This article examines the British colonial theft of Indigenous sovereignty and the particular obstacles that it presents to establishing just social relations between the colonizer and the colonized in settler states. In the first half, I argue that the particular nature of the crime of sovereign theft makes apologies and reparations unsuitable policy tools for reconciliation because Settler societies owe their very existence to the abrogation of Indigenous sovereignties. Instead, Settler states ought to return sovereignty to the land’s Indigenous peoples. (...) In the second half of this paper, I take up some of the practical questions of how this might be done and anticipate a number of objections. Giving up sovereignty would not mean dispossessing the millions of colonists who currently reside in these countries of their homes and property – but it does mean rethinking the constitutional makeup of a country and how that serves to benefit the different peoples who make their homes there. (shrink)

Convocado inicialmente por los miembros del Semillero de Investigación «Hermenéutica y Padres de la Iglesia» de la Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Bogotá, el Coloquio Interinstitucional de Estudiantes de Patrología se erige en 2018 como un espacio académico de reflexión sobre el pensamiento de los autores de los primeros siglos de la era cristiana. Hasta el día de hoy, el Coloquio se ha convertido en una importante iniciativa en Colombia para la visibilización de los trabajos de estudiantes que se han destacado (...) en el interés y dedicación por profundizar en torno a los Estudios Patrísticos. (shrink)

A comparaison between classical cavalier persepective and what really we see, called "natural perspective. A simple mathematical analysis is added.

In this paper, I show that Polleit and Mariano (2011) are right in concluding that Credit Default Swaps (CDS) are per se unobjectionable from Rothbard’s libertarian perspective on property rights and contract theory, but that they fail to derive this conclusion properly. I therefore outline the proper explanation. In addition, though Polleit and Mariano are correct in pointing out that speculation with CDS can conceivably hurt the borrowers’ interests, they fail to grasp that this can be the case only in (...) some peculiar circumstances that I identify. In other words, they miss the bigger picture, the one outside special circumstances, in which CDS trading has the opposite effect. That is, CDS facilitate debt accumulation, including government debt accumulation. Finally, I point out how this can precipitate the collapse of fiat money regimes. An incidental goal of the analysis is to provide a better account than Polleit and Mariano of recent government interventions in and around CDS markets. (shrink)

The present paper is an attempt at examining the value configuration and the socio-demographical profiles of the local political elites in four countries of East-Central Europe: Romania, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Poland. The treatment is a comparative one, predominantly descriptive and exploratory, and employs, as a research method, the case-study, being a quite circumscribed endeavor. The cases focus on the members of the Municipal/Local Council in four towns similar in terms of demography and developmental strategies (i.e. small-to-medium sized communities (...) of around 35,000 inhabitants, with economies largely based on food industry and commercial activities): Tecuci (Galați county, Romania), Česká Lípa (Liberec region, Czech Republic), Targovishte (Targovishte province, Bulgaria), and Oleśnica (Lower Silesia province, Poland). Hypothesizing that the local elites of the former Sovietized Erurope tend to differ in outlook, priorities, and value attainment, as compared to their Western counterparts, the paper considers the former’s attitudes and perspectives in regard to seven values: a series of values customarily connected with the concept of ‘democracy’ (i.e. citizen participation, political conflict, gradual change, economic equality), state intervention in economy, decentralization and increased local autonomy, cultural-geographical self-identification. The study uses, as well, five models of value attainment in what concerns the ‘ideal portrait’ of the local councilor (Putnam 1976): ethical, pragmatic, technocratic, political, and gender. According to the results of a study applying a standard written questionnaire among the local councilors of the three communities in the period December 2010-February 2013, the paper distinguishes among three corresponding types of local elites: (1) ‘predominantly elitistic,’ (2) ‘democratic elitist,’ and (3) ‘predominantly democratic,’ following two types of explanation accounting for the differences among the four cases: the legacy of the defunct regime and the degree of administrative decentralization. (shrink)

"El ser es uno con la comida; ser significa comer; es (ist) lo que come (isst) y lo que ha comido. Comer es la forma subjetiva, activa, siendo lo comido la forma objetiva, pasiva, pero ambas son inseparables. Por tanto, únicamente comiendo se llena el concepto vacío del ser y se revela el carácter absurdo de la pregunta: ¿el ser y el no ser son idénticos, es decir, comer y pasar hambre son idénticos?".

In the age of web 2.0, the university is constantly challenged to re-adapt its ‘old-fashioned’ pedagogies to the new possibilities opened up by digital technologies. This article proposes a rethinking of the relation between university and (digital) technologies by focusing not on how technologies function in the university, but on their constituting a meta-condition for the existence of the university pedagogy of inquiry. Following Ivan Illich’s idea that textual technologies played a crucial role in the inception of the university, we (...) will first show the structural similarities between university thinking and the text as a profanation of the book. Secondly, we describe university thinking as a type of critical thinking based on the materiality of the text-on-the-page, explaining why the text has been at the centre of university pedagogy since the beginning. In the third part, we show how Illich came to see the end of the culture of the text as a challenge for the university, by describing the new features of the text-as-code incompatible with the idea of reading as study. Finally, we challenge this pessimistic reading of Illich’s and end with a call for a profanatory pedagogy of digital technologies that could mirror the revolutionary thinking behind the mediaeval invention of the text. (shrink)

En este texto nos proponemos abordar la última clase del semanario de Deleuze sobre el poder en Foucault a partir de dos momentos. El primero tiene que ver con el concepto de imagen y la interpretación sobre el cine que ya venía siendo una constante —aunque marginalmente— en estas clases de Deleuze. Seguidamente, el segundo momento tiene que ver con la relación entre poder y resistencia que arroja como resultado una interpretación del pensamiento de Foucault por parte de Deleuze como (...) una obra viva y en constante construcción. Así, cumpliremos con la exigencia de una lectura que invita a pensar en los conceptos como herramientas de análisis integradas al desarrollo de situaciones donde el poder se presenta como noción central. (shrink)

This paper proposes three principles for the ethical design of online social environments aiming to minimise the unintended harms caused by users while interacting online, specifically by enhancing the users’ awareness of the moral load of their interactions. Such principles would need to account for the strong mediation of the digital environment and the particular nature of user interactions: disembodied, asynchronous, and ambiguous intent about the target audience. I argue that, by contrast to face to face interactions, additional factors make (...) it more difficult for users to exercise moral sensitivity in an online environment. An ethics for social media user interactions is ultimately an ethics of human relations mediated by a particular environment; hence I look towards an enactive inspired ethics in formulating principles for human interactions online to enhance or at least do not hinder a user’s moral sensitivity. This enactive take on social media ethics supplements classical moral frameworks by asking us to focus on the relations established through the interactions and the environment created by those interactions. (shrink)

This article explores the norms that govern regular users’ acts of sharing content on social networking sites. Many debates on how to counteract misinformation on Social Networking Sites focus on the epistemic norms of testimony, implicitly assuming that the users’ acts of sharing should fall under the same norms as those for posting original content. I challenge this assumption by proposing a non-epistemic interpretation of (mis) information sharing on social networking sites which I construe as infrastructures for forms of life (...) found online. Misinformation sharing belongs more in the realm of rumour spreading and gossiping rather than in the information-giving language games. However, the norms for sharing cannot be fixed in advance, as these emerge at the interaction between the platforms’ explicit rules, local norms established by user practices, and a meta-norm of sociality. This unpredictability does not leave us with a normative void as an important user responsibility still remains, namely that of making the context of the sharing gesture explicit. If users will clarify how their gestures of sharing are meant to be interpreted by others, they will implicitly assume responsibility for possible misunderstandings based on omissions, and the harms of shared misinformation can be diminished. (shrink)

El conocimiento ha incursionado como tema de gran alcance dadas las múltiples disciplinas que lo evocan y cuyos intereses investigativos incurren en una definición para este. Primeras cavilaciones acerca del conocimiento se adelantaron bajo una óptica dualista de materialismo e idealismo, ambas posturas de carácter filosófico que determinaron el pensar de Occidente. Dicho así, desde la Grecia clásica pensadores como Platón, entre otros clásicos, entronizaron esta cuestión, pero dicho trato dualista en el ámbito del saber estuvo fuertemente vinculado con una (...) reflexión de talante ético del que Platón no se eximió. Con lo dicho, el presente artículo busca describir los postulados gnoseológicos y éticos en Platón con el fin de esclarecer el nexo entre conocimiento y práctica humana. (shrink)

Adentrarse en el pensamiento político de la Grecia clásica es retornar a las acepciones éticas proferidas por los filósofos de ese momento, como, en este caso, de Platón y de su discípulo Aristóteles, cuyos intereses por la comprensión racional de la conducta humana no eran más que una diáfana preocupación por la consecución del bienestar de los individuos al interior de las ciudades griegas, donde se consideraba de gran importancia la formación de ideas, instituciones y asociaciones. En efecto, los vínculos (...) sociales y la configuración de actitudes que decantan en el objetivo del bienestar social implican una atención especial al concepto de ética-política, en tanto que la incorporación de acciones regidas por la razón determina las relaciones entre los individuos de una misma nación. Teniendo esto en cuenta, en el presente artículo se expone la acepción aristotélica de justicia, con el objetivo de precisar la importancia de dicha virtud en el nexo ético-político de la Grecia clásica, periodo al que asistió el mismo Aristóteles. (shrink)

La iglesia católica, inmersa en la sociedad y en su continua labor por la santificación de los pueblos, percibe en el ambiente escolar un espacio para la formación humana integral de todas las personas. Sin embargo, las múltiples dificultades sociales hacen de esta el principal foco de problemas, por lo que es necesario incitar a un proceso consciente y perseverante de cambio personal en función del bien común. Así pues, se exponen las principales contribuciones doctrinales de la Iglesia Católica en (...) lo que respecta al problema educativo, con base en los documentos conciliares del Vaticano II, seguidas de una sucinta reflexión que advierte la urgente difusión de valor en beneficio de la humanidad. (shrink)

This article aims to question the anti-individualist stance in Carl Schmitt's concept of the political by uncovering the historical bias of Schmitt's anti-individualism, seen here as one of the main driving forces behind his argument. For Schmitt, the political can take place only when a collectivity is able to declare war to another collectivity on the basis of feeling existentially threatened by the latter. As such, Schmitt's framework implies the inescapable possibility of war, as the condition which makes possible the (...) political. Acknowledging the previous criticisms of Schmitt raised by John Rawls and Iris Marion Young, this article takes a different path by pointing to certain historically tacit assumptions in 1927 Germany which Schmitt took for granted, but which are not suitable for a contemporary political theory. The demonstration is done first by showing how the structure of interruption functions in the works of Schmitt, then showing how he conceives of the individual as a possible interruption of the political in history, and then placing this structure of interruption in the historical context of Schmitt's writing. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to analyze the expressive power of the square operator of Łukasiewicz logic: ∗x=x⊙x⁠, where ⊙ is the strong Łukasiewicz conjunction. In particular, we aim at understanding and characterizing those cases in which the square operator is enough to construct a finite MV-chain from a finite totally ordered set endowed with an involutive negation. The first of our main results shows that, indeed, the whole structure of MV-chain can be reconstructed from the involution and the (...) Łukasiewicz square operator if and only if the obtained structure has only trivial subalgebras and, equivalently, if and only if the cardinality of the starting chain is of the form n+1 where n belongs to a class of prime numbers that we fully characterize. Secondly, we axiomatize the algebraizable matrix logic whose semantics is given by the variety generated by a finite totally ordered set endowed with an involutive negation and Łukasiewicz square operator. Finally, we propose an alternative way to account for Łukasiewicz square operator on involutive Gödel chains. In this setting, we show that such an operator can be captured by a rather intuitive set of equations. (shrink)

An increasingly popular solution to the anti-scientific climate rising on social media platforms has been the appeal to more critical thinking from the user's side. In this paper, we zoom in on the ideal of critical thinking and unpack it in order to see, specifically, whether it can provide enough epistemic agency so that users endowed with it can break free from enclosed communities on social media (so called epistemic bubbles). We criticise some assumptions embedded in the ideal of critical (...) thinking online and, instead, we propose that a better way to understand the virtuous behaviour at hand is as critical engagement, namely a mutual cultivation of critical skills among the members of an epistemic bubble. This mutual cultivation allows members within an epistemic bubble (in contrast, as we will show, with the authority-based models of epistemic echo chambers) to become more autonomous critical thinkers by cultivating self-trust. We use the model of relational autonomy as well as resources from work on epistemic self-trust and epistemic interdependence to develop an explanatory framework, which in turn may ground rules for identifying and creating virtuous epistemic bubbles within the environments of social media platforms. (shrink)

Dada la necesidad de formalizar un espacio de reflexión y discusión sobre los problemas y autores correspondientes al período de la antigüedad grecorromana, desde la Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira ingeniaron y materializaron el desarrollo de un foro académico. Con miras a la difusión y acrecentamiento de los estudios sobre el pensamiento grecolatino, se piensa para la región cafetera colombiana un avance importante en cuanto a la propuesta de proyectos y de actividades de talante dialógico a ejemplo de los países latinoamericanos (...) y europeos en que esos estudios poseen mayor alcance. De aquí que, para efectos del fortalecimiento de lo clásico en la academia colombiana, se convoca bianualmente al nominado Foro Internacional de Filosofía Antigua en la ciudad de Pereira. (shrink)

In this paper we consider the logics L(i,n) obtained from the (n+1)-valued Lukasiewicz logics L(n+1) by taking the order filter generated by i/n as the set of designated elements. In particular, the conditions of maximality and strong maximality among them are analyzed. We present a very general theorem that provides sufficient conditions for maximality between logics. As a consequence of this theorem, it is shown that L(i,n) is maximal w.r.t. CPL whenever n is prime. Concerning strong maximality (i.e. maximality w.r.t. (...) rules instead of only axioms), we provide algebraic arguments in order to show that the logics L(i,n) are not strongly maximal w.r.t. CPL, even for n prime. Indeed, in such case, we show that there is just one extension between L(i,n) and CPL obtained by adding to L(i,n) a kind of graded explosion rule. Finally, using these results, we show that the logics L(i,n) with n prime and i/n < 1/2 are ideal paraconsistent logics. (shrink)

Esta reflexión plantea el problema que se da al querer dar cuenta del individuo, como existencia, de manera sistemática en el terreno de las tendencias lógicas de la ética. Sören Kierkegaard, será la guía para plantear que tal pretensión es dañina y se presenta como la imposibilidad para la afirmación de la subjetividad como vitalidad abierta siempre a las posibilidades que ofrece la condición humana. Para el desarrollo de este planteamiento trataremos de confrontar algunos planteamientos de Kierkegaard -sobre todo el (...) de la irreductibilidad de la existencia a sistema- con la eticidad hegeliana en particular, para mostrar cómo se revienta el postulado de un sistema de la existencia. Este reventarse se debe entender no como destrucción de lo dado sino como enfrentamiento de ello y conducción hasta sus últimas consecuencias donde se hace manifiesta la imposibilidad de encerrar la existencia en la estrecha posición de la ética como ciencia normativa, es decir como imperativo de comportamiento y direccionamiento moral de la subjetividad por los carriles del pensamiento que absorbe al ser y que postula a la razón como la directriz de todo proyecto vital. (shrink)

Una deseada organización social por la cual se erige una teoría filosófica en materia política aparece en Platón como una cuestión de orden moral que tiene en la aprehensión de virtudes su naturaleza. La razón regenta sobre el alma cuya condición desiderativa puede tender a un extravío de la virtud, y por ello nada más contrario al orden de sí mismo que el estar dominado por placeres. No obstante, el placer, pese a su caracterización abyecta como sensación natural del hombre, (...) puntualiza sobre la virtud bajo una adecuada formación en su uso. Por tal razón, y por las muchas funciones que ejerce el placer (ἡδονή) en el corpus platonicum, es necesario atender al sentido que este posee en el proyecto educativo-político de Platón. (shrink)

Las críticas proferidas en la antigüedad y en la contemporaneidad acerca de la realización del proyecto hedónico de Epicuro, aducen algunas deficiencias en los principios valorativos y epistémicos que trastocan el sentido originario de dicho autor. Frente a las críticas, la censura a los valores tradicionales y el análisis de los deseos como caracteres de la virtud sugieren una respuesta a la insuficiencia epistémica y de valoración con que se designa a la doctrina epicúrea. Por ello, en este artículo se (...) indaga el carácter mediador de la virtud en tanto es justificación del placer como contenido del bienestar tan recusado por tantos críticos del filósofo de Samos. (shrink)

La sociedad católica de la vigésima centuria, en su propósito de ilustrar el alcance de la filosofía en la doctrina revelada, aboga por una injerencia del corpus clásico griego en la fe. Este es un problema que tuvo grandes repercusiones en cuanto a sostener la existencia de una philosophia christiana, tesis esta que emerge de la clásica cuestión de la relación fides et ratio. De manera que, el presente artículo, expone las razones que llevaron a los pensadores cristianos de antaño (...) al uso de ideas filosóficas y algunos ejemplos que refieren la situación. (shrink)

El humanismo cristiano constituye un permanente debate desde que el cristianismo entra en diálogo con la cultura y la filosofía en los primeros siglos, cuando recién formadas las primeras comunidades adherentes a la predicación de los apóstoles y, por tanto, anuentes al Evangelio de Jesucristo, surgen en ellas las primeras inquietudes de corte no solo religioso y teológico sino también filosófico, ético y antropológico, que tocan la esencia misma de esa religión a la cual muchos acaban de ingresar por la (...) vía de la conversión. (shrink)

Los aspectos ético y moral se insertan en los problemas de la filosofía antigua, aspectos que han sido tenidos en cuenta como determinantes en la búsqueda de la vida feliz. Una de tantas propuestas fue desarrollada por el heleno Epicuro oriundo de la isla de Samos quien argumenta que el placer es el fin de la vida feliz. Tal identificación del placer con la felicidad ha sido fundamento para que otros pensadores cataloguen a este filósofo de libertino, promiscuo, antimoral, etc. (...) Así pues, el presente estudio se desarrolla desde una propuesta hermenéutica que contribuya a la interpretación veraz de la filosofía ética epicúrea. Además, se pretende argumentar desde la objetividad el verdadero sentido del placer rebatiendo toda opción que le perfila desde la práctica como elemento propicio para la lujuria, derroche, narcisismo; e inclusive impugnar aquellas conjeturas que profieren falacias en torno al tema en desarrollo. (shrink)

This paper proposes a conceptual framework for evaluating how social networking platforms fare as epistemic environments for human users. I begin by proposing a situated concept of epistemic agency as fundamental for evaluating epistemic environments. Next, I show that algorithmic personalisation of information makes social networking platforms problematic for users’ epistemic agency because these platforms do not allow users to adapt their behaviour sufficiently. Using the tracing principle inspired by the ethics of self-driving cars, I operationalise it here and identify (...) three requirements that automated epistemic environments need to fulfil: (a) the users need to be afforded a range of skilled actions; (b) users need to be sensitive to the possibility to use their skills; (c) the habits built when adapting to the platform should not undermine the user’s pre-existing skills. I then argue that these requirements are almost impossible to fulfil all at the same time on current SN platforms; yet nevertheless, we need to pay attention to these whenever we evaluate an epistemic environment with automatic features. Finally, as an illustration, I show how Twitter, a popular social networking platform, will fare regarding these requirements. (shrink)

Cet article évalue, du point de vue moral, les justifications possibles pour le recours à la taxation en vue de promouvoir des comportements « sains ». L’objectif est de démontrer qu’un tel instrument recevrait une meilleure justification, c’est-à-dire plus en accord avec des principes égalitariens respectueux de la liberté individuelle, s’ils s’inscrivaient dans une logique de mutualisation. Pour ce faire, les arguments du bien-être individuel et de l’efficience sociale sont discutés afin d’en pointer les fécondités et limites. Au travers de (...) leurs limites, ces arguments introduisent naturellement à une troisième manière d’appréhender le problème, sous l’angle de la mutualisation. Ce principe représente moins une remise en cause radicale des arguments précédents qu’une reformulation du recours à l’efficience sociale et une limitation du champ d’application des appels au bien-être individuel. Il repose sur deux idées. La première est que la référence à une notion de responsabilité, même affadie, est nécessaire. De plus, celle-ci doit être conçue comme partagée entre producteurs et consommateurs ainsi que limitée au domaine financier. La seconde est que la mutualisation ne peut être déconnectée d’intuitions égalitariennes formulées de manière générale. (shrink)

In the autumn of 1667, the young Leibniz published a «new method» for the science of law. Producing a revised edition of that early work was to become his lifelong project, to the purpose of which he wrote, in the 1690s, a succession of new versions of most of its sections. The main reason for this enduring interest was probably the fact that the juridical part of the treatise was preceded with a more general one, encapsulating in a few pages (...) a systematic overview of the disciplines composing the baroque encyclopaedia, after the model of Johann Heinrich Alsted’s monumental Encyclopaedia septem tomis distincta. If Leibniz still depended on Alsted’s notion of philosophy as the «circle of disciplines», he deeply transformed that pre-Cartesian conception of knowledge by two decisive innovations: following Bacon, he defines each branch of demonstrative science as bearing on one single «quality», abstracted from the subjects in which it inheres; yet, contrary to Bacon, he no longer conceives of these qualities as the ultimate components of reality, but as those of our experience of it, marking the limit of the explanatory capacity of language. (shrink)

In this paper we present a new framework of idealization in biology. We characterize idealizations as a network of counterfactual and hypothetical conditionals that can exhibit different “degrees of contingency”. We use this idea to say that, in departing more or less from the actual world, idealizations can serve numerous epistemic, methodological or heuristic purposes within scientific research. We defend that, in part, this structure explains why idealizations, despite being deformations of reality, are so successful in scientific practice. For illustrative (...) purposes, we provide an example from population genetics, the Wright-Fisher Model. (shrink)

BackgroundViral pandemics present a range of ethical challenges for policy makers, not the least among which are difficult decisions about how to allocate scarce healthcare resources. One important question is whether healthcare workers should receive priority access to a vaccine in the event that an effective vaccine becomes available. This question is especially relevant in the coronavirus pandemic with governments and health authorities currently facing questions of distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.Main textIn this article, we critically evaluate the most common ethical (...) arguments for granting healthcare workers priority access to a vaccine. We review the existing literature on this topic, and analyse both deontological and utilitarian arguments in favour of HCW prioritisation. For illustrative purposes, we focus in particular on the distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine. We also explore some practical complexities attendant on arguments in favour of HCW prioritisation.ConclusionsWe argue that there are deontological and utilitarian cases for prioritising HCWs. Indeed, the widely held view that we should prioritise HCWs represents an example of ethical convergence. Complexities arise, however, when considering who should be included in the category of HCW, and who else should receive priority in addition to HCWs. (shrink)

In this chapter we argue that emotions are mediated in an incomplete way in online social media because of the heavy reliance on textual messages which fosters a rationalistic bias and an inclination towards less nuanced emotional expressions. This incompleteness can happen either by obscuring emotions, showing less than the original intensity, misinterpreting emotions, or eliciting emotions without feedback and context. Online interactions and deliberations tend to contribute rather than overcome stalemates and informational bubbles, partially due to prevalence of anti-social (...) emotions. It is tempting to see emotions as being the cause of the problem of online verbal aggression and bullying. However, we argue that social media are actually designed in a predominantly rationalistic way, because of the reliance on text-based communication, thereby filtering out social emotions and leaving space for easily expressed antisocial emotions. Based on research on emotions that sees these as key ingredients to moral interaction and deliberation, as well as on research on text-based versus non-verbal communication, we propose a richer understanding of emotions, requiring different designs of online deliberation platforms. We propose that such designs should move from text-centred designs and should find ways to incorporate the complete expression of the full range of human emotions so that these can play a constructive role in online deliberations. (shrink)

In 1915, a student named Walter Benjamin published his first article, entitled “The life of students”. In this reflection on the condition of student life, Benjamin touched upon one of the most puzzling features of the university: its disconnection from the real world. Benjamin draws our attention to the “huge gulf between ideas and life”, which the university was supposed to bridge through its connection with the state. Benjamin claims, however, that there is no such bridge. On the one hand, (...) we have university life, which is all about living and breathing theory, about “the will to submit to a principle, to identify completely with an idea”, as Benjamin puts it. On the other, in the world, we have the unchangeable rites and practices, institutions, marriage, family, jobs, legal systems, and tacit rules of proper behaviour, a way of life to which everyone assents by dedicating their own life to it. Benjamin is saddened that the world remains the same no matter how many students pass through the university, where they engage in an intense theoretical life. The university stage of life ends abruptly, when the graduates are cast away, back to the other side of the gulf, on the shore of the old world, which cannot be changed by the abstract theories smuggled out from the university. (shrink)

Lecturing is the only educational form inherited from the universities of the middle ages that is still in use today. However, it seems that lecturing is under threat, as recent calls to do away with lecturing in favour of more dynamic settings, such as the flipped classroom or pre-recorded talks, have found many adherents. In line with the post-critical approach of this book, this chapter argues that there is something in the university lecture that needs to be affirmed: at its (...) best, the university lecture functions as a technique for thinking together or for making collective thinking happen in a lecture hall. The lecture offers the set-up, both technological and architectural, to forge a common experience that binds together the listeners and the speakers; that experience can be characterised as visualising ideas or seeing things as if they had taken on a ‘bodily form’. By looking at several examples of lecturing moments experienced by Gadamer as a student and later recounted in his autobiography, we can better understand the paradigmatic experience that characterises the lecture – as an ideal to be sought, even if, perhaps, not always actualised in everyday lectures. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied on social media by an explosion of information disorders such as inaccurate, misleading and irrelevant information. Countermeasures adopted thus far to curb these informational disorders have had limited success because these did not account for the diversity of informational contexts on social media, focusing instead almost exclusively on curating the factual content of user’s posts. However, content-focused measures do not address the primary causes of the infodemic itself, namely the user’s need to post content (...) as a way of making sense of the situation and for gathering reactions of consensus from friends. This paper describes three types of informational context—weak epistemic, strong normative and strong emotional—which have not yet been taken into account by current measures to curb down the informational disorders. I show how these contexts are related to the infodemic and I propose measures for dealing with them for future global crisis situations. (shrink)

Convocada por diferentes estudiosos de los Padres de la Iglesia y del cristianismo antiguo en Latinoamérica, a saber, los profesores Ana Cristina Villa Betancourt, Andrés Mauricio Quevedo Rodríguez y Estiven Valencia Marín, de Colombia; Alejandro Nicola y Francisco Basttita-Harriet, de Argentina; Bruno Gripp, de Brasil; Pamela Chávez Aguilar, de Chile; y Jesús Ma. Aguiñaga Fernández, de México.

Aunque no puede hablarse en sentido estricto de una teoría moral del existencialismo a la manera de los grandes sistemas y modelos éticos de occidente, sí existen muchos argumentos que respaldan una versión en la cual es discutida la moral tradicional en contraposición a la posibilidad de una moral de la situación apoyada por las tesis más importantes de los existencialistas. Simone de Beauvoir ha elaborado un conjunto de textos donde esta posibilidad es expuesta.

El presente texto intenta establecer algunas bases de la filosofía social de Søren Kierkegaard. Para ello, toma el concepto de lo demoníaco, que se desarrolla en Sobre el concepto de ironía y El concepto de la angustia. En ellas, Kierkegaard señala las determinaciones de este concepto y lo enmarca dentro de las posibilidades de la subjetividad en su relación con los otros y consigo misma. En la primera, la figura de Sócrates da cuenta de lo demoníaco en el sentido del (...) surgimiento y repliegue de la subjetividad que no participa de los asuntos públicos de la polis griega. En la segunda, Kierkegaard trata la situación demoníaca como un estado psicológico donde la conciencia da cuenta de su relación forzada con el bien y de su mantenimiento en la posición del mal, que lleva al individuo a un estado de endemoniamiento caracterizado por su incomunicación, vacuidad y aburrimiento. Este diagnóstico establece, pues, que los demonios kierkegaardianos son tanto la imposibilidad de la configuración social de los individuos, como su posibilidad a través de la formación de una fuerte subjetividad. (shrink)

L’article introduit au rôle de l’efficience dans la génération d’avantages ou de désavantages enregistrés par les minorités. L’objectif est de démontrer que l’efficience devrait jouer un rôle plus important dans le domaine de la justice ethnoculturelle. Pour ce faire, une brève présentation de la place du nombre dans la littérature sur le sujet est offerte, ce qui permet de saisir le fond de l’argument consistant à faire des déséquilibres numériques une source certaine des injustices subies par les minorités, notamment dans (...) une perspective inspirée par l’égalitarisme de la chance. De ce point de vue, l’asymétrie numérique peut toutefois constituer une source d’avantages pour ces groupes. Dès lors, une telle asymétrie, qui est l’un des constituants de la définition de la minorité, prend une autre dimension. Plus que cette asymétrie, il apparaît que c’est l’efficience (la manière dont les groupes gèrent cette asymétrie) qui détermine les conditions et succès matériels des membres d’un groupe donné. Après une discussion des minorités efficientes et dominantes, l’article se conclut par la mise en lumière de quelques pistes de recherche rendues visibles par l’efficience et qui sont pertinentes pour la théorie de la justice en contexte multiculturel. (shrink)

This thesis is a sceptical investigation into the notion that the metaphorical wave-particle binary of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse is related to quantum physics. Indeed, the field of literature and science has employed conceptual similarities as the main means of connecting quantum concepts to novels, however, this has led to a host of scholarly difficulties, prompting the need for a re-examination of analogical linkages. Woolf is the model candidate for such a re-examination, given her historical and philosophical proximity with (...) the developments of quantum mechanics. To the Lighthouse, in particular, was written between 1925 and 1927: precisely when quantum physicists were attempting to resolve the wave-particle duality, leading to Niels Bohr's complementarity. This parallel has been noted by researchers as relevant to the novel, as it too displays a general binary that can be read as wave-particle-like, which the author also attempts to resolve along similar philosophical lines. Nevertheless, other than proximity and similarity, there are no reasons to affirm that the science is related to the novel; hence, it is an ideal case study to examine in order to ascertain the value of conceptual similarities in literature and science. To do so, To the Lighthouse's binary and its resolution are interpreted in a thesis-long close reading, in order to compare aspects of it firstly to Woolf's personal thought, and secondly to various non-quantum intellectual contexts that preceded and surrounded her. In doing so, it becomes clear not only that invoking quantum physics serves no clear purpose in better understanding the novel, but also that the notion of resolving wave- particle-like binaries was a widespread philosophical procedure at the turn of the century, decades before Bohr's concept. This negative conclusion interrogates what the scholarly value of interpreting similarities is, though a hypothetical solution can be found in conceptual metaphor theory. (shrink)

Basándome en la explicación que hace Jean-Paul Sartre de la violencia, sostengo que no solo la mala fe es inevitable en la práctica, sino que una mala fe limitada es necesaria para la autenticidad. Aunque violar la libertad de otros es mala fe, es imposible no violar nunca la libertad de alguien. Además, y de manera fundamental, la estructura ontológica del para-sí implica que este solo puede ser auténtico en el modo de no ser auténtico. Tratar de evitar por completo (...) la mala fe es, en sí mismo, un acto de mala fe, porque es un intento de constituirse como esencialmente auténtico, pero el para-sí no tiene esencia preexistente. Sin embargo, al reconocer la total responsabilidad de uno por elegir la mala fe, se limita su alcance. Esta mala fe limitada es, de hecho, necesaria para la autenticidad, un proyecto vivido en situaciones concretas y no una ley moral categórica que prohíbe la mala fe. [This is a Spanish translation by Leandro Sánchez Marín of the article "The Authentic Person's Limited Bad Faith".]. (shrink)

În studiul Laviniei Marin, Universitatea şi problema proprietăţii intelectuale, este discutată problema actuală a tipului de universitate pe care îl presupune noua economie a cunoaşterii. Pornind de la interesul pentru cuantificarea performanţelor universităţilor şi stabilirea de ierarhii, autoarea ajunge la unele teme epistemologice privind reportul dintre cunoaşterea teoretică şi cunoaşterea practică şi cel dintre cunoaşterea explicită şi cunoaşterea tacită într-o societate în care însăşi cunoaşterea devine un capital, iar inovarea este modul în care se realizează performanţă.

In this essay, I look at the significant portion of vegans who are vegan because they care about harm to animals. I investigate what lifestyle is in fact consistent with caring about harm to animals, which I begin by calling consistent veganism. I argue that the lifestyle that consistently follows from this underlying conviction behind many people’s veganism is in fact distinct from a vegan lifestyle.

Studious Drift: Movements and Protocols for a Postdigital Education (Lewis and Hyland 2022) continues Tyson Lewis’s theoretical project of dismantling the learning metaphysics, this time in the digital sphere. The object of concern here is e-studying or digital studying. Lewis has shown elsewhere, in an article written with Cristopher Moffett (Lewis and Moffett 2021), that the university lecture can be circumvented and profaned by turning attention to the students’ gesture of notetaking.

Many hypotheses have been advanced to explain the collective irrationality of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, such as partisanship and ideology, exposure to misinformation and conspiracy theories or the effectiveness of public messaging. This paper presents a complementary explanation to epistemic accounts of collective irrationality, focusing on the moral reasons underlying people’s decisions regarding vaccination. We argue that the moralization of COVID-19 risk mitigation measures contributed to the polarization of groups along moral values, which ultimately led to the emergence of collective irrational (...) behaviors. Collective irrationality arises from groups explicitly or implicitly endorsing values that ultimately harm both themselves and those around. The role of social media platforms in amplifying this polarization and contributing to the emergence of collective irrationality is also examined. Finally, potential strategies for addressing the moral sources of collective irrationality are discussed. (shrink)