Este artículo analiza los fundamentos doctrinales del derecho penal eclesiástico calviniano, asentado teóricamente en la teología del pecado original y cuyo ejercicio toma forma en la práctica del Consistorio ginebrino. Asimismo, explora las razones de la diferencia entre derecho penal eclesial y civil. Y es que, aunque en el calvinismo la Iglesia y el Estado son titulares de un ius gladii, sólo uno de estos sistemas penales puede reivindicar el ejercicio de la pena corporal, el otro tan sólo puede reclamar (...) un castigo espiritual: en esto haremos radicar la diferencia entre derecho y disciplina. El derecho de coacción propiamente dicho pertenece en exclusiva al Estado como tal y ni el individuo ni la Iglesia pueden reclamarlos para sí. Estamos ante una aportación fundamental de la Reforma a la historia del derecho. (shrink)

Durante siglos, se consideró un deber del buen cristiano obligar, a todos los hombres a entrar en el seno de la Iglesia, puesto que de ello dependía su salvación eterna. Esta doctrina presupone que existe una nítida diferencia entre verdad religiosa y error. Para Bayle, sin embargo, la creencia religiosa solo puede aspirar a convertirse en una verdad putativa, sustentada en la convicción subjetiva del fiel, concepción que le permite desdibujar el propio concepto de herejía y criticar las persecuciones religiosas (...) de su tiempo. (shrink)

This paper discusses the reach of ecclesiastical power in Hobbes' Leviathan, examining how the State acquires some of the roles traditionally played by the Church. I will first contextualize historically the ecclesiological debates on which Leviathan draws. Then, I will examine the essential role Hobbes assigns to the king in the governance of the church. Although Hobbes' political theology is often deemed atheist, in Leviathan the king becomes the institutional head of the Church. Moreover, he should establish a minimal Christian (...) creed to be shared by his subjects, in order to preserve religious peace among the different churches of his kingdom. (shrink)

How should we characterize the nature of conscious occurrent thought? In the last few years, a rather unexplored topic has appeared in philosophy of mind: cognitive phenomenology or the phenomenal character of cognitive mental episodes. In this paper I firstly present the motivation for cognitive phenomenology views through phenomenal contrast cases, taken as a challenge for their opponents. Secondly, I explore the stance against cognitive phenomenology views proposed by Restrictivism, classifying it in two strategies, sensory restrictivism and accompanying states. On (...) the one hand, I problematize the role of attention adopted by sensory restrictivism and I present and discuss in detail an argument that defends the limitation of sensory phenomenology so as to explain the distinction between visual and cognitive mental episodes on the basis of immediate experience. On the other hand, I address accompanying states views by discussing the empirical studies of Hurlburt et al. (2006, 2008) that defend the existence of “unsymbolized thinking”. I present how they can be construed as evidence for cognitive phenomenology views and I dispel some problems that have been raised against its acceptance. I thus conclude that cognitive phenomenology views hold up well against the restrictivist positions considered. (shrink)

C.S. Peirce defended a pragmatist view of assertion in terms of its normative effect. This paper has two goals. First, to reconstruct and assess Peirce’s argument for the thesis that to assert a proposition is to make oneself responsible for its truth. Second, to argue that Peirce interpreted “responsibility for truth” as the acquisition of a dialogical commitment, namely, the duty to defend the proposition asserted by giving reasons upon challenge.

In this paper we introduce two issues relevantly related to the cognitive phenomenology debate, which, to our minds, have not been yet properly addressed: the relation between access and phenomenal consciousness in cognition and the relation between conscious thought and inner speech. In the first case, we ask for an explanation of how we have access to thought contents, and in the second case, an explanation of why is inner speech so pervasive in our conscious thinking. We discuss the prospects (...) of explanation for both sides of the debate and argue that cognitive phenomenology defenders are in an overall advantageous position. We also propose an account of inner speech that differs from other influential explanations in some interesting respects. (shrink)

In what ways and how far does virtue shield someone against suffering evils? In other words, how do non-moral evils affect the lives of virtuous people and to what extent can someone endure evils while staying happy? The central purpose of this chapter is to answer these questions by exploring what Aristotle has to say about the effects of evils in human well-being in general and his treatment of extreme misfortunes.

Cancer research is experiencing ‘paradigm instability’, since there are two rival theories of carcinogenesis which confront themselves, namely the somatic mutation theory and the tissue organization field theory. Despite this theoretical uncertainty, a huge quantity of data is available thanks to the improvement of genome sequencing techniques. Some authors think that the development of new statistical tools will be able to overcome the lack of a shared theoretical perspective on cancer by amalgamating as many data as possible. We think instead (...) that a deeper understanding of cancer can be achieved by means of more theoretical work, rather than by merely accumulating more data. To support our thesis, we introduce the analytic view of theory development, which rests on the concept of plausibility, and make clear in what sense plausibility and probability are distinct concepts. Then, the concept of plausibility is used to point out the ineliminable role played by the epistemic subject in the development of statistical tools and in the process of theory assessment. We then move to address a central issue in cancer research, namely the relevance of computational tools developed by bioinformaticists to detect driver mutations in the debate between the two main rival theories of carcinogenesis. Finally, we briefly extend our considerations on the role that plausibility plays in evidence amalgamation from cancer research to the more general issue of the divergences between frequentists and Bayesians in the philosophy of medicine and statistics. We argue that taking into account plausibility-based considerations can lead to clarify some epistemological shortcomings that afflict both these perspectives. (shrink)

The International Conference "Tra rito e mito: il Carnevale nella cultura europea" was held online on the 16th and 17th of November 2020. We present twenty-two contributions coming from various fields of the Humanities and written in Italian, French, and German. This proceedings’ foreword traces back the thread that links these essays one with another, i.e., carnivalesque imagery between ritual and mythological dimensions. Moreover, this introduction provides a key to an interpretation of Carnival as a founding instance, both regenerative and (...) conservative, of the European identity. Recovering this instance today, in the midst of a pandemic, responds to the problem of its partial loss in contemporary society, in the hope to rebuild a “free and familiar contact among people”. (shrink)

This chapter describes the concept of enactive memory, which is quite new but increasingly discussed in contemporary philosophy of memory. Although the enactive approach has been used to investigate several memory sys- tems, e.g., procedural memory, episodic mem- ory, and autobiographical memory, this chapter focuses only on the enactive approach to epi- sodic memory because most of the current debate on enactive memory is about this mem- ory system. Section “Introduction” specifies what type of enactive memory is discussed in this (...) chapter. Section “The Concept of Enactive Memory” introduces the concept of enactive memory, clarifies its central theoretical com- mitments and goals, and describes how enactivists have explained episodic remember- ing. Section “The Philosophical Context of Enactive Memory” provides a brief contextu- alization of the enactive approach to memory with respect to approaches and theories with which, for one reason or another, it shares some theoretical insights, like the embodied, the extended, and the distributed approach, and the simulation theory. Section “Forgetting as a Challenge for Enactive Memory” explains why forgetting poses an important explanatory challenge to the enactive approach to memory and describes one philosophical proposal that has been developed to address this challenge. Section “Summary” provides a summary of the chapter, mentions some ongoing projects on enactive memory, and identifies some topics that advocates of the enactive approach to memory may want to investigate in the future. (shrink)

The specific role of empeiria in Aristotle’s ethics has received much less attention than its role in his epistemology, despite the fact that Aristotle explicitly stresses the importance of empeiria as a requirement for the receptivity to ethical arguments and as a source for the formation of phronêsis.1 Thus, while empeiria is an integral part of all explanations that scholars give of the Aristotelian account of the acquisition of technê and epistêmê, it is usually not prominent in explanations of the (...) acquisition of phronêsis.2 The abundant mentions of empeiria in Aristotle’s ethical treatises are often eclipsed in the secondary literature... (shrink)

In this paper I examine some of the positive epistemic and moral dimensions of anger in Plato’s dialogues. My aim is to show that while Plato is clearly aware that retaliatory anger has negative effects on people’s behavior, the strategy we find in his dialogues is not to eliminate anger altogether; instead, Plato aims to transform or rechannel destructive retaliatory anger into a different, more productive, reformative anger. I argue that this new form of anger plays a crucial positive role (...) in our intellectual and moral development. In relation to our intellectual development, anger is often part of people’s reactions to the Socratic interrogations and it often helps or hinders attempts to acknowledge one’s ignorance and become motivated to learn. For anger to play a positive role in the context of philosophical conversations, Plato suggests its transformation from being an outward-looking and reactive emotion oriented towards retaliation (refutation), into a mostly inward-looking emotion aimed at ones’ own moral and intellectual reform or self-betterment. In relation to our moral progress, anger is strategically linked both to the control of our appetites and to the virtue of courage, so anger is crucial to the psychology of the good citizen. Concretely, anger is needed both for the development of the right opposition to injustice and greed, and for the formation of an adequate sensitivity to justice. (shrink)

There are several reasons to believe that there is a predominance of suffering over wellbeing in nature. The difference grows exponentially when the suffering of invertebrates is taken into consideration. Given the relevance of the experience of pain when it comes to attributing moral considerability to an individual, the seriousness and implications of the above statements are significant due to the need to reconcile the interests of an enormous number of individuals who experience pain to some degree. Depending on the (...) species and the ecosystem, there are variations that must be kept in mind with the aim of reducing the existing amount of suffering. (shrink)

L'etica, secondo Wittgenstein, ha a che fare con la mostrazione di un modo di vivere, inteso vuoi come disposizione complessiva del soggetto, vuoi come "habitus". In questo libro, Marta Cassina ripercorre le forme di questa mostrazione nell'opera del filosofo, argomentando, in primo luogo, che il modo di vivere indicato nel "Tractatus" come il contrassegno indicibile della vita giusta e felice debba essere compreso, man mano che il pensiero di Wittgenstein matura, come un "fare" e un uso condiviso della vita; (...) che questo uso, inoltre, possa essere letto nelle sue implicazioni teoretiche e nella maniera della sua genesi attraverso le "lenti" della credenza religiosa e della grammatica del voto di fede. (shrink)

This book provides a critical reflection on automated science and addresses the question whether the computational tools we developed in last decades are changing the way we humans do science. More concretely: Can machines replace scientists in crucial aspects of scientific practice? The contributors to this book rethink and refine some of the main concepts by which science is understood, drawing a fascinating picture of the developments we expect over the next decades of human-machine co-evolution. The volume covers examples from (...) various fields and areas, such as molecular biology, climate modeling, clinical medicine, and artificial intelligence. The explosion of technological tools and drivers for scientific research calls for a renewed understanding of the human character of science. This book aims precisely to contribute to such a renewed understanding of science. (shrink)

Who is Pulcinella? What does his laughter have to say about the "end of time" and the end of life of Giandomenico Tiepolo? How can the end of a life make anyone laugh like Carnival’s popular mask does? This article tries to answer such questions. By unfolding the tools that come from the realm of Giorgio Agamben’s philosophy – notably the notion of "recapitulation of time" in its relation to comedy – we will trace a path which links Michail Bachtin’s (...) theories on the carnivalesque culture together with a recognition in the aesthetics of "character". In this encounter, the consistency of Pulcinella-King Carnival’s form of life will appear in the light of an “escape route”: it winks at a kind of general and anonymous beatitude, which pairs with the experience of the destitution of time. (shrink)

In this paper, I will investigate the notion of mind within the “Extended Mind” theory, as it is defended by Andy Clark. The aim is to provide an explanation of its key ideas and to highlight some of its consequences. In the first part I will briefly explain the main features of Clark's theory. In the second part, I will discuss his account of the nature of language and its relationship to cognition, and I will relate it with the arguments (...) for cognitive and mental extension. Then I will use my analysis of Clark's arguments in order to individuate some problems, which characterize his philosophical position. Although I am sympathetic with his theory, I will argue that it is nonetheless committed to a narrow account of cognition and mind. For this reason, I will propose a way to integrate Clark's theory within a semiotic and pragmatist framework inspired by C.S. Peirce. I suggest that, if we conceive the cognition as a semiotic sense-making process, we can provide a broad account of cognition and a fully externalist position about the mind. (shrink)

Are occurrent states of forgetting literal experiences of absences? I situate this question within the debate on mental time travel (MTT) to understand whether these states can be explained as literal experiences of absent episodic memories. To frame my argument, I combine Barkasi and Rosen’s literal approach to MTT with Farennikova’s literal approach to the perception of absences, showing that both are built on the idea that for an experience to be literal it must afford an unmediated contact with the (...) object that constitutes it. I test the idea that forgetting affords literal experiences of mnemonic absences by considering different views of absence perception and I evaluate whether the objections raised against Farennikova’s approach also apply to my exploratory idea. I show that, while the idea resists the objections that an advocate of a cognitive approach to mnemonic absences may raise, the same does not apply to those elaborated by advocates of a metacognitive approach. Even if conceiving of occurrent states of forgetting as literal experiences of mnemonic absences sounds appealing, this idea is misleading. Therefore, I suggest conceiving of occurrent states of forgetting as states with metacognitive features, which track the absence of episodic memories from awareness in an affectively mediated way. (shrink)

De nombreuses recherches contemporaines affirment que les idées centrales de l’énactivisme et de l’‘Esprit Étendu’ ont une origine pragmatiste. La théorie du signe de Peirce ainsi que sa sémiotique cognitive, le concept énactiviste de sense-making et l’externalisme cognitif de l’‘Esprit Étendu’ partagent des aspects théoriques fondamentaux. En raison de ces points communs je suggère que le pragmatisme et la sémiotique de Peirce peuvent offrir des perspectives intéressantes pour mieux comprendre le débat entre l’énactivisme et l’‘Esprit Étendu’. Je prends en examen (...) un point sur lequel les deux théories sont en désaccord : le rôle des représentations dans les processus cognitifs. Je suggère qu’une perspective sur les représentations inspirée par le concept peircéen de signe peut offrir la base théorique pour une intégration de ces deux positions contemporaines. (shrink)

Philosophers of embodied and situated cognition have provided convincing explanations of what objects do in affective processes (e.g., in emotion regulation). They have often used the concept of 'affective affordance' to account for the affective role of objects but it is not clear how this concept relates to other concepts of affordance, in particular those used in empirical works in cognitive science. We start to fill this gap by providing a new definition of affective affordances and we suggest a possible (...) way to test this novel theoretical construct through a kinematic analysis of hand movements. (shrink)

En este artículo nos proponemos reconstruir las bases de la teoría política calviniana. Intentaremos comprender cómo define el reformador al sujeto político de su teología, donde es definido como Pueblo de Dios. A través de una Teología de la Alianza Calvino establece los términos de un contrato político en el que las instituciones humanas son queridas y establecidas por Dios. A continuación, veremos que el Estado cristiano según Calvino es la plataforma desde la que se promueve el conocimiento de la (...) Voluntad divina, a través de la predicación y la positivación de leyes conformes a la misma. Finalmente, veremos que las ideas del reformador sobre la organización y la naturaleza de la política tuvieron en Ginebra una realización evidente. Ni sus textos ni sus acciones nos permiten calificar a Calvino de constitucionalista o republicano, sino más bien de hombre de orden y defensor de la tradición del derecho divino de los reyes. (shrink)

Phenomenal contrast arguments (PCAs) are normally employed as arguments showing that a certain mental feature contributes to (the phenomenal character of) experience, that certain contents are represented in experience and that kinds of sui generis phenomenologies such as cognitive phenomenology exist. In this paper we examine a neglected aspect of such arguments, i.e., the kind of mental episodes involved in them, and argue that this happens to be a crucial feature of the arguments. We use linguistic tools to determine the (...) lexical aspect of verbs and verb phrases – the tests for a/telicity and for duration. We then suggest that all PCAs can show is the presence of a generic achievement-like phenomenology, especially in the cognitive domain, which contrasts with the role that PCAs are given in the literature. (shrink)

4Es approaches to cognition draw an unconventional picture of cognitive processes and of the mind. Instead of conceiving of cognition as a process that always takes place within the boundaries of the skull and the skin, these approaches hold that cognition is a situated process that often extends beyond human agents’ physical boundaries. In particular, supporters of the extended mind theory and of the enactive approach claim that embodied action in a perceptually complex environment is constitutive of cognitive processes, and (...) thus of the mind. (Chapter 1). Although both draw an extended picture of cognition and of the mind, supporters of the extended mind and supporters of the enactive approach disagree on the value of internal representations in perceptually-guided action. The extended mind theory holds that we need to posit internal action-oriented representations (AORs). AORs are valuable -the argument goes- because they account for action-selection, action-control, and for the prediction of incoming perceptual information. Advocates of the enactive approach to cognition, instead, argue against AORs. Firstly, they argue that AORs do not fulfill the necessary conditions for the identification of representational entities. Therefore, that of AOR is an ill-conceived epistemic construct. Secondly, they argue that AORs are expressive of an internalist prejudice, which makes the extended mind theory weaker than it should be from an explanatory and metaphysical point of view. I endorse both these arguments advanced by supporters of the enactive approach. Moreover, through a semiotic analysis of the construct and of the workings of AORs, I show that AORs are not active at all. Hence, I argue that AORs do not do the job they are supposed to do: extending the mind’s boundaries by explaining our perceptual relation with the world as an active, embodied, and world-involving process. Therefore, I suggest that the construct of AOR ought to be dismissed - at least in current projects in 4Es cognition (Chapter 2). I argue that similar arguments apply to recent attempts to make predictive processing accounts of perceptually-guided action more aligned with 4Es approaches to cognitive science by appealing to predictive internal models of our perceptual world. I thus propose an alternative explanation of the key features of perceptually-guided action that AORs and these internal models are supposed to be grasp. Action-control, action-selection, and the anticipatory aspects of action-perception loops can be explained by appealing to embodied actions in a field of relevant affordances, which are perceived as such based on the agent’s motor skills and motives. Furthermore, I suggest that, by combining the enactive approach to cognition with an analysis of the indexical features of our perceptual environment, we can explain perceptually-guided action in a way that truly accounts for our minds as entities that often extend beyond our skulls and skin. And we can do so without holding onto spooking entities like AORs and internal predictive models. (Chapter 3). (shrink)

The story of the Ship of Theseus is one of the most venerable conundrums in philosophy. Some philosophers consider it a genuine puzzle. Others deny that it is so. It is, therefore, an open question whether there is or there is not a puzzle in the Ship of Theseus story. So, arguably, it makes sense to test empirically whether people perceive the case as a puzzle. Recently, David Rose, Edouard Machery, Stephen Stich and forty-two other researchers from different countries have (...) undertaken that task. We argue that their tests do not provide any evidence that bears on the question as to whether the Ship of Theseus case is a genuine puzzle. In our discussion we address also what should be taken into account if one wishes to test the puzzling, or not puzzling, status of the Ship of Theseus story. (shrink)

Sometimes subjects have sufficient internal and external resources to retrieve information stored in memory, in particular information that carries socially charged content. Yet, they fail to do so: they forget it. These cases pose an explanatory challenge to common explanations of forgetting in cognitive science. In this paper, I take this challenge and develop a new explanation of these cases. According to this explanation, these cases are best explained as cases of norm-induced forgetting: cases in which forgetting is caused by (...) social norms in a relevant sense. These cases draw attention to the normative aspects of the mechanisms of forgetting. This is an important but neglected aspect of cases of everyday forgetting, in particular of those characterized by a social dimension. By investigating some ways in which the psychology of social norms is causally relevant in the mechanisms of retrieval failure, I begin to fill this gap. (shrink)

In our everyday interaction with the environment, we often perceive objects and spaces as opportunities to feel, maintain, enhance, and change our affective states and processes. The concept of affective affordance was coined to accommodate this aspect of ordinary perception and the many ways in which we rely on the material environment to regulate our emo- tions. One natural way to think of affective affordances in emotion regulation is to interpret them as tools for regulating felt affective states. We argue (...) that this way of conceiving of affective affordances is too restrictive. By analyzing the role of expressive properties of objects and spaces in emotion regulation, we show that our environment does not need to elicit felt affective states to regulate our emotions. Thus, we revise the concept of affective affordance to accommodate these cases. This revised concept explains more with less. Hence, it should be preferred in wide-reaching philosophical projects that aim to explain human affectivity as a situated phenomenon. (shrink)

This article offers an analysis of the problem of Augustine’s rationalism, by paying particular attention to his Dialogi, in which the Ciceronian and Christian ideal of the search for truth (quaerere veritatem) emerges as a life-long project. It shows how in Augustine’s thought the overcoming of Manichaeism has to be understood as a liberation from an ‘experience of madness’, or ‘perverse logic’, produced by an imagination unable to rise to pure rationality, in contrast with the ideal of order typical of (...) classical education, and in particular of the rhetorics, based on Cicero, which Augustine had learned in African schools. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss the Protestant contribution to the modern concept of autonomy on the basis of an analysis of John Calvin's moral theology. I show that Calvin affirms our incapacity to know and want what is morally good, as expressed by natural law. Such incapacity is compensated for by the biblical mandates that, according to Calvin, should be incorporated into the positive legislation of Christian republics. In view of all this, I conclude that Calvin is far from the (...) Kantian idea of autonomy which defines our Modernity. (shrink)

«A experiência global e partilhada da pandemia obrigou-nos a focar a natureza – simultaneamente pública e ética – das decisões em saúde e fez sobressair a importância do consenso. Esta exigência – agora tão visível – vinha-se fazendo sentir há décadas. Prova disso é que cresceu exponencialmente a literatura que se debruça sobre as implicações antropológicas e éticas dos grandes âmbitos da cultura mais diretamente vinculados ao mundo da tecnologia, das biotecnologias à inteligência artificial. Uma das áreas em que a (...) necessidade de reflexão se fez sentir primeiro e de forma mais nítida foi a das ciências da vida. [...]. (shrink)

In this paper, I will discuss what the first phases of the long history of the transformation of Political in the Spiritual patria consisted of and those who made the development possible. In this essay the main protagonists will be Cicero and Saint Augustine. We will see how St. Augustine could complete the transformation of Cicero's political ideal not only theoretically but practically. St. Augustine's great work can be understood to be a replica of Cicero's Republic in which the City (...) of God is made into the Dream of Scipio and the Church occupies the place of the res publica. The theologizing of the political concepts is taken from the modernization process which Schmitt defined as illegitimate politics of the process of secularization of theoretical concepts. (shrink)

Imagine a sculptor who molds a lump of clay to create a statue. Hylomorphism claims that the statue and the lump of clay are two different colocated objects that have different forms, even though they share the same matter. Recently, there has been some discussion on the requirements of consistency for hylomorphist theories. In this paper, we focus on an argument presented by Maegan Fairchild, according to which a minimal version of hylomorphism is inconsistent. We argue that the argument is (...) unsound or, at best, it just points to a well-known problem for hylmorphist theories. Additionally, we explore some general consequences of this fact. (shrink)

The authors of the contribution closely follow the published results of their sociological research regarding views of Slovak teachers at primary and secondary schools in the area of relationships with students, parents, colleagues and superiors (Gluchman, & Gluchmanová, 2016). The present contribution analyses views of students at the second level of primary school and at secondary schools by means of evaluating their relationship to teachers, as well as relationships between parents and teachers while students’ views regarding the presence of violence (...) and bullying at school are also addressed. The research results indicate that almost a third of students do not perceive their teachers as ethical models of behaviour and actions; moreover, they have also witnessed instances of corrupt behaviour on the part of teachers. On the other hand, almost two thirds of students appreciate that teachers, when addressing problems at school, proceed in accordance with ethical principles and norms. Unlike teachers, students do not believe serious problems are present when it comes to the behaviour of parents toward teachers. They, however, believe the behaviour of students towards teachers is a more problematic area. (shrink)

One usually makes assertions by means of uttering indicative sentences like “It is raining”. However, not every utterance of an indicative sentence is an assertion. For example, in uttering “I will be back tomorrow”, one might be making a promise. What is to make an assertion? C.S. Peirce held the view that “to assert a proposition is to make oneself responsible for its truth” (CP 5.543). In this thesis, I interpret Peirce’s view of assertion and I evaluate Peirce’s reasons for (...) holding it. I begin by reconstructing and assessing Peirce’s case for such view as it appears in (EP 2.140, 1903), (EP 2.312-313, 1904), and (CP 5.546, 1908). Then, I continue by elaborating on three aspects of Peirce’s view of assertion, namely, assertion as an act involving a certain kind of responsibility, the proposition as what is asserted, and responsibility for truth as a responsibility to give reasons. With respect to these three aspects, I argue for the following claims: (1) Peirce construed the responsibility involved in asserting as a moral responsibility; (2) Peirce held that propositions are types; and (3) Peirce was committed to a dialogical interpretation of “responsibility to give reasons”. Finally, I end by presenting two objections to Peirce’s view of assertion and its corresponding replies. I conclude that Peirce’s account of assertion is a valuable contribution to the philosophical debate on assertion. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt suele ser considerado un crítico de la modernidad por sostener que los principales conceptos de la teoría del Estado son conceptos teológicos secularizados. En este trabajo pretendemos poner de manifiesto que la importancia que Schmitt concede a la teología es aún mayor. En efecto, la secularización se refiere a los conceptos claves de la teoría del Estado, pero la política es previa al Estado. Y para establecer sus categorías, Schmitt se sirve de la teología: el carácter conflictivo o (...) pacífico del hombre remite al pecado original; el dilema amigo/enemigo a la elección entre Dios y el diablo, etc. Exploraremos el .alcance de estas analogías, intentando mostrar el carácter inerradicablemente teológico del pensamiento de Schmitt. (shrink)

For many, putting in doubt the existence of phenomenal consciousness is absurd since the distinction between appearance and reality does not apply to it. Many cognitive scientists and neuroscientists accept the existence of consciousness in virtue of such reasoning. The present work questions that justification. Consciousness is a concept whose scientific meaning comes from philosophy or colloquial language. From this, it concludes that the “self-evident nature of consciousness” is not a scientifically valid statement. This philosophical assumption rests on a category (...) mistake in scientific language use. (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)

Far from being rigorously defined, the concept of species in a biologicalsense has suffered from imprecision since Charles Darwin. This is mainlydue to the absence of a definition that allows to combine within eachspecies the organisms that are considered part of it. The objective of thiswork is to show, on the one hand, the diversity of characterizations of theconcept of species as well as their respective problems and, on the other,the different sustainable ontological positions. As a consequence of theaforementioned imprecision, (...) the ethical consequences that this entails inthe debate about speciesism are analyzed. (shrink)

El presente artículo tiene como principal objetivo introducir al lector algunos de los conceptos fundamentales de la filosofía de Gottlob Frege. Estos son: el binomio sentido/referencia, el valor veritativo de oraciones con elementos no referenciales, la distinción entre pensar, juzgar y aseverar, su concepción de los indéxicos y los demostrativos, así como su defensa de la existencia de un tercer reino. En algunos de ellos se mostrarán algunas problemáticas asociadas que han sido destacados por pensadores de renombre. Tal es el (...) caso, por ejemplo, de la famosa crítica de Bertrand Russell a la semántica de Frege por su incapacidad para dar cuenta del valor de verdad de oraciones ficticias. Dirigido especialmente al lector lego en la materia, aunque sin perder rigor académico, este trabajo procura presentar algunas de las principales tesis fregeanas a través de sus fuentes primarias. (shrink)