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.

En el presente artículo se reflexiona sobre dos propuestas de Arturo Andrés Roig: la conciencia de la alteridad y el a priori antropológico para reconocer sus posibilidades de cara al progreso de la ideas y programas filosóficos. Para ello, se muestran las insuficiencias y posibilidades. Las primeras emergen al adoptar uno de los principios más importantes que sostienen el programa filosófico de la modernidad: el mantenimiento del ser humano como fundamento del mundo. Las posibilidades de sus aportes cobran fuerza (...) a la luz de las nuevas propuestas filosóficas que pretenden superar los postulados de la modernidad. (shrink)

Esta entrevista se realizó a la comunicadora española Marta Ramos Matas. En ella, expone las experiencias gratificantes que ha tenido al desempeñarse a nivel profesional, ya sea a través de la radio o el periódico a nivel. Para conseguir ese resultado, ella revela que le sirvió mucho tener como referentes a Àngels Barceló, Iker Jiménez, Carmen Porter y Alberto Matas. Por otro lado, ejercer esta función en su país es para ella ha generado percibir un alto nivel de competitividad, (...) ya que hay un gran número de personas que recurre a las mismas estrategias de difundir información, y que incluso no hacen un buen trabajo, debidoa que optan por denigrar la labor periodística al utilizar las fakenews. Esa sería una forma de transgredir los límites de la libertad de expresión, pues al no haber filtros en las redes sociales los usuarios comparten aquello que puede provenir de una fuente inverosímil. (shrink)

In what ways and how far does virtue shield someone against suffering evils? In other words, how do non-moral evils affect the lives of virtuous people and to what extent can someone endure evils while staying happy? The central purpose of this chapter is to answer these questions by exploring what Aristotle has to say about the effects of evils in human well-being in general and his treatment of extreme misfortunes.

Naturalism, construed as the idea that philosophy should be continuous with science, is a highly influential view. Its consequences for epistemology, however, are rather odd. Many believe that naturalized epistemology allows eschewing traditional skeptical challenges. This is often seen as an advantage; but it also calls into question its claim of belonging to the philosophical inquiry into knowledge. This paper argues that skeptical challenges can be stated to defy epistemic optimism within naturalized epistemology, and that there are distinctively naturalistic forms (...) of skepticism. To that end, it outlines some assumptions underlying many attempts to naturalize epistemology. It contrasts these approaches to traditional epistemology and identifies the reasons offered by naturalistic epistemologists to dismiss traditional skeptical challenges. Next, it argues that the problem of skepticism can be sensibly stated within a naturalistic setting. Finally, it contends that there are distinctively naturalistic strategies to argue for skepticism and diagnoses the prospects of naturalism vis-à-vis these kinds of skeptical challenges. (shrink)

The specific role of empeiria in Aristotle’s ethics has received much less attention than its role in his epistemology, despite the fact that Aristotle explicitly stresses the importance of empeiria as a requirement for the receptivity to ethical arguments and as a source for the formation of phronêsis.1 Thus, while empeiria is an integral part of all explanations that scholars give of the Aristotelian account of the acquisition of technê and epistêmê, it is usually not prominent in explanations of the (...) acquisition of phronêsis.2 The abundant mentions of empeiria in Aristotle’s ethical treatises are often eclipsed in the secondary literature... (shrink)

The work presented has the following approach: starting from the Pope's reflection on the planet and ecological problems, it is intended to show the philosophical influences that underlie Francisco's exposition. These influences make it possible to describe a philosophical profile present in the encyclical Laudato si’. In addition, since philosophy claims to know, it is not exhausted only in knowledge, but tries to know in order to act; therefore, the presence of an ethical proposal follows; and since all ethics leads (...) to action, it follows that action cannot be without some indicators, without an axiology on which human action on the planet revolves. The result is that Francisco offers an ethic of otherness that feels the other as an authentic neighbor, even those who are in the future. It is an ethic of common benefit and caring for the other whose fundamental axis is the person and for this reason he reflects the phenomenon of human life within life on Earth, with which its philosophical approach seems personalist, from a point of Christian view. (shrink)

El trabajo que se presenta intenta mostrar, por un lado y siguiendo a Ortega y Gasset, la complejidad del fenómeno de la política; y por otro lado, a partir de la constatación anterior, la necesidad de una ética que haga de la política una actividad presidida por el diálogo, la integración y la búsqueda de soluciones a las complejidades de la sociedad actual. Son relevantes en este aspecto Apel y Habermas.

Have you ever kept a diary of your personal life? For many people, keeping a written record of their experiences, thoughts, feelings, travels or encounters with people is a common practice. For others, it is not. Perhaps for some it is something completely foreign. For Russian Orthodox priest Alexander Schmemann it was clearly not. His diary, two volumes of almost 600 pages each, has given an insight into the life, worries, joys and even disappointments of one of the most influential (...) theologians of the 20th century. On this occasion we would like to refer to the first volume and scrutinize a little of what this work brings to the world today. ¿Ha llevado usted un diario de su vida personal? Para muchas personas, llevar un registro escrito de sus vivencias, pensamientos, sentimientos, viajes o encuentros con personas es una práctica común. Para otros no. Quizá para algunos esto es algo completamente ajeno. Es evidente que para el sacerdote ortodoxo ruso Alexander Schmemann no lo fue. Su diario, dos tomos de casi 600 páginas cada uno, ha dejado ver a fondo la vida, preocupaciones, alegrías, e incluso desilusiones de uno de los teólogos más influyentes del siglo XX. En esta ocasión queremos referirnos al primer tomo y escudriñar un poco qué aporta esta obra al mundo de hoy. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the search for explainable models and interpretable decisions in AI must be reformulated in terms of the broader project of offering a pragmatic and naturalistic account of understanding in AI. Intuitively, the purpose of providing an explanation of a model or a decision is to make it understandable to its stakeholders. But without a previous grasp of what it means to say that an agent understands a model or a decision, the explanatory strategies will (...) lack a well-defined goal. Aside from providing a clearer objective for XAI, focusing on understanding also allows us to relax the factivity condition on explanation, which is impossible to fulfill in many machine learning models, and to focus instead on the pragmatic conditions that determine the best fit between a model and the methods and devices deployed to understand it. After an examination of the different types of understanding discussed in the philosophical and psychological literature, I conclude that interpretative or approximation models not only provide the best way to achieve the objectual understanding of a machine learning model, but are also a necessary condition to achieve post hoc interpretability. This conclusion is partly based on the shortcomings of the purely functionalist approach to post hoc interpretability that seems to be predominant in most recent literature. (shrink)

Our philosophical understanding of mental illness is being shaped by neuroscience. However, it has the paradoxical effect of igniting two radically opposed groups of philosophical views. On one side, skepticism and denialism assume that, lacking clear biological mechanisms and etiologies for most mental illnesses, we should infer they are constructions best explained by means of social factors. This is strongly associated with medical nihilism: it considers psychiatry more harmful than benign. On the other side of the divide, naturalism and reductionism (...) are on the look for failures in the biological functioning of the organism whenever a genuine mental illness occurs. Psychiatry as currently practiced, accordingly, exhibits the gaps of an ongoing research programme; a yet to be completed neuroscience would link mental illnesses with identifiable biological mechanisms. Both sides of this divide claim to be fostered by scientific discoveries and advances in neuroscience, when taken at face value. Against this background, we argue instead for a modest view. To that end, we draw attention to some nuances in the scientific realism debate. While contending that neuroscientific theories and models aim to provide true representations of their target systems, and can justifiably claim to have attained some, we argue that our confidence should not be placed beforehand in specific features of these scientific representations. Hence, it would be unwarranted to extract morals for psychiatry from posits (or their absence) in neuroscientific explanations of mental illnesses. To illustrate our position, we examine some recent discoveries in neuroscience concerning bipolar disorder. We conclude by linking our topic to a broader issue in the philosophy of medicine: insofar as psychiatry is a biomedical specialty, its classifications of health and disease are guided by pragmatic concerns, as well as by scientific discoveries. (shrink)

El autor del artículo edita y estudia una inscripción funeraria inédita de época helenística encontrada en Aptera (Creta) por la arqueóloga griega V. Ninioú-Kindelí. El texto de la inscripción dice así: A) Σώσανδρος | Βίτωνος. B) Ἀμφιμήδης | Σωσάνδρω.

Plurality implies a public sphere in which different worldviews (e.g. Secular Humanist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim and others) coexist respecting each other. Banning the presence of one or several of them from the public sphere is questionable in principle, and divisive in practice.

MacIntyre's is one approach among many to explain what philosophy ought to be. For Pieper (in: "Defence of Philosophy"), just to cite another one, "to engage in philosophy means to reflect on the totality of things we encounter, in view of their ultimate" or fundamental truth. And there are others. But my interest here is to explore the circumstances under which philosophers could claim a place in society due to a service they provide, as valuable as that of a mechanical (...) engineer in a factory, a waiter in a hotel or a pilot on an airplane. The circumstances, this is, which would make society see philosophers not (or not only) as oddly useless figures addressing intellectually engaging puzzles and uttering obscure conclusions, but as valuable contributors to the common good. (shrink)

A man or woman who has a great spiritual sensitivity, who is interested in matters of faith and religion, or who dedicates a good part of his time to the cultivation of the spiritual life, is almost always associated with a priest or a nun, sometimes even in a derogatory way for the rest of the people. It seems that the interest in the spiritual was something exclusive to some. However, Alexander Schmemann is an example of how a great sensitivity, (...) a deep interest in matters of faith and religion, and a great dedication of time to the cultivation of the spiritual life are combined with being a father of a family. That is why this book will particularly appeal to many men who are already married or who want to be and at the same time want to lead a solid, consistent and coherent life of faith. (shrink)

The economic crisis in Europe exposes the European Union’s political fragility. How a polity made of very different states can live up to the motto “Europe united in diversity” is difficult to envisage in practice. In this paper I attempt an “exegesis”—a critical explanation or interpretation of a series of published pieces (“the Series”) which explores, first, if European unity is desirable at all. Second, it presents a new methodology—analogical hermeneutics—used throughout the Series to approach the problem of unity. Third, (...) it conceptualises the source of unity as political identity. Fourth, it advances that the vehicle to share such identity is an analogical language: the political culture of human rights. Fifth, it submits the conditions under which such political culture could ground political identity through an open public sphere. Finally, it presents a way in which solidarity can grow as the increasingly diverse citizens of the European Union interact with each other. Even though the economic crisis can be solved by means of sound economic strategy (which is not the main object of my work), any successful economic strategy requires—as a precondition—a certain degree of political unity (the central concern of my research). (shrink)

The recent encyclical of Pope Francisco has been classified by many as the encyclical on the climate and the environment. However, father Francisco not only mentions several of the environmental problems of today’s world, including the more dramatic, but analyses the causes of such problems and seeks to shed plenty of light to find solutions. In the present investigation, it delves into the importance of the message of hope from Pope Francisco facing the serious crisis which describes in his Encyclical (...) insists on hope as a core element of an ethic that will help to get out of these problems, because without hope there is no possible ethics. The Encyclical is situated in the field of bioethics demonstrating the concern of the Pope at the general situation of the planet Earth, placing the human person at the Centre of this reflection, to then describe the positive elements of the diagnosis of the reality and bets that allow you to build a vision of hope. -/- La reciente encíclica del Papa Francisco ha sido catalogada por muchos como la encíclica sobre el clima y el medio ambiente. Sin embargo, el Papa Francisco no solo menciona varios de los problemas ambientales del mundo actual, incluyen-do los más dramáticos, sino que analiza las causas de dicha problemática y busca arrojar abundante luz para encontrarle soluciones. En la presente investigación, se ahonda en la importancia del mensaje de esperanza del Papa Francisco frente a la grave crisis que describe en su encíclica y se insiste en la esperanza como elemento medular de una ética que ayude a salir de dichos problemas, pues sin esperanza no hay ética posible. Se sitúa la encíclica en el ámbito de la bioética evidenciando la preocupación del Papa por la situación general del planeta Tie-rra, poniendo a la persona humana en el centro de dicha reflexión, para luego describir los elementos positivos del diagnóstico de la realidad y las apuestas que permiten construir una visión de esperanza. (shrink)

En este contexto se sitúa el presente escrito. Se pretende describir el estado de una problemática antigua y nueva. Antigua, porque se remonta a los cimientos mismos de la filosofía y del pensar humano, varios miles de años antes de Cristo. Nueva, porque no han terminado en el siglo XX las discusiones sobre dicha problemática, ni las aplicaciones posibles que se derivan de ella. Se trata del principio de identidad. El presente trabajo partirá de la definición del principio de identidad (...) según Aristóteles. Se matizarán algunos aspectos de tal principio según otros autores que han perseguido sobre todo fines didácticos al presentarlo, ya sea para el desarrollo de la teología como para el de la epistemología o la metafísica. Finalmente, se expondrá —de una manera bastante elemental— la utilización y las conclusiones que algunos autores contemporáneos han efectuado con relación a la identidad. El trabajo se enmarca, así, en casi una pura descripción elemental que sienta las bases para una posterior profundización. (shrink)

This article analyses the epistemic status of law and its presumption of being a science in relation with the so-called demarcation criterion proposed by different philosophers of science. Such criteria are the main analytical elements to differentiate scientific discourses from those who are not and the ones who pretend to be. In relation to those, pseudoscience and law are treated, to finally conclude with the exposition of the case of Daubert v. Merrill Dow Pharmaceuticals, in which a judicial process defined (...) demarcation criteria. This paper shows how the demarcation criteria of science and the concept of pseudoscience cannot be applied to law science given its own rationality. (shrink)

This study investigates the relationship between mental health and emotional intelligence among senior high school students in a public school. Thus, the study employed a correlational design to measure the relationship between mental health and emotional intelligence among 152 Grade 12 senior high school students in a public school. Hence, to measure the study’s variables - Mental Health Inventory and Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS) were utilized. Based on the inferential statistics, the r coefficient of 0.32 indicates a low positive correlation (...) between the variables and a p-value of 0.00, indicating a significant relationship between the respondents' mental health and emotional intelligence. Implications and recommendations were discussed in the study. (shrink)

Una de las bifurcaciones en el debate contemporáneo sobre la legitimidad de la democracia explora si ésta ofrece ventajas distintivamente epistémicas frente a otras alternativas políticas. Quienes defienden la tesis de la democracia epistémica afirman que la democracia es instrumentalmente superior o equiparable a otras formas de organización política en lo que concierne a la obtención de varios bienes epistémicos. En este ensayo presento dos (grupos de) argumentos a favor de la democracia epistémica, que se inspiran en resultados formales: el (...) teorema del jurado de Condorcet [TJC] y el teorema ‘diversidad supera habilidad’ [DSH]. Pese a su gran atractivo, sostengo que estos argumentos son incapaces de respaldar dicha tesis: no brindan razones para considerar que la democracia es epistémicamente superior (o equiparable) a algunas alternativas políticas no democráticas. En su lugar, sugiero que, sin requerir un cambio radical en nuestras formas de organización política, la epistemología democrática –el estudio de las ‘circunstancias epistémicas de la democracia’– puede ofrecer valiosas lecciones de sobre cómo optimizar, en nuestra situación, instituciones y procedimientos de toma de decisiones. Para ello, primero distingo entre varias maneras de evaluar procedimientos de toma de decisión colectiva. Argumento que, al considerarlos como formas de organización política, un factor importante en la evaluación de tales procedimientos involucra asuntos fácticos sobre los cuales puede aspirarse a obtener o promover algunos bienes epistémicos. En este contexto, presento algunos de los argumentos más importantes a favor de la democracia epistémica. A continuación, reúno algunas de las objeciones sobre la aplicabilidad de dichos argumentos y ofrezco razones independientes para dudar de que ofrezcan apoyo a la tesis de la democracia epistémica. Finalmente, defiendo que la epistemología democrática puede desempeñar un papel significativo en la legitimación de formas de organización colectiva que podrían denominarse ‘democráticas’. (shrink)

Uno de los principales criterios que utiliza el método científico para establecer la pertinencia de una explicación o hipótesis competidora con respecto a un evento en la realidad física, es el principio de simplicidad o parsimonia científica. Este suele implicar la prescindencia de entidades o hipótesis consideradas innecesarias para la explicación de un fenómeno. Las raíces de este principio se suelen trazar hasta el filósofo nominalista medieval Guillermo de Ockham. En el presente trabajo, se pretende determinar el posible impacto de (...) la concepción metodológica derivada de la Navaja de Ockham en torno a la hipótesis cosmológica de los multiversos, y realizar un recorrido por la visión crítica del cosmólogo, George F. R. Ellis en la discusión sobre la validez de la hipótesis multiversal en el plano de la física contemporánea. (shrink)

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, procrastination has become commonplace due to changes in teaching and learning, which trigger students' academic burnout. As a result, it has increased the intensity of procrastination among students who are enrolled in online learning programs. As a result, students have difficulty as a result of the rapid change from in-person learning to online learning. The study investigates the relationship between academic burnout and procrastination among 150 grade 12 senior high school students. Hence, this study employed (...) a correlational design. Based on the inferential analysis, the r coefficient of 0.71 indicates a high positive correlation between the variables. The p-value of 0.00, which is less than 0.05, leads to the decision to reject the null hypothesis. Hence, a significant relationship exists between academic burnout and academic procrastination among grade 12 senior high school students. (shrink)

El artículo trata de mostrar las influencias de los ideales de la Ilustración en el pensamiento de John Stuart Mill. Así, puede comprobarse como en esos ideales de libertad, igualdad, tolerancia, respeto a la diferencia que propugna la Ilustración están presentes en el pensamiento de Mill y vertebran su filosofía.

El estudio que se desarrolla aquí muestra los aspectos generales del pensamiento de John Stuart Mill relacionados con la religión, tales como la existencia de Dios, los atributos de Dios, características del Cristianismo y cuestiones similares. Igualmente muestra la hipótesis de la utilidad de la religión para las personas.

The paper reviews the foundational ideals that gave “Europe”, an integration project with continental ambitions, its initial meaning or identity. “Europe” meant reconciliation and peace, reconstruction and widespread prosperity, and the mitigation of nationalism through the creation of supranational communities. A broad cultural consensus made it easier to trust each other and work together. The enterprise received a tacit approval from Europeans throughout the initial stages. More than 60 years and 20 member states later the project is under strain in (...) the social, economic, political and cultural fields. Today, as Europeans (now continental citizens) experience not only the advantages, but also the sacrifices of belonging to “Europe” (in the form of a Union), their allegiance to, and indeed the identity of the whole project are in question. I will submit that the original identity of “Europe” should be revived, and revisited for it to evolve in response to the present challenges. If its future identity is that of an intercultural, inclusive, flexible, and analogical polity, Europe will be still worth fighting for. (shrink)

In this paper I examine some of the positive epistemic and moral dimensions of anger in Plato’s dialogues. My aim is to show that while Plato is clearly aware that retaliatory anger has negative effects on people’s behavior, the strategy we find in his dialogues is not to eliminate anger altogether; instead, Plato aims to transform or rechannel destructive retaliatory anger into a different, more productive, reformative anger. I argue that this new form of anger plays a crucial positive role (...) in our intellectual and moral development. In relation to our intellectual development, anger is often part of people’s reactions to the Socratic interrogations and it often helps or hinders attempts to acknowledge one’s ignorance and become motivated to learn. For anger to play a positive role in the context of philosophical conversations, Plato suggests its transformation from being an outward-looking and reactive emotion oriented towards retaliation (refutation), into a mostly inward-looking emotion aimed at ones’ own moral and intellectual reform or self-betterment. In relation to our moral progress, anger is strategically linked both to the control of our appetites and to the virtue of courage, so anger is crucial to the psychology of the good citizen. Concretely, anger is needed both for the development of the right opposition to injustice and greed, and for the formation of an adequate sensitivity to justice. (shrink)

There is a growing awareness that there are many subtle forms of exclusion and partiality that affect the correct workings of a judicial system. The concept of epistemic injustice, introduced by the philosopher Miranda Fricker, is a useful conceptual tool to understand forms of judicial partiality that often go undetected. In this paper, we present Fricker’s original theory and some of the applications of the concept of epistemic injustice in legal processes. In particular, we want to show that the seed (...) planted by Fricker has flourished into a rich field of study in which the concept is used to analyze many different phenomena in law, not always following the original characterization provided by her. This has led to a distinction between what we will call the narrow version of the concept, which is closer to Fricker’s original account, and the wider version of epistemic injustice, which is a more controversial notion because it is always on the verge of morphing into other well-known concepts like sexism, racial discrimination, oppression, silencing, and gaslighting. We will show that the value of the narrow version is mostly theoretical, and that in order to use the concept of epistemic injustice one must adopt a more liberal understanding of it. (shrink)

Many word forms in natural language are polysemous, but only some of them allow for co-predication, that is, they allow for simultaneous predications selecting for two different meanings or senses of a nominal in a sentence. In this paper, we try to explain (i) why some groups of senses allow co-predication and others do not, and (ii) how we interpret co-predicative sentences. The paper focuses on those groups of senses that allow co-predication in an especially robust and stable way. We (...) argue, using these cases, but focusing particularly on the multiply polysemous word ‘school’, that the senses involved in co-predication form especially robust activation packages, which allow hearers and readers to access all the different senses in interpretation. (shrink)

El estudio actual de la argumentación se encuentra distanciado de la lógica. En este artículo sostengo que restaurar el vínculo del estudio de la argumentación con esta disciplina podría resultar benéfico para la metas descriptivas y normativas de este campo de investigación. Tras destacar algunos aspectos del surgimiento la teoría de la argumentación contemporánea, enfatizando la idea de "perspectivas", explico cómo el reconocimiento de sus objetivos y tareas volvió problemática la coexistencia de varios enfoques o aproximaciones para el estudio de (...) la realidad argumentativa. Sugiero algunas hipótesis explicativas sobre el abandono del enfoque lógico en favor de otras alternativas y, a continuación, ofrezco razones para encauzar el estudio sistemático de la argumentación desde este enfoque. Además de las consideraciones normativas y las herramientas descriptivas que pueden aducirse en su favor, sostengo que el enfoque lógico puede proporcionar una clase de integración a este campo investigación de maneras que no están disponibles para otras aproximaciones. (shrink)

The euro crisis has hit “Europe” (the European Union, or EU) at its root. Economic harshness, social unrest and political turmoil betray a deeper problem: a weak pan-European sense of belonging — a common political identity thanks to which European citizens may regard each other as equals, and therefore as deserving of recognition, trust, and solidarity. This paper explores interculturalism from an analogical perspective, looking at the harmonious interplay between human rights and cultural plurality, as a possible source of trust (...) and solidarity among European citizens. Only a common — even if analogical — political identity, whereby European citizens regard each other, if not as “siblings” at least as “cousins,” can make the sacrifices required to overcome the crisis meaningful — and therefore less unlikely to happen. (shrink)

The human person is an open book which should first be read by oneself in order to later be read by others. Throughout history we have seen many spoken and written narratives in different parts of the world, that along with having a historical value contribute to self-knowledge looking up ones life reflected in that who narrates its own life; within many others, we could point out the narratives of spiritual experiences, such as the Confessions of St. Augustine. This kind (...) of narrative work helps to come to the surface certain elements of oneself life that have been accumulated in the unconscious. For this reason, in the present we put emphasis on the value of the narrative work and in particular of spiritual experiences which we propose that helps to be aware of one’s own reality. We present the results of some online interviews from a religious movement which helps to clarify the influence of spiritual narratives in the awareness of one’s own life and a closer approach to God. -/- La persona humana es un libro abierto que en primer lugar debe ser leído por sí misma para luego ser leído por los demás. A lo largo de la historia se han visto numerosas narraciones orales y escritas en distintas partes del mundo que, además de tener un valor histórico, contribuyen al autoconocimiento viendo muchas veces reflejada la propia vida en la de quien la narra; entre muchas otras podríamos destacar las narraciones de experiencias espirituales, como las Confesiones de San Agustín. Este tipo de narraciones ayudan a aflorar algunos elementos de la propia vida que han quedado en el inconsciente. Por esta razón, en el presente trabajo se resalta el valor de la narración y en particular de la narración de experiencias espirituales para lograr una toma de conciencia de la propia realidad. Se presentan resultados de una encuesta realizada a jóvenes de un movimiento religioso que ayudan a esclarecer cómo la narración de las experiencias espirituales influye en la toma de conciencia de la propia vida y de su acercamiento a Dios. (shrink)

In a world in which emotions and feelings occupy a dominant place in daily human life and especially in decision-making circumstances, it is important for us to ask ourselves whether it is possible to talk about “new” ethics or “renewed ethics.” Actually, we do not face a re-creation of principles and values, but rather we face a need for deepening our understanding of human anthropology. Thinkers such as Dietrich von Hildebrand have proposed that affectivity can shed light on ethics comprehension. (...) By means of a study of some of the works of this contemporary philosopher, we state that ethics is the result of a harmony between a clear objective comprehension of reality and a straight comprehension of that reality within the sphere of an educated, formed and well-known affectivity of the human person, which would lead us beyond the common place understanding of ethics as something rigid and full of rules and restrictions. -/- En un mundo en el que las emociones y los sentimientos ocupan un lugar preponderante en la vida cotidiana de las personas y especialmente en las decisiones que toman, cabe preguntarnos si podemos hablar de una nueva ética o de una ética renovada. En realidad no nos enfrentamos a una recreación de nuevos principios y valores, sino a una necesidad de ahondar en la antropología de la persona humana. En esta profundización se ha revalorado el importante papel que juega la afectividad en la vida humana. Pensadores como Dietrich von Hildebrand han propuesto que la afectividad puede dar luces en la comprensión de la ética. A partir de un estudio de algunas de las obras de este filósofo contemporáneo proponemos que la ética vendría siendo el resultado de una armonía entre la clara comprensión objetiva de la realidad y una recta comprensión de dicha realidad dentro de una esfera afectiva educada, formada, y ante todo conocida por la propia persona, lo cual nos conduce más allá de una ética entendida muchas veces como algo rígido lleno de normas y restricciones. (shrink)

The work then develops attempts to present the most relevant aspects of the philosophical thought of John Stuart Mill in relation to religion. The work consists of two parts: the first part, w e develop below, theological reflection on the most important aspects about religión, the debate on the arguments that justify the existente of God; the attributes of God; the occurrence of evil in the World; and, finally, the M ill's assesment about Christ. The second part, will focus on (...) aspects about utilitarian morality and the Christian religion; the proposal about new religión, M ankind's Religion; the happiness in your relationship with utilitarianism, happiness relates to Christianity and the common ground between Christian doctrine and utilitarian doctrine. (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)

The European project was aimed from the outset, alongside reconciliation (peace) and economic reconstruction (prosperity), at a degree of political integration too. Political integration has progressed modestly. Not everybody is convinced of its benefits. Besides, the notion of a European polity opens the question about its sources of cohesion. Those sources are more or less evident in the member states – language, history, legal, political and religious traditions, for instance. They give, say, Latvia, Italy or Hungary a certain degree of (...) unity – a national identity. But what ought to be that source of cohesion – or identity – for the European Union (EU) considered as a whole? This paper analyses five normative conceptions about such ‘European identity’ (EI) – cultural, legal, economic, international and cosmopolitan – and suggests that they are not mutually exclusive, but can be combined in a synthetic notion that promises to reflect in a more comprehensive and accurate way the sources of the minimal unity required to hold the EU polity together. (shrink)

From the political point of view, European Union (EU) integration implies some kind of unity in the community constituted by EU citizens. Unity is difficult to attain if the diversity of citizens (and their nations) is to be respected. A thick bond that melts members' diversity into a 'European pot' is therefore out of the question. On the other hand, giving up unity altogether makes political integration impossible. Through a meta-theoretical analysis of normative positions, this paper proposes a composed notion (...) of European identity that links without binding. It contains four facets – cultural, political, social, external – with nuances, expressed in three binaries, that cut across all of them – history-project, ethos-achievement, commonness-uncommonness. I will submit that a workable European identity (and the related concepts of unity, polity and citizenship) can be better conceived as analogical – a mid way between blending unity and irreconcilable diversity. (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.

The increasing number of residents and citizens with non-Western cultural backgrounds in the European Union (EU) has prompted the question of whether EU member states (and other Western democracies) can accommodate the newcomers and maintain their free polities (‘liberal democracies’). The answer depends on how important – if at all – cultural groundings are to democratic polities. The analysis of a fascinating Habermas-Ratzinger debate on the ‘pre-political moral foundations of the free-state’ suggests that while legitimacy originates on the will of (...) the citizens that conform the political community, liberal democracies might not be completely free from moral principles implicit in their political culture. This possibility has normative implications for the political future of the EU - and of the West in general - particularly regarding immigration, integration and citizenship policies. (shrink)

In 2004 Jürgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger participated in a debate on the ‘pre-political moral foundations of the free-state’. Their contributions showed broad agreement on the role of religion in today’s Western secular state and on areas of collaboration and mutual enrichment between Modernity and Christianity in Europe and the West. They diverged regarding the need or not of a common cultural background prior to the existence of the polity. Their diverging point becomes all the more fascinating to the extent (...) that the matter requires wider empirical, analytical and normative research before it can be settled. Nevertheless, the implications that derive from one or the other possibility are very different in terms, for instance, of immigration and citizenship policies. This is already clear in Europe and is becoming more evident in general in Western democracies. (shrink)

Current work in language models (LMs) helps us speed up or even skip thinking by accelerating and automating cognitive work. But can LMs help us with critical thinking -- thinking in deeper, more reflective ways which challenge assumptions, clarify ideas, and engineer new concepts? We treat philosophy as a case study in critical thinking, and interview 21 professional philosophers about how they engage in critical thinking and on their experiences with LMs. We find that philosophers do not find LMs to (...) be useful because they lack a sense of selfhood (memory, beliefs, consistency) and initiative (curiosity, proactivity). We propose the selfhood-initiative model for critical thinking tools to characterize this gap. Using the model, we formulate three roles LMs could play as critical thinking tools: the Interlocutor, the Monitor, and the Respondent. We hope that our work inspires LM researchers to further develop LMs as critical thinking tools and philosophers and other 'critical thinkers' to imagine intellectually substantive uses of LMs. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Erasmus et al. (2021) defend the idea that the ambiguity of the term “explanation” in explainable AI (XAI) can be solved by adopting any of four different extant accounts of explanation in the philosophy of science: the Deductive Nomological, Inductive Statistical, Causal Mechanical, and New Mechanist models. In this chapter, I show that the authors’ claim that these accounts can be applied to deep neural networks as they would to any natural phenomenon is mistaken. I also (...) provide a more general argument as to why the notion of explainability as it is currently used in the XAI literature bears little resemblance to the traditional concept of scientific explanation. It would be more fruitful to use the label “understandable AI” to avoid the confusion that surrounds the goal and purposes of XAI. In the second half of the chapter, I argue for a pragmatic conception of understanding that is better suited to play the central role attributed to explanation in XAI. Following De Regt (2017) and Kuorikoski and Ylikoski (2015), the conditions of satisfaction for understanding an ML system are fleshed out in terms of an agent’s success in using the system. (shrink)

Postnationalists like Habermas have suggested EU citizenship as a way to overcome nationalisms, grounding political belonging on the body of laws that members of the postnational polity generate in the public sphere. Cosmopolitan communitarianist like Bellamy think that EU citizens should form a mixed-commonwealth, with political belonging based on their nations. I will argue that the second option is more desiderable and submit the analogical character of the ensuing ideas of the citizenship, identity and polity. Cosmopolitan communitarianist citizenship promises to (...) better foster the great richness of European national cultural, religious, historical, political, legal and linguistic diversity while still maintaining a certain unity to form a "mixed" polity. (shrink)

Frente a problemas de decisión colectiva de cierta complejidad, distintos métodos de votación pueden considerarse igualmente democráticos. Ante esta situación, argumento que es posible investigar cuáles de esos métodos producen mejores resultados epistémicos sobre asuntos fácticos. Comienzo ilustrando la relación entre democracia y métodos de votación con un sencillo ejemplo. Muestro cómo el uso de modelos idealizados permite descubrir algunas propiedades de los métodos de votación; varios de estos descubrimientos muestran que, frente a problemas de cierta complejidad, no hay una (...) respuesta clara acerca de cuál es el resultado de una elección democrática. Frente a esto, sugiero que deberíamos tomar en cuenta un rasgo epistémico instrumental de varios métodos de votación: su capacidad para generar respuestas correctas ante varias situaciones. Esta intuición ofrece lecciones importantes para el diseño de instituciones electorales. (shrink)

Los sesgos cognitivos afectan negativamente la toma de decisiones en todas las esferas de la vida, incluyendo las decisiones de los jueces. La imposibilidad de eliminarlos por completo de la práctica del derecho, o incluso de controlar sus efectos, contrasta con el anhelo de que las decisiones judiciales sean el resultado exclusivo de un razonamiento lógico-jurídico correcto. Frente el efecto sistemático, recalcitrante y porfiado de los sesgos cognitivos, una posible estrategia para disminuir su efecto es enfocarse, no en modificar el (...) comportamiento de los agentes judiciales, sino en moldear su entorno para que los sesgos tengan menos oportunidades de aparecer. En particular, es más provechoso concentrar los esfuerzos en identificar aquellas reglas procesales que faciliten o limiten el efecto de los sesgos. En este ensayo propongo un diálogo fructífero entre el derecho y la psicología que puede llevar a mejorar la calidad de los sistemas judiciales. La propuesta está basada en la creación de guías de práctica judicial que puedan servir de base para la creación de protocolos procesales que limiten en la medida de lo razonable sus efectos negativos y conduzcan a mejores decisiones judiciales. (shrink)

Tradução para o português do livro "Le Scepticisme Philosophique", Paris: Bordas, 1972, de André Verdan. Título da edição brasileira: O Ceticismo Filosófico. Florianópolis: Editora da UFSC, 1998, 135 páginas. ISBN: 8532801390 / ISBN-13: 9788532801395.

At a moment when a new crisis threatens Europe—a crisis containing, among other ingredients, COVID-19, a faltering economy, immigration and Brexit—the European Union (EU)’s motto ‘Europe united in diversity’ would appear progressively less attainable. This paper submits that the European ideal is still both desirable and possible through the fostering of political unity at the constitutional (regime) level by using the notions of analogical state and analogical culture, and at the community level by the enablement of public sphere secularity and (...) relational interculturalism. These concepts share the intuition that the EU should be envisaged in a more flexible manner, and carry several policy implications for the future of European integration. (shrink)

La literatura universal muestra cómo resulta mucho más sencillo plasmar ciertos valores en “modelos” o ejemplos humanos que los encarnen. Y es de modelos de ese tipo que los niños - y muy especialmente- los adolescentes de todas las épocas, han tomado el ejemplo y los valores que orientarán su comportamiento durante toda la vida. Por lo menos esa constituye la intuición inicial de este trabajo, que está motivado por buscar hasta qué punto la presentación de modelos puede repercutir eficazmente (...) en la educación moral de los ciudadanos del mañana. En las líneas que vienen se procede a la investigación, siguiendo los desarrollos que al respecto han realizado diversos pensadores, en especial William Kilpatrick. (shrink)