Thinking the Visual, Visualizing the Thought. A perceptual and Political Model of VisionMerleau-Ponty’s program of perceptivizing thought has depoliticizing effects that, though he does not recognize them, undermine his understanding of politics. These anti-political consequences, moreover, bring out the internal difficulties of his anti-intellectualist starting point. There are three areas in which Merleau-Ponty gave a thorough application, though with unequal success, of his perception-based model: the presentation of his own thought, in which his program of picturalization had a striking success; (...) the explanation of the historical process, in which his visualization model was only partly effective; and access to other people’s thought, in which his perceptivist views encountered an undeniable failure. Merleau-Ponty’s successive approaches to other people’s thought show, by two distinct paths, and beyond his own intentions, an unforeseen political defect. His perceptive model proves incompatible with his political ideas when it is applied in depth, and it thus breaks apart the cohesion of his thought. From a larger perspective, it disrupts reflective approaches to politics since it damages their conceptual bases. This article shows successively that Merleau-Ponty laid out a perceptive model of universal scope; that he applied it to several areas, including politics; that this model proves politically deficient when it serves to remove the autochthonous sources of sense; that these depoliticizing effects become more acute when Merleau-Ponty employs the perceptive model to elucidate other people’s thought; and that its frustration in this area not only devalues his political reflections, but also signals that the perceptive model simply prevents a “thinking of the political.”Pensare il visuale, visualizzare il pensiero.Un modello percettivo e politico della visioneIl programma di percettivizzazione del pensiero intrapreso da Merleau-Ponty comporta effetti spoliticizzanti che sconfessano nascostamente la sua comprensione della politica. Tali conseguenze antipolitiche mettono altresì in rilievo le difficoltà intrinseche alla sua posizione anti-intellettualista. Vi sono tre ambiti nei quali Merleau-Ponty, con diverso successo, ha applicato il suo modello percettivo : la presentazione del suo stesso pensiero, nella quale questo programma di pittoricizzazione incontra un successo trionfale; la chiarificazione del processo storico, dove tale modello “visualeˮ non è efficace che in parte; infine l’accesso al pensiero di altri autori, terreno sul quale questa prospettiva percettivista subisce uno scacco innegabile. Molti tentativi merleaupontiani di approcciare il pensiero di altri autori attestano in vario modo un imprevisto deficit politico. Il modello percettivo di Merleau-Ponty si rivela in altri termini incompatibile con le sue idee politiche, nel momento in cui viene applicato in profondità, e in ultima analisi mette a dura prova la coerenza del suo pensiero. In una prospettiva più ampia, esso ostacola un approccio riflessivo alla politica poiché ne degrada le stesse basi concettuali. Il nostro articolo mostra quindi che Merleau-Ponty ha articolato un modello percettivo di portata universale; che l’ha applicato a svariati ambiti d’indagine, tra cui la politica; che quel modello si rivela deficitario quando viene utilizzato per attingere a specifiche fonti di senso; che tali effetti spoliticizzanti si acuiscono nel momento in cui Merleau-Ponty adotta il modello percettivo per illuminare il pensiero di altri autori; che, per concludere, la sua incongruenza con questo peculiare ambito di riflessione non solo impoverisce le sue riflessioni politiche, ma attesta che in linea generale il modello percettivo sbarra la strada a un qualsiasi «pensiero del politico». (shrink)

La filosofía fue entre nosotros, durante largo tiempo, un “juego social”, en las últimas décadas se ha venido transformando en (pseudo)campo, y en la actualidad está expuesta a sucumbir a la heteronomía, decayendo a la degradada situación de “espacio de servicios”. Así la doctrina de Bourdieu esclarece el surgimiento, la situación actual, y en cierto modo también la peripecia futura de la filosofía en España. Y al mismo tiempo consigue explicar porque, en este preciso momento, es plausible el pesimista diagnóstico (...) de que el peligro de regresión a la heteronomía compromete la existencia del incipiente campo filosófico español. Simplemente ocurre que en las situaciones de crisis las percepciones de los agentes adquieren una relevancia de la que suelen carecer en etapas más apacibles. En los períodos de desilusión los agentes se vuelven lúcidos, en una palabra, porque entonces resulta más difícil “seguir el juego” que el campo les exige. Ya que tomar parte en dicho juego no es más, según Bourdieu, que una forma de ilusión. (shrink)

The shortcomings of Merleau-Ponty’s crucial concept of “institution” led him into a turning point where the way out he selected was actually much inferior, as regards the prospects of fulfillment that were latent in his thought, to the alternative path he did not take.

This paper studies five approaches on the future of alterity that awaits ideas and doctrines. According to these predictions, embedded in texts by Weber, Meinecke, Butterfield, Merleau-Ponty and Koselleck, the coming forms of thinking shall endure the same destiny affecting the ideas of the past because they will evolve without relying on historical sameness. The future of Western thought, in short, is bound to an unpredictable “destiny of otherness”. These claims, taken together, outline a redirection of the genealogical untangling to (...) the future. While they persist on linking present phenomena to realities deemed historically “other”, they also foresee that this fate of alterity will prevail in future times, an enlargement of scope that results in a symmetrically expanded genealogy. This universalized “discourse of historical otherness” makes evident that genealogy, in addition to its involvement with past vicissitudes of ideas and beliefs, is also bound to explore their future emmeshing with alterity. Its “forward-looking inflection” will proscribe historiographic prolepsis, contending that the destiny of otherness awaiting ideas and doctrines excludes any surmise about the meaning they will be given in the future. (shrink)

In the last third of the 20th century, the Bielefeld School of social history, headed by Hans- Ulrich Wehler and Jürgen Kocka, rose to prominence. It had contrasting concerns: the focus on structures and processes of development sidelined intentional action and coexisted with a political rewriting of the past that indicted the interests and decisions of dominant elites in Germany from 1870 to 1933. History was viewed, oddly enough, as retrospective politics. This article analyses the main aporiae implied by both (...) the School’s programme and its scholarly output. How did a structuralist historiography contrive backward-looking political denunciations? Is our time entitled to judge and accuse the past? Notwithstanding the weight of structures and processes, were there real alternatives for the historical agents? Did systemic causality grant elbowroom to intentional action? What chances were then missed and why? Overall, the surmise that there were always choices clashes with received narratives of inevitability. (shrink)

Comentaba en el Prólogo a la 1ª edición que nos cuesta distinguir las técnicas de los métodos y aceptar que la buena investigación clínica es la que se realiza con método riguroso. Este método reposa en cuatro pilares: que la pregunta o cuestión formulada sea relevante, que esté enunciada de manera precisa y operativa, que sea abordada o respondida con el mejor medio disponible en cada circunstancia, y que evite redundancias o repeticiones de cuestiones que ya han sido examinadas por (...) otros investigadores. Añadía que es imprescindible una dosis de curiosidad y de entusiasmo por lo que se examina. Como se ha dicho con frecuencia, el ensayo clínico es, entre los métodos de investigación clínica, el "patrón oro", el que, gracias a su característica inherente (la distribución aleatoria), está sujeto a menores posibilidades de sesgos. Esta consideración no ha cambiado. Sin embargo, mayor validez interna del método no implica mayor relevancia de los resultados obtenidos. Actualmente es común examinar protocolos de ensayos clínicos bien diseñados, cuyo "único" problema es que pretenden evaluar aspectos de escaso interés farmacológico, terapéutico, epidemiológico o sanitario. ¿Qué interés tiene la evaluación del quinto fármaco de una serie en una indicación para la que ya hay cuatro análogos que le han precedido en su desarrollo? ¿Qué interés tiene la evaluación de un nuevo hipocolesterolemiante o de un nuevo fármaco para la osteoporosis si no se conocen, respectivamente, el impacto de la hipercolesterolemia como factor de riesgo de cardiopatía isquémica o la epidemiología de las fracturas en mujeres postmenopáusicas en nuestro medio? En relación con estos ejemplos, tendría mucho más interés conocer los determinantes epidemiológicos y la historia natural de la cardiopatía isquémica en nuestro medio y conocer la epidemiología de las fracturas "espontáneas" y su impacto sobre la demanda asistencial; para ello serían de mucha utilidad métodos de investigación cuya validez intrínseca podría ser considerada "subóptima" en comparación con el ensayo clínico. En los últimos años ha irrumpido con fuerza en numerosísimas publicaciones el concepto de la "medicina basada en pruebas". Esta moda refleja en parte la importancia que de manera creciente reguladores e industria farmacéutica han concedido a los ensayos clínicos: se ha alcanzado un consenso global sobre la necesidad de demostrar la "eficacia" de los nuevos medicamentos por medio de ensayos clínicos controlados. De este modo, los organismos reguladores y autoridades sanitarias exigen ensayos clínicos como uno de los elementos necesarios para obtener el registro de un nuevo medicamento. Como consecuencia, se realizan y publican muchos más ensayos clínicos que antaño, y actualmente se pueden encontrar ensayos que sustentan la eficacia de la mayoría de los medicamentos disponibles en indicaciones específicas. Si hace unos años bastaba con examinar si había ensayos clínicos que demostraran la eficacia de un determinado medicamento antes de adoptarlo como uno de los de uso común (o de incluirlo en el formulario de un hospital), en la actualidad estas decisiones son más complejas, y se basan sobre todo en una consideración atenta de los objetivos, los métodos y los resultados de cada ensayo o de otros estudios destinados a evaluar eficacia, seguridad, conveniencia o comodidad y coste. Un buen clínico debe saber a la vez leer críticamente las publicaciones científicas y producir información relevante. Leer críticamente significa evaluar la pertinencia de los problemas investigados, los métodos aplicados y la interpretación de los resultados obtenidos. Producir información relevante implica saber identificar los problemas que deben y pueden ser objeto de investigación, formularlos, y ser protagonista (generalmente como parte de un equipo) de la elaboración del plan de investigación. En los últimos años se han publicado varios textos similares al que tiene en sus manos, todos ellos de gran calidad. El presente no pretende ser el más exhaustivo, sino sobre todo interesar a los profesionales sanitarios en el apasionante campo de la investigación clínica, en su sentido más amplio, estimulando la autonomía del lector para investigar un problema o una situación, y para aprender a leer las publicaciones científicas clínicas. Su lectura debe contribuir a que términos como "doble ciego", "p<0,05", "casos y controles", etc. dejen de ser fetiches-misterios, para convertirse en herramientas conceptualmente sencillas, útiles para la evaluación de la actividad asistencial. Esta nueva edición está muy ampliada respecto a la anterior. Se han reorganizado las generalidades sobre los objetivos y métodos de la investigación clínica, se han ampliado algunos aspectos del ensayo clínico, como el análisis de subgrupos, los aspectos estadísticos y éticos y las publicaciones sobre ensayos clínicos, se han añadido cuatro nuevos capítulos, sobre efectividad y eficacia, metaanálisis, ensayos en un solo paciente y farmacoeconomía, y el Glosario ha sido revisado y ampliado (sobre todo con términos de farmacocinética, desarrollo preclínico de fármacos, estadística y biotecnología genética), e incluye casi 750 términos. Para su elaboración me he basado en numerosos textos y diccionarios,a aunque he reformulado la mayoría de las definiciones y he optado por añadir en ocasiones algún comentario personal a muchas de ellas. Carles Vallvé ha escrito el capítulo sobre Normas de Buena Práctica Clínica. Agradezco asimismo las precisones y comentarios de Eulalia Dalmau, Javier Jiménez, Josep Maria Castel y Xavier Vidal, así como los comentarios a versiones anteriores de Fernando Antezana y Jorleny Rojas. Eduard Diogène me sugirió la idea de la portada, El sueño de la razón produce monstruos, que Goya comentaba así: " La fantasía abandonada de la razón produce monstruos imposibles: unida con ella es madre de las artes y origen de sus marabillas" La 1ª edición de este libro, que fue promovida por Zeneca, tuvo una amplia difusión, en España y en América Latina. AstraZeneca me propuso preparar esta 2ª edición del mismo modo abierto que en ocasión de la primera; su actual Director Médico Ramón Estiarte me ha ayudado en la selección de términos para el Glosario. A él y al anterior Director Médico de Zeneca, Manuel Martín, agradezco su idea inicial, su estímulo y ayuda, y las facilidades que han dado para la difusión de este libro. Joan-Ramon Laporte. (shrink)

This book is the culmination of the COST Action CA15212 Citizen Science to Promote Creativity, Scientific Literacy, and Innovation throughout Europe. It represents the final stage of a shared journey taken over the last 4 years. During this relatively short period, our citizen science practices and perspectives have rapidly evolved. In this chapter we discuss what we have learnt about the recent past of citizen science and what we expect and hope for the future.

Yago es el mal incondicional\ sus acciones no pueden justificarse y, sin embargo, puede ser defendidas [T1]. Esta es la tesis que defiende Richard Raatzsch en *The Apologetics o f Evil. The Case o f Yago*. Su argumento descansa fundamentalmente en otras dos tesis, a saber: [T2] que no hay motivo alguno que dé cuenta de las acciones de Yago como un todo y [T3] que Yago es s uno de esos que mantienen su corazón atento solo a sí mismos. (...) Trataré de mostrar, sin embargo, que el argumento de Raatzsch en favor de [T1-T3] es inconsistente con su defensa de Yago, por lo que concluiré que Ratzsch no puede mantener coherentemente las tres tesis. Esta conclusión se verá, no obstante, complementada con una propuesta alternativa acerca de la naturaleza del mal incondicional en la que se subraya el papel de las experiencias corporales en la articulación de lo ético. (shrink)

This paper examines the debate about the referential meaning of Kant’s concept of substance. In the Critique of Pure Reason and other works such as the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, the category or concept of substance appears quite uncontroversially to have both a logical meaning (by which it means roughly ‘a thing that is the ultimate subject of predication’) and an objective meaning (by which it means roughly ‘a thing that is permanent’, or, equivalently, ‘a thing existing at all (...) times’). However, it is highly contested what kind of object, or objects, are supposed to meet, in experience, the criteria imposed by the conjunction of these two distinct meanings. I discuss two examples of the main interpretations to be found in the literature: Peter Strawson (2000), who contends that the reference of substance is only matter, and Claudia Jáuregui (2021), who also includes ordinary particular objects as substances. I scrutinize their fit with some of the textual evidence, primarily from the First Analogy of Experience, and finally reject Jáuregui’s interpretation as implying a kind of mereological essentialism about particular objects. Keywords: substance, meaning, matter, ordinary objects, First Analogy of Experience. (shrink)

This article presents an explanatory hypothesis regarding an anomalous fact: the omission of complete information but also of the necessary interpretation about the identity traits and specific characteristics of civil society observed in many theoretical and practical contributions in studies on deliberative democracy. The difference between liberal democracy and the deliberative model is blurred when the task of interpreting deliberative practices is relegated or when the approach of critical theory is not applied in the analysis of the material political culture (...) of which deliberative agents are both the architects and the recipients. The hypothesis presented emphasizes the difficulties and systematic rejection generated by the main emancipatory achievements of modern citizens. The resistance aroused by these achievements among prestigious interlocutors of civil society has fueled a sophisticated reactionary rhetoric, which was reported by social science researcher Albert O. Hirschman. At the same time, the explanatory hypothesis used here has a key assumption: the existence of a striking correlation between certain argumentative imperatives and the meager cultural attention that the valuable pluralism observable in deliberative behavior receives today. (shrink)

Thinking of problems of aesthetics has a long and strong tradition in Austrian Philosophy. It starts with Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848); it is famously represented by the critic and musicologist Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904); and it is continued within the school of Alexius Meinong (1853-1920), in particular by Christian von Ehrenfels (1859-1932) and Stephan Witasek (1870-1915). Nowadays the aesthetic writings of Bolzano, Ehrenfels, and Witasek are hardly known, particularly not in the Anglo-Saxon world. Austrian aesthetics is surely less known than Austrian contributions (...) to other philosophical disciplines, like ontology, epistemology or philosophy of science. One of the aims of this paper is to show that this is both regrettable and unjustified for the following reasons: Austrian aestheticians have dealt with a number of problems (mainly concerning the foundations of aesthetics) that are salient until today; in terms of subtlety and depth as well as exactness and originality, in general, they easily stand comparison with today's analytic aesthetics; and many of there views and arguments are still worthy of consideration. In this paper, the focus is on a number of hardly known Austrian contributions to aesthetics. These contributions concern the following, partly interrelated, central problems of philosophical aesthetics: i. The problem of the definition of beauty (What is beauty? What does it mean to say of an object that it is beautiful?) ii. The problem of the ontological status of works of art (What kinds of objects are works of art?) iii. The problem of the objectivity of aesthetic values (Do we claim objective validity for aesthetic value judgements, and if so, is this claim justified?) The answers of Bolzano, Meinong, Witasek and Ehrenfels to these questions will be considered. (shrink)

Human nature has always been a foundational issue for philosophy. What does it mean to have a human nature? Is the concept the relic of a bygone age? What is the use of such a concept? What are the epistemic and ontological commitments people make when they use the concept? In What’s Left of Human Nature? Maria Kronfeldner offers a philosophical account of human nature that defends the concept against contemporary criticism. In particular, she takes on challenges related to social (...) misuse of the concept that dehumanizes those regarded as lacking human nature (the dehumanization challenge); the conflict between Darwinian thinking and essentialist concepts of human nature (the Darwinian challenge); and the consensus that evolution, heredity, and ontogenetic development results from nurture and nature. After answering each of these challenges, Kronfeldner presents a revisionist account of human nature that minimizes dehumanization and does not fall back on outdated biological ideas. Her account is post-essentialist because it eliminates the concept of an essence of being human; pluralist in that it argues that there are different things in the world that correspond to three different post-essentialist concepts of human nature; and interactive because it understands nature and nurture as interacting at the developmental, epigenetic, and evolutionary levels. On the basis of this, she introduces a dialectical concept of an ever-changing and “looping” human nature. Finally, noting the essentially contested character of the concept and the ambiguity and redundancy of the terminology, she wonders if we should simply eliminate the term “human nature” altogether. (shrink)

Las definiciones de argumentación son tan variadas como las distintas posiciones existentes en torno a la pregunta de qué hacemos exactamente cuando argumentamos y cuándo estamos, de hecho, argumentando. Incluso el mismo autor puede ofrecer más de una definición de lo que entiende por argumentación; en parte, porque el problema de la argumentación no se circunscribe a un solo ámbito, ni del conocimiento ni de la vida práctica.

In this Chapter, Maria Kronfeldner discusses whether psychological essentialism is a necessary part of dehumanization. This involves different elements of essentialism, and a narrow and a broad way of conceptualizing psychological essentialism, the first akin to natural kind thinking, the second based on entitativity. She first presents authors that have connected essentialism with dehumanization. She then introduces the error theory of psychological essentialism regarding the category of the human, and distinguishes different elements of psychological essentialism. On that basis, Kronfeldner connects (...) historical, socio-psychological, and philosophical insights in order to show that although essentialism can act as a catalyst for dehumanization, it is not necessary for it. Examples relate to dehumanization in the context of colonialism and evolutionary thinking, to the history of dehumanizing women from Aristotle to 19th-century craniology, and to contemporary self-dehumanization and ‘lesser mind’ attribution. (shrink)

El estudio y análisis de las argumentaciones cotidianas entendidas como interacciones discursivas e intencionales encaminadas a dar cuenta de algo con el fin de lograr que aquello que se sostiene sea aceptado, sería inconcebible sin la aparición de la teoría de los actos de habla de Austin (1962), la propuesta de Searle (1969), el trabajo de Grice sobre la teoría de la conversación (1975) y el importante estudio sistemático de Hamblin sobre el argumento falaz (1970). Como una reelaboración de dichas (...) obras cabe entender la teoría pragmadialéctica de la argumentación propuesta inicialmente por Frans H. van Eemeren y Rob Grootendorst (1984). Algunos autores (Blair, 2006: 11; Woods, 1992) creen ver en ella, más que una teoría, una amalgama de varias teorías y una particular versión de la teoría pragmadialéctica de la argumentación, entendiendo ésta bajo una acepción más general. Otros consideran que ni es útil ni tampoco especulativamente productivo sostener que de toda argumentación pueda buscarse un modelo según el cual ésta buscaría resolver una diferencia de opinión (Goodwin, 1999). (shrink)

Readers are awaiting a new encounter with stories united under the common title Why We Are in Need of Tales. Let me remind you that these deep philosophical books were written by Maria daVenza Tillmanns, a professional philosopher dedicated to the study of philosophizing with children, who has gained valuable experience in this field. Maria’s books are inspired by her work with her students at El Toyon Elementary School in National City (California), with whom Maria held philosophy with children classes (...) for three years before COVID-19. With parental permission, the children provided their drawings, which are used as illustrations for the books. I read Why We Are in Need of Tales, Part III with great pleasure. The focus of this book is on making decisions, sometimes very hard decisions. In Part II, the focus is on dreams — hopes and wishes we have for life. This book looks at how we may best decide how to make those hopes and wishes come true. And the answer Huk and Tuk suggest is deceptively easy: by making decisions “with your eyes wide open.” (5, p. ix). The author of this excellent book managed to describe how to make decisions with your eyes wide open through the playful dialogue between Huk and Tuk. The books are written in dialogue so the reader immediately plunges into the context of a lively conversation. Dialogue not only sharpens attention, but also invites the reader to participate in the conversation. In this way, the reader becomes a listener at the same time. (shrink)

Der Begriff der Toleranz in der Moderne wurde erdacht mit dem Ziel, Gesellschaften zu organisieren, die sich im Umbruch befanden auf Grund des plötzlichen Eindringens von Glaubensunterschieden in die politische Raumordnung. Die Definition der Toleranz als Tugend, die auf der Nachgiebigkeit gegenüber dem Andersartigen basiert, ist ein Pseudobegriff. Die hermeneutische Veranlagung, die mit der Philosophie einhergeht, zeigt, dass die Toleranz keine schlichte moralische Tugend sein kann, sondern vielmehr eine der Beschaffenheiten der Möglichkeit rationaler Handlungen (die Arten des Seins und des (...) Sagens fallen in der Vielfältigkeit ihrer Formen zusammen). Die Geschichte der Hermeneutik zeigt seit ihren Anfängen – die exegetische Arbeit war hierbei grundlegend – die Zwickmühlen der Existenzformen der Rationalität und lässt nur ein Denken an der Grenze zu, welche ihre Grundlage ist: Es gibt keine Tatsachen, sondern Interpretationen. (shrink)

Escribir hoy en día un libro sobre hermenéutica, que tal hermenéutica se refiera a la desarrollada por G. Gadamer en su conocido Verdad y método y que se pretenda añadir algo nuevo a lo mucho escrito sobre el tema parecería, a primera vista, empresa irrealizable. Que ambas pretensiones inspiren la sólida monografía de María G. Navarro —titulada Interpretar y argumentar— constituye empresa audaz y arriesgada, plena de coraje innovador, que provoca admiración, curiosidad e interés. Contra lo que pudiera parecer (...) a primera vista, el libro contiene un alto componente de originalidad y creatividad, debido a la estratagema metodoló-gica de que se sirve la autora. A saber, una hermenéutica in obliquo, estrategia consistente en interpretar a la hermenéutica gadameriana a través del prisma de la lógica de la argumentación. (shrink)

En este artículo se analiza el planteamiento de Reinhart Koselleck en torno a la Begriffsgeschichte desde el punto de vista de la productividad de la historia, el tiempo y la productividad propia de la dialéctica de los conceptos. Para ello se traen a colación aspectos muy precisos de la filosofía de Aristóteles, Hegel y Gadamer. La reflexión concluye extrayendo algunas aportaciones que podrían enriquecer la investigación de Koselleck.

In this paper art history and visual studies, the disciplines that study visual culture, are presented as a field whose conjectural paradigm can be used to understand the epistemic problems associated with abduction. In order to do so, significant statements, concepts and arguments from the work of several specialists in this field have been highlighted. Their analysis shows the fruitfulness and potential for understanding the study of visual culture as a field that is interwoven with the assumptions of abductive cognition.

The administrative discretionary act differs from regulated act because while the latter refers to the simple execution of the law, the former refers to cases where there is some leeway for a further understanding and application of the rule. For example, discretionary is necessary when the law can provide two possible proceedings, none of which is mandatory. It is also necessary when legislation merely indicates its ends, without specifying the means to achieve them. When it is not dissociated from the (...) exercise of the discretion of a constituted authority, discretionary is the opposite of arbitrariness. After defining this important notion, this paper emphasizes two highlights of it, namely, that the foundation of its power lies in the law itself, and that the distinguishing feature of a discretionary act is the justification of the reasons for the decision. (shrink)

This article asks how the costs and benefits of operating a monetary union should be distributed amongst its more and less competitive members, taking as an example the operation of the European Monetary Union (EMU or Eurozone). Drawing on existing domestic and transnational justice debates, I resist both a purely procedural and a purely distributive view. The former assumes treaties against a fair background can make any distribution fair and disregards how individual citizens are likely to fare depending on how (...) a monetary union is organized. The latter requires justice amongst Eurozone co-citizens, and it neglects the value of member state’s choices and attitudes towards risk. Instead, I defend a view of the EMU as an association of free self-determining states. I also argue that a variety of factors are relevant to this problem, including the need to protect less competitive states from ‘domination’, or inappropriate forms of control by their co-members, and to protect citizens from various forms of deprivation even if their own governments are willing to expose them to the relevant risks. This article asks how the costs and benefits of operating a monetary union should be distributed amongst its more and less competitive members, taking as an example the operation of the European Monetary Union (EMU or Eurozone). Drawing on existing domestic and transnational justice debates, I resist both a purely procedural and a purely distributive view. The former assumes treaties against a fair background can make any distribution fair and disregards how individual citizens are likely to fare depending on how a monetary union is organized. The latter requires justice amongst Eurozone co-citizens, and it neglects the value of member state’s choices and attitudes towards risk. Instead, I defend a view of the EMU as an association of free self-determining states. I also argue that a variety of factors are relevant to this problem, including the need to protect less competitive states from ‘domination’, or inappropriate forms of control by their co-members, and to protect citizens from various forms of deprivation even if their own governments are willing to expose them to the relevant risks. (shrink)

Si concebimos el bienestar como condición para que se dé auténtica dignidad en la vida individual y/o colectiva, entre diferentes especies y generaciones de especies, lo cierto es que cabría colegir que la dignidad no tiene una única naturaleza ni, en relación a la que cupiera definir como la más conveniente o necesaria o justa, se instituye conforme a idénticos grados. La (esencia de la) dignidad sería, por consiguiente, relativa. Analicemos esto.

Thema der Arbeit ist der ontologische Status von Werken sowie die Beziehung zwischen Werken einerseits und Aufführungen, Manuskripten, Partituren, Schallplatten, Gemälden, Gebäuden, Drucken etc. andererseits. Es wird angeknüpft an den phänomenologischen Ansatz von Roman Ingarden (aber auch an den von Alexius Meinung). Diese Ansätze werden unter Verwendung moderner logischer Hilfsmittel weiterentwickelt und, wo notwendig, revidiert. Im ersten Kapitel wird ausführlich begründet, warum Werke (und zwar Werke aller Gattungen) abstrakte, typenartige Gegenstände sein müssen, die in konkreten Einzeldingen (z. B. Aufführungen) realisiert (...) sein können, jedoch von diesen Realisierungen in ihrer Existenz nicht abhängig sind. Diese These ist im weiteren Verlauf der Arbeit eine nicht mehr hinterfragte Grundvoraussetzung. Im zweiten Kapitel werden die formalen Grundlagen einer Typenontologie des Werks entwickelt. Zwei Hauptfragen stehen dabei im Vordergrund: (a) Wie kann ein Werk (also ein abstrakter Gegenstand) sinnliche Eigenschaften (z. B. Klangeigenschaften, Farbeigenschaften) haben? (b) Was macht einen Gegenstand zu einer Realisierung eines Werks? Welche Bedingungen müssen erfüllt sein, damit etwas eine Realisierung eines gegebenen Werks ist? Neben dem Begriff des Werks beruht die in dieser Arbeit entwickelte Theorie auf drei weiteren Grundbegriffen: Realisierungen, Konkretisierungen und Aktualisierungen. Realisierungen sind jene Gegenstände, in denen Werke realisiert sind. Konkretisierungen sind abstrakte Gegenstände, die durch "Vervollständigung" aus Werken hervorgehen. Sie sind immer noch unvollständig bestimmt, aber vollständiger bestimmt als die Werke, deren Konkretisierungen sie sind. Beispiele für Konkretisierungen sind Inszenierungen im Theater oder musikalische Interpretationen. Aktualisierungen sind die intentionalen Korrelate von Rezeptionsvorgängen. Sie entstehen im Verlauf der Rezeption eines Werks und werden von den Rezipienten erzeugt. Ein und dasselbe Werk kann auf verschiedene Weisen aktualisiert werden (z. B.: ein Musikstück kann auf verschiedene Weisen "gehört" werden). In eigenen Kapiteln werden Probleme der Mereologie, der Identität, des Darstellens und der Beziehung zwischen dem darstellenden Werk und dem Dargestellten erörtert. (shrink)

In 1685, in The Art of Discovery, Leibniz set down an extraordinary idea: "The only way to rectify our reasonings is to make them as tangible as those of the Mathematicians, so that we can find our error at a glance, and when there are disputes among persons, we can simply say: Let us calculate [calculemus], without further ado, to see who is right." Calculemus.

Maria Kronfeldner’s Preface and Introduction to the Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization maps the landscape of dehumanization studies. She starts with a brief portrayal of the history of the field. The systematically minded sections that follow guide the reader through the resulting rugged landscape represented in the Handbook’s contributions. Different realizations, levels, forms, and ontological contrasts of dehumanization are distinguished, followed by remarks on the variety of targets of dehumanization. A discussion on valence and emotional aspects is added. Causes, functions, and (...) consequences of dehumanization, and the prospects for reducing or undoing it, are introduced. The systematic overview closes with a discussion of some important theoretical complexities that arise in studying dehumanization. After these systematic sections, the scholarly work on dehumanization gets situated in the broader intellectual landscape of debates about the ‘human’ in the humanities and social sciences. The Introduction ends with some notes on scope, limitations, and intended readership of the Handbook. (shrink)

Interview with the author of "why We are in Need of Tails." Iguana Books, Toronto, Canada.

This essay examine Samuel Beckett's *Trilogy to specify the conditions under which we could make sense of practical necessity. Among other things, I will show how Ajax' must is connected to Mol/oy's attempt to visit his mother and to the need to keep talking that both Molloy and the Unnamable share. I will conclude that their dislocated pursuit of certainty reveal - among other things - how the conditions under which practical necessity can be properly experienced have been extirpated from (...) our social and cultural context. Still, the fact that its vestiges nevertheless subsist provide some reason to regard practical necessity as a constitutive aspect of our agency. This will provide a particular sense in which the Unnamable may coherently claim: "I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I will go on.". (shrink)

En estas páginas hemos presentado varios argumentos para defender que existe una conexión entre el empleo de heurísticas y los procesos de deliberación. En lugar de caracterizar las heurísticas en función de las disciplinas, los campos y/o los ámbitos en que se emplean—tal y como hace, por ejemplo, el grupo ABC, i.e. racionalidad ecológica—las hemos proyectado sobre nuestros enclaves deliberativos, esto es, sobre un espacio eminentemente retórico y político. En dichos enclaves, tal y como solía recordarnos Quintín Racionero, la téchne (...) de la persuasión se nos presenta como parte del órganon de la filosofía práctica porque está aplicada a un espacio ontológico fundado por la comunicación humana. Y es en el seno de dicha comunicación como cabe entender la proliferación de razonamientos heurísticos encaminados al cálculo, la estimación y/o la ponderación, con ayuda de los cuales no sólo se orienta la acción colectiva sino las mismas fases de la deliberación. (shrink)

Creativity has often been declared, especially by philosophers, as the last frontier of science. The assumption is that it will defy explanation forever. I will defend two claims in order to oppose this assumption and to demystify creativity: (1) the perspective that creativity cannot be explained wrongly identifies creativity with what I shall call metaphysical freedom; (2) the Darwinian approach to creativity, a prominent naturalistic account of creativity, fails to give an explanation of creativity, because it confuses conceptual issues with (...) explanation. I will close with some remarks on the status and differences in some explanations available in contemporary cognitive science. (shrink)

The Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2009 exacerbated two distinct concerns about the independence of central banks: a concern about legitimacy and a concern about economic justice. This paper explores the legitimacy of independent central banks from the perspective of these two concerns, by presenting two distinct models of central banking and their different claims to political legitimacy and distributive justice. I argue primarily that we should avoid construing central bank independence in binary terms, such that central banks either are, or (...) are not, independent. I will argue that we should instead construe central bank independence in scalar terms, so that independence admits of degree, thus allowing us to develop an account of independence in which central banks can retain it to the extent necessary for economic efficiency, while meeting reasonable concerns regarding democratic legitimacy and economic justice. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that for blame to be appropriate the wrongdoer must be blameworthy. However, blameworthiness is not sufficient for appropriate blame. It has been argued that for blame to be appropriate the blamer must have standing to blame. Philosophers writing on the topic have distinguished several considerations that might defeat someone’s standing to blame. This paper examines the underexplored consideration of how personal relationships can influence who has the standing to express blame. We seem to assume that if (...) we do not stand in the right relation to the wrongdoer, it is not our business to blame them. I identify three challenges to this view. First, we do not know what is wrong with meddling (whether it is morally or prudentially wrong). Second, there are cases where we have no close relation to the wrongdoer, but where we seem to have standing nonetheless – murder and other serious moral offences are examples of this. Third, we don’t seem to have a clear conception of what ‘standing’ means, and this makes it hard to see how discussion on standing can help us determine the propriety of blame. This paper defends the notion of standing as a propriety condition on blame in cases of meddling. I argue that personal relationships influence who has the standing to blame through constitution of relationship-specific norms; and that the role these norms play in developing and regulating our relationships can explain why meddlesome blame is morally wrong. (shrink)

My paper examines the popular idea, defended by Kripke, that meaning is an essentially normative notion. I consider four common versions of this idea and suggest that none of them can be supported, either because the alleged normativity has nothing to do with normativity or because it cannot plausibly be said that meaning is normative in the sense suggested. I argue that contrary to received opinion, we don’t need normativity to secure the possibility of meaning. I conclude by considering the (...) repercussions of rejecting semantic normativity on three central issues: justification, communication, and naturalism. (shrink)

La oposición a una estricta separación entre las dimensiones dialéctica y retórica de la actividad argumentativa es una de las aportaciones más destacadas y peculiares de la denominada escuela holandesa sobre argumentación. Frans H. van Eemeren y Peter Houtlosser reaccionaron contra una separación estricta entre dialéctica y retórica en varios trabajos, pero uno de los más inspiradores es sin duda su artículo “William the Silent’s argumentative discourse” (1998) presentado en la ciudad de Ámsterdam con ocasión de la cuarta conferencia organizada (...) por la International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA). Sobre este tema siguieron investigando para presentar un análisis de la perspectiva dialéctica inherente al caso de Guillermo I de Orange en un congreso de la Japan Debate Association en Tokio (van Eemeren y Houtlosser, 2000). (shrink)

With the growing emphasis on early mathematics education, it is imperative to explore the preparedness of early years mathematics pre-service teachers in relation to content knowledge, beliefs, and dispositions. Therefore, this mixed-methods study explored Lebanese pre-service teachers’ mathematics dispositions and efficacy beliefs in the context of a mathematics methods course. The sample comprised of 11 pre-service teachers who completed a survey prior to and after completing the methods course. Additionally, they each participated in a semi-structured interview shortly after beginning the (...) course. Results revealed pre-service teachers had the most positive beliefs with regards to how mathematics is learned, the nature and usefulness of mathematics, and personal teaching efficacy. Following the course, statistically significant differences were observed with regards to how mathematics is learned, personal teaching efficacy beliefs, and general teaching efficacy beliefs. Practical implications include the importance of subject-specific mathematics methods courses for teachers of younger children, as well as supporting the development of pre-service teachers’ conceptual mathematical understanding prior to entering the profession. (shrink)

I am proposing here an examination o f the text Reading Capital, written by Louis Althusser in 1965. I will consider it as a text in the history o f philosophy. In Reading Capital Althusser explicitly asks which philosophy provides the basis, the foundation, for Marx’s scientific work? In this sense, Reading Capital is, at the same time, a text in the history o f philosophy and a text in the philosophy o f science. In research on Marx’s philosophy, it (...) becomes essential in the Althusserian argument to consider Marx’s historical position in relation to the school o f classical economy, on the one hand, and to Hegel’s philosophy, on the other. In other words, it is a matter of determining Marx ’s p o sitio n in a history of science and in a history of philosophy. (shrink)

In this chapter, I focus on the experience of torture and, more specifically, on Jean Améry's account of it in his book *At the Mind's Limits*. There he claims that the loss of confidence in the world is the most devastating effect he experienced as a victim of torture. I thus explore what cosmopolitan aspiration may be revealed by this loss and also discuss whether it is to be discredited as an irrational reaction on the victim's side or instead as (...) proportional to the facts and, consequently, as relevant to the conditions under which a certain cosmopolitan aspiration could be achieved or, at least, favored. (shrink)

Human nature is a concept that transgresses the boundary between science and society and between fact and value. It is as much a political concept as it is a scientific one. This chapter will cover the politics of human nature by using evidence from history, anthropology and social psychology. The aim is to show that an important political function of the vernacular concept of human nature is social demarcation (inclusion/exclusion): it is involved in regulating who is ‘us’ and who is (...) ‘them.’ It is a folk concept that is used for dehumanization, for denying (a) membership in humankind or (b) full humanness to certain people in order to include or exclude them from various forms of politically relevant aspects of human life, such as rights, power, etc. (shrink)

When are we, in fact, arguing? Even one and the same author may offer more than one definition of what he understands by argumentation: this is partly because the problem of argumentation is not confined to a single area of knowledge or of practical life. Definitions of argumentation are as varied as the different positions taken on the question of what exactly we do when we argue. Be that as it may, we are struck by the fact that the problem (...) of argumentation (above all in its application to hypothetic-inductive methods) has not been analysed as a problem linked to interpretation. (shrink)

Even when they are defined with precision, one can often read and hear judgments about the vagueness of heuristics in debates about heuristic reasoning. This opinion is not just frequent but also quite reasonable. In fact, during the 1990s, there was a certain controversy concerning this topic that confronted two of the leading groups in the field of heuristic reasoning research, each of whom held very different perspectives. In the present text, we will focus on two of the papers published (...) in Psychological Review, wherein the arguments of each of these groups were presented:. (shrink)

ABSTRACT. In this paper, I defend a strong version of actual intentionalism. First, I argue against meaning subjectivism, conventionalism and contextualism. Second, I discuss what I take to be the most important rival to actual intentionalism, namely hypothetical intentionalism. I argue that, although hypothetical intentionalism might be acceptable as a definition of the concept of utterance meaning, it does not provide an acceptable answer to the question of what determines an utterance’s meaning. Third, I deal with the most serious objection (...) against actual intentionalism, namely the failure objection. I argue that the failure objection can be overcome within a framework of full-blown actual intentionalism if one distinguishes between categorial and semantic intentions. Moreover, I show how this version of actual intentionalism accounts for the possibility of innovative metaphors and other implicatures. Finally, I demonstrate that actual intentionalism – thus construed – makes it possible to distinguish between communicative failures and the intentional breaking of conventions. (shrink)

Si celebramos hoy, 19 de noviembre, el Día Mundial de la Filosofía, es porque consideramos que la Filosofía es una especie de patrimonio de la humanidad ¿verdad? Pero ¿qué hay en la filosofía que la haga merecedora de este calificativo? Para indagar en algunas de las razones que justifican este nombramiento de la UNESCO (...).

Important empirically informed proposals of virtue cultivation invoke techniques of goal pursuit. This paper argues that these techniques are effective in changing behavior due to the attention narrowing they bring about, and further show that such attention narrowing can threaten the appropriate exercise of phronetic-related capacities. When these phronetic-related capacities are threatened, two derivative problems arise: (1) One can end up acting in morally inappropriate ways, and (2) Even in cases where one performs the morally appropriate action, one nonetheless can (...) fail to notice and appreciate features of moral value. In light of these concerns, such techniques of goal pursuit – at least, by themselves – serve the most good for those who are merely trying to avoid vice, rather than cultivate virtue. And so, I suggest that such accounts of virtue cultivation are incomplete. I then go on to argue that these undesirable effects of attention narrowing brought about by these goal pursuit techniques may be ameliorated by also engaging in certain indirect modifications of cognition, particularly those which broaden attention. The suggestion, then, is that attention narrowing techniques of goal pursuit, along with attention broadening modifications, might best facilitate virtue cultivation when employed together. While the particulars of how we might best go about this are currently unclear, this paper ends by looking at empirical research on Open Monitoring Meditation as providing a hopeful option that might be further investigated. (shrink)

This paper argues that the so-called ‘paradox’ of dehumanization is a mirage arising from misplaced abstraction. The alleged ‘paradox’ is taken as a challenge that arises from a skeptical stance. After reviewing the history of that skeptical stance, it is reconstructed as an argument with two premises. With the help of an epistemologically structured but pluralistic frame it is then shown how the two premises of the Skeptic’s argument can both be debunked. As part of that it emerges that there (...) are a couple of ways how dehumanization can be realized, and one such realization can be sufficient for affirming the reality of dehumanization for a specific case. (shrink)