This is a collection of new investigations and discoveries on the history of a great tradition, the Lvov-Warsaw School of logic , philosophy and mathematics, by the best specialists from all over the world. The papers range from historical considerations to new philosophical, logical and mathematical developments of this impressive School, including applications to Computer Science, Mathematics, Metalogic, Scientific and Analytic Philosophy, Theory of Models and Linguistics.

Esta obra compila los estudios presentados en las I Jornadas de Filosofía del Instituto CEU de Humanidades Ángel Ayala y está prologada por Abelardo Lobato, O. P. Los filósofos tienen el deber de buscar y alcanzar la verdad apelando a las fuerzas de la razón, la cual, por cierto, no impide otras vías genuinas de conocimiento, como la fe. La búsqueda intelectual exige un trabajo de análisis que debe afinarse ante las obcecaciones que a menudo se interponen en el (...) horizonte de la existencia humana. En no pocos momentos de la historia ha habido claudicaciones generalizadas ante esa búsqueda, olvidos más o menos conscientes de que las verdades se alcanzan si se mantiene la esperanza de sabiduría y el amor a ella. El relativismo y el escepticismo se presentan casi como el polo opuesto de esa esperanza y ese amor; como una consecuencia de la “con-fusión” cultural, de las mentiras interesadas y de la desidia moral de algunas sociedades. La nuestra, la europea occidental, es una de ellas. El relativismo afecta al modo de pensar y de comportarse del hombre y es habitual que le lleve por vericuetos que a la postre terminan dañándole a él y a sus congéneres. En este libro se analizan algunos errores que han llevado a suscribir las tesis del relativismo y a rechazar la posibilidad de dar con algunas verdades comunes para todos. La obra tiene dos partes, una histórica y otra temática. Las páginas con enfoque histórico estudian las tesis que sobre el relativismo han mantenido algunos pensadores o corrientes de la filosofía. De su lectura se puede extraer la conclusión de que el fenómeno del relativismo es tan viejo y tan actual como el propio hombre y su apertura inteligente a la verdad. Filósofos de la época antigua de la talla de Protágoras, Pirrón o los “Académicos” coetáneos de San Agustín; modernos como Descartes; contemporáneos como Wittgenstein o Kuhn han dejado huellas que luego abrieron el camino hacia un régimen de pensamiento en que el hombre abandona la posibilidad de admitir verdades universales. Algunos argumentos favorables al relativismo —y, más aún, algunas actitudes “propedéuticas” de él— se han ido instalando culturalmente hasta consolidarse de manera cada vez más indiscutida. La segunda parte analiza el relativismo de forma temática, como un asunto abordable desde las diversas ramas del saber filosófico. Así, se tratan las repercusiones que tiene esta forma de pensamiento en la pragmática, la lógica, la estética o la religión, y se intentan desenmascarar los tópicos y falsos argumentos que justifican un comportamiento ético o religioso “abierto a todas las opciones”. (shrink)

Sometimes two expressions in a discourse can be about the same thing in a way that makes that very fact evident to the participants. Consider, for example, 'he' and 'John' in 'John went to the store and he bought some milk'. Let us call this 'de jure' coreference. Other times, coreference is 'de facto' as with 'Mark Twain' and 'Samuel Clemens' in a sincere use of 'Mark Twain is not Samuel Clemens'. Here, agents can understand the speech without knowing that (...) the names refer to the same person. After surveying many available linguistic and pragmatic tools (intentions to corefer, presuppositions, meanings, indexing, discourse referents, binding etc.) I conclude that we must posit a new semantic primitive to account for de jure coreference. (shrink)

I argue that truth is relative (in the sense recently defended by some prominent analytical philosophers) by focusing on some semantic issues raised by Einstein's theory of relativity together with our ordinary attributions of truth.

In having an experience one is aware of having it. Having an experience requires some form of access to one's own state, which distinguishes phenomenally conscious mental states from other kinds of mental states. Until very recently, Higher-Order (HO) theories were the only game in town aiming at offering a full-fledged account of this form of awareness within the analytical tradition. Independently of any objections that HO theories face, First/Same-Order (F/SO) theorists need to offer an account of such access to (...) become a plausible alternative. My aim in this paper is twofold. In the first place, I wish to widen the logical space of the discussion among theories of consciousness by offering a distinction, orthogonal to that between F/SO and HO theories, between what I will call 'Self-Involving' (SI) and 'Mental-State-Involving' (MSI) theories and argue in favor of the former one. In the second place, I will present the basics of a characterization of such a Self-Involving theory in Same-Order terms. (shrink)

Este artículo se opone a la tesis recientemente sostenida por John Searle según la cual no existen los derechos humanos positivos. Argumentamos que la existencia de dichos derechos no es contradictoria, como pretende Searle, con las nociones de "derecho" y"derechos humanos" definidas en su ontología social. Por consiguiente, es posible aceptar la ontología social de Searle y afirmar al mismo tiempo que los derechos humanos positivos existen. En segundo lugar, ofrecemos razones para cuestionar la supuesta prioridad lógica de una ontología (...) social al modo en que Searle la entiende (esto es, como una empresa puramente analítica) sobre los desarrollos más específicos de la filosofía moral, social y política. Al contrario, sugerimos que, por lo que se refiere a la realidad social, los compromisos ontológicos dependen de los presupuestos sustantivos que se adopten en relación con la naturaleza y los fines de la sociedad misma, o bien no pasarán de ser un formalismo vacío sin relevancia heurística alguna. [This paper challenges the point recently made by John Searle that there are no positive human rights. We contend that the existence of positive human rights is not inconsistent, as Searle argues, with the notions of "right" and "human rights" as defined in his social ontology. Therefore, one could adhere to Searle's social ontology and assert the existence of positive human rights at the same time. Subsequently, the paper gives reason to question the alleged logical priority of social ontology in Searle's sense (i.e., as a purely analytic endeavour) over the particular developments of moral, social, and political philosophy. We suggest, on the contrary, that concerning social reality ontological commitments are dependent on substantive assumptions about the nature and aims of society itself, or else they amount to an empty formalism with no heuristic relevance.]. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers have gathered impressive evidence for the surprising conclusion that philosophers' intuitions are out of step with those of the folk. As a result, many argue that philosophers' intuitions are unreliable. Focusing on the Knobe Effect, a leading finding of experimental philosophy, we defend traditional philosophy against this conclusion. Our key premise relies on experiments we conducted which indicate that judgments of the folk elicited under higher quality cognitive or epistemic conditions are more likely to resemble those of the (...) philosopher. We end by showing how our experimental findings can help us better understand the Knobe Effect. (shrink)

Cognitive theories claim, whereas non-cognitive theories deny, that cognitive access is constitutive of phenomenology. Evidence in favor of non-cognitive theories has recently been collected by Block and is based on the high capacity of participants in partial-report experiments compared to the capacity of the working memory. In reply, defenders of cognitive theories have searched for alternative interpretations of such results that make visual awareness compatible with the capacity of the working memory; and so the conclusions of such experiments remain controversial. (...) Instead of entering the debate between alternative interpretations of partial-report experiments, this paper offers an alternative line of research that could settle the discussion between cognitive and non-cognitive theories of consciousness. Here I relate the neural correlates of cognitive access to empirical research into the neurophysiology of dreams; cognitive access seems to depend on the activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. However, that area is strongly deactivated during sleep; a period when we entertain conscious experiences: dreams. This approach also avoids the classic objection that consciousness should be inextricably tied to reportability or it would fall outside the realm of science. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers have gathered impressive evidence for the surprising conclusion that philosophers' intuitions are out of step with those of the folk. As a result, many argue that philosophers' intuitions are unreliable. Focusing on the Knobe Effect, a leading finding of experimental philosophy, we defend traditional philosophy against this conclusion. Our key premise relies on experiments we conducted which indicate that judgments of the folk elicited under higher quality cognitive or epistemic conditions are more likely to resemble those of the (...) philosopher. We end by showing how our experimental findings can help us better understand the Knobe Effect. (shrink)

People generally accept that there is causation by omission—that the omission of some events cause some related events. But this acceptance elicits the selection problem, or the difficulty of explaining the selection of a particular omissive cause or class of causes from the causal conditions. Some theorists contend that dependence theories of causation cannot resolve this problem. In this paper, we argue that the appeal to norms adequately resolves the selection problem for dependence theories, and we provide novel experimental evidence (...) for it. (shrink)

In this essay we discuss recent attempts to analyse the notion of representation, as it is employed in cognitive science, in purely informational terms. In particular, we argue that recent informational theories cannot accommodate the existence of metarepresentations. Since metarepresentations play a central role in the explanation of many cognitive abilities, this is a serious shortcoming of these proposals.

Higher-Order Thought (HOT) theories of consciousness maintain that the kind of awareness necessary for phenomenal consciousness depends on the cognitive accessibility that underlies reporting. -/- There is empirical evidence strongly suggesting that the cognitive accessibility that underlies the ability to report visual experiences depends on the activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). This area, however, is highly deactivated during the conscious experiences we have during sleep: dreams. HOT theories are jeopardized, as I will argue. I will briefly present HOT (...) theories in the first section. Section 2 offers empirical evidence to the effect that the cognitive accessibility that underlies the ability to report depends on the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex: dlPFC is the neural correlate of HOTs. Section 3 shows the evidence we have of the deactivation of this brain area during dreams and, in section 4, I present my argument. Finally, I consider and rejoin two possible replies that my opponent can offer: the possibility of an alternative neural correlate of HOTs during dreams and the denial that we have phenomenally conscious experiences during sleep. (shrink)

Some philosophers, like David Chalmers, have either shown their sympathy for, or explicitly endorsed, the following two principles: Panpsychism—roughly the thesis that the mind is ubiquitous throughout the universe—and Organizational Invariantism—the principle that holds that two systems with the same fine-grained functional organization will have qualitatively identical experiences. The purpose of this paper is to show the tension between the arguments that back up both principles. This tension should lead, or so I will argue, defenders of one of the principles (...) to give up on the other. (shrink)

The CRISPR system for gene editing can break, repair, and replace targeted sections of DNA. Although CRISPR gene editing has important therapeutic potential, it raises several ethical concerns. Some bioethicists worry CRISPR is a prelude to a dystopian future, while others maintain it should not be feared because it is analogous to past biotechnologies. In the scientific literature, CRISPR is often discussed as a revolutionary technology. In this paper we unpack the framing of CRISPR as a revolutionary technology and contrast (...) it with framing it as a value-threatening biotechnology or business-as-usual. By drawing on a comparison between CRISPR and the Ford Model T, we argue CRISPR is revolutionary as a product, process, and as a force for social change. This characterization of CRISPR offers important conceptual clarity to the existing debates surrounding CRISPR. In particular, conceptualizing CRISPR as a revolutionary technology structures regulatory goals with respect to this new technology. Revolutionary technologies have characteristic patterns of implementation, entrenchment, and social impact. As such, early identification of technologies as revolutionary may help construct more nuanced and effective ethical frameworks for public policy. (shrink)

Suppose that we repair a wooden ship by replacing its planks one by one with new ones while at the same time reconstructing it using the discarded planks. Some defenders of vague or indeterminate identity claim that: (1) although the reconstructed ship is distinct from the repaired ship, it is indeterminate whether the original ship is the reconstructed ship and indeterminate whether it is the repaired ship, and (2) the indeterminacy is due to the world and not just an imprecision (...) in the language used to describe the situation. I argue that such a description is incoherent. The argument has two features. First, it differs in spirit from Gareth Evans's more general famous proof against the possibility of indeterminate identity. This is because I rely on facts regarding counting and sets. Second, I focus on Terence Parsons's recent defence of indeterminate identity. I argue that his attempts at making sense of counting objects involving indeterminate identities fail on technical and philosophical grounds. (shrink)

El artículo analiza hasta que punto puede equipararse la labor del traductor con la de realizar una interpretación de los textos sobre los que trabaja. Utilizaremos para ello instrumental tanto de la tradición de la filosofía hermenéutica (especialmente Hans-Georg Gadamer) como de la inspirada en la obra de Ludwig Wittgenstein. La conclusión intenta mostrar las fuertes diferencias que existen entre traducir e interpretar, y con ello entender mejor qué quiere decir realmente la idea de "universalidad hermenéutica" que funda la citada (...) tradición de filosofía ídem. (shrink)

En los debates actuales sobre ética y filosofía política, a menudo se acusa a autores de tradiciones tan distintas como Gianni Vattimo, Paul K. Feyerabend y Richard Rorty de pecar de un mismo vicio: el relativismo en su idea de lo que es la racionalidad (tanto epistémica como moral). Nuestra tesis en este escrito es doble: en primer lugar, defendemos que ninguno de ellos es (ni se considera) relativista; sino que, bien al contrario, su pensamiento podría considerarse como un ejercicio (...) de "antirrelativismo". En segundo lugar, puntualizaremos que este antirrelativismo no les lleva a identificarse con el universalismo (epistémico o moral); sino que, de algún modo, logran recuperar una vía intermedia entre estos dos extremos para apostar a favor de una idea de racionalidad práctica que cifra en el diálogo sin apriorismos sus esperanzas. (shrink)

Modernity developed two conceptions of “nation”: “political nation” (grounded on the free will of subjects) and “cultural nation” (grounded on an objective entity, like culture, race, etc). But both axes of justification, the Subject and the Object, have recently suffered hard attacks from philosophies like Hermeneutics, which reveal heavy contradictions in them if they are to function as “grounds” of the “nation”. Nevertheless, no radical alternative to the concept of “nation” nor to these ways of grounding it seems nowadays plausible. (...) The hermeneutical approach that we propose is, then, to keep them, but in a verwordenem (weakened) sense, as termini towards which (not from which) making dialogical explanations about “nation”. In such a way, once we have excluded Modern fundamentals, a non fundament(al)ist way of thinking about it would favour the “reduction of violence” that hermeneutical practical philosophy adopts as its keynote. (shrink)

The idea behind this work is to demonstrate that Western logocentrism hegemonizes in the same process of individuation. Analyze the evolution of the body through the texts would be to make a deconstruction of the capitalist system and the current market society. Undoubtedly, this system is the consecration of the idea of individual that was increasing along multiple events and allows us, not only review the appearance of the subject as such, but also as appearance of the individualism as cultural (...) current. Also it allows us to observe how they were giving various processes of individuation and like some factors have become higher hierarchies were imposed on others, which were relegated, hidden, denied. (shrink)

El avance tecnológico de los últimos años nos lleva a imaginar un futuro, no muy lejano, donde los sistemas tecnológicos y la inteligencia artificial (AI) supere a la inteligencia humana (HI), inclusive con la capacidad de auto generarse, denominando ésto como Singularidad Tecnológica. Razón por lo cual surge la posibilidad de fusión entre ambas inteligencias, dando lugar así al surgimiento de Cyborgs o Post Humanos y la llegada de lo que los expertos han dado en llamar Transhumanismo. Me planteo reflexionar (...) sobre esta posibilidad con el fin de analizar las posibles consecuencias que traería consigo una super inteligencia dura. -/- The technological advance of recent years leads us to imagine a future, not too distant, where technological systems and artificial intelligence (AI) surpass human intelligence (HI), even with the ability to self-generate, calling this as Singularity Technological. Reason why the possibility of merging between the two intelligences arises, thus giving rise to the emergence of Cyborgs or Post Humans and the arrival of, what experts have called, Transhumanism. I consider reflecting on this possibility, in order to analyze the possible consequences that a hard super intelligence would bring. (shrink)

For centuries, several disciplines have tried to tackle the topic of how legitimate it is to use violence in order to solve social problems. One of the most recent interdisciplinary approaches (and one of the most successful in present-day Latin America) is the so-called “Ethics of Liberation,” designed by Enrique Dussel. Based on the Theology of Liberation, this theory goes beyond the limits of theology as a discipline and pleads for three ethical criteria that every political revolution must fulfill to (...) use violence in a legitimate way. The first is a formal criterion, which basically takes after the ideal dialogue situation endorsed by Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas, and purports to be rooted in yet another discipline, linguistics. The second is a material criterion, defined as the upshot of an acceptable welfare for all citizens, thus intimately linked with the discipline of economy and political philosophy. The third is a criterion of feasibility, which makes a revolt legitimate if, and only if, it has a reasonable possibility of succeeding; hence strategic issues take a leading role. This essay contends that each of these criteria is conceptually incompatible with violence. Hence, Dussel’s arguments involve multiple contradictions as he aims to justify the use of violence precisely with these interdisciplinary criteria. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es establecer una condición de posibilidad para el diálogo interreligioso o religioso-ateo. Esta condición consiste en tomar los conceptos de «verdad» y «condiciones de verdad» como elementos centrales de la naturaleza de la creencia religiosa. Además, para hacer posible el diálogo, es necesario rechazar cualquier rasgo de inefabilidad de cualquier descripción satisfactoria de la creencia religiosa. Así, en primer lugar, se examinará el trabajo de Wittgenstein en su Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus para mostrar que, en esta aproximación, (...) todo discurso religioso es un sinsentido y, por lo tanto, ningún diálogo sería posible. En segundo lugar, se analizará la obra tardía de Wittgenstein, para mostrar que conceptos como «juego de lenguaje», «forma de vida» y «ver-aspectos» no son herramientas suficientes que permitan el diálogo. En general, se argumentará que ambas perspectivas de Wittgenstein fallan debido a que asumen que la inefabilidad es un atributo esencial de la creencia religiosa. Finalmente, se argumentará que los conceptos de «verdad» y «condiciones de verdad» son esenciales a la creencia religiosa, si se quiere garantizar el diálogo interreligioso. Se defenderá que la interpretación radical de Davidson es útil para este propósito y además permite la tolerancia entre puntos de vista religiosos y divergentes. (shrink)

Dos filósofos dialogan sobre cómo definir en nuestros días la barbarie desde la filosofía política actual. Barajan para ello tres tipos de respuestas. La respuesta ilustrada es la que considera que la diversidad de concepciones del bien de nuestras sociedades es un hecho pernicioso para el desarrollo de la Humanidad, y que hay que imponer sobre ese batiburrillo de opiniones bárbaras la concepción sobre lo bueno más racional, la que en Occidente se propugna desde la Ilustración dieciochesca. La respuesta liberal, (...) por el contrario, acepta gustosa la pluralidad de concepciones morales y metafísicas de nuestras sociedades, y lo único que propone es evitar la barbarie haciendo que, en las cuestiones sobre cómo organizar nuestra sociedad, estas diferencias queden de lado y se intente encontrar un mínimo acuerdo entre todos. Por último, la respuesta postmetafísica sugiere aceptar que las cosmovisiones sobre el bien y el mundo no pueden quedar tan totalmente aparte de nuestros modos de organizar la sociedad como quiere el liberal; pero para evitar el conflicto bárbarico entre ellas, persigue hacer plausible sobre las demás una concepción concreta, que, a diferencia de la del ilustrado, aspiraría mucho más modestamente a sólo expandir un escepticismo para con el resto de nuestras propias creencias; autoironía que nos abriría al diálogo con las creencias de los demás y evitaría en ese juego de conversaciones la violencia de la imposición bárbara. (shrink)

Michael H. Mitias argues that friendship is a central moral value constituting an integral part of the good life and therefore deserving a prominent place in ethical theory. He consequently calls upon ethicists to make immediate and decisive adjustments toward accommodating what he regards as a neglected organic relationship between friendship and morality. This is not a fanciful amendment to our standard conception of morality but a radical proposal grounded in a unifying vision to recapture the right way of doing (...) ethics. While the assessment is compelling, and the plea well-placed, neither has been fully understood in the scholarly reception of Mitias. This paper clarifies both. What sets it apart from other reactions to Mitias is a holistic approach drawing on literary considerations as well as philosophical ones. The combined aim is to demonstrate that Mitias is not seeking simply to restore friendship to its rightful place in normative ethical theory, which is indeed the full extent of his formal mission, but that he is seeking to do so specifically within virtue ethics. This interpretation rests on a broad engagement with Mitias’s publications beyond the recent treatise often taken understandably yet erroneously to be his only work on the subject. (shrink)

Informational theories of semantic content have been recently gaining prominence in the debate on the notion of mental representation. In this paper we examine new-wave informational theories which have a special focus on cognitive science. In particular, we argue that these theories face four important difficulties: they do not fully solve the problem of error, fall prey to the wrong distality attribution problem, have serious difficulties accounting for ambiguous and redundant representations and fail to deliver a metasemantic theory of representation. (...) Furthermore, we argue that these difficulties derive from their exclusive reliance on the notion of information, so we suggest that pure informational accounts should be complemented with functional approaches. (shrink)

My main objective in this paper is to formulate a view of pictorial realism I call ‘hypothetical verity’. It owes much to John Kulvicki but diverges from his view in an important respect: rather than thinking that realistic pictures are true to our conceptions of things, I hold that they are true to what things would be like if they existed. In addition, I agree with Dominic Lopes that different realisms reflect different aspects of reality, but restate the case without (...) recourse to symbol systems. Together, the twin principles of hypothetical verity and aspectival absolutism constitute a theory of realism able to account for realistic fictional entities, the problem of revelatory realism and images that teach new information. (shrink)

El libro de María González Navarro se presenta a sí mismo como una “nueva hermenéutica” (23). La novedad involucra dos aspectos: uno que llamaremos metateórico y otro hermenéutico en propiedad. Hablando metateóricamente, el libro presenta una hermenéutica gadameriana vigorizada y robustecida por las teorías pragma-dialécticas de la argumentación. Desde el punto de vista hermenéutico propiamente dicho, la novedad reposa en que se considera que la interpretación correcta está indesligablemente vinculada a la argumentación abductiva.

This paper deals with those dimensions of narrative which define it as such (i.e. narrativity). It examines some current conceptions of narrativity, and puts forward an emergentist theory of narrativity, one which takes into account the narrative structuring effected by narratological analysis itself as a distinct cognitive activity.

A critical exposition, in Spanish, of Erving Goffman's theories on the semiotic organization of social reality and on the structure of subjectivity and subjective experience (two sides of the same coin) through a detailed analysis of the conclusion to Frame Analysis (1974). Goffman's insights into the interactional nature of subjectivity are related to other theorists' conceptions of the role of reflexivity in perception, consciousness and the structuring of semiotic artifacts (language, narrative, art).

This is a review essay on narrative phenomena in conversation, structured as a commentary and critique of Neal Norrick's book, Conversational Narrative (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2000). Written in Spanish.