From the back cover: "Un repaso de las publicaciones que han abordado las relaciones e intercambios entre los Estados Unidos de América y España, arroja un saldo positivo en los ámbitos sociológico, político y cultural; no así en el estricto campo de la filosofía, necesitado todavía de mayores estudios. Los once trabajos que integran Estados Unidos/España: Diálogos filosóficosrepresentan un esmerado aporte en esta dirección: el de paliar el citado desequilibrio mediante la reflexión en torno al influjo del pensamiento estadounidense en (...) España y a la recepción de la filosofía española —a través de Unamuno, Ortega y Gasset y Julián Marías— en la patria de Walt Whitman.“Es muy deseable que este activo diálogo filosófico entre los Estados Unidos y España se desarrolle todavía más en los próximos años” (cit. Jaime Nubiola). Esta ha sido la principal aspiración de esta obra: ensanchar este intercambio, esclarecer sus múltiples direcciones y abrir nuevos caminos de investigación.". (shrink)

La denotación de los nombres propios es un problema tradicional de la Filosofía que aún es discutido en nuestros días. La tesis de este ensayo es que, lejos de ser una problemática superada, el debate sigue muy vivo y se siguen generando constantes aportaciones que contribuyen a enriquecer esta discusión en la actualidad. El objetivo que aquí se propone es mostrar que los argumentos tradicionales están motivando nuevas propuestas que mantienen la actualidad del debate, como las de Robert Stalnaker y (...) Jason Stanley. Para este propósito, se emplea el método hermenéutico-crítico sobre la bibliografía consultada. Concluimos reivindicando la actualidad del tema en Filosofía. (shrink)

This paper has two separate aims, with obvious links between them. First, to present Charles S. Peirce and the pragmatist movement in a historical framework which stresses the close connections of pragmatism with the mainstream of philosophy; second, to deal with a particular controversial issue, that of the supposed logicistic orientation of Peirce's work.

The paper defends a version of Direct Reference for indexicals on which reference-fixing material (token-reflexive conditions) plays the role of an ancillary presupposition.

The truth of a statement depends on the world in two ways: what the statement says is true if the world is as the statement says it is; on the other hand, what the expressions in the statement mean depends on what the world is like (for instance, on what conventions are in place). Each of these two kinds of dependence of truth on the world corresponds to one of the dimensions on the two-dimensional semantic framework, developed in the 1970’ (...) in the work of Evans, Kaplan, Kripke and Stalnaker. The introduction provides a systematic overview of the framework, the ideas of its earlier originators, recent developments and criticism. Finally, it gives a brief overview over the contributions to the volume. (shrink)

Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) made relevant contributions to deductive logic, but he was primarily interested in the logic of science, and more especially in what he called 'abduction' (as opposed to deduction and induction), which is the process whereby hypotheses are generated in order to explain the surprising facts. Indeed, Peirce considered abduction to be at the heart not only of scientific research, but of all ordinary human activities. Nevertheless, in spite of Peirce's work and writings in the field of (...) methodology of research, scarce attention has been paid to the logic of discovery over the last hundred years, despite an impressive development not only of scientific research but also of logic. -/- Having this in mind, the exposition is divided into five parts: 1) a brief presentation of Peirce, focusing on his work as a professional scientist; 2) an exposition of the classification of inferences by the young Peirce: deduction, induction and hypothesis; 3) a sketch of the notion of abduction in the mature Peirce; 4) an exposition of the logic of surprise; and finally, by way of conclusion, 5) a discussion of this peculiar ability of guessing understood as a rational instinct. -/- . (shrink)

In a recent opinion paper, it was argued that individuals with multiple retractions or a record of academic misconduct should not serve as editors, including as editors-in-chief, on the editorial boards of scholarly or academic journals. As a first step towards appreciating how such a policy could be applied in practice, the presence of 30 individuals listed on the Retraction Watch Leaderboard on editorial boards was screened. Six cases are highlighted to gain an appreciation of the potential reputational risks that (...) journals and publishers might incur by including individuals with a tainted academic record on editorial boards. Given the reputational, legal and other risks associated with this type of assessment and decision, more formal positioning and guidance are needed by global ethics policy-related bodies such as COPE, the ICMJE, and the CSE, even more so in journals that claim to follow these organizations’ ethical guidelines. (shrink)

The American novelist Walker Percy (1916-90) considered himself a "thief of Peirce", because he found in the views of C.S. Peirce, the founder of pragmatism, an alternative approach to prevailing reductionist theories in order to understand what we human beings are and what the peculiar nature of our linguistic activity is. -/- This paper describes, quoting widely from Percy, how abduction is the spontaneous activity of our reason by which we couple meanings and experience in our linguistic expressions. This coupling (...) of personal creativity and cultural tradition makes it possible to bridge the gaps between persons and cultures. (shrink)

Our aim in this article, after providing the general framework of the reception of William James in Spain, is to trace the reception of The Varieties of Religious Experience through Unamuno’s reading of this book.

In Spain, Peirce's thought has generally remained almost unknown throughout the syllabi of the various Licentiate programs offered. The only exceptions are the degrees of Linguistic, Communication Studies, and Philosophy, in which Peirce's semiotics is normally only alluded to or cursorily presented. Much the same could be said of Latin America. There is evidence, however, that this situation is beginning to change: translations into Spanish are now appearing, particularly in the web, which make a notable amount of Peirce’s vast production (...) accessible to the Spanish-speaking readership. Interest in Peirce's work is clearly growing in the Hispanic world, probably due to the general resurgence of pragmatism, and to the gradual approximation of Hispanic philosophers to American academic philosophy. (shrink)

There are propositions constituting the content of fictions—sometimes of the utmost importance to understand them—which are not explicitly presented, but must somehow be inferred. This essay deals with what these inferences tell us about the nature of fiction. I will criticize three well-known proposals in the literature: those by David Lewis, Gregory Currie, and Kendall Walton. I advocate a proposal of my own, which I will claim improves on theirs. Most important for my purposes, I will argue on this basis, (...) against Walton’s objections, for an illocutionary-act account of fiction, inspired in part by some of Lewis’s and Currie’s suggestions, but (perhaps paradoxically) above all by Walton’s deservedly influential views. (shrink)

Defends a version of the Davidsonian Demonstrative Theory of quotation against proponents of the Fregean Identity Theory.

I argue for a substantive interpretation of Carlos Vaz Ferreira’s account of intellectual flourishing as intellectual liberation. For Vaz Ferreira, I argue, there is an inescapable master-slave dynamic between language and language users, so that flourishing intellectually essentially involves a type of mastery of language that frees up thinking from enslaving linguistic/conceptual confusions and thus facilitates the acquisition of truth. Central to this project are Vaz Ferreira’s most interesting, and radical, views on the nature of language signification and thus on (...) human’s ability to accurately describe and know reality, for failing to keep these linguistic limitations in mind, Vaz Ferreira argues, is a central way for language to enslave humans to confused thinking and thus prevent their intellectual flourishing. (shrink)

In this article I pay attention to some of the reviews that Reason in Common Sense of George Santayana received from some of the most outstanding philosophers of his time: E. Albee, J. Dewey, A.W. Moore, G. E. Moore, C. S. Peirce and F. C S. Schiller. My paper is arranged in six sections: 1) Biographical circumstances of Reason in Common Sense; 2) Peirce’s reading of Santayana; 3) The reviews of John Dewey; 4) Other readers of Reason in Common Sense; (...) 5) Santayana returns on his book; and, finally, by way of conclusion, 6) Reading today Reason in Common Sense. (shrink)

In my paper I make a summary assessment of the connection between Eugeni Crexells and Eugeni d'Ors and that of both of them with pragmatism. I organize it in three sections: 1. First, the philosophical formation of Crexells and its relation with D'Ors; 2. Eugeni d'Ors and pragmatism, and 3. Joan Crexells and pragmatism.

Contra recent, inflationary views, the paper submits a deflationary approach to legal ontology. It argues, in particular, that to answer ontological questions about legal entities, we only need conceptual analysis and empirical investigation. In developing this proposal, it follows Amie Thomasson’s ‘easy ontology’ and her strategy for answering whether ordinary objects exist. The purpose of this is to advance a theory that, on the one hand, does not fall prey to sceptical views about legal reality (viz., that ontological truths about (...) legal entities are established by metaphysical principles); and, on the other, is compatible with common-sense jurisprudence (viz., that there in fact exist legal entities, and they all have important practical implications). While this methodology is common to legal philosophers interested in elucidating the ‘artifactual nature’ of law, the paper departs from their projects by taking a step forward in connecting this deflationary approach to legal ontology with an expressivist account of legal discourse, thus providing enough resources to satisfy the general ambition of jurisprudence, viz., to establish the conditions for the analysis of legal reality and its normative character. (shrink)

As touch remains commonly defined by the closeness it physically implies and it rhetorically evokes, the mere notion of distant touch and of distal haptic perception seems peculiar. But Aristotle’s perspective, which I wish to take as a point of departure, is firm: we perceive the objects of touch, the hot and the cold, the hard and the soft, the curved and the sharp, through other things: δι' ἑτέρων. In this article, I would like to explore this ἕτερος by showing (...) how the otherness of perception always implies an intermediary, a middle point (μέσος), i.e. an other not so other, an other that is able to translate the much more distant otherness of the perceived object. To explore these forgotten layers of alterity that fall into what we commonly conceive of as the impalpable emptiness of distance, I propose to study the idea of distant touch from the perspective of phenomenological aesthetics. In order to do so, I will first examine some aspects of the Husserlian account of perception and will then focus on the phenomenology of distant touch in Alejandra Costamagna’s novel El Sistema del Tacto [The System of Touch] (2018). (shrink)

In this article I examine the compatibility of a leading trope bundle theory of substance, so-called Nuclear Theory, with trope theory more generally. Peter Simons (1994) originally proposed Nuclear Theory (NT), and continues to develop (1998, 2000) and maintain (2002/03) the view. Recently, building on Simons’s theory, Markku Keinänen (2011) has proposed what he calls the Strong Nuclear Theory (SNT). Although the latter is supposed to shore up some of NT’s weaknesses, it continues to maintain NT’s central tenet, the premise (...) that tropes are variously existentially interdependent. I argue that the central tenet of NT frustrates several important aims of trope theory. If my arguments go through, they also implicate SNT. Because of this, I largely set aside other aspects of NT and SNT and focus on their shared central tenet. (shrink)

Hacemos una lectura del “Tratado sobre los principios de la teología” de Guillermo de Occam, y echamos un vistazo a la Escolástica tardía que esta obra representa tan bien, revisando diferentes referencias bibliográficas, que me han permitido conocer y analizar diferentes conceptos y enfoques acerca de este singular tema. De hecho, se trata de una obra mayor, de gran calibre, pero de autor incierto, generalmente atribuida a Occam, aunque la autoría real está en disputa. Lo cierto es que se trata (...) de un momento culminante de una época de la historia del pensamiento occidental; una en la que su autor, con briosa arquitectura, levanta un edificio que perenniza el pensar occamista, comentándolo, glosándolo y dándole forma enciclopédica, minuciosa, como la que uno esperaría encontrar en un diccionario o un manual del Nominalismo naciente. (shrink)

Thirty years ago Richard Rorty detected the similarities between Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (1953) and the philosophical framework of Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914), the founder of pragmatism. Rorty tried to show that Peirce envisaged and repudiated in advance logical positivism and developed insights and a philosophical mood very close to the analytical philosophers influenced by the later Wittgenstein (Rorty 1961). In spite of that, the majority of scholars have considered both thinkers as totally alien. Some scholars have attributed the pragmatist flavor (...) of the Philosophical Investigations to the influence of Frank P. Ramsey, who awoke Wittgenstein from the dogmatic slumber of the Tractatus. Nevertheless, the real scope of the influence of American pragmatist philosophy in Wittgenstein's later thought is not clearly known. The purpose of my paper is not to describe the common themes between Wittgenstein and Peirce, but the way in which recent scholarship has established some links between both philosophers. -/- . (shrink)

The aim of my paper is to highlight that for Peirce the reality of God makes sense of the whole scientific enterprise. The belief in God is a natural product of abduction, of the "rational instinct" or educated guess of the scientist or the layman, and also the abduction of God may be understood as a "proof" of pragmatism. Moreover, I want to suggest that for Peirce scientific activity is a genuine religious enterprise, perhaps even the religious activity par excellence, (...) and that to divorce religion from science is antithetical to both the scientific spirit and the real Peirce. Understanding the real Peirce requires to deal with his religious concerns, which are increasingly recognized as being perhaps as philosophically important as his scientific concerns. Since a key notion in this project is the idea of "il lume naturale" that Peirce borrowed from Galileo, I want also to pay attention to that expression which during years I have been following through Peirce's papers and books. -/- In order to try to explain some of this, my paper is arranged into four brief sections after this already long introduction: 1) God and scientific inquiry; 2) The belief in God as a product of abduction; 3) Galileo and Peirce: Il lume naturale; and by way of conclusion 4) Some remarks on the religious framework of Peirce's approach. (shrink)

Can a person from Latin America be a Catholic, or a feminist, or a democratic socialist in an authentic way? These identities come from Europe, and given the colonial history of Latin America, it seems reasonable to think that decolonizing the Latin American mind is a condition for its authenticity. Further, it seems reasonable to think that decolonization itself requires extirpating ideas and identities originating from the colonizers, especially those used to establish the colonial order. Thus, it seems that Latin (...) Americans cannot adopt such identities; authentic decolonization demands otherwise. In this paper I argue that the thought of twentieth century Mexican philosopher Jorge Portilla provides a persuasive account of the nature of authentic self-creation that allows for a kind of decolonization that makes it conceptually possible for Latin Americans to be Catholics, feminists, or democratic socialists in an authentic fashion. That is, authentic decolonization of the mind, I argue, need not involve a blanket rejection of identities originating from the colonizers; instead, it can be understood as a particular kind of authentic self-creation: one that is appropriately sensitive to the colonial history of the identities freely chosen by the agent. (shrink)

In this short paper I try to present William James’s connection with the Argentinian writer Macedonio Fernández (1874-1952), who was in some sense a mentor of Borges and might be considered the missing link between Borges and James.

En este artículo se estudia con cierto detenimiento y con abundantes textos la relación entre filosofía, fe y cultura cristiana, que ha resultado a veces problemática, quizá porque se tenía una concepción racionalista de la filosofía -casi asimilable a las matemáticas- o porque se creía erróneamente que un cristiano no podía ser un verdadero filósofo. La exposición está organizada a grandes rasgos en sentido histórico con una primera sección dedicada al impacto del cristianismo en la filosofía antigua; en segundo lugar, (...) la grave situación en la modernidad y la reacción de la Iglesia Católica en el siglo XIX; para finalmente sugerir en la tercera sección algunas claves para la renovación de la filosofía cristiana en el siglo XXI. (shrink)

The relations between the Scottish School of Common Sense and the Catalan philosophy of Martí d'Eixalà and Llorens i Barba are well known. But the links between that Catalan tradition and the thought of Eugenio d'Ors (1881-1954) have not been studied. The study of the texts from d'Ors and of the cultural context of his philosophical development gives strong support to the suggestion that the germinal role that Scottish philosophy had during the XIX century in the so-called School of Barcelona (...) was taken over in the first decades of the XX century by a special blend of pragmatism and vitalism coming from Paris. (shrink)

It is technically possible to clone a human being. The result of the procedure would be a human being in its own right. Given the current level of cloning technology concerning other animals there is every reason to believe that early human clones will have shorter-than-average life-spans, and will be unusually prone to disease. In addition, they would be unusually at risk of genetic defects, though they would still, probably, have lives worth living. But with experimentation and experience, seriously unequal (...) prospects between cloned and noncloned people should erode. We shall ignore arguments about cloning that focus on the potential for harm to the fetus or resultant human being, where harm is understood solely in terms of physical and mental health. Unless the resultant people would generally have lives worth living there is no positive case for cloning, or any other form of reproduction, for that matter. If the resultant beings will generally have lives worth living there is a prima facie case for allowing cloning. We imagine the case in which the resultant beings will have lives well worth living. (shrink)

La atención relativamente escasa que los estudiosos del filósofo y científico norteamericano Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) han prestado a lo largo de los años a la dimensión religiosa de su pensamiento siempre me ha resultado un tanto sorprendente. Desde mis primeras lecturas de Peirce me impresionó profundamente la ubicuidad de las referencias religiosas en sus escritos, especialmente en los años de madurez. En mis encuentros con reconocidos estudiosos peirceanos solía preguntarles acerca de Dios y la religión en Peirce, y la (...) respuesta que recibí casi siempre era que efectivamente había una gran cantidad de cuestiones religiosas en su obra, pero que no estaban interesados en ello. Dentro del espacio disponible, mi exposición está organizada en cuatro secciones: 1) Una presentación del artículo de 1908; 2) La noción de realidad; 3) ¿Cuál es realmente el Argumento Olvidado?, y 4) Una discusión de su alcance destacando el poder de la abducción. Citaré a algunos de los comentaristas más relevantes y aportaré un texto del propio Peirce interpretando su artículo que no he visto hasta ahora citado: se trata de la carta de Peirce del 28 de noviembre de 1908 (L 212) en la que explica a su amiga Mary Huntington el artículo publicado en el Hibbert Journal poco tiempo antes. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to describe in some detail the actual relationship between Charles S. Peirce and Alfred N. Whitehead, paying particular attention to the Peircean notions of science and metaphysics, with the conviction that this contrast can help to understand better the scope and depth of C. S. Peirce’s thought.

"I do not call the solitary studies of a single man a science. It is only when a group of men, more or less in intercommunication, are aiding and stimulating one another by their understanding of a particular group of studies as outsiders cannot understand them, that call their life a science”. (MS 1334: 12–13, 1905). This beautiful quotation from Charles S. Peirce comes from his “Lecture I to the Adirondack Summer School 1905” and was catalogued as MS 1334 (Robin (...) 1967). In 1986 Kenneth L. Ketner chose fifteen pages (7–22) of the Notebook I of these lectures to represent Peirce’s conception of science in the volume Classical American Philosophy (Stuhr 1987: 46–48). “The Nature of Science” was the appropriate title assigned to that selection, which up to then had been almost unknown to the majority of Peirce scholars. Sara Barrena translated the piece into Spanish in 1996 (Barrena 1996: 1435–1440) and we chose the quotation above as the motto for our then incipient group of Peirce scholars in the Spanish- speaking world because it so finely expressed the aim of our undertaking. Against the traditional image of the philosopher as a solitary thinker near the stove, we wanted, following Peirce, to encourage cooperation and communication between our researchers not only as something useful, but as something essential for the real development of science. (shrink)

In this paper Peirce's notion of sign is studied to try to characterize the artistic sign as representation. Then, some considerations about the work of art as a sign are developed involving three elements: experience, expression and interpretation. Finally it is concluded that beauty requires for Peirce a peculiar balance, the imaginative conjunction of the sensible and the reasonable in an artistic sign; it requires moreover the expression of something that transcends the sensible; it requires, as a sign, an interpretation (...) which is not exact and which implies growth. It requires, finally, love, because an artist will only reach beauty guided by agape updating and harmonizing possibilities through abduction, that is, creating new signs that give form to what does not have it; the artist only reaches beauty when he loves what he does and when he can express himself freely. -/- En este artículo se estudia, en primer lugar, la noción de signo de Peirce para tratar de caracterizar después el signo artístico como representación. Se desarrollan enseguida algunas consideraciones sobre la obra de arte como signo que como tal conlleva tres elementos: experiencia, expresión e interpretación. Finalmente se concluye que la belleza requiere para Peirce un peculiar equilibrio, la conjunción imaginativa de lo sensible y lo razonable en un signo artístico; requiere además la expresión de algo que trasciende lo sensible; requiere, en tanto signo, de una interpretación que no es exacta y que implica crecimiento. Requiere, por último, amor, pues el artista solo alcanzará lo bello cuando sea guiado por el ágape y a través de la abducción vaya actualizando y armonizando posibilidades, creando nuevos signos que den forma a lo que no la tiene, cuando ame lo que hace y se exprese libremente. (shrink)

Para intentar comprender la visión que Eugenio d'Ors tiene de España a principios de los años 30 del pasado siglo, es necesario entender su biografía. Cuando Eugenio d’Ors deja Barcelona en julio de 1921 solo le faltaban tres meses para cumplir los cuarenta años. A los cuarenta —escribió su hijo Álvaro— lo más normal es que los hombres no cambien ya su caudal de ideas. La originalidad de la época catalana sobre el resto de la producción de d'Ors no significa, (...) sin embargo, un menosprecio de los años posteriores. Fue en gran medida su producción no catalana y su constante actividad y participación en muchos otros proyectos españoles y europeos, lo que hizo que su “gloria catalana” no quedara diluida y que su figura tenga hoy un lugar destacado en las letras españolas. Por todo ello, la exposición está organizada en las tres secciones siguiente: 1) Su biografía catalana; 2) la primera etapa de su biografía castellana, y 3) Su visión de España en los años 30. (shrink)

A brief history of the reception of Charles S. Peirce in the city of Tucuman in the North of Argentina is described with some detail: 1) Courses and lectures; 2) Publications.

El artículo da noticia del marco de la discusión contemporánea acerca del lenguaje en el ámbito angloamericano, con el objetivo de lograr una mejor comprensión del trabajo en torno al lenguaje que viene desarrollándose en los últimos años. Se ofrece un breve panorama histórico de la filosofía del lenguaje de la primera mitad del siglo XX que se centró particularmente en la lógica y de describe la transformación pragmatista de la filosofía del lenguaje acaecida en las últimas décadas, para finalmente (...) desvelar algunas de las claves que —a juicio del autor— resultan decisivas para una cabal comprensión del lenguaje jurídico. (shrink)

En diciembre de 1996 fui invitado a impartir una sesión a profesores de lógica en los estudios institucionales del Studium Generale de la Prelatura del Opus Dei. En aquella ocasión preparé concienzudamente un texto escrito que pasé a mi querido y admirado colega Ángel Luis González para su revisión. Pocos días después Ángel Luis me lo devolvió con unas pocas correcciones y sugerencias y un alentador “¡Mucho ánimo!” en su encabezamiento. Durante muchos años conservé ese texto con sus anotaciones manuscritas. (...) Por este motivo, me ha parecido que podría ser adecuado reproducir en este volumen en homenaje de Ángel Luis aquella exposición en forma abreviada con unas pocas correcciones y actualizaciones de detalle. Mi exposición se divide en tres partes: 1) Situación de la lógica en la filosofía contemporánea; 2) El papel de la lógica en los estudios institucionales; y termina con 3) A modo de conclusión, una reflexión más personal. (shrink)

According to Charles S. Peirce and to Mariano Artigas, science is the collective and cooperative activity of all those whose lives are animated by the desire to discover the truth. The particular sciences are branches of a common tree. The unity of science is not achieved by the reduction of the special sciences to more basic ones: the new name for the unity of the sciences is cross-disciplinarity. This is not a union of the sciences themselves, but rather the unity (...) and dialogue of scientists, the real inquirers into the truth. In the light of Peirce’s and Artigas’s teachings, we can see that philosophers are in just the right place to call for this unity of sciences. This call should not be seen as promoting a return to the old scientism, but seeks a deep dialogue between the particular sciences and philosophy in order to deal with the presuppositions of the scientific enterprise. The key to the cross-disciplinarity of knowledge is not revolution, but rather shared efforts in a unique mixture of continuity and fallibilism, of affection and reason, of the attempt to understand others’ disciplines as well as our own. (shrink)

In this article we wish to share the work in which the Group of Peirce Studies of the University of Navarra has been involved since 2007: the study of a very interesting part of the extensive correspondence of Charles S. Peirce, specifically, his European letters. Peirce wrote some of these letters over the course of his five trips to Europe (between 1870 and 1883), and wrote others to the many European scientists and intellectuals he communicated with over the course of (...) his life. The translation of those letters has been an excellent practical example of the creative and abductive nature of translation, as well as of the cooperative character of research. Translating Peirce's letters has allowed us a deep study of some theoretical aspects, and at the same time it has permitted us to work creatively and cooperatively to enrich the common vision of this scientist and philosopher. (shrink)

Abstract: Faced with the thesis of the exhaustion of analytic philosophy, the work of Susan Haack shows a process of deep transformation within analytical philosophy. Instead of considering the analytic tradition as an abrupt breakdown with classical pragmatism, the resurgence of pragmatism in the last decades endorses, on the contrary, the continuity between both movements. In this process Susan Haack's work has a decisive role. This paper around the pragmatism of Susan Haack is organized into three sections: 1) The pragmatist (...) development in Haack's biography; 2) the two rival versions of pragmatism; and 3) the future of pragmatism. -/- Frente a la tesis del agotamiento de la filosofía analítica, el trabajo de Susan Haack muestra un proceso de profunda transformación en el seno de la filosofía analítica. En lugar de considerar la tradición analítica como una abrupta ruptura con el pragmatismo clásico, el resurgimiento del pragmatismo de las últimas décadas avala, por el contrario, la continuidad entre ambos movimientos. En este proceso el trabajo de Susan Haack tiene un papel decisivo. Esta colaboración en torno al pragmatismo de Susan Haack está organizada en tres secciones: 1) El desarrollo pragmatista en la biografía de Haack; 2) las dos versiones rivales del pragmatismo; y 3) el futuro del pragmatismo. (shrink)

The topic I address in this paper is whether the independence of Church and State brought about by the Lutheran Reformation tantamounted to the secularisation of the latter. Taking into account two recent essays by Harold Berman and John Witte on the Lutheran contribution to the Western legal tradition, I argue that Luther’s criticism of the catholic doctrine of Papal power came hand in hand with a theologization of the foundations of the authority of the State, which is difficult to (...) deem «secular». (shrink)

Es realmente un honor y un gusto para mí poder acompañar a Fernando Zalamea y a sus numerosos discípulos en la celebración de sus 60 años. En mi breve texto, deseo dar noticia de su colaboración con nuestro Grupo de Estudios Peirceanos y del importantísimo catálogo que constituye la Bibliografía Peirceana Hispánica (1883- 2000) por él preparada y que publicamos en un volumen conjunto en el año 2006 [Nubiola & Zalamea 2006].

The celebration of 50 years of an academic journal of philosophy in Spanish invites to evaluate the work already done and to reconsider its role in the near future. Being a philosopher and doing philosophy in the 21st century demands a real blending of thought and life, a real learning of how to share quality scholarship with big audiences. The great technological changes that are affecting academic publications enable to venture a future in which it will be possible to reach (...) more easily to a much wider audience. (shrink)

After a critical examination of several attempts to characterize the Analytic tradition in philosophy, in the book here discussed Hanjo Glock goes on to contend that Analytic Philosophy is “a tradition that is held together both by ties of influence and by a family of partially overlapping features”. Here I question the need to appeal to a “family resemblance” component, arguing instead (in part by drawing on related attempts to characterize art, art genres and art schools) for a genealogical characterization. (...) Nonetheless, I point out that the difference between these two views might end being merely terminological, for, properly understood, a genealogical characterization will have to mention a “family of partially overlapping features” in describing the origins of Analytic Philosophy and the lines of influence among analytic philosophers. (shrink)

El objetivo de esta colaboración es, en primer lugar, dar noticia de algunas coordenadas básicas de la discusión contemporánea acerca del lenguaje y la diferencia de los sexos, prestando especial atención a la acusación de esencialismo con la que se descalifican los contendientes entre sí. En segundo lugar, quiero llamar la atención acerca de la insuficiencia de las razones esgrimidas por el discurso feminista de la diferencia y por el discurso de la complementariedad cultural, que en última instancia vienen a (...) favorecer —en total oposición, sin duda, a los deseos de sus valedores— una perpetuación de la discriminación de las mujeres1. En tercer lugar, esbozo unas pautas para la eliminación de algunos elementos sexistas que todavía subsisten en la lengua española. -/- El trabajo se articula en cuatro secciones: 1) El debate contemporáneo sobre el esencialismo; 2) El discurso biológico sobre la diferencia sexual; 3) La construcción cultural de la diferencia sexual; y finalmente, 4) La búsqueda de un nuevo lenguaje. El propósito unificador que otorga sentido al conjunto radica en el empeño por ganar en comprensión de lo que es el ser humano mediante la reflexión filosófica sobre la diferenciación sexual que se detecta, se expresa o se crea, a través o en el lenguaje. La perspectiva que adopto —desde una óptica preferentemente hispánica, pero prestando especial atención a la cultura angloamericana— es decididamente filosófica, y aspira a integrar armónicamente aportaciones multidisciplinares, datos y planteamientos teóricos procedentes de las ciencias biomédicas y de las humanidades. Esta actitud supone una concepción de la filosofía que, lejos de un eclecticismo acrítico, busca encontrar las razones de la verdad en la confrontación de opiniones opuestas, sabedora con la mejor tradición que todos los pareceres formulados seriamente, en cierto sentido, dicen algo verdadero. Una segunda consecuencia de la adopción de esta perspectiva filosófica es que he evitado convertir el trabajo en una investigación lexicográfica de la lengua española, limitando ésta exclusivamente al final de la última sección. (shrink)

In the following paper, I wish to examine a problem for the theist libertarian. On the one hand, libertarians insist that freedom requires possible alternatives open to the agent. On the other hand, God’s perfectly formed moral character implies that He always does the morally best. Give His moral character, then, it appears that there are no possible alternatives open to God. We thus get a dilemma for the theist libertarian: either a) God is not libertarian free – because His (...) moral character rules out possible alternatives; or b) God’s character is not perfectly formed – because libertarian freedom requires that it is possible for God to act out of character. In the present paper, I argue that Thomas Reid, a paradigmatic libertarian, has the theoretical tools to retain a robust account of libertarian freedom without compromising a robust account of perfectly formed characters. In sum, it is necessary that agents with fully formed characters always act in character (read de dicto), but it is possible that agents with fully formed characters act out of character (read de re). The former claim captures the robustness of perfectly formed moral characters and the latter claim captures the robustness of libertarian freedom. (shrink)

In Charles Mills’ essay, “White Ignorance,” and his trail-blazing monograph, The Racial Contract, he developed a view of how Whiteness or anti-Black-Indigenous-and-Latinx racism causes individuals to hold false beliefs or lack beliefs about racial injustice in particular and the world in general. I will defend a novel exegetical claim that Mills’ view is part of a more general view regarding how racial injustice can affect a subject’s epistemic standing such as whether they are justified in a belief and whether their (...) degree of confidence in the belief is rational given their evidence. Then, in light of this novel exegetical claim, I show how this interpretation of Mills’ view that racial injustice causes ignorance relates to how epistemically justified philosophers and social scientists are in the views that dominate their respective scholarly literature. (shrink)

This entry is a presentation of C. S. Peirce and of his connections with A. N. Whitehead. Also Whitehead's connections with Peirce are explored.

What I argue in this article is neither new nor very original, but important, in my opinion, for the organization of the political space and for the intellectual work of each person. I try to defend epistemological pluralism, that is, that problems and things have facets, different faces, and that there are different ways to think about them. At the same time I want to reject relativist skepticism and vulgar pragmatism, with which this view is frequently associated. The rejection of (...) scientific foundationalism or of ethical fundamentalism does not necessarily lead to relativist skepticism. With the help of the best pragmatist tradition, it is possible to try a compromise that supports fallibilism without resorting to skepticism and cooperative pluralism. A pluralist pragmatism holds —with Hilary Putnam— that there is nothing such as a privileged vision of man and the world offered by the Science. Sciences, on the contrary, are cooperative and communicative human activities through which we humans really progress, not without having doubts or making mistakes, in our understanding of the world and ourselves. It is argued that non-relativist pluralism is not only one of the best results of contemporary scientific research but also is an indispensable requirement to achieve a truly democratic social organization. -/- My paper is divided in three sections. Firstly, pragmatism is briefly discussed; secondly, the connection between relativism, "vulgar pragmatism" and the so-called "neopragmatism" is described; and finally, I will offer an explanation of why the pluralism, which is the legacy of the best pragmatism, is not relativist. (shrink)