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 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)

The reward system of science is the priority rule. The first scientist making a new discovery is rewarded with prestige, while second runners get little or nothing. Michael Strevens, following Philip Kitcher, defends this reward system, arguing that it incentivizes an efficient division of cognitive labor. I argue that this assessment depends on strong implicit assumptions about the replicability of findings. I question these assumptions on the basis of metascientific evidence and argue that the priority rule systematically discourages replication. My (...) analysis leads us to qualify Kitcher and Strevens’s contention that a priority-based reward system is normatively desirable for science. (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.

While most people believe the best possible life they could lead would be an immortal one, so‐called “immortality curmudgeons” disagree. Following Bernard Williams, they argue that, at best, we have no prudential reason to live an immortal life, and at worst, an immortal life would necessarily be bad for creatures like us. In this article, we examine Bernard Williams' seminal argument against the desirability of immortality and the subsequent literature it spawned. We first reconstruct and motivate Williams' somewhat cryptic argument (...) in three parts. After that, we elucidate and motivate the three best (and most influential) counterarguments to Williams' seminal argument. Finally, we review, and critically examine, two further distinct arguments in favor of the anti‐immortality position. (shrink)

It’s constitutive of classical theism that there is a necessarily existent personal god who is also the creator of the universe, where the latter claim includes at least the following three theses: (i) God is wholly distinct from the natural world; (ii) God is the originating or sustaining cause of the natural world; and (iii) God created the natural world ex nihilo, i.e., without the use of pre-existing materials. Call this tripartite component of classical theism the classical view of creation. (...) In this paper, I offer a new argument against classical theism. In particular, I argue that creation ex nihilo is prima facie impossible, and that since the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is constitutive of classical theism, classical theism is false. (shrink)

This collection highlights the new trend away from rationalism and toward empiricism in the epistemology of modality. Accordingly, the book represents a wide range of positions on the empirical sources of modal knowledge. Readers will find an introduction that surveys the field and provides a brief overview of the work, which progresses from empirically-sensitive rationalist accounts to fully empiricist accounts of modal knowledge. Early chapters focus on challenges to rationalist theories, essence-based approaches to modal knowledge, and the prospects for naturalizing (...) modal epistemology. The middle chapters present positive accounts that reject rationalism, but which stop short of advocating exclusive appeal to empirical sources of modal knowledge. The final chapters mark a transition toward exclusive reliance on empirical sources of modal knowledge. They explore ways of making similarity-based, analogical, inductive, and abductive arguments for modal claims based on empirical information. Modal epistemology is coming into its own as a field, and this book has the potential to anchor a new research agenda. (shrink)

Neste trabalho, investigo a possibilidade de compatibilidade entre o pessimismo filosófico e a compreensão da morte como um mal para quem morre. Por pessimismo filosófico, compreendo a doutrina filosófica que mantém como tese fundamental que a não-existência é preferível à existência, de modo que o pessimismo é tomado como a filosofia de que a vida não vale a pena ser vivida. Por mal da morte, me refiro à compreensão da morte como um dano para o indivíduo que morre, cujo pressuposto (...) em diferentes abordagens contemporâneas é o de que a morte só é um mal no caso de continuar existindo ser preferível a deixar de existir. Desse modo, o problema discutido é a aparente incompatibilidade entre a tese de que a não-existência é preferível à existência e a tese de que continuar existindo é preferível a deixar de existir. Busco demonstrar que essa (in)compatibilidade depende do modo como fundamentamos o pessimismo filosófico. Para tanto, examino dois argumentos para o pessimismo filosófico e suas implicações para o mal da morte: o argumento a priori de Arthur Schopenhauer e o argumento da assimetria de David Benatar. Concluo que o primeiro desses argumentos nos leva para a conclusão de que a morte não é um mal, mas que o segundo argumento compatibiliza o pessimismo filosófico e a compreensão da morte como um mal para quem morre. (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 philosophy of perception has been mostly focused on vision, to the detriment of other modalities like audition or olfaction. In this paper I focus on olfaction and olfactory experience, and raise the following questions: is olfaction a perceptual-representational modality? If so, what does it represent? My goal in the paper is, firstly, to provide an affirmative answer to the first question, and secondly, to argue that olfaction represents odors in the form of olfactory objects, to which olfactory qualities are (...) attributed. In order to do this I develop an empirically adequate notion of olfactory object that is sensitive to the peculiarities of olfaction, and defend it against various objections. (shrink)

El concepto de desarrollo humano del Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD) surge en 1990 como una crítica a la consideración de la economía como el fin último de los esfuerzos del desarrollo. En la visión del PNUD, la economía es considerada un fin relativo, es decir, un fin y un medio para el desarrollo humano. Al considerar, por su parte, el fin del desarrollo humano, este es identificado con el ensanchamiento de las opciones y libertades de (...) que gozan los individuos. En este sentido, este concepto de desarrollo humano hace alusión a una práctica política más que a un entendimiento ético-ontológico del ser humano, evitando referirse a desarrollo humano entendido como un desarrollo del ser humano. Este artículo explora los antecedentes del concepto del desarrollo humano del PNUD y los fines que consideran estos enfoques previos. Se observa que la consideración subjetivista del PNUD proviene de la teoría de Amartya Sen, quien queda sujeto a la crítica objetivista de Martha Nussbaum al no considera un fin objetivo para los asuntos humanos, crítica que puede de igual manera aplicarse al concepto de desarrollo humano del PNUD. (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)

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.

Niche construction theory highlights the active role of organisms in modifying their environment. A subset of these modifications is the developmental niche, which concerns ecological, epistemic, social and symbolic legacies inherited by organisms as resources that scaffold their developmental processes. Since in this theory development is a situated process that takes place in a culturally structured environment, we may reasonably ask if implicit cultural biases may, in some cases, be responsible for maladaptive developmental niches. In this paper we wish to (...) argue for an affirmative answer. In order to do so, we first propose to conceptualize implicit bias as embodied perceptual habits, and then proceed to show that these habits are at least partially responsible for maladaptive developmental niches of children with Down syndrome and autism. With this framework we thus hope to bring together two fields of research that haven’t been explicitly connected: implicit bias and niche construction theory. Linking these two theories may bring benefits both to implicit bias researchers, who can extend this concept to characterize other sets of processes as biased, as well as to niche construction theorists, who will have a useful theoretical tool to diagnose maladaptive features of niches brought about by sociocultural biases. (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.

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)

A key premise of the kalam cosmological argument is that the universe began to exist. However, while a number of philosophers have offered powerful criticisms of William Lane Craig’s defense of the premise, J.P. Moreland has also offered a number of unique arguments in support of it, and to date, little attention has been paid to these in the literature. In this paper, I attempt to go some way toward redressing this matter. In particular, I shall argue that Moreland’s philosophical (...) arguments against the possibility of traversing a beginningless past are unsuccessful. (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)

Este artigo tem como objetivo apresentar as principais abordagens em que a psicologia social clássica norte-americana teorizou sobre o preconceito racial, o racismo e o antirracismo e, a partir delas, trazer os estudos críticos da branquitude como possibilidades para superar os limites identificados nessa corrente, que ora apresenta um indivíduo fora da estrutura, ora a estrutura sem indivíduos. Para isto, neste artigo definimos três abordagens propostas pela psicologia social norte-americana: teste de associação implícita (Greenwald & Banaji 2013); teoria do contato (...) intergrupal e racismo aversivo (Pettigrew 1997, Gaertner & Dovidio, 1986); e emoções específicas (Leach et al., 2002). A partir daí mostramos como os estudos críticos da branquitude se apresentam como uma síntese entre essas duas posições opostas, que oscilam entre o indivíduo e a estrutura. Nesta perspectiva, a estrutura se manifesta na própria experiência subjetiva do indivíduo, que se torna capaz de identificá-la em seu próprio campo experiencial. (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)

El presente texto muestra, dentro del pensamiento de John Stuart Mill, una idea de ser humano diverso y distinto que vive en una realidad también diversa. La convivencia de seres diversos en las distintas sociedades requiere de una organización política en la que la democracia representativa juega un papel importante, pero también unida a la política está la ética, la cual en Stuart Mill ha de ser una ética cívica, esto es, una ética en la que los ciudadanos, sujetos de (...) derechos y de deberes, desplieguen sus capacidades de modo libre, sin más freno que el perjuicio al semejante. (shrink)

Una interpretación aristotélica del concepto de desarrollo humano propone como fin último del desarrollo la eudaimonía o felicidad, esto es, la plena realización de la capacidad eudemónica en el alma humana. Para esto se requiere del desarrollo de sus partes racional e irracional, lo que demanda como medios una ética y una dianoética del desarrollo, referidos a los modos de ser de las respectivas partes del alma. La interacción entre ambas partes genera siempre un ciclo virtuoso, existiendo la posibilidad de (...) influencias externas a través de la educación, la costumbre, la economía, la legislación y la política. -/- An Aristotelian approach of the concept of human development proposes eudaimonía or happiness as the ultimate goal of development, that is, the full realization of the eudemonic capacity in the human soul. For this, the development of its rational and irrational parts is required, which in turn requires an ethics and dianoethics of development as means, referring to the characters of the respective parts of the soul. The interaction between both parts always generates a virtuous cycle, with the possibility of external influences through education, custom, economics, legislation and politics. (shrink)

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.

Brexit has been widely covered in the news. Much of the attention of the press in English has gone to the British perspective. This piece seeks to present a holistic view of this event, including the European perspective. It argues that, notwithstanding this break-up and the problems it highlights (especially the tiredness of citizens with traditional party politics), the European project can survive this crisis and forge ahead into the future.

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)

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)

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)

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)

Eshel Ben-Jacob’s manuscript entitled ‘Bacterial wisdom, Gödel’s theorem and creative genomic webs’ summarizes decades of work demonstrating adaptive mutagenesis in bacterial genomes. Bacterial genomes, each an essential part of a Kantian whole that is a single bacterium, are thus not independent of the environment as sensed; and a single bacterium is therefore a semiotic entity. Ben-Jacob suggests this but errs in 1) assigning autonomy to the genome, and 2) analogizing through computation without making clear whether he is doing so for (...) illustrative purposes or making committed ontological propositions. We reinterpret adaptive mutagenesis and related phenomena in ways both metaphysically rigorous and revealing. We conclude that bacteria are much farther removed from the ‘self-organizing’ world of inanimate process than from the Peircian world of signs; and a critical reappraisal of existing knowledge can enhance our understanding of selfhood, semiosis, and the roots of subjective experience. (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)

Felipe Gonzalez and Victoria Camps on the Catalan independent.

In the philosophy of memory there is a tension between a preservationist and a constructivist view of memory reflected in the debate between causalism and simulationism. Causalism is not only committed to the claim that there must be an appropriate causal connection between the remembered event and the content represented at retrieval but also that such connection is possible because of a content-preserving memory trace. Simulationism, by contrast, rejects the need for an appropriate causal condition and, thereby, makes the appeal (...) to memory traces unnecessary. In this paper I argue that while the are strong conceptual arguments and empirical evidence to support a constructivist view of memory, the empirical evidence also suggest that the initial formulation of simulationism needs to be revised. In particular, I argue, first, that simulationism’s commitment to a single cognitive system for mental time travel is likely wrong, and second, that simulationism cannot get rid of memory traces altogether, as they are still explanatorily indispensable when it comes to explaining a large number of memory-related phenomena. At the end, I end up suggesting a way of thinking about memory traces that, I think, is compatible with simulationism and a constructivist view of memory. If the view I put forth is on the right track, then an updated version of simulationism can help to dispel the dichotomy between causalism and simulationism as a false one. (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)

As the euro crisis unfolds, political discourse on both sides of the European Union (EU)’s internal divide—“North” and “South”—becomes ever more exasperated, distant and untranslatable. At the root lies 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 recognition, trust, and solidarity. This paper describes some of the culture-related problems that impact directly on the formation of an eventual political identity for EU citizens. It then (...) suggests that the enacting of an interculturalist paradigm can help untie some of the nuts—political but also cultural—that Europe faces in order to solve the economic crisis. A few remarks are dedicated in the conclusive part to cultural pluralism in Singapore, a key player in any future progress towards the integration of the Asia Pacific Region. (shrink)

The logos question, one of the most important among the subjects that traverse the Plato's Sophist, has in fact some different aspects: the criticism of father Parmenides' logos, that is unable to speak about the not-being, but also about the being; the relations between logos and its cognates, phantasia, doxa and dianoia; the logos’ complex structure, that is a compound with onoma and rema; the difference between naming and saying, two distinct but inseparable actions; the logical and ontological conditions that (...) make possible to say the truth, or to lie or simply to joke; the necessity of a most flexible logos that allows us to speak about the not-being, and about the being, but at the same time is a logos dangerously similar to the sophist’ one; finally, the identity between the power to produce “spoken images” and the very power to speak. The aim of the present article is giving a systematical view of the matter that grasps all these faces. (shrink)

El presente capítulo presenta un análisis teórico del tipo de amor que involucra la sexualidad, las altas expectativas que genera y la incertidumbre de que se cumplan. Para esclarecer el estudio se distingue entre sexualidad, impulso amoroso (“eros”) y amor propiamente dicho (“ágape”) y se echa mano de conceptos tomados de la filosofía personalista incluidos los de naturaleza, persona, racionalidad, relación y los varios tipos de amor. A final de cuentas se propone que sólo cuando se vuelve conyugal puede el (...) amor sexuado puede desarrollar su máximo potencial. (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)

Este artículo trata de mostrar la idea de sociedad y de convivencia política de los ciudadanos en el pensamiento de John Stuart Mill desde su perspectiva utilitarista, en la cual el objetivo es la felicidad de las personas.

En el presente artículo, el autor se ocupa de esbozar una caracterización general del autoengaño desde algunas de las principales perspectivas en la materia, señalando los problemas centrales que involucra y haciendo énfasis en la línea intencionalista. Luego analiza la relación que el autoengaño guarda con la autoridad de la primera persona y qué imagen resulta de una conjunción teórica de ambos problemas.

In the concept of European citizenship, public and international law intersect. The unity of the European polity results from the interplay between national and European loyalties. Citizens’ allegiance to the European polity depends on how much they see the polity’s identity as theirs. Foundational ideals that shaped the European project’s identity included social reconciliation and peaceful coexistence, economic reconstruction and widespread prosperity, and the creation of supranational structures to rein in nationalism. A broad cultural consensus underlay the first impulse for (...) integration. Europeans had little trouble giving explicit or tacit allegiance to such a project, which resulted in an unparalleled success. However, roughly 60 years and 20 Member States later, social integration is being challenged as immigrants with diverse cultural backgrounds arrive, while far-right political parties surge in reaction; economic integration is confronted with a faltering euro and countries struggling to meet financial commitments; and political integration weakens as the EU seems to fail the democratic test. Cultural assumptions are no longer shared by all. Allegiance to today’s EU is problematic for the ordinary European citizen. This paper submits that careful attention to the spirit of the foundational ideals sheds light on how the present problems as well as future integration could and should be approached. (shrink)

Citizenship is the cornerstone of a democratic polity. It has three dimensions: legal, civic and affiliative. Citizens constitute the polity's demos, which often coincides with a nation. European Union (EU) citizenship was introduced to enhance ‘European identity’ (Europeans’ sense of belonging to their political community). Yet such citizenship faces at least two problems. First: Is there a European demos? If so, what is the status of peoples (nations, demoi) in the Member States? The original European project aimed at ‘an ever (...) closer union among the peoples of Europe.’ Second: Citizens are members of a political community; to what kind of polity do EU citizens belong? Does the EU substitute Member States, assume them or coexist alongside them? After an analytical exposition of the demos and telos problems, I will argue for a normative self‐understanding of the EU polity and citizenship, neither in national nor in federal but in analogical terms. (shrink)

Political integration has been part of the European project from its very beginnings. As far back as the early seventies there was concern in Brussels that an ingredient was missing in the political integration process. ‘Output legitimacy’ – the permissive consensus citizens grant to a government that is ‘delivering’, even if they do not participate in setting its goals – could not sustain unification indefinitely. Such a lacking ingredient – or ‘soul’ – has been labelled ‘European identity’ (EI) in an (...) abundant and growing academic literature. According to Aristotle, ‘polity’ is a specific ‘constitution’ (regime or politeia) of a ‘city’ (or polis): a (‘political’) community composed of ‘citizens’ (politai). No polis can exist unless the politai come together to form it and sustain it. But what will gather and keep them united? Citizens can be very diverse regarding their language, history, religion or economic activity. In absence of a motivation, diversity of itself will make each member of a community go their own way. What kind of bond is required among very diverse European citizens to keep their polis (the EU) – their political community – together? In this paper I analyse several responses – culture, deliberation, welfare, power, multiplicity. Then I attempt a synthesis suggesting that the answers might be referring to different aspects of a single notion – rather than exhaustive explanations of it. Finally I mention three issues regarding the concept of EI that require further study. (shrink)

A stunning phenomenon has dramatically changed the way in which we in the West regard the public sphere in particular, and democracy in general in the twenty-first century: the re-emergence of religion.

It is common in psychiatry and other sciences to describe an individual or a type of individual in terms of its disposition to manifest specific effects in a particular range of circumstances. According to one understanding, dispositions are statistical regularities of an individual or type of individual in specific circumstances. According to another understanding, dispositions are properties of individuals in virtue of which such regularities hold. This entry considers a number of ways of making each of these senses of disposition (...) more precise while discussing a number of dangers lurking in careless use of the concept of a disposition. (shrink)

Este artículo sugiere que los derechos humanos existen, que requieren fundamentación y que esa fundamentación debe ser objetiva para tener validez y legitimidad (debe ser verdadera). La clave para la fundamentación de los derechos humanos, aquí se propone, descansa en el concepto metafísico de naturaleza. El artículo concluye señalando el valor del diálogo, la comunicación y el consenso, si no para decidir cuál es la verdad, al menos para avanzar, a través de las contribuciones de todos, hacia el desvelamiento de (...) la verdad sobre la naturaleza humana. Los derechos humanos se ligan después al problema de la identidad política a través de la hermenéutica analógica. (shrink)

The focus of Australia-US relations is most often on mutual security and economic ties. But it is also important to acknowledge the significant role that educational linkages and exchanges have played in furthering the bond between the two countries.

The cultural, economic and political crisis affecting the European Union (EU) today is manifested in the political community’s lack of enthusiasm and cohesion. An effort to reverse this situation – foster ‘EU identity’ – was the creation of EU citizenship. Citizen- ship implies a people and a polity. But EU citizens already belong to national polities. Should EU citizenship override national citizenship or coexist with it? Postnationalists like Habermas have suggested EU citizenship can overcome nationalisms, grounding political belonging on the (...) body of laws that members of the post- national polity generate in the public sphere. Cosmopolitan communitarianists like Bellamy, by contrast, think that EU citizens should form a mixed commonwealth, with political belonging based on national citizenship. I will argue in favour of the second option, and submit an analogical reading of the ensuing ideas of citizenship, identity and polity. Cosmopolitan communitarianist EU citizenship promises to better foster the great richness of European national cultural, religious, historical, political, legal and linguistic diversity in a ‘mixed’ polity. Its main challenge is how to keep the diverse, mixed polity together. (shrink)

The separation of church and state isn’t the same as separating religion from politics. Countries that have enshrined secularism have found themselves discussing religious architecture, law and clothing.