres sentientes, poseedores de cierta complejidad, que el Estado debe cautelar y procurar como un mínimo exigido. Tras analizar esta propuesta, se desarrollan algunas de las críticas originadas por la «ética animal» defendida por (...) Nussbaum, entre las que se cuentan las de Donaldson, Kymlicka, Smith, Cortina y Schlosberg. This paper describes the capabilities approach Martha Nussbaum as an attempt to justify the inclusion of non-human animals within the civic rights dimension is studied. In this perspective is to establish certain «direct duties of justice» for sentient beings, possessors of some complexity, that the State must seek precautionary and as a minimum requirement. After analyzing this proposal, they develop some of the criticism caused by the «animal ethics» defended by Nussbaum, among which are counted Donaldson, Kymlicka, Smith, Cortina and Schlosberg. (shrink)

This work analyzes the text De suis tentationibus, of Otloh of St. Emmeram. A monk that shows us how the love for reading and knowledge ends up committing his life and the life of many men when using the Liberal Arts mainly the dialectic. It also allows us to see how a parallel construcción, the one that mantains separated Philosophy from Revelation, is established. We are interested in recovering some thinkers of the Hight Middle Ages, who have elaborated arguments that (...) may have changed to some extent the history of the prejudices, punishments, heresies and blazes. (shrink)

This book shows that the debate over the compatibility of externalism and self-knowledge has led to the investigation of a variety of topics, including the a...

The debate on concept possession in animals has moved at a very abstract level, with scant detailed consideration of case studies in animal behaviour. In this paper, we go against this trend by examining a specific prey defence mechanism, thanatosis or death-feigning, in order to determine what it can tell us about the minds of the predators it targets. We argue that thanatosis gives us evidence of conceptual abilities in predators. In particular, we defend that the best available explanation for (...) the evolution of thanatosis comes from positing that the predators whose cognition acted as selection pressure and shaped thanatosis displays satisfy the concept possession requirements of distance, inferentiality, aspectuality, generality, and a minimal semantic net. Moreover, we argue that the semantic content of the concept targeted by thanatosis likely corresponds to a minimal concept of death. We end on a methodological note, by showing how the consideration of case studies can help move this philosophical debate forward, while also generating concrete empirical predictions that can be put to the test, thus favouring interdisciplinary collaborations. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show how modern genetics reached Spain through the Junta para la Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas (JAE) during the decade of 1920s, the role played by key persons, and the level of development this discipline achieved from its different points of inception and under the conditions of financial scarcity and political turmoil that prevailed during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). In addition, the effect of the war on the continuity of the lines (...) of research already began is outlined, identifying the main area in which genetics first reappeared: agronomy. (shrink)

The interest of assigning homework is frequently discussed due to its alleged low impact on student achievement. One of the current lines of research is to emphasize the quality of student homework engagement rather than the amount of time spent on homework. The aim of this study was to determine (a) the extent to which students’ prior achievement affects their homework engagement (i.e., time spent, time management, and amount of teacher-assigned homework done), and (b) how students’ intrinsic motivation towards homework (...) may mediate or moderate the relationship between prior achievement and the homework engagement variables. A large sample of students from the first four years of Secondary Education (N = 1899) completed questionnaires. The results showed that intrinsic motivation partially mediates, but does not moderate, the effect of prior achievement on the three variables related to homework engagement (time spent, time management, and amount of teacher-assigned homework done). These results highlight the importance of considering both students’ current level of achievement and their motivation towards homework engagement when assigning homework. (shrink)

The US has built the most extensive immigration detention system globally. Over the last three administrations, several organizations have noted a systemic failure in the provision of health care in detention centers, leading to the torture and death of immigrants. This essay develops the principle of the preferential option for the poor to examine the causes of deficient access to health care and solutions to overcome them. It analyzes the substandard health care in detention centers from the notion of structural (...) violence and systematizes solutions of grassroots immigrant organizations from the idea of solidarity, understood here as a form of friendship with the poor that moves toward relational justice. Its goal is to build bridges between people so that the political will is generated to create policies to improve and enforce health care standards in detention centers and address the unjust foundations of immigration detention. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Second-Order Cybernetics as a Fundamental Revolution in Science” by Stuart A. Umpleby. Upshot: Connecting Umpleby’s article with Piaget and García’s genetic epistemology, I will argue that the revolution the former discerns is more comprehensive. Additionally, since the latter differ from cybernetic and radical traditions in their philosophical assumptions about society and its conditioning on knowledge, I will suggest that these assumptions must be considered to explain each constructivist program’s achievements and challenges.

Este artículo plantea la posibilidad de hallar un surgimiento de la literatura autobiográfica en la obra de Michel Foucault a partir del momento en que este filósofo deja de interesarse por la literatura como un espacio autorreferencial para adentrarse en la historia de criminales, locos, anormales, vidas minúsculas e infames, cuyos relatos se encuentran comprometidos dentro de diferentes prácticas discursivas promovidas por mecanismos de poder. En este sentido, los diarios de Pierre Rivière, Herculine Barbine o Alexina B. y del anónimo (...) inglés de _My secret life_, no sólo cuestionarán la voluntad de saber sobre el crimen y la sexualidad que comenzaba a surgir en términos médicos, psiquiátricos y legales a fines del siglo XVIII y comienzos del XIX, sino que también pondrán en tela de juicio la institucionalidad literaria a partir de una especie de genealogía de la literatura autobiográfica, nacida, en su generalidad, dentro de prácticas confesionales. De este modo, Foucault demuestra un interés previo por la autobiografía antes de que esta práctica de escritura sea situada dentro de una ética y estética de sí. (shrink)

In Lignes de fuite. Pour un autre monde de possibles, Guattari refers to an ‘analytico-militant programme’ that would position analysis across multiple social fields. What would this correspond to? Through an examination of Guattari’s theorisation of the question of the group in the framework of institutional psychotherapy, this article seeks to open ways to think the general meaning of analysis for social and political purposes and its practical form. The paper will explore what is at stake in the collectivisaton of (...) analysis beyond the group as a social-environmental process and according to a collective machinic perspective of enunciative processes. Analysis will be defined here as an everyday permanent process of creating conditions of autonomy, where self-management is key and alliances are unlocked through a work of analytical metabolism. (shrink)

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, approved on December 13, 2006 by the UN General Assembly, represented a historic advance in the field of disability by recognizing that the right to education implied the right to an quality inclusive education, thus consolidating a normative evolution from previous international instruments. Since May 3, 2008, the Convention has been part of the Spanish legal system, which implies that the State is obliged to modify national laws that do not correspond (...) to the principles established in the Convention. However, different reports have revealed the weakness of its implementation in Spain, with the consequent breach of the rights of people with disabilities. These difficulties in establishing a truly inclusive education show how ableist conceptions and practices continue to be perpetuated in the educational field. (shrink)

In the wake of the most recent tragic school shootings in Florida and Texas, one must ask, when will enough be enough? Mass shootings have become an all-too-normal occurrence in contemporary society in our country. Although we are still impacted by every one of them, there is a concern that we are slowly becoming desensitized to the unspeakable actions of violence that are being carried out regularly. After the initial shock, the typical reaction to such actions involves a clichéd response (...) calling for thoughts and prayers, as if thoughts and prayers were enough to prevent the next incident every other time that people have called for them. Next, people engage in heated discussions and arguments over gun violence... (shrink)

El libro de Ruse Tomándose en serio a Darwin fue una obra muy influyente sobre todo para los autores que se proponían explicar, desde la teoría evolutiva, no sólo los aspectos biológicos de los seres humanos, sino también los cognitivos, culturales y éticos. Ruse afirma que, para poder pasar de la dimensión biológica a la cultural, es necesario tomar en cuenta los aportes de la epigenética. En este trabajo se retomará dicha propuesta a la luz de las nuevas perspectivas teóricas (...) y datos empíricos, sobre todo en lo referente a los mecanismos de herencia. Concluyendo que las relaciones biológico/cultural deben darse en el marco de perspectivas sistémicas como la teoría de los sistemas de desarrollo o las nociones de herencia no sólo genética sino también epigenética, conductual y simbólica que entienden a los procesos evolutivos como redes interrelacionadas con distintos niveles de complejidad. (shrink)

Rowlands offers a de-intellectualised account of personhood that is meant to secure the unity of a mental life. I argue that his characterisation also singles out a morally relevant feature of individuals. Along the same lines that the orthodox understanding of personhood reflects a fundamental precondition for moral agency, Rowlands’s notion provides a fundamental precondition for moral patienthood.

For undergraduate/graduate courses in Latin American Philosophy, Latin American Thought, Multicultural Philosophy, Latino Culture and Civilization, and Hispanic Culture and Civilization in the Departments of Philosophy, Latin American Studies, Political Science, Romance Languages, and Chicano Studies. The most comprehensive anthology in its field, 'Latin American philosophy' offers the reflections of Latin American thinkers on the nature of philosophy, justice, human rights, cultural identity, and other issues that have faced them from the colonial period to the present day. Most of the (...) essays are short and easy to read making them accessible to students with little or no philosophical background. (shrink)

The development of modern science, as everybody knows, has come largely through naturalizing domains of inquiry that were traditionally parts of philosophy – a process that philosophers have, by and large, applauded. But could this worthwhile endeavor now move on to include critical thinking? Here we argue that critical thinking, a discipline devoted principally to the study of the normative aspects of reasoning, cannot be assimilated to purely naturalistic, descriptive studies of reasoning of the sort now prevalent in the social (...) sciences and in what is now called „experimental philosophy.‟ Critical thinking, on our view, is a discipline whose central task is not that of constructing a catalogue of common patterns of reasoning, but instead of accounting for the normative worth of such patterns. Plainly, it is an enterprise that raises philosophical questions about the nature of such normativity and requires an evaluation of possible answers. The normativity issues at stake in critical thinking are parallel in significant ways to those arising in normative ethics and traditional epistemology. And this is why successful arguments offered against attempts at eliminating or reducing the latter disciplines to the sciences could be adapted to support the philosophical autonomy of critical thinking. A glance at the naturalistic approaches to reasoning currently on offer reveals that there is so far no naturalistic account of the normativity of reasoning in the offing. Not surprisingly, naturalistic studies of reasoning concerned with such normativity either fail to account for it or simply rehash traditional philosophical accounts. In a recent study, Sripada and Stich (2005) 1 seem to assume that all there is to explaining what moral judgments are can be captured by some results of experimental tests about what people standardly make of moral norms in general (e.g., Turiel‟s moral/conventional task experiments) – perhaps together with some psychological account of the role of emotions and motivation in normative judgment.. (shrink)

These thirteen original essays, whose authors include some of the world's leading philosophers, examine themes from the work of the Cambridge philosopher G. E. Moore (1873-1958), and demonstrate his considerable continuing influence on philosophical debate. Part I bears on epistemological topics, such as scepticism about the external world, the significance of common sense, and theories of perception. Part II is devoted to themes in ethics, such as Moore's open question argument, his non-naturalism, utilitarianism, and his notion of organic unities.

Twin-earth thought experiments, standardly construed, support the externalist doctrine that the content of propositional attitudes involving natural-kind terms supervenes upon properties external to those who entertain them. But this doctrine in conjunction with a common view of self-knowledge might have the intolerable consequence that substantial propositions concerning the environment could be knowable a priori. Since both doctrines, externalism and privileged self-knowledge, appear independently plausible, there is then a paradox facing the attempt to hold them concurrently. I shall argue, however, that (...) externalist claims about the dependence of content on environmental factors presuppose certain theses about the semantics of natural-kind terms that, if sound, would make those claims eligible for empirical justification instead. In fact, that is the only interpretation of their epistemic status that could square with the standard conclusion from twin-earth cases. Furthermore, it can be shown to solve the paradox of externalism and self-knowledge in a more doxastically conservative way--accommodating precisely each of the well-accepted intuitions about knowledge, closure and the individuation of content given up by available competitors. (shrink)

The proliferation of AI systems across all domains of life as well as the complexification and opacity of algorithmic techniques, epitomised by the bourgeoning field of Deep Learning (DL), call for new methods in the Humanities for reflecting on the techno-human relation in a way that places the technical operation at its core. Grounded on the work of the philosopher of technology Gilbert Simondon, this paper puts forward individuation theory as a valuable approach to reflect on contemporary information technologies, offering (...) an analysis of the functioning of deep neural networks (DNNs), a type of data-driven computational models at the core of major breakthroughs in AI. The purpose of this article is threefold: (1) to demonstrate how a joint reading of Simondon’s mechanology and individuation theory, foregrounded in the Simondonian concept of information, can cast new light on contemporary algorithmic techniques by considering their situated emergence as opposed to technical lineage; (2) to suspend a predictive framing of AI systems, particularly DL techniques, so as to probe into their technical operation, accounting for the data-driven individuation of these models and the integration of potentials as functionality; and finally, (3) to argue that individuation theory might in fact de-individuate AI, in the sense of disassembling the already-there, the constituted, paving the way for questioning the potentialities for data and their algorithmic relationality to articulate the unfolding of everyday life. (shrink)

It has been argued that some animals are moral subjects, that is, beings who are capable of behaving on the basis of moral motivations. In this paper, we do not challenge this claim. Instead, we presuppose its plausibility in order to explore what ethical consequences follow from it. Using the capabilities approach, we argue that beings who are moral subjects are entitled to enjoy positive opportunities for the flourishing of their moral capabilities, and that the thwarting of these capabilities entails (...) a harm that cannot be fully explained in terms of hedonistic welfare. We explore the implications of this idea for the assessment of current practices involving animals. (shrink)

El concepto de trastorno mental permite justificar intervenciones médicas, psicológicas y judiciales. Además, facilita a la/el consultante acceder a tratamientos mediante reembolsos o programas de salud pública, y por otro lado, podría conllevar estereotipos sociales. No obstante, el significado de dicho concepto no ha dejado de suscitar debate. En el presente artículo argumentaré que los trastornos de personalidad, tal como son definidos en el DSM-5, no cumplen con los criterios de patología de las propuestas principales (i.e. teoría bio-estadística de la (...) salud, disfunción dañina, o entidad patológica) debido a tres razones independientes: (i) no se han propuesto dis/funciones a la base de cada trastorno y, dado el estado del arte de la psicología evolucionista, es poco probable que se pueda llevar a cabo ese programa en el futuro; (ii) el concepto de daño (distrés, perjuicio) aplicable a los trastornos de personalidad es constitutivamente social (aunque no exclusivamente social), por lo que resulta más adecuado hablar de grados de discapacidad que de trastornos del individuo; y (iii) que la ausencia de condiciones patognomónicas para cada trastorno, junto a la elevada comorbilidad y multimorbilidad entre trastornos de personalidad, horada la validez de la nosología actual y de los diagnósticos diferenciales. Propondré como solución la eliminación de los trastornos de personalidad de la nosología psiquiátrica. Eliminar los trastornos de personalidad no equivale a desconocer el sufrimiento de las personas diagnosticadas, ni a ignorar que dicho sufrimiento precede a, –y no acaba con la disolución de– la etiqueta diagnóstica. Por ello, se propondrá una reconceptualización de dicho sufrimiento en términos de discapacidad, entendida desde el modelo social, y que no presupone patología. (shrink)

Nietzsche understands that the world unfolds as a will to power. If we want to properly understand this cosmological perspective, we must start by attributing immanent activity not only to organisms, but also to beings called “inorganic”. With this in mind, in this article we examine, in an “ascending” way, the features of the vital becoming in both strata, that is, from the minerals, with their attractions and repulsions, until reaching the man himself and his conscious operations. All the problems (...) involved in this monistic perspective are approached from argumentations that are based on Nietzsche’s readings. Strauss, Dubois Reymond, Herzen, Spencer, Lange, Delfœuf, are some of the cited sources that allow this writing to give an account of how Nietzsche makes life prevail, beyond being, as the primordial phenomenon in all orders. (shrink)

We explore the distinctive characteristics of Mexico's society, politics and history that impacted the establishment of genetics in Mexico, as a new disciplinary field that began in the early 20th century and was consolidated and institutionalized in the second half. We identify about three stages in the institutionalization of genetics in Mexico. The first stage can be characterized by Edmundo Taboada, who was the leader of a research program initiated during the Cárdenas government (1934-1940), which was primarily directed towards improving (...) the condition of small Mexican farmers. Taboada is the first Mexican post-graduate investigator in phytotechnology and phytopathology, trained at Cornell University and the University of Minnesota, in 1932 and 1933, respectively. He was the first investigator to teach plant genetics at the National School of Agriculture and wrote the first textbook of general genetics, Genetics Notes, in 1938. Taboada's most important single genetics contribution was the production of "stabilized" corn varieties. The extensive exile of Spanish intellectuals to Mexico, after the end of Spain's Civil War (1936-1939), had a major influence in Mexican science and characterizes the second stage. The three main personalities contributing to Mexican genetics are Federico Bonet de Marco and Bibiano Fernández Osorio Tafall, at the National School of Biological Sciences, and José Luis de la Loma y Oteyza, at the Chapingo Agriculture School. The main contribution of the Spanish exiles to the introduction of genetics in Mexico concerned teaching. They introduced in several universities genetics as a distinctive discipline within the biology curriculum and wrote genetics text books and manuals. The third stage is identified with Alfonso León de Garay, who founded the Genetics and Radiobiology Program in 1960 within the National Commission of Nuclear Energy, which had been founded in 1956. The Genetics and Radiobiology Program rapidly became a disciplinary program, for it embraced research, teaching, and training of academics and technicians. The Mexican Genetics Society, created by de Garay in 1966, and the development of strains and cultures for genetics research were important activities. One of de Garay's key requirements was the compulsory training of the Program's scientists for at least one or two years in the best universities of the United States and Europe. De Garay's role in the development of Mexican genetics was fundamental. His broad vision encompassed the practice of genetics in all its manifestations. (shrink)