Este libro ofrece una respuesta bíblica, espiritual, moral y teológica, para que el lector pueda enfocar su ser interior: integrado por sus actitudes, ego y temperamento, el carácter y la personalidad, junto con las emociones y sentimientos. Así mejorar saludablemente en las costumbres, competencias psicosociales y habilidades socioemocionales, con la conexión y relación directa unida a un Poder Superior o Ser Supremo. El autor con agudeza reordena y une, mediante el sistema de análisis minucioso y una descripción en profundidad, la (...) actividad de la mente e influencia del pensamiento, mediante la psique como Psicoteología del alma. Se ilumina nuestro propósito y sentido de la vida, que va más allá de la vida presente a la eternidad, a través de la relación de la actividad mental, sumado al conocimiento personal y la unión con Dios a su voluntad, con fidelidad y gratitud en amor y obediencia. Frederick Alberto Mora Quesada, se ha esforzado desde su juventud en conocer y cumplir los principios cristianos, para ser biblista, comentarista, investigador y recopilador bíblico. Logra plasmar con este trabajo teológico, el enlace del aspecto psicológico y el estudio e interpretación en relación con Dios. En esta época de grandes crisis y desafíos, las enseñanzas bíblicas actuales y asociadas con los conceptos del estudio en el comportamiento y conducta humana, permitirá descubrir y despertar la conveniente consciencia del bien y evitable mal. De acuerdo con la intención, motivación y voluntad personal, se implica, por consiguiente, la espiritualidad y moral, los principios, valores y las virtudes promovidas por Jesucristo. Se explica la trama actual y en desarrollo, de las acechanzas culturales e ideológicas de la muerte espiritual en el mundo contemporáneo. Se aclaran las implicaciones de este conjunto de ideas, que caracterizan nuestra época, con la amenaza latente de la Edad del Calentamiento Global. La prioridad es que el lector conozca la Verdad, identifique y reconozca el Camino, ejemplo y modelo de Vida de Cristo en el diario vivir. (shrink)

Se percibe en el mundo académico de la teología y de la praxis pastoral, un giro general y englobante hacia el sujeto, la experiencia, la donación del amor, la misericordia, el mundo vivido de los hombres y la vivencia de la fe en la vida cotidiana de un mundo secularizado. Es un anhelo de salir de la simple conceptualización y de las discusiones sin fin sobre la fe, para dar paso a una vivencia y a una experiencia de lo creído (...) y a un testimonio que lo haga creíble. La revolución que ha propiciado el papa Francisco se fundamenta en una radicalidad del seguimiento de Jesús en la vida diaria, en las cosas sencillas, sin muchos malabares teológicos, y sí con una insistencia grande en el amor misericordioso de Dios. Este artículo quiere presentar algunas reflexiones que ayuden a fundamentar la donación experiencial del amor misericordioso, preguntándose por la experiencia, el lenguaje usado para expresarla y la libertad como respuesta del sujeto llamado en el momento del evento. (shrink)

This reissue of his collection of early essays, Logico-Linguistic Papers, is published with a brand new introduction by Professor Strawson but, apart from minor ...

The aim of this paper is to argue against the received view among Unamuno scholars that Miguel de Unamuno was defending a sort of pragmatic argument for religious faith and that his notion of religious faith as “querer creer” (“wanting to believe”) is to be identified with William James’s “the will to believe”. As I will show in this paper, one of the aspects that makes Unamuno’s reasoning philosophically relevant is his ability to formulate a non-pragmatist defense of religious faith (...) without a prior commitment to the truth of any religious or theological statement and grounded in our longing for an endless existence through God’s Salvation. (shrink)

El presente trabajo es un ensayo sobre lo que, en los últimos años, se ha empezado a llamar "lógica filosófica". La lógica filosófica se origina como consecuencia del progresivo rigor formal de la lógica tradicional. Este rigor ha conducido, en contra de lo que se esperaba, a problemas de significado filosófico fundamental y de profundidad abismal. Son muchos los problemas que interesan a la lógica filosófica, pero, en opinión del autor, el más importante apenas ha sido abordado. Este problema es (...) la relación entre la lógica y la razón. La tradición siempre ha considerado la lógica como una disciplina preeminentemente racional, que se constituye sobre estructuras fundamentales del pensamiento racional. Ahora bien, si se intenta saber cuáles son estas estructuras, se encuentra un grave problema: en los últimos años han proliferado nuevos sistemas de lógica, algunos de los cuales parecen no tener ninguna relación entre sí y con la lógica clásica. Esto da la impresión de que no tiene mucho sentido hablar de "razón humana", es decir, de una facultad que funciona mediante principios necesarios y universales organizados en un sistema unitario. La única manera de abordar este problema es comenzar con un análisis de los sistemas lógicos que difieren del modelo clásico (como, por ejemplo, las lógicas polivalentes y paraconsistentes). A estos sistemas el autor los denomina "lógicas heterodoxas". Una vez analizado el significado y las características de estas lógicas, es posible ver si realmente expresan el hecho de que la razón no puede ser concebida como un sistema de principios o si esta creencia es sólo una consecuencia de un enfoque superficial. La opinión del autor es que, a pesar de la multiplicidad de sistemas lógicos heterodoxos, es posible encontrar un criterio de unidad en el cumplimiento común de ciertas condiciones necesarias de logicidad y la posesión común de algunas condiciones suficientes. La razón no funciona, por supuesto, como creían los clásicos, pero su funcionamiento está determinado por un complejo invariable de principios necesarios y universales. Este funcionamiento es más flexible que el concebido por la lógica tradicional; la razón humana puede prescindir de algunos principios clásicos, pero no de todos, y, por el contrario, puede encontrar nuevos principios basados en evidencias que no habían sido previamente analizadas lógicamente. Pero en ambos casos, siempre presupone un complejo invariable de principios. (shrink)

Medieval Integration Challenge for Intellection (MICI) in Albert the Great, Siger of Brabant, and Radulphus Brito.

no epistemológica de la autoridad de primera persona. Trataré de mostrar que esta autoridad no implica infalibilidad ni incorregibilidad en el conocimiento de nuestros propios estados mentales, sino solo una conciencia de que somos sus portadores; en otras palabras, lo que intento mostrar es que la llamada autoridad de primera persona no radica en que conozcamos algo de nuestros propios estados mentales que nadie puede conocer, sino más bien en que tenemos una conciencia de algo que es propiamente nuestro.

Hannah Arendt disavowed the title of “philosopher,” and is known above all as a political theorist. But the relationship between philosophy and politics animates her entire oeuvre. We find her addressing the topic in The Human Condition (1958), in Between Past and Future (a collection of essays written in the early 1960s), and in Men in Dark Times (another collection of essays, this one from the late sixties). It is treated in her Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, composed during the (...) seventies, and also in the posthumous Life of the Mind, two of three projected volumes of which were complete when she died in 1975. Certainly, Arendt’s thought cannot be understood without taking into account her deep suspicion of and equally deep commitment to philosophy in the context of political reflection. For all that, her writings on this abiding preoccupation do not gel into a systematically articulated theory or programmatic statement. Instead, they reflect Arendt’s appreciation of what remained for her a “vital tension” – an enigma. (shrink)

Most of the existing studies on Bourdieu and the digital regards the social and class distinctions in the use of digital technologies, thus presupposing a certain transparency of technologies themselves. Our proposal is to refer to this attitude as “Bourdieu outside the digital.” Yet in this paper, another perspective called “Bourdieu inside the digital” is developed, which moves the focus on the effects of some emerging technologies on social distinctions and discrimination. The main hypothesis is that algorithms of machine learning (...) are producers and reproducers of habitus. Although their results present a greater granularity with respect to the standard techniques of the past, these algorithms still reduce individuals to categories, general trends, classes, and behaviors. Such a reduction has flattening effects on the individuals’ self-understanding, especially in terms of identity and interaction with the social world. This is the phenomenon described in the article as the “personalization without personality,” whose consequences are both existential and social-political. This idea will be illustrated through qualitative and comparative analysis between the correspondence analysis and the multiple correspondence analysis used by Bourdieu in his works and some of those techniques that are performed today in big data analytics. (shrink)

That about sums up what is wrong with Clark's view.

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo mostrar lo que es una sana laicidad en la sociedad actual pluralista, multicultural, democrática y diversa. En primer lugar se presentan dos tentaciones de la iglesia hoy: refugiarse en el ghetto y cerrarse al mundo dando razón a los fundamentalistas laicos que la consideran como algo privado, o salir a la cruzada a imponer sus creencias y su mensaje. Luego se analiza el proceso histórico de formación del pluralismo, de la laicidad y de la libertad (...) religiosa con énfasis en los modelos norteamericano y francés. Se concluye con una visión de lo que es la laicidad en la doctrina de la iglesia católica hoy y una propuesta de lo que debe ser el verdadero pluralismo y la sana laicidad hoy. This article has as aim show what is a healthy secularism in the current pluralist, multicultural, democratic and diverse society. First, it presents two temptations of the church today: to shelter in the ghetto and to be closed to the world giving reason to the lay fundamentalists who consider faith to be something private, or to go out to the crusade to impose Christian beliefs and message. Then there is analyzed the historical process of formation of the pluralism, of the secularism and of the religious freedom emphatically in the models North American and French. The article concludes with a vision of what is the secularism in the doctrine of the catholic church today and a proposal of what must be the real pluralism and the healthy secularism today. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to analyse the concept of love —understood in the broad and Christian-inspired sense of love as agape-charis love— in relation to the animes Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. I first comment on the character of Piccolo —and how his friendship with Son Gohan— leads to him losing all his original villainous traits. I argue that the evolution of the character of Piccolo through his friendship with Son Gohan illustrates the philosophical claim that a (...) loving and giving of oneself to the other —far from being a sign of weakness— is a courageous and self-affirming exercise. The result may move the individual to an inner transformative experience that leads to the enjoyment of a renewed and authentic life that is worth living. I then argue that Son Goku’s respectful attitude towards his opponents is ultimately a loving attitude. Last, I argue that it is the inspiring and loving example of Son Goku that ultimately explains why characters such as Vegeta —who are at first presented as villains— end up losing their villainous traits after fighting against Son Goku. (shrink)

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo mostrar lo que es una sana laicidad en la sociedad actual pluralista, multicultural, democrática y diversa. En primer lugar se presentan dos tentaciones de la iglesia hoy: refugiarse en el ghetto y cerrarse al mundo dando razón a los fundamentalistas laicos que la consideran como algo privado, o salir a la cruzada a imponer sus creencias y su mensaje. Luego se analiza el proceso histórico de formación del pluralismo, de la laicidad y de la libertad (...) religiosa con énfasis en los modelos norteamericano y francés. Se concluye con una visión de lo que es la laicidad en la doctrina de la iglesia católica hoy y una propuesta de lo que debe ser el verdadero pluralismo y la sana laicidad hoy. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es ofrecer una exposición sistemática de la propuesta filosófica de Joaquim Xirau (Figueras, 1895 – Ciudad de México, 1946), señalando así su interés filosófico al tiempo que se vinculan sus dos grandes obras ensayísticas de madurez, Amor y mundo (1940) y Lo fugaz y lo eterno (1942).

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo mostrar lo que es una sana laicidad en la sociedad actual pluralista, multicultural, democrática y diversa. En primer lugar se presentan dos tentaciones de la iglesia hoy: refugiarse en el ghetto y cerrarse al mundo dando razón a los fundamentalistas laicos que la consideran como algo privado, o salir a la cruzada a imponer sus creencias y su mensaje. Luego se analiza el proceso histórico de formación del pluralismo, de la laicidad y de la libertad (...) religiosa con énfasis en los modelos norteamericano y francés. Se concluye con una visión de lo que es la laicidad en la doctrina de la iglesia católica hoy y una propuesta de lo que debe ser el verdadero pluralismo y la sana laicidad hoy. This article has as aim show what is a healthy secularism in the current pluralist, multicultural, democratic and diverse society. First, it presents two temptations of the church today: to shelter in the ghetto and to be closed to the world giving reason to the lay fundamentalists who consider faith to be something private, or to go out to the crusade to impose Christian beliefs and message. Then there is analyzed the historical process of formation of the pluralism, of the secularism and of the religious freedom emphatically in the models North American and French. The article concludes with a vision of what is the secularism in the doctrine of the catholic church today and a proposal of what must be the real pluralism and the healthy secularism today. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that Unamuno was conceiving of God (and ordinary, non-religious fictional characters more generally) in realist, though non-evidentially grounded, terms. I will point out that this way of conceiving of God allowed Unamuno to claim the actual existence of God (though as a fictional, purely humanly created character) and, with this, the possibility of there being an actual relationship between the concrete religious person and God without having to dispense with his own core claim that (...) religious faith is just a subjective, though natural and thus inevitable, human reaction. (shrink)

In this article, we argue that John Henry Newman was right to think that our passional nature can play a legitimate epistemic role. First, we unpack the standard objection to Newman’s understanding of the relationship between our passional nature and the evidential basis of faith. Second, we argue that the standard objection to Newman operates with a narrow definition of evidence. After challenging this notion, we then offer a broader and more humane understanding of evidence. Third, we survey recent scholarship (...) arguing that emotions, a key aspect of our passional nature, are cognitive. In this light, they plausibly have a proper epistemic role. Fourth, we defend Newman’s reliance on the passional nature in epistemic matters by showing how reasonable it is in light of this recent work on evidence and the nature of emotions. Newman’s insistence that the formation of a right state of heart and mind is crucial for epistemic success is far from untenable. (shrink)

The debate about the foundations of mathematical sciences traces back to Greek antiquity, with Euclid and the foundations of geometry. Through the flux of history, the debate has appeared in several shapes, places, and cultural contexts. Remarkably, it is a locus where logic, philosophy, and mathematics meet. In mathematical astronomy, Nicolaus Copernicus’s axiomatic approach toward a heliocentric theory of the universe has prompted questions about foundations among historians who have studied Copernican axioms in their terminological and logical aspects but never (...) examined them as a question of mathematical practice. Copernicus provides seven unproved assumptions in the introduction of the brief treatise entitled Nicolaus Copernicus’s draft on the models of celestial motions established by himself, better known as Commentariolus (ca. 1515), published circa 30 years before the final composition of his heliocentric theory (On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres, 1543). The assumptions deal with the renowned Copernican hypothesis of considering the Earth in motion and the Sun, not affected by motion, near the center of the universe. Although Copernicus decides to omit the proofs for the sake of brevity, the deductions in the Commentariolus are supposed to be drawn from the initial seven assumptions. Questions on the nature (are they postulates or axioms?) and the logic (is there an internal rigor?) of those assumptions have yet to be fully explored. By examining Copernicus’s seven assumptions as a question of mathematical practice, it is possible to hold historical, philosophical, and logical aspects of Copernican axiomatics together and understand them as part of Copernicus’s intuition and creativity. (shrink)

L’articolo illustra il modo in cui Dante ha utilizzato le fonti medievali nel campo dell’ottica e degli exempla dei bestiari per costruire analogie al fine di ragionare delle ricchezze e della nobiltà. Il testo analizza, in particolare, Purg. XVII 1-9, Cv. II iv 16-17, III vii, ix, alcuni frammenti della canzone Le dolci rime e il relativo commento in Cv. IV. Alla fine dell’articolo si espone il contrappunto filosofico che Dante offre alle vicende storiche del suo tempo.

Alvin Plantinga has famously responded to the logical problem of evil by appealing to the intrinsic value of significant free will. A problem, however, arises because traditional theists believe that both God and the redeemed who go to heaven cannot do wrong acts. This entails that both God and the redeemed in heaven lack significant freedom. If significant freedom is indeed valuable, then God and the redeemed in heaven would lack something intrinsically valuable. However, if significant freedom is not intrinsically (...) valuable, then Plantinga’s reply to the logical problem of evil fails. In this paper, we assess three contemporary solutions to the dilemma above. The first is the love solution, which proposes that significant freedom is necessary for agents to love, and loving others is intrinsically good. The second is the soul-making solution, which argues that significant freedom is necessary for self-developing one’s moral character, and having a self-developed moral character is intrinsically good. The third is the derivative free will solution, which argues that significant freedom is necessary for derivative free will in heaven, and derivative free will is intrinsically good. We raise problems against all three solutions and instead defend a fourth solution – the ultimate responsibility solution. That is, significant freedom is instrumentally valuable as it gives agents ultimate responsibility with regards to morally significant acts. Finally, we defend the ultimate responsibility solution against two major objections. (shrink)

Se hace presente la necesidad de una ontología relacional para la teología (Hemmerle, 1996, p. 26) y la fenomenología actual ayuda a dar piso a esa ontología en cuanto muestra el fondo de la existencia, de la realidad, de la forma de aquello que está en el origen como dato dado. La donación se convierte así en la nueva concepción del ser, no el ser como esse, sino como donación y relación, como llamado originario y como respuesta existencial, así se (...) puede pensar una ontología trinitaria cristiana pero también plenamente humana. (shrink)

Se presentan las concepciones sobre el argumento ontológico en Paul Tillich y en Jean-Luc Marion. Paul Tillich no ha creado una propia escuela de pensamiento, pero ha influido sobre muchos pensadores. Abre el camino a posteriores reflexiones, desde diversos puntos metodológicos, sobre el problema ontológico, sobre la realidad de Dios y sobre la relación del Ser con la cultura. Se puede decir que, a partir de él, se abren caminos para pensar el papel de la mística en el conocimiento del (...) Being itself (el ser mismo), la relación dinámica en la vida del hombre, el darse del Ser como ágape, la correlación entre mística y cultura. Y Jean-Luc Marion lleva a su plenitud las ideas de Anselmo y Tillich: Dios no se piensa sino que se da. (shrink)

Johannes Müller von Königsberg (1436-1476), better known as Regiomontanus, is widely considered as the most influential astronomer and mathematician of 15th-century Europe. He was active as an astrologer and deemed astrology to be the queen of mathematical sciences. Despite this, Regiomontanus's astrological activity has yet to be fully explored. A brief examination of Regiomontanus's manuscripts shows that his astrological interests were accompanied by interests in the arts and in methods of prognostication. This article studies an unconventional astrological-chiromantical text, whose relevance (...) is threefold: a) it sheds new light on Regiomontanus's astrological interests; b) it enriches our knowledge of Regiomontanus's efforts to learn and understand Greek-Regiomontanus transcribed it into his own manuscript during his sojourn in Italy from 1460-1467; and c) it is the sole extant text in the Greek tradition that provides a system for prognostication from the study of a person's hand, the parts of which are considered as being under the domain of planets. The article provides an English translation of Regiomontanus's transcription, alongside a brief commentary, and studies the intellectual and historical context of that production through manuscript analysis. (shrink)

La pandemia del Covid19 es un acontecimiento entendido en la forma fenomenológica de su llegada y de su permanencia, pues irrumpe, cambia, afecta a la humanidad en su totalidad. No es un acontecimiento personal o territorial que se convierte en objeto de alguna disciplina en especial o responsabilidad de ciertos actores sociales. Más allá de la búsqueda de su origen o de las causas de su aparición, hay en ella una característica revelatoria que convoca, llama y pide una respuesta. Escuchar (...) la llamada y dar el responsorio es tarea obligada de la humanidad actual por encima de visiones sesgadas, parciales, culpabilizantes o escapistas. La enseñanza social de la Iglesia aporta, en este momento, una visión integral para afrontar el momento difícil mediante la acción y agencia de todos los seres humanos. La propuesta es una ética ecológica integral que reconozca la interconexión entre toda la realidad y proponga una acción de cuidado integral de la creación. (shrink)

Integral development as the most assertive path of sustainable development models is presented as a new paradigm in the social teaching of the church. It is a question of identifying the theoretical foundations that precede the encyclical Laudato Si’ (ls) from philosophy and theology: the harmony of quaternity, the mystique of creation, the science-faith dialogue and the theology of the small and the poor. At the same time it tries to recover and remember the reflections and teachings that are already (...) in the tradition of the church on the “common house”. It proposes a renewed theological attitude and joint ethical action of all humanity, believers and non-believers. (shrink)

Logic systems that can handle contradictions were being used for some time without having a general technical name. One of the main proposers of these systems, Newton da Costa, asked Francisco Miró Quesada to suggest him a name for those systems. In the historical letter that here we translate into English for the first time, Miró Quesada suggests three names to da Costa for this purpose: ‘ultraconsistent’, ‘metaconsistent’, and ‘paraconsistent’; explaining their pros and cons. -/- Paper based on (...) a letter by Francisco Miró Quesada Cantuarias to Newton da Costa, edited, translated, and annotated by Luis Felipe Bartolo Alegre. (shrink)

Uno de los fenomenólogos de la nueva generación que sigue la línea de Husserl, Heidegger, Marion y Lévinas es Richard Kearney. Este filósofo irlandés, católico, propone una cuarta reducción fenomenológica, esto es, volver al eschaton enraizado en la existencia cotidiana: encontrar la voz y el rostro de lo más alto en lo más bajo. Es como la realización de aquella idea heideggeriana de que “Sólo aquello del mundo que es de poca monta llegará alguna vez a ser cosa.” . En (...) el lenguaje cotidiano, en la vida diaria, se encuentra una posibilidad de superar el escepticismo, la indiferencia y el hastío del mundo vuelto consumo y del hombre convertido en pieza del mercado. En el encuentro cara a cara se da la posibilidad de una revelación que hace de la relación con el otro, y especialmente con el extranjero, un maravillarse y nos implemente una duda, una sospecha y una desconfianza. (shrink)

Este artículo recoge las críticas que se han hecho a la metafísica y a la teología respecto al concepto de Dios. Indica algunos filósofos que han aceptado acríticamente dichos ataques a la ontoteología o concepción de Dios, y señala otros (Lévinas, Marion) que buscan vías de salida. Estas vías de salida son la fenomenología de la donación, entendiendo a Dios como fenómeno saturado que se da a un yo pasivo (no al yo constituyente moderno), donación que supera la visión representacional (...) de Dios y abre el camino a una hermenéutica de la donación. (shrink)

An important distinction lies between consciousness attributed to creatures, or subjects, (creature consciousness) and consciousness attributed to mental states (state consciousness). Most contemporary theories of consciousness aim at explaining what makes a mental state conscious, paying scant attention to the problem of creature consciousness. This attitude relies on a deeper, and generally overlooked, assumption that once an explanation of state consciousness is provided, one has also explained all the relevant features of creature consciousness. I call this the priority of state (...) consciousness thesis (PSC). In this paper, I want to explore how the renewed centrality bestowed to phenomenology in contemporary discussions on consciousness challenges PSC and, consequently, the standard way of framing the problem of consciousness. More precisely, I examine PSC in light of a view about the structure of phenomenal character that is paradigmatic of the approach above. This is subjectivism about phenomenal character (SUBJ), according to which a mental state is conscious when it acquires the property of for-me-ness. I argue that PSC and SUBJ are incompatible because the latter implies that creature consciousness is explanatorily prior to state consciousness. Consequently, if SUBJ is true, then PSC is false, and what constitutes the problem of consciousness is primarily a problem of explaining (a kind of) creature consciousness. I conclude by defending my claim from a pair of possible objections and drawing some implications for the discussion of for-me-ness and the debate on the explanation of consciousness. (shrink)

El giro teológico de la fenomenología francesa contemporánea abre nuevos caminos de reflexión a la filosofía y a la teología, por la donación del fenómeno saturado.

Según varios filósofos del lenguaje contemporáneos, el argumento Frege-Geach plantea una objeción genuina para el expresivismo semántico. En el presente texto se sostiene que una manera eficaz de enfrentar y superar este argumento es modificando la concepción expresivista clásica. Se examinan el expresivismo clásico y el expresivismo mínimo y se propone una versión de este último que, a la vez que supera la objeción derivada del argumento Frege-Geach, tiene la ventaja de incluir dentro del espectro del expresivismo teorías que claramente (...) tienen este “espíritu” pero que la caracterización clásica deja fuera. (shrink)

The new Christian humanism is not about concepts and theories. It is a mystical experience of the centrality of Jesus Christ, of His face of mercy, of love given and delivered. Love is the gift that we must accept and respond to with love, especially with an ethic of love that makes us stand in solidarity with nature, with each other, and with the poor in a special way. We are a gift that is communicated. We must use the resources (...) of science, technology, and educational advances without fear, but always looking at human beings as the goal of our action. Everything is summarized in an integral ethic of loving care, in which women are experts and especially women religious in the church . (shrink)

La experiencia y el testimonio son la clave central de la revelación cristiana. Sin embargo, se puede apreciar que en diferentes estudios contemporáneos sobre el tema se insiste más en el testimonio que en la experiencia misma que da origen al testimonio. Urge la reflexión sobre la posibilidad y la efectividad de la experiencia y del testimonio, y más en un mundo en el que la idea de Dios o absoluto ya no tiene raíces en la metafísica representacional y no (...) cabe en los estrechos límites de un concepto. Las críticas realizadas al cristianismo en la época de la Modernidad han servido para purificar el mismo cristianismo, pues las representaciones idolátricas de Dios que se habían incrustado en él van siendo corregidas en la reflexión contemporánea: en la teología y en la filosofía. (shrink)

Alireza Bagheri supports a policy on organ procurement where individuals could choose their own definition of death between two or more socially accepted alternatives. First, we claim that such a policy, without any criterion to distinguish accepted from acceptable definitions, easily leads to the slippery slope that Bagheri tries to avoid. Second, we suggest that a public discussion about the circumstances under which the dead donor rule could be violated is more productive of social trust than constantly moving the line (...) between life and death. (shrink)

This article examines two arguments that a worship-worthy agent cannot command worship. The first argument is based on the idea that any agent who commands worship is egotistical, and hence not worship-worthy. The second argument is based on Campbell Brown and Yujin Nagasawa's (2005) idea that people cannot comply with the command to worship because if people are offering genuine worship, they cannot be motivated by a command to do so. One might then argue that a worship-worthy agent would have (...) no reason to issue a command to worship. I argue that both these arguments fail. (shrink)

Can we feel emotions about abstract objects, assuming that abstract objects exist? I argue that at least some emotions can have abstract objects as their intentional objects and discuss why this conclusion is not just trivially true. Through critical engagement with the work of Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt, I devote special attention to awe, an emotion that is particularly well suited to show that some emotions can be about either concrete or abstract objects. In responding to a possible objection, (...) according to which we can only feel emotions about things that we take to matter to our flourishing, and thus cannot feel emotions about causally inefficacious abstract objects, I explore how abstract objects can be relevant to human flourishing and discuss someemotions other than awe that can be about abstract objects. I finish by explaining somereasons why my conclusion matters, including the fact that it presents a challenge to perceptual theories of emotion and causal theories of intentionality. (shrink)

Religious disagreements are widespread. Some philosophers have argued that religious disagreements call for religious skepticism, or a revision of one’s religious beliefs. In order to figure out the epistemic significance of religious disagreements, two questions need to be answered. First, what kind of disagreements are religious disagreements? Second, how should one respond to such disagreements? In this paper, I argue that many religious disagreements are cases of unconfirmed superiority disagreements, where parties have good reason to think they are not epistemic (...) peers, yet they lack good reason to determine who is superior. Such disagreements have been left relatively unexplored. I then argue that in cases of unconfirmed superiority disagreements, disputants can remain relatively steadfast in holding to their beliefs. Hence, we can remain relatively steadfast in our beliefs in such cases of religious disagreements. (shrink)

Juha Raikka argues against disassociation from collective responsibility based on a premise of logical inconsistency insofar as the conclusion ‘one is not guilty’ does not necessarily follow from the premise that ‘everyone is guilty.’ Raikka builds his case on a fictionalized national, ethnic, or cultural group that participates in human sacrifices for the sake of ‘medical reasons’ or human health. He concedes that this fictionalized group bears an uncanny resemblance to Western society and their proposed collective responsibility for practices ranging (...) from (A) foreign conflicts to (B) Environmental pollution and (C) overconsumption of “third world” foreign natural resources. Arguably, these practices could be parsed as exercises conducive or equal to ‘human sacrifices’. Our discussion here will be all but entirely subsumed by (C). (shrink)

Conscientious objection in health care is a form of compromise whereby health care practitioners can refuse to take part in safe, legal, and beneficial medical procedures to which they have a moral opposition (for instance abortion). Arguments in defense of conscientious objection in medicine are usually based on the value of respect for the moral integrity of practitioners. I will show that philosophical arguments in defense of conscientious objection based on respect for such moral integrity are extremely weak and, if (...) taken seriously, lead to consequences that we would not (and should not) accept. I then propose that the best philosophical argument that defenders of conscientious objection in medicine can consistently deploy is one that appeals to (some form of) either moral relativism or subjectivism. I suggest that, unless either moral relativism or subjectivism is a valid theory—which is exactly what many defenders of conscientious objection (as well as many others) do not think—the role of moral integrity and conscientious objection in health care should be significantly downplayed and left out of the range of ethically relevant considerations. (shrink)

In recent years, Duncan Pritchard has developed a position in religious epistemology called quasi‐fideism that he claims traces back to John Henry Newman's treatment of the rationality of religious belief. In this paper, we give three reasons to think that Pritchard's reading of Newman as a quasi‐fideist is mistaken. First, Newman's parity argument does not claim that religious and non‐religious beliefs are on a par because both are groundless; instead, for Newman, they are on a par because both often stem (...) from implicit rather than explicit reasoning. Second, pace Pritchard, Newman's distinction between simple and complex assent does not map onto the Wittgensteinian distinction between groundless hinge commitments and beliefs that flow from these hinges. For Newman, simple and complex assent differ in terms of the believer's level of awareness of their grounds. Third, and finally, Newman does not reject Locke's evidentialism in toto. Instead, he argues that certitude is not restricted to beliefs stemming from intuition and demonstration but often rightly includes probabilistically supported (or fallibly evidenced) beliefs. (shrink)

This paper examines the moral arguments for and against employees' blowing the whistle on illegal or immoral actions of their employers. It asks whether such professional dissidents are justified in disclosing wrongdoing by others while concealing their own identity. Part I examines the concept of anonymity, distinguishing it from two similar concepts — secrecy and privacy. Part II analyzes the concept of whistleblowing using recent definitions by Bok, Bowie and De George. Various arguments against anonymous whistleblowing are identified and evaluated. (...) The author concludes with a defense of the practice in terms of social benefits — primarily the redressing of wrongdoing. (shrink)

1. Do models formulated in programming languages use explicit rules where connectionist models do not? 2. Are rules as found in programming languages hard, precise, and exceptionless, where connectionist rules are not? 3. Do connectionist models use rules operating on distributed representations where models formulated in programming languages do not? 4. Do connectionist models fail to use structure sensitive rules of the sort found in "classical" computer architectures? In this chapter we argue that the answer to each of these questions (...) is negative. (shrink)

The verifiability principle was the characteristic claim of a group of thinkers who called themselves the Vienna Circle and who formed the philosophical movement now known as logical positivism. The verifiability principle is an empiricist criterion of meaning which declares that only statements that are verifiable by —i.e., logically deducible from— observational statements are cognitively meaningful. -/- This essay is a short introduction to the philosophical movement of logical positivism and its formulation of the verifiability principle. Its primary aim is (...) to provide students of philosophy with an accessible first overview of this philosophical movement. -/- After pointing out some aspects of the philosophical background of logical positivism (section 1), I will comment on the reasoning that lead these authors to formulate the verifiability principle (section 2), and I will analyse the debate about how to understand observational language and how observational statements (the so-called ‘protocol statements’) are verified (section 3). I will also comment on the two main consequences of accepting the verifiability principle: the conception of philosophy as the task of logical analysis and the project of unified science (section 4), and I will explain the different views on ethical language defended by logical positivists (section 5). I will end this essay by identifying the main problems of the verifiability principle and I will explain the core ideas of Carnap’s confirmability criterion, which attempts to resolve these problems (section 6 and 7). (shrink)

In his essay against Eberhard, Kant denies that there are innate concepts. Several scholars take Kant’s statement at face value. They claim that Kant did not endorse concept innatism, that the categories are not innate concepts, and that Kant’s views on innateness are significantly different from Leibniz’s. This paper takes issue with those claims. It argues that Kant’s views on the origin of the intellectual concepts are remarkably similar to Leibniz’s. Given two widespread notions of innateness, the dispositional notion and (...) the input/output notion, intellectual concepts are innate for Kant no less than for Leibniz. (shrink)

Legal decisions and theories are frequently condemned as formalistic, yet little discussion has occurred regarding exactly what the term "'formalism" means. In this Article, Professor Schauer examines divergent uses of the term to elucidate its descriptive content. Conceptions offormalism, he argues, involve the notion that rules constrict the choice of the decisionmaker. Our aversion to formalism stems from denial that the language of rules either can or should constrict choice in this way. Yet Professor Schauer argues that this aversion to (...) formalism should be rethought: At times language both can and should restrict decisionmakers. Consequently, the term "'formalistic" should not be used as a blanket condemnation of a decisionmaking process; instead the debate regarding decision according to rules should be confronted on its own terms. (shrink)

This paper traces the ancestry of a familiar historiographical narrative, according to which early modern philosophy was marked by the development of empiricism, rationalism, and their synthesis by Immanuel Kant. It is often claimed that this narrative became standard in the nineteenth century, due to the influence of Thomas Reid, Kant and his disciples, or German Hegelians and British Idealists. The paper argues that the narrative became standard only at the turn of the twentieth century. This was not due to (...) the influence of Reid, German Hegelians, or British Idealists as they did not endorse the narrative, although Thomas Hill Green may have facilitated its uptake. The narrative is based on Kant’s historiographical sketches, as corrected and integrated by Karl Leonhard Reinhold. It was first fleshed out into full-fledged histories by two Kantians, Wilhelm Gottlieb Tennemann and Johann Gottlieb Buhle. Numerous historians, several of whom were not Kantians, spread it in the English-speaking world. They include Kuno Fischer, Friedrich Ueberweg, Richard Falckenberg, and Wilhelm Windelband. However, the wide availability of their works did not suffice to make the narrative standard because, until the 1890s, the Hegelian account was at least as popular as theirs. Among the factors that allowed the narrative to become standard are its aptness to be adopted by philosophers of the most diverse persuasions, its simplicity and suitability for teaching. (shrink)

In a paper recently published in this journal, Navin and Largent argue in favour of a type of policy to regulate non-medical exemptions from childhood vaccination which they call ‘Inconvenience’. This policy makes it burdensome for parents to obtain an exemption to child vaccination, for example, by requiring parents to attend immunization education sessions and to complete an application form to receive a waiver. Navin and Largent argue that this policy is preferable to ‘Eliminationism’, i.e. to policies that do not (...) allow non-medical exemptions, because Inconvenience has been shown to maintain exemption rates low while not harming parents by forcing them to do something that goes against their beliefs. We argue that it is at least doubtful that Inconvenience is ethically preferable to Eliminationism: while the latter disregards the value of liberty, Inconvenience disregards the value of fairness in the distribution of the burdens entailed by the preservation of a public good like herd immunity. We propose a variant of Inconvenience, which we call ‘Contribution’, which we think is preferable to the versions of Inconvenience discussed by Navin and Largent in that it successfully strikes a balance between the values of parents’ liberty, fairness and expected utility. (shrink)

Several scholars have criticized the histories of early modern philosophy based on the dichotomy of empiricism and rationalism. They view them as overestimating the importance of epistemological issues for early modern philosophers (epistemological bias), portraying Kant's Critical philosophy as a superior alternative to empiricism and rationalism (Kantian bias), and forcing most or all early modern thinkers prior to Kant into the empiricist or rationalist camps (classificatory bias). Kant is often said to be the source of the three biases. Against this (...) criticism, this paper argues that Kant did not have the three biases. However, he promoted a way of writing histories of philosophy from which those biases would naturally flow. (shrink)