In this article I investigate online misinformation from a media philosophy perspective. I, thus move away from the debate focused on the semantic content, concerned with what is true or not about misinformation. I argue rather that online misinformation is the effect of an informational climate promoted by user micro-behaviours such as liking, sharing, and posting. Misinformation online is explained as the effect of an informational environment saturated with and shaped by techno-images in which most users act automatically under the (...) constant assault of stirred emotions, a state resembling what media philosopher Vilém Flusser has called techno-magical consciousness. I describe three ways in which images function on social media to induce this distinctive, uncritical mode of consciousness, and complement Flusser’s explanation with insights from the phenomenology of emotions. (shrink)

Recent work in formal semantics suggests that the language system includes not only a structure building device, as standardly assumed, but also a natural deductive system which can determine when expressions have trivial truth-conditions (e.g., are logically true/false) and mark them as unacceptable. This hypothesis, called the `logicality of language', accounts for many acceptability patterns, including systematic restrictions on the distribution of quantifiers. To deal with apparent counter-examples consisting of acceptable tautologies and contradictions, the logicality of language is often paired (...) with an additional assumption according to which logical forms are radically underspecified: i.e., the language system can see functional terms but is `blind' to open class terms to the extent that different tokens of the same term are treated as if independent. This conception of logical form has profound implications: it suggests an extreme version of the modularity of language, and can only be paired with non-classical---indeed quite exotic---kinds of deductive systems. The aim of this paper is to show that we can pair the logicality of language with a different and ultimately more traditional account of logical form. This framework accounts for the basic acceptability patterns which motivated the logicality of language, can explain why some tautologies and contradictions are acceptable, and makes better predictions in key cases. As a result, we can pursue versions of the logicality of language in frameworks compatible with the view that the language system is not radically modular vis-a-vis its open class terms and employs a deductive system that is basically classical. (shrink)

The meaning that expressions take on particular occasions often depends on the context in ways which seem to transcend its direct effect on context-sensitive parameters. ‘Truth-conditional pragmatics’ is the project of trying to model such semantic flexibility within a compositional truth-conditional framework. Most proposals proceed by radically ‘freeing up’ the compositional operations of language. I argue, however, that the resulting theories are too unconstrained, and predict flexibility in cases where it is not observed. These accounts fall into this position because (...) they rarely, if ever, take advantage of the rich information made available by lexical items. I hold, instead, that lexical items encode both extension and non-extension determining information. Under certain conditions, the non-extension determining information of an expression e can enter into the compositional processes that determine the meaning of more complex expressions which contain e. This paper presents and motivates a set of type-driven compositional operations that can access non-extension determining information and introduce bits of it into the meaning of complex expressions. The resulting multidimensional semantics has the tools to deal with key cases of semantic flexibility in appropriately constrained ways, making it a promising framework to pursue the project of truth-conditional pragmatics. (shrink)

How are biases encoded in our representations of social categories? Philosophical and empirical discussions of implicit bias overwhelmingly focus on salient or statistical associations between target features and representations of social categories. These are the sorts of associations probed by the Implicit Association Test and various priming tasks. In this paper, we argue that these discussions systematically overlook an alternative way in which biases are encoded, that is, in the dependency networks that are part of our representations of social categories. (...) Dependency networks encode information about how features in a conceptual representation depend on each other. This information determines the degree of centrality of a feature for a conceptual representation. Importantly, centrally encoded biases systematically disassociate from those encoded in salient-statistical associations. Furthermore, the degree of centrality of a feature determines its cross-contextual stability: in general, the more central a feature is for a concept, the more likely it is to survive into a wide array of cognitive tasks involving that concept. Accordingly, implicit biases that are encoded in the central features of concepts are predicted to be more resilient across different tasks and contexts. As a result, the distinction between centrally encoded and salient-statistical biases has important theoretical and practical implications. (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?".

Recent work in formal semantics suggests that the language system includes not only a structure building device, as standardly assumed, but also a natural deductive system which can determine when expressions have trivial truth‐conditions (e.g., are logically true/false) and mark them as unacceptable. This hypothesis, called the ‘logicality of language’, accounts for many acceptability patterns, including systematic restrictions on the distribution of quantifiers. To deal with apparent counter‐examples consisting of acceptable tautologies and contradictions, the logicality of language is often paired (...) with an additional assumption according to which logical forms are radically underspecified: i.e., the language system can see functional terms but is ‘blind’ to open class terms to the extent that different tokens of the same term are treated as if independent. This conception of logical form has profound implications: it suggests an extreme version of the modularity of language, and can only be paired with non‐classical—indeed quite exotic—kinds of deductive systems. The aim of this paper is to show that we can pair the logicality of language with a different and ultimately more traditional account of logical form. This framework accounts for the basic acceptability patterns which motivated the logicality of language, can explain why some tautologies and contradictions are acceptable, and makes better predictions in key cases. As a result, we can pursue versions of the logicality of language in frameworks compatible with the view that the language system is not radically modular vis‐á‐vis its open class terms and employs a deductive system that is basically classical. (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)

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)

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)

The practice of taking hand-written notes in lectures has been rediscovered recently because of several studies on its learning efficacy in the mainstream media. Students are enjoined to ditch their laptops and return to pen and paper. Such arguments presuppose that notes are taken in order to be revisited after the lecture. Learning is seen to happen only after the event. We argue instead that student’s note-taking is an educational practice worthy in itself as a way to relate to the (...) live event of the lecture. We adopt a phenomenological approach inspired by Vilém Flusser’s phenomenology of gestures, which assumes that a gesture like note-taking is always an event of thinking with media in which a certain freedom is expressed. But Flusser’s description of note-taking focusses on the individual note-taker. What about students’ note-taking in a lecture hall as a collective gesture? Nietzsche considered note-taking ‘mechanical,’ as if students were automatons who mindlessly transcribed a verbal flow, while Benjamin considered it an inaesthetic gesture: at best, boring; at worst, ‘painful to watch.’ In contrast, we argue that the educational potentiality of note-taking—or better, note-making—can be grasped only if we account for its mediaticity (as writing that displaces the voice), together with but distinct from its political potentiality as a collective mediality (as a ‘means without end’). Note-taking enables us to see how collective thinking emerges in the lecture, a kind of thinking that belongs neither to the lecturer nor the student, but emerges in the relation of attention established between the lecturer, students and their object of thought. (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)

The logicality of language is the hypothesis that the language system has access to a ‘natural’ logic that can identify and filter out as unacceptable expressions that have trivial meanings—that is, that are true/false in all possible worlds or situations in which they are defined. This hypothesis helps explain otherwise puzzling patterns concerning the distribution of various functional terms and phrases. Despite its promise, logicality vastly over-generates unacceptability assignments. Most solutions to this problem rest on specific stipulations about the properties (...) of logical form—roughly, the level of linguistic representation which feeds into the interpretation procedures—and have substantial implications for traditional philosophical disputes about the nature of language. Specifically, contextualism and semantic minimalism, construed as competing hypotheses about the nature and degree of context-sensitivity at the level of logical form, suggest different approaches to the over-generation problem. In this paper, I explore the implications of pairing logicality with various forms of contextualism and semantic minimalism. I argue that to adequately solve the over-generation problem, logicality should be implemented in a constrained contextualist framework. (shrink)

Kim Diaz's translation of Guillermo Hurtado's "Retratos de Luis Villoro".

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)

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)

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)

The purpose of this article is to present the main contributions to peace, democracy, and the philosophy of education in Colombia, made by philosopher Guillermo Hoyos-Vásquez (Medellín, 1935 – Bogotá, 2013). The work of this Colombian philosopher stands out for its important contributions to political philosophy as the vital, supportive, and responsible exercise of thought concerning the public interest. Using Kant’s concept of practical reason, Husserl’s lifeworld [Lebenswelt], and Habermas’s communicative action as starting points, Hoyos-Vásquez succeeded in going beyond (...) these political philosophers by trying to apply their ideas in the midst of the difficult context of corruption, drug trafficking and armed conflict in Colombia over the past five decades. At the same time, Hoyos-Vásquez developed throughout his life a varied public activity as a thinker and educator, belying the myth of the theoretical distance between the philosopher and his/her political present or historical reality. The thought of Guillermo Hoyos-Vásquez, and his public action as an educator, represent a substantial contribution to contemporary political and educational philosophy, maintaining a close connection between theory and practice. (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)

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.

Jenefer Robinson believes that feelings can play an important role in the critical evaluation of artworks. In this paper, I want to put some pressure on two important notions in her theory: emotional understanding and affective empathy. I will do this by focusing on the nature of self-conscious emotions. My strategy will be, firstly, to demonstrate the difficulty that Robinson’s two step theory of emotions has in accommodating higher cognitive emotional responses to art. Secondly, I will discuss how the tight (...) connection to the ‘self’ involved in self-conscious emotions makes it difficult to take the emotional perspective of another person as empathy requires. From here, I suggest that Peter Goldie’s feeling-towards and his critique of perspective-shifting may give a better understanding of the role of emotions in the appreciation of art, particularly in the case of reflective emotions. This issue will be explored through a discussion of the expression of autobiographical nostalgia in the work of the avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas. (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)

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.

The concepts expressed by social role terms such as artist and scientist are unique in that they seem to allow two independent criteria for categorization, one of which is inherently normative. This study presents and tests an account of the content and structure of the normative dimension of these “dual character concepts.” Experiment 1 suggests that the normative dimension of a social role concept represents the commitment to fulfill the idealized basic function associated with the role. Background information can affect (...) which basic function is associated with each social role. However, Experiment 2 indicates that the normative dimension always represents the relevant commitment as an end in itself. We argue that social role concepts represent the commitments to basic functions because that information is crucial to predict the future social roles and role-dependent behavior of others. (shrink)

Over the past decade or so, a new interdisciplinary field has emerged in the ground between, on the one hand, computer science – and artificial intelligence in particular – and, on the other, the area of philosophy concentrating on the language and structure of argument. There are now hundreds of researchers worldwide who would consider themselves a part of this nascent community. Various terms have been proposed for the area, including "Computational Dialectics," "Argumentation Technology," and "Argument-based Computing," but the term (...) that has stuck is simply Argument & Computation. It encompasses several specific strands of research, such as: . the use of theories of argument, and dialectic in particular, in the design and implementation of protocols for multi-agent action and communication; . the application of theories of argument and rhetoric in natural language processing and affective computing; . the use of argument-based structures for autonomous reasoning in artificial intelligence, and in particular, for defeasible reasoning; . computer-supported collaborative argumentation – the implementation of software tools for enabling online argument in domains such as education and e-government. These strands come together to form the core of a research field that covers parts of artificial intelligence (AI), philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science, but, increasingly, is building an identity of its own. (shrink)

Los objetos sensibles y el hombre, que constituyen el mundo sometido a alteración o cambios, poseen una estructura, organización y dinámicas propias por las cuales se intuye la presencia de causas o principios que dotan a ambos de tales atributos. De aquí que el límite y la medida representen condiciones de orden establecidas por el mundo ideal, un orden que actúa como causa de la armonía y la proporción que conforman todo el mundo visible. El orden ontológico y cósmico que (...) aquí se plantea proyecta también disposiciones éticas en el plano antropológico, disposiciones que obedecen a un intento explicativo de la realidad en su totalidad y que en el presente texto se intentan dilucidar. (shrink)

This paper is a contribution to graded model theory, in the context of mathematical fuzzy logic. We study characterizations of classes of graded structures in terms of the syntactic form of their first-order axiomatization. We focus on classes given by universal and universal-existential sentences. In particular, we prove two amalgamation results using the technique of diagrams in the setting of structures valued on a finite MTL-algebra, from which analogues of the Łoś–Tarski and the Chang–Łoś–Suszko preservation theorems follow.

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)

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)

Lo que se introduce como metafísica de la luz adherida a una connotación religiosa, resulta ser uno de los temas más dominantes y discutidos durante el período medieval, aunque más exhaustivamente abordado durante el período escolástico, es decir, desde finales del siglo IX hasta mediados del siglo XIV. Sin embargo, las reflexiones sobre la idea de "lux" se iniciaron con el neoplatonismo, más precisamente con el egipcio Plotino, quien abanderó la idea de revitalizar la doctrina de la Academia, que fue (...) fundada por Platón. De hecho, la consideración de la luz se destaca como uno de los elementos que repercutió en la filosofía patrística medieval, estableciendo una base sólida para las formulaciones del dogma cristiano. Teniendo esto en cuenta, el propósito del artículo es introducir algunos significados del concepto de lux, tal como lo desarrolló Plotino. (shrink)

El esfuerzo humano por la búsqueda del sentido de la existencia se inscribe en la práctica discursiva que las religiones exhiben no sólo de la situación existencial del hombre sino también de la experiencia de este con lo trascendente. De hecho, un lenguaje que expresa lo trascendente es básicamente intuitivo, sin embargo, la idea de carencia de significado para los contenidos de fe aconteció por boca de filósofos analíticos. De ahí que el presente artículo intente reproducir algunas consideraciones pro et (...) contra de los contenidos de fe por parte de pensadores adscritos a la escuela analítica para luego enfatizar en una necesaria contribución de la filosofía en el tratamiento del lenguaje religioso. (shrink)

Algunos elementos de la filosofía platónica establecidos en tratados apologéticos de muchos escritores cristianos entre los cuales se encuentra el ateniense Atenágoras y su conocida obra πρεσβεία περὶ χριστιανῶν, cuya versión del helenista y teólogo español Daniel Ruiz será el objeto de estudio en el presente texto, demuestran un especial interés por la exposición de la cosmología. Si bien esta temática hace las veces de un intento por demostrar racionalmente la trascendencia de lo divino y la seguida generación del universo (...) por causa del designio y poder de Dios, no se trata de una exposición meticulosa de las ideas de filósofos que el mismo Atenágoras cita sino más bien de una exégesis cristiana acerca de Platón en la que pareciese que incurrieran tales escritores, al menos por ser este uno de los autores que abogan por la filosofía griega, para realizar una reflexión profunda sobre la fe. (shrink)

Un especial interés por los problemas vitales del ser humano llevó a Epicuro a distanciarse de las simples teorizaciones y consagrarse a pensar máximas por las que el hombre podría hacerse con las causas y objetos del bienestar. Epicuro asume el cuerpo y la vida sensible como principios de un bienestar que descansa en las afecciones (πάθη), si bien estas son efectos de los estímulos del ambiente que le preceden, además de ser la fuente de las actitudes de aceptación o (...) de rechazo que determinan las acciones humanas. Cierto es que esta perspectiva sensualista describe la εὐδαιμονία como simple satisfacción de deseos y de necesidades cotidianas, pero se hace manifiesto que, en ocasiones, al no coincidir los deseos con el noble interés del bienestar contradicen este fin buscado. Dicho esto, el tema que se expone en el presente texto es la pregunta por los argumentos que validaron el cuerpo y sus sentidos para conocer el mundo y actuar según lo percibido, frente a algunas de las críticas escépticas y plutarqueas. (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)

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)

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 búsqueda de lo divino, que aparece en el cristianismo como un asunto espiritual, perfila ser tema de importancia para una mística agustiniana que tiene referencias a la figura de Dios, esto es, expresiones que intentan describir la naturaleza divina. Así pues, el santo de Hipona, a través de términos como luz y verdad, presenta los rasgos de un Dios que parece mostrarse tal como es, pero para alcanzar una visión tan inefable, es necesario el deseo de esta; una búsqueda (...) de Dios que, traducida en amor, es un proceso de ascenso a la verdad de lo divino permeado por ese intenso deseo de ello. De manera que un deseo de Dios posiblemente connota una erótica entendida como amor vehemente; el cual, para interés del presente artículo, puede resignificar la noción común de erótica y de sexualidad inherentes al carácter relacional del ser humano, a veces visto con sospecha. (shrink)

Las críticas que brotan en un medio en que el debate epistemológico parece encabezar los problemas que competen al filosofar, tienen en el negar el sentido de verdad al discurso de índole religiosa la ratificación del estatus de cientificidad. Esta es la apuesta de teóricos inscritos a la tradición analítica surgida en el pasado siglo. No obstante, frente a los discursos neopositivistas y el radical evidencialismo vienen las posiciones de algunos filósofos y teólogos analíticos quienes paralelamente abogaron por la validez (...) y el sentido de lo religioso. (shrink)

The practice of taking hand-written notes in lectures has been rediscovered recently because of several studies on its learning efficacy in the mainstream media. Students are enjoined to ditch their laptops and return to pen and paper. Such arguments presuppose that notes are taken in order to be revisited after the lecture. Learning is seen to happen only after the event. We argue instead that student’s note-taking is an educational practice worthy in itself as a way to relate to the (...) live event of the lecture. We adopt a phenomenological approach inspired by Vilém Flusser’s phenomenology of gestures, which assumes that a gesture like note-taking is always an event of thinking with media in which a certain freedom is expressed. But Flusser’s description of note-taking focusses on the individual note-taker. What about students’ note-taking in a lecture hall as a collective gesture? Nietzsche considered note-taking ‘mechanical,’ as if students were automatons who mindlessly transcribed a verbal flow, while Benjamin considered it an inaesthetic gesture: at best, boring; at worst, ‘painful to watch.’ In contrast, we argue that the educational potentiality of note-taking—or better, note-making—can be grasped only if we account for its mediaticity (as writing that displaces the voice), together with but distinct from its political potentiality as a collective mediality (as a ‘means without end’). Note-taking enables us to see how collective thinking emerges in the lecture, a kind of thinking that belongs neither to the lecturer nor the student, but emerges in the relation of attention established between the lecturer, students and their object of thought. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to reconcile two claims that have long been thought to be incompatible: that we compositionally determine the meaning of complex expressions from the meaning of their parts, and that prototypes are components of the meaning of lexical terms such as fish, red, and gun. Hypotheses and are independently plausible, but most researchers think that reconciling them is a difficult, if not hopeless task. In particular, most linguists and philosophers agree that is not negotiable; so (...) they tend to reject. Recently, there have been some attempts to reconcile these claims, but they all adopt an implausibly weak notion of compositionality. Furthermore, parties to this debate tend to fall into a problematic way of individuating prototypes that is too externalistic. In contrast, I propose that we can reconcile and if we adopt, instead, an internalist and pluralist conception of prototypes and a context-sensitive but strong notion of compositionality. I argue that each of this proposals is independently plausible, and that, when taken together, provide the basis for a satisfactory account of prototype compositionality. (shrink)

The epistemic modal auxiliaries must and might are vehicles for expressing the force with which a proposition follows from some body of evidence or information. Standard approaches model these operators using quantificational modal logic, but probabilistic approaches are becoming increasingly influential. According to a traditional view, must is a maximally strong epistemic operator and might is a bare possibility one. A competing account—popular amongst proponents of a probabilisitic turn—says that, given a body of evidence, must \ entails that \\) is (...) high but non-maximal and might \ that \\) is significantly greater than 0. Drawing on several observations concerning the behavior of must, might and similar epistemic operators in evidential contexts, deductive inferences, downplaying and retractions scenarios, and expressions of epistemic tension, I argue that those two influential accounts have systematic descriptive shortcomings. To better make sense of their complex behavior, I propose instead a broadly Kratzerian account according to which must \ entails that \ = 1\) and might \ that \ > 0\), given a body of evidence and a set of normality assumptions about the world. From this perspective, must and might are vehicles for expressing a common mode of reasoning whereby we draw inferences from specific bits of evidence against a rich set of background assumptions—some of which we represent as defeasible—which capture our general expectations about the world. I will show that the predictions of this Kratzerian account can be substantially refined once it is combined with a specific yet independently motivated ‘grammatical’ approach to the computation of scalar implicatures. Finally, I discuss some implications of these results for more general discussions concerning the empirical and theoretical motivation to adopt a probabilisitic semantic framework. (shrink)

It is often suggested that social media is a hostile environment for critical thinking and that a major source for epistemic problems concerning social media is that it facilitates emotions. We argue that emotions per se are not the source of the epistemic problems concerning social media. We propose that instead of focusing on emotions, we should focus on the affective scaffolding of social media. We will show that some affective scaffolds enable desirable epistemic practices, while others obstruct beneficial epistemic (...) practices, or enable hostile epistemic practices. Particularly, we will show that emotions play a crucial role in the epistemic practice of critical thinking and that the affective scaffolding of social media can support, or hinder, online critical thinking. The upshot of our argument is that affective scaffoldings of social media can harness emotions to support beneficial epistemic practices, like online critical thinking. (shrink)

La doctrina sugerida por el filósofo de Samos, al menos en lo que respecta al placer como fin de la vida dichosa, informa de ciertos rasgos teóricos los cuales convergen en una finalidad: la defensa de la vida feliz que, en sentido omnímodo, recoge variados aspectos de la existencia (material y anímica), siendo preeminente el propósito de un filosofar que busca de la salud del cuerpo y la imperturbabilidad del alma. Para ello, un conocimiento de la realidad de lo provechoso (...) y perjudicial, un bien que se limita a la experiencia del no sufrir en el cuerpo ni en el alma, tiene en la autosuficiencia del ser humano su criterio de adquisición; autosuficiencia que se logra en el reproche a la viciada participación en ciertas actividades de la πόλις y de sus instituciones, el desarraigo de aquellas riquezas y honores excesivos, además de las falsas creencias en los dioses. Todo esto integra lo que puede llamarse los tópicos éticos esenciales de una filosofía epicúrea. (shrink)

Lejos de ser lo político una cuestión secundaria o extraña a la filosofía epicúrea, se arguye de este ser un componente esencial de su pensamiento que se presenta en el trato de la amistad como rasgo característico e ineludible para el constructo social decara a los conflictos internos y externos de la Grecia del siglo IV a.C. Desde esta óptica, un interés por precisar el alcance ético-político de la φιλíα (filopolitismo) tan referido en la antigüedad, pero desde un filósofo al (...) que se le endilga la defensa de apoliticidad (O’Keefe,2010; Christensen, 2020), el actual estudio explora argumentos que hacen de ese término un fundamento práctico que ofrece las mejores condiciones para una vida social en tanto puede ofrendar patrones de conducta en lo que respecta a vínculos comunitarios. Para ello se recurre al análisis de textos que se conservan de Epicuro los cuales tienen un tratamiento de la amistad como la Carta a Meneceo (Ad Menoeceum), las Máximas Capitales (Ratæ Sententiae) y las Sentencias Vaticanas (Gnomologio Vaticano), pues se trata de un estudio documental el cual tiene por fin la revisión y análisis de fuentes bibliográficas. (shrink)

Con el presente libro se da razón del resultado investigativo y colaborativo que se realizó entre dos universidades chilenas, la Universidad Finis Terrae y la Universidad Alberto Hurtado, con cuatro universidades colombianas: la Universidad de La Salle (sede Bogotá), la Universidad Católica de Oriente, la Universidad Mariana de Pasto y la Universidad Católica de Pereira, en torno a la reflexión pedagógica y disciplinar que atañe a la educación religiosa escolar en ambos países. Esas disertaciones posibilitaron avanzar en la investigación y (...) hoy se reúnen en este texto, Intuiciones para el cultivo de la inteligencia espiritual en la Educación Religiosa Escolar desde la perspectiva de la libertad religiosa y de cultos. (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)

En principio es el placer un tema históricamente tratado, aunque moralmente recusado, mas con el abordaje teórico de pensadores cirenaicos y epicúreos tal concepto acabó por situarse en una defensa del mismo, hecho que resignifica a esa expresión tan censurada en el filosofar griego de antaño. De igual manera, el uso de sinonimias como gozo, fruición, bienestar, entre otros conceptos para referirse al placer, posicionan una vez más a este como elemento valioso en el tratamiento filosófico ulterior a las nociones (...) éticas aristipiana y epicureísta. Al fin y al cabo, frente a los improperios emitidos por los adversarios de la corriente hedonista, Aristipo y Epicuro justificaron sus postulados ante esas interpelaciones con el fin de salvaguardar sus principios bajo la idea de bondad de las sensaciones, siendo estas un rasgo común entre tales filósofos. Sin embargo, ambos autores disienten en el modo para conseguir tal fin, diferencias que en el presente estudio se intentan demostrar. (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)

Este texto se propone explorar la relación intelectual de Jean-Paul Sartre y Michel Foucault respecto de su activismo intelectual en la forma de sus manifestaciones públicas. Además de ello, también busca analizar sus desacuerdos teóricos y la forma en la cual se debatió en favor de cada una de sus consideraciones filosóficas y los posicionamientos que asumieron uno y otro autor respecto de la sociedad a la cual les tocó asistir. De otra parte, también se asume que existe un punto (...) de conexión teórica en relación al concepto de resistencia que se puede derivar de la crítica al capitalismo en Sartre y de la crítica al neoliberalismo en Foucault. (shrink)