Donald Davidson contributed to the discussion of logical form in two ways. On the one hand, he made several influential suggestions on how to give the logical forms of certain constructions of natural language. His account of adverbial modification and so called action-sentences is nowadays, in some form or other, widely employed in linguistics (Harman (forthcoming) calls it "the standard view"). Davidson's approaches to indirect discourse and quotation, while not as influential, also still attract attention today. On the other hand, (...) Davidson provided a general account of what logical form is. This paper is concerned with this general account. Its foremost aim is to give a faithful and detailed picture of what, according to Davidson, it means to give the logical form of a sentence. The structure of the paper is as follows. (1) I will first informally introduce a notion of logical form as the form that matters in certain kinds of entailments, and indicate why philosophers have taken an interest in such a notion. (2) The second section develops constraints that we should arguably abide by in giving an account of logical form. (3) I then turn to Davidson’s view of what is involved in giving such an account. To this end, I will try to reconstruct Davidson’s view of the connection between an assignment of logical forms, a truth theory and a meaning theory. (4) Finally, I will briefly discuss possible problems of Davidson’s account as developed in this paper. (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)

Considerando el contexto bélico y el surgimiento de las vanguardias a inicios del siglo XX, fundamento en este trabajo las razones por las cuales la presencia del concepto de nivola, atribuida por Miguel de Unamuno para hacer referencia a la técnica literaria que emplea en su novela Niebla (1914), suscita una confrontación posible entre universos compuestos por elementos de la realidad y lo virtual. En ese sentido, será propicio explicar el procedimiento que origina esa colisión de planos establecidos. Para (...) ello, recurriré a categorías literarias que sustentan las teorías de la ficción, según la percepción de Thomas Pavel y Marie-Laure Ryan. (shrink)

Non-representational approaches to cognition have struggled to provide accounts of long-term planning that forgo the use of representations. An explanation comes easier for cognitivist accounts, which hold that we concoct and use contentful mental representations as guides to coordinate a series of actions towards an end state. One non-representational approach, ecological-enactivism, has recently seen several proposals that account for “high-level” or “representation-hungry” capacities, including long-term planning and action coordination. In this paper, we demonstrate the explanatory gap in these accounts that (...) stems from avoiding the incorporation of long-term intentions, as they play an important role both in action coordination and perception on the ecological account. Using recent enactive accounts of language, we argue for a non-representational conception of intentions, their formation, and their role in coordinating pre-reflective action. We provide an account for the coordination of our present actions towards a distant goal, a skill we call distal engagement. Rather than positing intentions as an actual cognitive entity in need of explanation, we argue that we take them up in this way as a practice due to linguistically scaffolded attitudes towards language use. (shrink)

Considering the war context and the emergence of the avant-garde in the early twentieth century, I base on this work the reasons why the presence of the concept of nivola, attributed by Miguel de Unamuno to refer to the literary technique used in his novel Mist (1914), provokes a possible confrontation between universes composed of elements of reality and the virtual. In that sense, it will be appropriate to explain the procedure that originates that collision of established plans. For (...) this, I will resort to literary categories that support the theories of fiction, according to the perception of Thomas Pavel and Marie-Laure Ryan. (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)

Similarity-based cognition is commonplace. It occurs whenever an agent or system exploits the similarities that hold between two or more items—e.g., events, processes, objects, and so on—in order to perform some cognitive task. This kind of cognition is of special interest to cognitive neuroscientists. This paper explicates how similarity-based cognition can be understood through the lens of radical enactivism and why doing so has advantages over its representationalist rival, which posits the existence of structural representations or S-representations. Specifically, it is (...) argued that there are problems both with accounting for the content of S-representations and with understanding how neurally-based structural similarities can work as representations in guiding intelligent behavior. Finally, with these clarifications in place, it is revealed how radical enactivism can commit to an account of similarity-based cognition in its understanding of neurodynamics. (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)

Explaining agency is a significant challenge for those who are interested in the sciences of the mind, and non-representationalists are no exception to this. Even though both ecological psychologists and enactivists agree that agency is to be explained by focusing on the relation between the organism and the environment, they have approached it by focusing on different aspects of the organism-environment relation. In this paper, I offer a suggestion for a radical embodied account of agency that combines ecological psychology with (...) recent trends in enactive cognitive science. According to this proposal, while enactivism focuses primarily on describing how our acquired sensorimotor schemes and habits mutually equilibrate, affecting our tendency to act upon some affordances instead of others, ecological psychology focuses on studying how perceptual information contributes to the actualization of the sensorimotor schemes and habits without mediating representations, inferences, and computations. The paper concludes by briefly exploring how this ecological-enactive theory of agency can account for how socio-cultural norms shape human agency. (shrink)

Recent experimental studies indicate that epistemically irrelevant factors can skew our intuitions, and that some degree of scepticism about appealing to intuition in philosophy is warranted. In response, some have claimed that philosophers are experts in such a way as to vindicate their reliance on intuitions—this has become known as the ‘expertise defence’. This paper explores the viability of the expertise defence, and suggests that it can be partially vindicated. Arguing that extant discussion is problematically imprecise, we will finesse the (...) notion of ‘philosophical expertise’ in order to better reflect the complex reality of the different practices involved in philosophical inquiry. On this basis, we offer a new version of the expertise defence that allows for distinct types of philosophical expertise. The upshot of our approach is that wholesale vindications or rejections of the expertise defence are shown to be unwarranted; we must instead turn to local, piecemeal investigations of philosophical expertise. Lastly, in the spirit of taking our own advice, we exemplify how recent developments from experimental philosophy lend themselves to this approach, and can empirically support one instance of a successful expertise defence. (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)

This article develops a constructive criticism of methodological conventionalism. Methodological conventionalism asserts that standards of inductive risk ought to be justified in virtue of their ability to facilitate coordination in a research community. On that view, industry bias occurs when conventional methodological standards are violated to foster industry preferences. The underlying account of scientific conventionality, however, is problematically incomplete. Conventions may be justified in virtue of their coordinative functions, but often qualify for posterior empirical criticism as research advances. Accordingly, industry (...) bias does not only threaten existing conventions but may impede their empirically warranted improvement if they align with industry preferences. My empiricist account of standards of inductive risk avoids such a problem by asserting that conventional justification can be pragmatically warranted but has, in principle, only a provisional status. Methodological conventions, therefore, should not only be defended from preference-based infringements on their coordinative function but ought to be subjected to empirical criticism. (shrink)

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)

Recension of the 2023 book "Ethics and Time in the Philosophy of History" an interesting book on metaphysics, moral philosophy, existentialism, and speculative philosophy of history.

Digital COVID certificates are a novel public health policy to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. These immunity certificates aim to incentivize vaccination and to deny international travel or access to essential spaces to those who are unable to prove that they are not infectious. In this article, we start by describing immunity certificates and highlighting their differences from vaccination certificates. Then, we focus on the ethical, legal, and social issues involved in their use, namely autonomy and consent, data protection, equity, and (...) international mobility from a global fairness perspective. The main conclusion of our analysis is that digital COVID certificates are only acceptable if they meet certain conditions: that they should not process personal data beyond what is strictly necessary for the aimed goals, that equal access to them should be guaranteed, and that they should not restrict people’s autonomy to access places where contagion is unlikely. We conclude that, if such conditions are guaranteed, digital COVID certificates could contribute to mitigating some of the most severe socioeconomic consequences of the pandemic. (shrink)

Alleged self-evidence aside, conceivability arguments are one of the main reasons in favor of the claim that there is a Hard Problem. These arguments depend on the appealing Kripkean intuition that there is no difference between appearances and reality in the case of consciousness. I will argue that this intuition rests on overlooking a distinction between cognitive access and consciousness, which has received recently important empirical support. I will show that there are good reasons to believe that the intuition is (...) misguided—at least on the reading that the conceivability arguments require—and hence that the arguments are unsupported. This, in turn, alleviates the Hard Problem but leaves us with what I think is a not easy problem. (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)

It is a fact that there is ethical criticism about art. Art critics, the general public and even artists point out moral flaws in artworks while evaluating them. Philosophers, however, have maintained a hot debate on the meaning of such criticism. This debate can be understood as a disagreement about the kind of relation between the artistic value of artworks and their alleged moral value. While some claim that moral value can contribute to artistic value (moralism), others claim that there (...) cannot be such a contribution (autonomism). Since at least some works of architecture are artworks, that debate also concerns architecture. A moderate moralist view claims that some works of architecture have moral flaws/merits that bear on their artistic evaluation. In an apparently promising version, the contention is that some moral flaws/merits are aesthetically relevant. In this paper I argue against such contention and defend an autonomist view. Following some taxonomy remarks I distinguish the views in the debate and present two points in favour of autonomism: its simplicity and not having the burden of proof. Then I discuss Carroll’s merited response argument for moralism and I argue that in its best interpretation either it begs the question against autonomism or it is compatible with it. I conclude with some possible objections that may help further investigations on the subject. (shrink)

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)

Theoretical and practical activity have traditionally been understood as complementary activities: through theoretical activity the subject would internalize the external world, while through practical activity she would externalize her internal goals. Hegel scholars have often attempted to interpret the difference and relation between subjective and objective spirit on the basis of that way of understanding theoretical and practical activity. Such approach, however, raises serious exegetical and conceptual problems about the meaning and formal structure of Hegel´s entire philosophy of spirit. Indeed, (...) if what primarily characterizes subjective spirit is the activity of knowing considered as the process of idealization and internalization of the external world and what characterizes, in turn, objective spirit is the externalization of the goals of the will, how should we conceive within such explanatory framework the specificity of the acts of absolute spirit, that is to say, of the human behavior in art, religion, and philosophy? In my talk I will first attempt to clarify what exactly defines, according to Hegel, theoretical and practical activity, in order to develop on that basis an exegetical model that can satisfactorily account for Hegel´s peculiar periodization of the different forms of human activity. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article offers the first step in an ongoing project of revisiting the foundations of latinidad and lo latinoamericano by focusing on the exclusions enacted by the history of these concepts and the cultural and political identity that comes with them. In conversation with Susana Nuccetelli and Omar Rivera, the author focuses on two emblematic authors in the history of Latin American philosophy (Simón Bolívar and José de Vasconcelos) that are usually read as offering a novel, liberatory conception of (...) the Latin American reality/identity, categorically different from European and Anglo-American conceptions. This common reading of some of the foundational texts on Latin American identity, however, conceals not only the active, textual removal of Blackness in the construction of this identity, but also the literal subtraction of Black bodies, lives, and histories from the Latin American nations and communities. Both of these elements are an explicit part of the philosophical programs of Bolívar and Vasconcelos. The article shows how the thought and political practice of these two authors, celebrated in different ways as foundational of what we understand as Latin America today, exemplify the exclusionary historical demarcation of latinidad. (shrink)

Many philosophers and scientists have argued that the difference between phenomenally conscious states and other kind of states lies in the implicit self-awareness that conscious states have. Higher-Order Representationalist theories, attempt to explain such a self-awareness by means of a higher-order representation. Consciousness relies on our capacity to represent our own mental states, consciousness depends on our Theory of Mind. Such an ability can, at least conceptually, be decomposed into another two: mindreading and metacognition. In this paper I will argue (...) that consciousness cannot depend on mindreading. The tenability of HOR theories depends, therefore, on the relation between mindreading and metacognition. I analyze several views on such a relation and argue that none of them seem to be a plausible option for HOR theories. (shrink)

Las últimas décadas del siglo XX hasta nuestros días parecen estar mostrando un continuo abandono de la filosofía para explicar los temas del mundo y del hombre, más específicamente, el abandono de la metafísica. ¿Se está olvidando la metafísica?, ¿se trata de un saber perimido, reservado sólo para especialistas de estudios clásicos? En esta comunicación pretendo señalar, en primer lugar la actualidad e importancia de la reflexión en torno a la antropología filosófica, y en segundo, la insoslayable necesidad de contar (...) con una metafísica como saber de supuestos. Toda antropología se basa en una idea de hombre, en una filosofía que intenta explicar quién es el ser humano. La ciencia no puede dar una respuesta cabal a dichos supuestos, porque su estatuto epistemológico asume como hechos de experiencia la constitución psico-física humana y su comportamiento. La filosofía, en cambio, indaga acerca del por qué del ser humano, no solo de sus aspectos fenomenológicos, sino el sustrato que lo constituye. Mucho se ha oído hablar de la crisis de la metafísica, sin embargo, a pesar de “tantos sepultureros” que desean enterrarla, ella se sigue presentando para reclamar respuestas fundamentales, radicales. ¿Por qué tanto rechazo? Este es un tema que nos puede dar para pensar y debatir en el Congreso que celebramos. Hay propuestas de una “renovación de la metafísica” que viene de corrientes personalistas, pero también hay sugerencias estimulantes desde la Filosofía Analítica, ¿merece la pena el intento? Quisiera recordar que las preguntas que se oyen en nuestras aulas de Filosofía remiten a explicaciones de hondo calado acerca del hombre, si deseamos plantear una antropología filosófica que no se quede en medianías, tal vez haya que analizar la vuelta a esa reflexión de ultimidades. (shrink)

The Challenge from Cognitive Diversity (CCD) states that demography-specific intuitions are unsuited to play evidential roles in philosophy. The CCD attracted much attention in recent years, in great part due to the launch of an international research effort to test for demographic variation in philosophical intuitions. In the wake of these international studies the CCD may prove revolutionary. For, if these studies uncover demographic differences in intuitions, then in line with the CCD there would be a good reason to challenge (...) philosophical views that rely on those intuitions for evidential support. I argue that philosophical views that rely on demography-specific intuitions for evidential support need not be threatened by such findings. I first provide a detailed analysis of the epistemological principles driving the CCD and distinguish three formulations of this challenge. I then show that there are good reasons to reject all such formulations of the CCD. (shrink)

Some philosophers, like David Chalmers, have either shown their sympathy for, or explicitly endorsed, the following two principles: Panpsychism—roughly the thesis that the mind is ubiquitous throughout the universe—and Organizational Invariantism—the principle that holds that two systems with the same fine-grained functional organization will have qualitatively identical experiences. The purpose of this paper is to show the tension between the arguments that back up both principles. This tension should lead, or so I will argue, defenders of one of the principles (...) to give up on the other. (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)

The notion of the human embryo is not immutable. Various scientific and technological breakthroughs in reproductive biology have compelled us to revisit the definition of the human embryo during the past 2 decades. Somatic cell nuclear transfer, oocyte haploidisation and, more recently, human stem cell-derived embryo models have challenged this scientific term, which has both ethical and legal repercussions. Here, we offer a legal perspective to identify a universally accepted definition of ‘embryo’ which could help to ease and unify the (...) regulation of such entities in different countries. (shrink)

Em analogia com outras discriminações, como o racismo ou o sexismo, o especismo é concebido como uma forma de discriminação moral com base na espécie. Em grande medida, a discussão contemporânea sobre a importância moral dos animais surgiu e desenvolveu-se em torno da crítica e da defesa do especismo. Este artigo oferece uma visão da discussão filosófica contemporânea sobre o especismo. Após uma breve introdução, apresenta-se uma definição de especismo e caracterizam-se vários tipos de especismo, sendo o Antropocentrismo o mais (...) relevante. Depois, expõe-se um argumento proeminente contra o Antropocentrismo: o argumento dos casos marginais. Por fim, algumas posições antropocêntricas são criticamente discutidas. (shrink)

En esta entrevista, el integrante de RIO, Cucho Galarza, narra cómo conformó este grupo musical en el Perú y la repercusión que tuvo en la conciencia de los ciudadanos. Esto se generaría porque las letras de sus canciones estaban caracterizadas por un mensaje social y político que se vivía en ese entonces. Por ese motivo, el objetivo de este trabajo es que el artista revele qué hizo asequible que la transmisión de su ideal fuera bien recibida por la sociedad, sin (...) que tenga que enfrentarse a la censura o al silencio político. Más allá de ese contenido, debe destacarse que la melodía de sus canciones también hizo posible que la recepción fuera grata. Para finalizar, en esta conversación, se conocerá toda esa trayectoria musical que permitió que la banda RIO lograse un valor en la sociedad peruana que hasta hoy en día se le recuerda y se le escucha. (shrink)

En la historia no hay solución de continuidad. Este principio racionalista sirve para desmitificar la historia de la filosofía que la academia occidental ha fabricado desde un punto de vista etnocéntrico. Desde su nacimiento en Grecia, el racionalismo penetró en Oriente Medio y Norte de África, para pasar luego a Europa a través del desarrollo científico y filosófico de al-Ándalus en la Edad Media.

Este trabalho é uma breve análise do livro eletrônico ― tomado como meio de comunicação relevante para a educação e a cultura no futuro próximo ― centrada nos potenciais e desafios que ele apresenta em relação a acesso e autonomia. A análise visa apontar tendências gerais relativas às características das plataformas de leitura (dispositivos leitores e softwares), particularmente para leitores. Essas tendências são extrapoladas a partir de um pequeno número de exemplos ou casos já existentes. O trabalho avalia as restrições (...) à autonomia impostas pelo caráter proprietário das plataformas de leitura atuais, bem como seus efeitos sobre a mercantilização do livro, e esboça alternativas possíveis, ligadas a padrões abertos de arquivos, software livre e hardware livre. Conclui relacionando esse novo meio à chamada “era do acesso” (RIFKIN) ― evidenciada pela transição da propriedade à licença de uso dos livros ―, e avaliando as principais consequências possíveis (positivas e negativas) dessa transformação. (shrink)

In this essay we discuss recent attempts to analyse the notion of representation, as it is employed in cognitive science, in purely informational terms. In particular, we argue that recent informational theories cannot accommodate the existence of metarepresentations. Since metarepresentations play a central role in the explanation of many cognitive abilities, this is a serious shortcoming of these proposals.

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)

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..

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.

TRABAJO DE FIN DE GRADO -/- Søren Kierkegaard (Copenhague, 1813-1855) figura como una de las grandes figuras del pensamiento filosófico de Europa en pleno siglo XIX. Su filosofía se articula como una tensión constante entre el pesimismo existencial, la fe protestante y la impotencia de la razón, motivo por el cual se ha debatido acerca de lo adecuado del calificativo de filósofo o teólogo. Los años 1844 y 1849, por otra parte, son uno de los más prolijos de su carrera (...) como escritor, publicando textos como "Migajas filosóficas", "El concepto de angustia" o "La enfermedad mortal". Se trata de las obras seleccionadas para el presente trabajo, cuyo primer objetivo no es sino la investigación del papel de la fe en la filosofía de Kierkegaard. Esto responde a varios motivos: el primero de ellos, por la inextricabilidad que comporta la religión con las concepciones de la existencia en su obra. Como hemos mencionado, el análisis vital que hace en sus escritos siempre tienen presente las aportaciones del cristianismo, sobre todo en su vertiente protestante. De esta manera, saber cuál es la significación esencial de fe en el autor danés permitirá una más profunda dilucidación de su vinculación con el resto de los condicionantes existenciales que plantea, como lo son la angustia o el terror. -/- El segundo motivo se marcaría por la cercanía temática que guarda con un aclamado personaje de nuestras letras: Miguel de Unamuno. En efecto, el bilbaíno escritor de "nivolas" ha sido y es conocido por una finísima —y, desde luego, también agónica— sensibilidad existencial. Los temas centrales de sus escritos principales son, mediata o inmediatamente, la expresión y canalización literaria de los análisis de Kierkegaard. Así, "San Manuel Bueno, mártir" rezuma una incertidumbre nauseabunda —en el sentido sartreano del término— que recuerda a "El concepto de angustia"; mientras que "Del sentimiento trágico de la vida" expone, a caballo entre la poesía y la filosofía —a las cuales, como veremos, considera idénticas—, las características esenciales de la fe y su naturaleza de «salto» aducidas en las "Migajas filosóficas". De hecho, es bien conocida la fascinación de don Miguel por el autor de Copenhague, llegando incluso a estudiar danés para acceder a los textos originales. -/- De esta manera, el breve ensayo que se sigue pretende investigar uno de los conceptos angulares de la filosofía de Søren Kierkegaard con el objetivo último de aproximarlo al contexto peninsular, donde los desasosiegos existenciales del norte europeo encuentran en la figura de Miguel de Unamuno un digno interlocutor. Para ello, se hará una lectura comparativa, si bien no tratando de detectar influencias intelectuales o biográficas reales, sí planteando el núcleo de investigación como perteneciente a una misma preocupación fundamental: lo que Unamuno bautizó como el sentimiento trágico de la vida. (shrink)

Se pretende mostrar, en primer lugar, cuál es la reinterpretación que Hegel lleva a cabo del Espíritu Verdadero en la comunidad griega, a partir de la situación de Antígona. Luego, se expone cómo esta armonía entre las leyes divina y humana podría llevar dentro la semilla de su fracaso porque, el (lugar del) entierro y la relación entre Polinices y Antígona, se encontrarían por fuera del sistema mismo y lo destruirían, si se hiciesen efectivos. Para esto último, estaríamos frente a (...) un “proceso autoinmune”, como lo llama Derrida, porque se trataría de poner en el núcleo y fundamento mismo de la comunidad un lugar imposible dentro de ella, un lugar para su autodestrucción. Finalmente, se pretende cuestionar tanto la posición de Hegel como la de Derrida en torno a Antígona. (shrink)

Many Christian thinkers have embraced the notion “art for art’s sake.” Chesterton did not. To the contrary, he saw such an idea as deeply problematic for a Christian aesthetic. In the following article, I will explore some philosophical aspects of the “art for art’s sake” movement and then explain why Chesterton parted company with it.

Today, the notion of identity is usually linked with ethical-political discussions like multiculturalism, gender or sexual diversity, recognition of plurality, etc. Nevertheless, the flourishing of this vision that interprets “identity” mainly in its plural form (as “identities”) contrasts sharply with the sense that “identity” has had during most of the history of philosophy (in which identity was understood in connection with “unity” or “selfsameness”, not with “diversity” or “otherness”). In order to explain the passage from one notion of identity to (...) the other (a passage mainly made in the last third of the 20th century), we will focus on the reflections made by Ludwig Wittgenstein towards the middle of that century. Our contention is that these reflections open the way to a more plural understanding of human identity, against the many interpreters of Wittgenstein that defend the opposite: that he offered a strong notion of common human identity in his writings, a notion based on the idea of “human nature”. In order to sustain our thesis, we will have to give an interpretation of some key terms of Wittgenstein’s philosophy (like “forms of life” or “natural history”) from a pluralistic point of view; this is the only way of understanding to what extent he is a predecessor of contemporary discussions about plural identities. (shrink)

This chapter explains the rationale behind the book. It provides basic definitions of the concept of the sharing economy as well as the primary meanings related to the subject of the analysis undertaken in the subsequent chapters. This Introduction also includes a description of the main benefits of the analysis of the sharing economy from a European perspective. It highlights that the idea of the book emerged from the collaboration of most co-authors in the COST Action CA16121 ‘From Sharing to (...) Caring: Examining Socio-Technical Aspects of the Collaborative Economy.’ Finally, the outline of the book is presented, providing a description of the content of each chapter within this academic collection. (shrink)