El libro de María González Navarro se presenta a sí mismo como una “nueva hermenéutica” (23). La novedad involucra dos aspectos: uno que llamaremos metateórico y otro hermenéutico en propiedad. Hablando metateóricamente, el libro presenta una hermenéutica gadameriana vigorizada y robustecida por las teorías pragma-dialécticas de la argumentación. Desde el punto de vista hermenéutico propiamente dicho, la novedad reposa en que se considera que la interpretación correcta está indesligablemente vinculada a la argumentación abductiva.

Parece que en tiempos de postmetafísica, donde se quiere huir de todo autoritarismo (ya sea epistémico, ya sea ético o político), la democracia cuenta con la baza a su favor de ser el sistema político que más favorece el diálogo sobre la imposición, la tolerancia por encima de la opresión. Ahora bien, una democracia que asuma plenamente su condición postmetafísica habrá de contar con ciertas características si quiere ser del todo coherente con este su avatar contemporáneo. Concretamente, en nuestra comunicación (...) pergeñamos unas cuantas de ellas: así, la democracia deberá adecuarse a la sociedad civil postmoderna siendo capaz, en primer lugar, de fundamentarse no en algo así como una teoría política fuerte (que crea haber hallado de una vez por todas el mejor de los ordenamientos políticos posibles), sino que más bien los demócratas deberán hacer de la carencia de fundamentos absolutos y perentorios que caracterizan a la posibilidad democrática su mejor virtud. Esta cierta “modestia” de la democracia postmetafísica le marcará a ésta, además, un camino en el cual deberá escapar de dos extremos parejamente desdeñables: tanto de la fe ciega en la “salvación” del hombre por medio de la actividad política (que deja en manos de “ideólogos” o “iluminados” la esfera pública), como el sometimiento del espacio de lo político a una tecnocrática racionalidad medios-fines (que deja en manos de los “expertos” o “científicos” toda la acción común). Por el contrario, la política democrática, consciente de que debe dejar en manos de la sociedad civil gran parte del tráfico de interacciones humanas, se limitará tan sólo a ofrecer el marco donde estas se lleven a cabo del modo más tolerante y pacífico, no autoritario, que sea menester; no pretenderá competir con las religiones, verbigracia, a la hora de llenar de sentido la vida de los hombres (como haría un planteamiento estrictamente laicista de la misma), sino que más bien habría de facilitar a estas las condiciones mínimas para su libre y fecundo desarrollo. (shrink)

En las últimas décadas han proliferado un conjunto de planteamientos teológicos cristianos que, por primera vez, incorporan a su reflexión sobre Dios la perspectiva de las personas con género, orientación o identidad sexual minoritarias. Bebiendo en algunos casos de los desarrollos de la teología de la liberación (especialmente en autores procedentes de Iberoamérica) y en otros casos de la teología feminista, estas teologías pretenden hablar de lo divino desde y para las realidades del conjunto de personas que a menudo se (...) agrupan bajo el acrónimo LGTBIAA (lesbianas, gays, transexuales, bisexuales, intersexuales, asexuales y aliados). El propósito de nuestra comunicación es, en primer lugar, trazar un panorama general de cuáles son las principales aportaciones que se han hecho al pensamiento sobre Dios desde estos ámbitos. Para ello, examinaremos brevemente el modo en que las filosofías constructivistas de género (no necesariamente vinculadas a lo divino) han incidido en este tipo de pensamiento sobre lo divino. En segundo lugar, abordaremos un planteamiento crítico de las fortalezas, debilidades, amenazas y oportunidades que presenta este tipo de reflexión teológica. Por último, sugeriremos algunas posibles vías de desarrollo futuro de este tipo de teologías, así como de aportaciones que pueden hacer a otras esferas (filosóficas, éticas, sociales, eclesiales, políticas, etc.). (shrink)

In having an experience one is aware of having it. Having an experience requires some form of access to one's own state, which distinguishes phenomenally conscious mental states from other kinds of mental states. Until very recently, Higher-Order (HO) theories were the only game in town aiming at offering a full-fledged account of this form of awareness within the analytical tradition. Independently of any objections that HO theories face, First/Same-Order (F/SO) theorists need to offer an account of such access to (...) become a plausible alternative. My aim in this paper is twofold. In the first place, I wish to widen the logical space of the discussion among theories of consciousness by offering a distinction, orthogonal to that between F/SO and HO theories, between what I will call 'Self-Involving' (SI) and 'Mental-State-Involving' (MSI) theories and argue in favor of the former one. In the second place, I will present the basics of a characterization of such a Self-Involving theory in Same-Order terms. (shrink)

Para diagnosticar y curar una enfermedad del pensamiento y de la cultura tan devastadora en nuestros días como es la del relativismo, parece oportuno reparar antes en las diversas tipologías que este mal adopta, pues es razonable sospechar que seguramente las terapias oportunas podrán resultar más efectivas si lo sometemos a un tratamiento particularizado. Así pues, en mi comunicación, y una vez establecido el criterio según el cual se van a clasificar los diferentes modos de planteamiento epistemológico posible (criterio que (...) residirá en el número de instancias que se reconocen como autoridades normativas para nuestro pensamiento), describo tres tipos de relativismo posible: el relativismo cultural, el relativismo protagórico y el relativismo escéptico. Para el primer tipo de relativismo, las instancias normativas pertinentes son tantas como culturas o “paradigmas” existan en el mundo: se trata, pues, de un pensamiento que apuesta por una pluralidad de instancias normativas, y por el hecho de que estas dependan del contexto desde el cual el agente epistémico aborda la tarea de conocer o pensar. Para el segundo y tercer tipos de relativismo, empero, no existe instancia normativa válida alguna, y la diferencia entre ellos reside en el “talante” con el cual se toman tal creencia en la ausencia de autoridades (el relativismo protagórico tenderá al cinismo del “todo vale”, mientras que el relativismo escéptico se refugiará más bien en la tragedia del “nada vale nada”). Por su parte, y como alternativa a estos relativismos, también apuntamos en nuestra comunicación brevemente a los tres tipos de pensamiento (monista, pluralista y postmetafísico) que acaso podrían plantarle cara a la tríada antes descrita, con diversas posibilidades de éxito. (shrink)

Además de las numerosas concomitancias que a menudo se han venido señalando en los últimos años entre la filosofía de Immanuel Kant y la de Ludwig Wittgenstein, es posible detectar una coincidencia ulterior entre ambos en el ataque que los dos realizan a la teoría disposicionalista de la normatividad (esto es, la tesis según la cual el agente que sigue una regla correctamente debe contar para ello en su interior con una especie de mecanismo causal o disposición que produzca, ante (...) el estímulo de una norma, el efecto del seguimiento correcto). Las razones por la cual ambos consideran defectuosa esta teoría son, fundamentalmente, tres: el hecho de que esa especie de mecanismo interno es incompatible con nuestra idea de lo que son los mecanismos; la ausencia en el dibujo que nos hace esta tesis disposicionalista de las prácticas reguladas de precisamente algún poder regulativo (es decir, un “deber ser” diferenciado de lo que de hecho se da, de lo fáctico; o, dicho en términos kantianos, la distinción entre actuar “según concepciones de reglas” y actuar “según reglas”); y lo inapropiado de aplicar el concepto de causa a mecanismos internos como aquellos por los cuales abogan los disposicionalistas. En nuestra comunicación examinaremos esta acometida conjunta kantiano-wittgensteiniana a la tesis disposicionalista, lo cual acaso sirva para comprender a su vez mejor los íntimos vínculos que ligaron al pensador alemán y al pensador austríaco en más de un recodo de sus respectivos caminos del pensar. (shrink)

Philosophy has rendered a close attention to audiovisual communication in recent times, but this interest has not always had a parallel in the attention that television has paid to philosophical themes. Nevertheless, some examples of television approaches to philosophy have reached a quite remarkable level of quality. This paper will focus on one of such instances (the DVD Gadamer. Memoria de un siglo, produced by the Spanish Open National University). By means of an analysis of its main virtues and its (...) flaws (from a communicational outlook), we will try to obtain some general conclusions about how philosophical didactics and television can move ahead in their just begun cooperation. (shrink)

Modernity developed two conceptions of “nation”: “political nation” (grounded on the free will of subjects) and “cultural nation” (grounded on an objective entity, like culture, race, etc). But both axes of justification, the Subject and the Object, have recently suffered hard attacks from philosophies like Hermeneutics, which reveal heavy contradictions in them if they are to function as “grounds” of the “nation”. Nevertheless, no radical alternative to the concept of “nation” nor to these ways of grounding it seems nowadays plausible. (...) The hermeneutical approach that we propose is, then, to keep them, but in a verwordenem (weakened) sense, as termini towards which (not from which) making dialogical explanations about “nation”. In such a way, once we have excluded Modern fundamentals, a non fundament(al)ist way of thinking about it would favour the “reduction of violence” that hermeneutical practical philosophy adopts as its keynote. (shrink)

Higher-order thought theories of consciousness attempt to explain what it takes for a mental state to be conscious, rather than unconscious, by means of a HOT that represents oneself as being in the state in question. Rosenthal Consciousness and the self: new essays, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011) stresses that the way we are aware of our own conscious states requires essentially indexical self-reference. The challenge for defenders of HOT theories is to show that there is a way to explain (...) the required reference-fixing mechanisms that is compatible with the theory. According to Rosenthal, the reference to oneself as such is grounded in the disposition to identify the individual the HOT refers to as the individual who has that HOT. I argue that this leads to a vicious infinite regress on the more than plausible assumption that our cognitive capacities are limited. This leaves such theories without a foundation, since self-reference is thought essential to consciousness. (shrink)

Cognitive theories claim, whereas non-cognitive theories deny, that cognitive access is constitutive of phenomenology. Evidence in favor of non-cognitive theories has recently been collected by Block and is based on the high capacity of participants in partial-report experiments compared to the capacity of the working memory. In reply, defenders of cognitive theories have searched for alternative interpretations of such results that make visual awareness compatible with the capacity of the working memory; and so the conclusions of such experiments remain controversial. (...) Instead of entering the debate between alternative interpretations of partial-report experiments, this paper offers an alternative line of research that could settle the discussion between cognitive and non-cognitive theories of consciousness. Here I relate the neural correlates of cognitive access to empirical research into the neurophysiology of dreams; cognitive access seems to depend on the activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. However, that area is strongly deactivated during sleep; a period when we entertain conscious experiences: dreams. This approach also avoids the classic objection that consciousness should be inextricably tied to reportability or it would fall outside the realm of science. (shrink)

Como requisito para finalizar mi Diplomado en Antropología Filosófica Contemporánea en el CISAV, desarollé un ensayo con el título “La dignidad como punto diferenciador del ser humano” buscando responder a la pregunta: ¿es el hombre animal o persona? -/- As a requirement to complete my Diploma in Contemporary Philosophical Anthropology at CISAV, I developed an essay entitled "Dignity as a differentiating point of the human being" seeking to answer the question: is man an animal or a person?

The traditional approach in cognitive sciences holds that cognition is a matter of manipulating abstract symbols followingcertain rules. According to this view, the body is merely an input/output device, which allows the computationalsystem—the brain—to acquire new input data by means of the senses and to act in the environment following its com-mands. In opposition to this classical view, defenders of embodied cognition (EC) stress the relevance of the body inwhich the cognitive agent is embedded in their explanation of cognitive processes. (...) From a representationalist frameworkregarding our conscious experience, in this article, I will offer a novel argument in favor of EC and show that cognitionconstitutively—and no merely causally—depends upon body activity beyond that in the brain. In particular, I will arguethat in order to solve the problem derived from the empirical evidence in favor of the possibility of shifted spectrum,representationalist should endorse the view that experiences concern its subject: the content of experience isde se.Ishow that this claim perfectly matches the phenomenological observation and helps explaining the subjective characterof the experience. Furthermore, I argue that entertaining this kind of representation constitutively depends on bodilyactivity. Consequently, insofar as cognition depends on consciousness, it is embodied. (shrink)

Representations are not only used in our folk-psychological explanations of behaviour, but are also fruitfully postulated, for example, in cognitive science. The mainstream view in cognitive science maintains that our mind is a representational system. This popular view requires an understanding of the nature of the entities they are postulating. Teleosemantic theories face this challenge, unpacking the normativity in the relation of representation by appealing to the teleological function of the representing state. It has been argued that, if intentionality is (...) to be explained in teleological terms, then the function of a state cannot depend on its phylogenetical history, given the metaphysical possibility of a duplicate of an intentional being that lacks an evolutionary history. In this paper, I present a method to produce, according to our current knowledge in genetic engineering, human-like individuals who are not the product of natural selection in the required sense. This variation will be used to shed light on the main replies that have been offered in the literature to the Swampman thought experiment. I argue that these replies are not satisfactory: representations should better not depend on natural selection. I conclude that a non-etiological notion of function is to be preferred for characterizing the relation of representation. (shrink)

The Ethics of Liberation by Enrique Dussel pleads for three criteria that every political revolution must fulfill if it wishes to use violence in a legitimate way: the formal criterion (that basically takes after the ideal dialogue situation endorsed by Apel and Habermas); the material criteri..

Higher-Order Thought (HOT) theories of consciousness maintain that the kind of awareness necessary for phenomenal consciousness depends on the cognitive accessibility that underlies reporting. -/- There is empirical evidence strongly suggesting that the cognitive accessibility that underlies the ability to report visual experiences depends on the activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). This area, however, is highly deactivated during the conscious experiences we have during sleep: dreams. HOT theories are jeopardized, as I will argue. I will briefly present HOT (...) theories in the first section. Section 2 offers empirical evidence to the effect that the cognitive accessibility that underlies the ability to report depends on the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex: dlPFC is the neural correlate of HOTs. Section 3 shows the evidence we have of the deactivation of this brain area during dreams and, in section 4, I present my argument. Finally, I consider and rejoin two possible replies that my opponent can offer: the possibility of an alternative neural correlate of HOTs during dreams and the denial that we have phenomenally conscious experiences during sleep. (shrink)

Bajo el título «Utopías, distopías y otras nostalgias», la cuarta edición del Congreso de Pensamiento Interdisciplinar, organizado por alumnos del grado de Filosofía, Política y Economía de la Alianza 4 Universidades, abordó el controvertido fenómeno woke, una supuesta mezcla de izquierda identitaria y progresismo políticamente correcto al que se acusa de promover la censura y la llamada «cultura de la cancelación». Sobre esta cuestión conversaron la escritora y filósofa Elizabeth Duval, la investigadora Ayme Román y el director académico y profesor (...) del Instituto Superior de Sociología, Economía y Política (ISSEP), Miguel Ángel Quintana Paz, en un debate moderado por dos de los alumnos organizadores del congreso, Guzmán Díez e Isabel Rodríguez. (shrink)

The well-known distinction between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness has moved away from the conceptual domain into the empirical one, and the debate now is focused on whether the neural mechanisms of cognitive access are constitutive of the neural correlate of phenomenal consciousness. In this paper, I want to analyze the consequences that a negative reply to this question has for the cognitive phenomenology thesis – roughly the claim that there is a “proprietary” phenomenology of thoughts. If the mechanisms responsible (...) for cognitive access can be disentangled from the mechanisms that give rise to phenomenology in the case of perception and emotion, then the same disentanglement is to be expected in the case of thoughts. This, in turn, presents, as I argue, a challenge to the cognitive phenomenology thesis: either there are thoughts with cognitive phenomenology we lack cognitive access to or there are good reasons to doubt that there is such a thing as cognitive phenomenology. I discuss a... (shrink)

When reasoning about dependence relations, philosophers often rely on gradualist assumptions, according to which abrupt changes in a phenomenon of interest can result only from abrupt changes in the low-level phenomena on which it depends. These assumptions, while strictly correct if the dependence relation in question can be expressed by continuous dynamical equations, should be handled with care: very often the descriptively relevant property of a dynamical system connecting high- and low-level phenomena is not its instantaneous behaviour but its stable (...) fixed points (those in the vicinity of which it spends most of the time, after comparatively short transitory periods), and stable fixed points can change abruptly as a result of infinitesimal changes of the low-level phenomenon. We illustrate this potential gradualist trap by showing that Chalmers’ fading qualia argument falls into it. (shrink)