Concerns about threats to human autonomy feature prominently in the field of AI ethics. One aspect of this concern relates to the use of AI systems for problematically manipulative influence. In response to this, the European Union’s draft AI Act (AIA) includes a prohibition on AI systems deploying subliminal techniques that alter people’s behavior in ways that are reasonably likely to cause harm (Article 5(1)(a)). Critics have argued that the term ‘subliminal techniques’ is too narrow to capture the target cases (...) of AI-based manipulation. We propose a definition of ‘subliminal techniques’ that (a) is grounded on a plausible interpretation of the legal text; (b) addresses all or most of the underlying ethical concerns motivating the prohibition; (c) is defensible from a scientific and philosophical perspective; and (d) does not over-reach in ways that impose excessive administrative and regulatory burdens. The definition is meant to provide guidance for design teams seeking to pursue responsible and ethically aligned AI innovation. (shrink)

It is common in political theory and practice to challenge normatively ambitious proposals by saying that their fulfillment is not feasible. But there has been insufficient conceptual exploration of what feasibility is, and very little substantive inquiry into why and how it matters for thinking about social justice. This paper provides one of the first systematic treatments of these issues, and proposes a dynamic approach to the relation between justice and feasibility that illuminates the importance of political imagination and dynamic (...) duties to expand agents’ power to fulfill ambitious principles of justice. (shrink)

This is the introduction to the special issue of the Spanish journal Ágora-Papeles de Filosofía (31/2, 2012) devoted to new Ibero-American contributions to metatheoretical structuralism.

In this paper, I develop a quasi-transcendental argument to justify Kant’s infamous claim “man is evil by nature.” The cornerstone of my reconstruction lies in drawing a systematic distinction between the seemingly identical concepts of “evil disposition” (böseGesinnung) and “propensity to evil” (Hang zumBösen). The former, I argue, Kant reserves to describe the fundamental moral outlook of a single individual; the latter, the moral orientation of the whole species. Moreover, the appellative “evil” ranges over two different types of moral failure: (...) while an “evil disposition” is a failure to realize the good (i.e., to adopt the motive of duty as limiting condition for all one’s desires), an “evil propensity” is a failure to realize the highest good (i.e., to engage in the collective project of transforming the legal order into an ethical community). This correlation between units of moral analysis and types of obligation suggests a way to offer a deduction of the universal propensity on behalf of Kant. It consists in tracing the source of radical evil to the same subjective necessity that gives rise to the doctrine of the highest good. For, at the basis of Kant’s two doctrines lies the same natural dialectic between happiness and morality. While the highest good brings about the critically acceptable resolution of this dialectic, the propensity to evil perpetuates and aggravates it. Instead of connecting happiness and morality in an objective relation, the human will subordinatesmorality to the pursuit of happiness according to the subjective order of association. If this reading is correct, it would explain why prior attempts at a transcendental deduction have failed: interpreters have looked for the key to the deduction in the body of Kant’s text, where it is not to be found, for it is tucked, instead, in the Preface to the first edition. (shrink)

Can we develop a definition of power that is satisfactorily determinate but also enables rather than foreclose important substantive debates about how power relations proceed and should proceed in social and political life? I present a broad definition of agential power that meets these desiderata. On this account, agents have power with respect to a certain outcome (including, inter alia, the shaping of certain social relations) to the extent that they can voluntarily determine whether that outcome occurs. This simple definition (...) generates a surprisingly complex agenda for substantive research. It is quite fruitful for both descriptive and normative purposes-or so this paper argues. The broad account of agential power offered here is partly developed through a critical engagement with Rainer Forst's important recent account of "noumenal power.". (shrink)

This Guide is designed to restore the theological background that informs Kant’s treatment of grace in Religion to its rightful place. This background is essential not only to understand the nature of Kant’s overall project in this book, namely, to determine the “association” or “union” between Christianity (as a historical faith) and rational religion, but also to dispel the impression of “internal contradictions” and conundrums” that contemporary interpreters associate with Kant’s treatment of grace and moral regeneration. That impression, we argue, (...) is the result of entrenched interpretative habits that can be traced back to Karl Barth’s reading of the text. Once we realize that such a reading rests on a mistake, much of the anxiety and confusion that plague current discussions on these issues can be put to rest. (shrink)

Daniel Isaacson has advanced an epistemic notion of arithmetical truth according to which the latter is the set of truths that we grasp on the basis of our understanding of the structure of natural numbers alone. Isaacson’s thesis is then the claim that Peano Arithmetic (PA) is the theory of finite mathematics, in the sense that it proves all and only arithmetical truths thus understood. In this paper, we raise a challenge for the thesis and show how it can be (...) overcome. We introduce the concept of purity for theories of arithmetic: a theory of arithmetic is pure when it only proves arithmetical truths. Then, we argue that, under Isaacson’s thesis, some PA-provable truths—including transfinite induction claims for infinite ordinals and some consistency statements—are seemingly not arithmetical in Isaacson’s sense, and hence that Isaacson’s thesis might entail the impurity of PA. Nonetheless, we conjecture that the advocate of Isaacson’s thesis can avoid this undesirable consequence: the arithmetical nature, as understood by Isaacson, of all contentious PA-provable statements can be justified. As a case study, we explore how this is done for transfinite induction claims with infinite ordinals below ε0. To this end, we show that the PA-proof of such claims employs exclusively resources from finite mathematics, and that ordinals below ε0 are finitary objects despite being infinite. (shrink)

This article studies the political dimension of friendship in Robert Guédiguian’s cinema, delving into the crucial role that conversation plays in this relationship, and taking Stanley Cavell’s thought as a main reference. Aristotle’s concept of civic friendship, along with its contemporary readings, and Cavell’s notion of conversation provide a theoretical frame for the analysis of three recent feature films directed by Guédiguian that present a strong thematic and narrative unity (and have barely received attention in previous scholarship): Les Neiges du (...) Kilimandjaro/The Snows of Kilimanjaro (2011), La Villa/The House by the Sea (2017) and Gloria Mundi (2019). Based on, but going beyond, Cavell’s moral theorisation of the filmic portrayal of human relationships, the analysis of these films has identified four milestones in the transformative process—both personal and political—that stems from conversation with friends: conformity, confrontation, acknowledgement and renewed community. In all three films, this process of change is not only presented as a progressive discovery of one’s own voice, but also as a progressive unmasking: both are necessary prerequisites for welcoming foreigners in need of acknowledgement and, consequently, for the renewal of community. (shrink)

This paper offers an exploration of the socialist principle “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.” The Abilities/Needs Principle is arguably the ethical heart of socialism but, surprisingly, has received almost no attention by political philosophers. I propose an interpretation of the principle and argue that it involves appealing ideas of solidarity, fair reciprocity, recognition of individual differences, and meaningful work. The paper proceeds as follows. First, I analyze Marx’s formulation of the Abilities/Needs Principle. Second, (...) I identify the principle’s initial plausibility, but show that it faces serious problems that cannot be addressed without developing a fresh interpretation of it. Third, I provide an interpretation of the principle that highlights demands concerning opportunities for self-realization in work, positive duties of solidarity, sensitivity to individual differences, and mechanisms of fair reciprocity. Fourth, I discuss a possible institutional implementation of the Abilities/Needs Principle. Finally, I identify some normative puzzles about the transition from capitalism to socialism, and suggest how the Abilities/Needs Principle might gain motivational traction by mobilizing the powerful idea of human dignity. (shrink)

Substructural approaches to paradoxes have attracted much attention from the philosophical community in the last decade. In this paper we focus on two substructural logics, named ST and TS, along with two structural cousins, LP and K3. It is well known that LP and K3 are duals in the sense that an inference is valid in one logic just in case the contrapositive is valid in the other logic. As a consequence of this duality, theories based on either logic are (...) tightly connected since many of the arguments for and objections against one theory reappear in the other theory in dual form. The target of the paper is making explicit in exactly what way, if any, ST and TS are dual to one another. The connection will allow us to gain a more fine-grained understanding of these logics and of the theories based on them. In particular, we will obtain new insights on two questions concerning ST which are being intensively discussed in the current literature: whether ST preserves classical logic and whether it is LP in sheep’s clothing. Explaining in what way ST and TS are duals requires comparing these logics at a metainferential level. We provide to this end a uniform proof theory to decide on valid metainferences for each of the four logics. This proof procedure allows us to show in a very simple way how different properties of inferences (unsatisfiability, supersatisfiability and antivalidity) that behave in very different ways for each logic can be captured in terms of the validity of a metainference. (shrink)

This paper explores the connections between human rights, human dignity, and power. The idea of human dignity is omnipresent in human rights discourse, but its meaning and point is not always clear. It is standardly used in two ways, to refer to a normative status of persons that makes their treatment in terms of human rights a proper response, and a social condition of persons in which their human rights are fulfilled. This paper pursues three tasks. First, it provides an (...) analysis of the content and an interpretation of the role of the idea of human dignity in current human rights discourse. The interpretation includes a pluralist view of human interests and dignity that avoids a narrow focus on rational agency. Second, this paper characterizes the two aspects of human dignity in terms of capabilities. Certain general human capabilities are among the facts that ground status-dignity, and the presence of certain more specific capabilities constitutes condition-dignity. Finally, this paper explores how the pursuit of human rights and human dignity links to distributions and uses of power. Since capabilities are a form of power, and human rights are in part aimed at respecting and promoting capabilities, human rights involve empowerment. Exploring the connections between human rights, capabilities, and empowerment provides resources to defend controversial human rights such as the right to democratic political participation, and to respond to worries about the feasibility of their fulfillment. This paper also argues that empowerment must be coupled with solidaristic concern in order to respond to unavoidable facts of social dependency and vulnerability. (shrink)

Vamos a tratar de comprender la concepción de la identidad en la obra de Butler, fundamentalmente a partir de El género en disputa. Profundizaremos para ello en su teoría de la performatividad, tratando tanto a los autores que posibilitaron su desarrollo (Austin, Derrida) como a algunos de sus críticos (especialmente Seyla Benhabib y Pierre Bourdieu). Nos preocupan especialmente las discusiones en torno a la constitución discursiva del sujeto, y el modo en que se plantea la oposición entre estar constituido por (...) el discurso y estar determinado por él. Trataremos finalmente de comprender el lugar de la obra de Butler en el panorama general del feminismo contemporáneo, explorando algunas de las razones que impiden interpretarla como un desplazamiento teórico que permanezca en el marco de la teoría feminista. (shrink)

En la actualidad hay un renacer del interés académico por la amistad que se aborda desde múltiples disciplinas, tales como la Sociología (Spencer & Pahl, 2006), la Psicología (Hojjat & Moyer, 2017), la educación (Kristjánsson, 2022), la Política (Digeser, 2016) o las Relaciones Internacionales (Koschut & Oelsner, 2014). En filosofía, la amistad es un tema clásico que se ha abordado con interés variable en distintos momentos de la historia: para griegos y romanos fue relevante a nivel personal y político (Aristóteles, (...) 1994); los pre-modernos la concibieron como un vínculo fundamental para la estabilidad política y la administración de la justicia (Smith & Devere, 2010) y en la Ilustración siguió considerándose un vínculo valioso. A partir del siglo XIX se oscurece su papel social (Laín Entralgo, 1986) y solo a finales del XX se retoma su valor en el ámbito social, más allá del personal (Derrida, 1998). A pesar de esa atención renovada a la amistad, las investigaciones desde la antropología filosófica o la metafísica son hoy menos frecuentes que otras como las que se hacen desde la ética o la filosofía política, por lo que es relevante prestarle atención desde esta perspectiva que es la elegida en este capítulo. El objetivo es repensar la amistad en Leonardo Polo desde su antropología trascendental partiendo de una confluencia interesante entre este filósofo y Agamben: la apertura ontológica al plano existencial (trascendental, en terminología poliana). Argumentaré cómo, en continuidad con la antropología trascendental y prosiguiendo el pensamiento de Polo, la amistad puede incluirse de alguna forma en el ámbito trascendental, puede ser un “amor personal” que, como tal, radica en la persona, muestra a la persona y la hace crecer. De acuerdo con eso, la estructura del capítulo es la siguiente: explicaremos la confluencia metafísica entre ambos filósofos y el papel de la amistad en la apertura al ámbito existencial (epígrafe 2); seguiremos con los elementos de la antropología trascendental que permiten proseguir pensando la amistad (epígrafe 3); estudiaremos el amar personal y la posibilidad de los “amores personales” (epígrafe 4) y finalmente abordaremos la amistad como amor personal. (shrink)

Are positive duties to help others in need mere informal duties of virtue or can they also be enforceable duties of justice? In this paper I defend the claim that some positive duties (which I call basic positive duties) can be duties of justice against one of the most important prin- cipled objections to it. This is the libertarian challenge, according to which only negative duties to avoid harming others can be duties of justice, whereas positive duties (basic or nonbasic) (...) must be seen, at best, as informal moral requirements or recommendations. I focus on the contractarian version of the libertarian challenge as recently presented by Jan Narveson. I claim that Narveson’s contractarian construal of libertarianism is not only intuitively weak, but is also subject to decisive internal problems. I argue, in particular, that it does not pro- vide a clear rationale for distinguishing between informal duties of virtue and enforceable duties of justice, that it can neither successfully justify libertarianism’s protection of negative rights nor its denial of positive ones, and that it fails to undermine the claim that basic positive duties are duties of global justice. -/- . (shrink)

Three metascientific concepts that have been object of philosophical analysis are the concepts oflaw, model and theory. The aim ofthis article is to present the explication of these concepts, and of their relationships, made within the framework of Sneedean or Metatheoretical Structuralism (Balzer et al. 1987), and of their application to a case from the realm of biology: Population Dynamics. The analysis carried out will make it possible to support, contrary to what some philosophers of science in general and of (...) biology in particular hold, the following claims: a) there are "laws" in biological sciences, b) many of the heterogeneous and different "models" of biology can be accommodated under some "theory", and c) this is exactly what confers great unifying power to biological theories. (shrink)

What is a duty of justice? And how is it different from a duty of beneficence? We need a clear account of the contrast. Unfortunately, there is no consensus in the philosophical literature as to how to characterize it. Different articulations of it have been provided, but it is hard to identify a common core that is invariant across them. In this paper, I propose an account of how to understand duties of justice, explain how it contrasts with several proposals (...) as to how to distinguish justice and beneficence, respond to some objections and suggest further elaborations of it. The conceptual exploration pursued in this paper has practical stakes. A central aim is to propose and defend a capacious concept of justice that makes a direct discussion of important demands of justice (domestic and global) possible. Duties of justice can be positive besides negative, they can be imperfect as well as perfect, they can range over personal besides institutional contexts, they can include multiple associative reasons such us non-domination, non-exploitation and reciprocity, and they can even go beyond existing national, political, and economic associative frameworks to embrace strictly universal humanist concerns. We should reject ideological abridgments of the concept of justice that render these possibilities, and the important human interests and claims they may foster, invisible. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of human dignity based on a discussion of Kant's moral and political philosophy and then shows its relevance for articulating and developing in a fresh way some normative dimensions of Marx’s critique of capitalism as involving exploitation, domination, and alienation, and the view of socialism as involving a combination of freedom and solidarity. What is advanced here is not Kant’s own conception of dignity, but an account that partly builds on that conception and partly criticizes (...) it. The same is the case with the account of socialism in relation to Marx’s work. As articulated, Kantian dignity and Marxian socialism turn out to be quite appealing and mutually supportive. (shrink)

The idea of dignity is pervasive in political discourse. It is central to human rights theory and practice, and it features regularly in conceptions of social justice as well as in the social movements they seek to understand or orient. However, dignity talk has been criticized for leading to problematic exclusion. Critics challenge it for undermining our recognition of the rights of non-human animals and of many human individuals (such as children, the elderly, and people with disabilities). I argue that, (...) on a plausible articulation of it, the idea of dignity does not lead to these exclusions and that it in fact helps defend an appropriately inclusive moral and political treatment of all individuals. Difficult issues about equality and diversity indeed arise, but a dignitarian approach can provide good answers to them or at least help make them clearer and more tractable. (shrink)

The problem of alterity can be posed in two areas: a) that of absolute alterity, which Descartes develops in the Third Meditation when the ego discovers himself as a negation of infinite and an aspiration to the infinite; b) that of relative alterity that distinguishes me from my fellow man. Firstly, we risk a synthesis of the ways in which the alter ego loses his otherness when conceived as an object of representation or desire. Secondly, we propose that Descartes thinks (...) of alterity in a purely ethical sense, as a capacity for good and evil. Our thesis is, first: pure love (without desire) is parental love —the only one addressed to others themselves for themselves, the only one that opens the possibility of self-giving, sacrifice. Second, we propose that Descartes’ texts acquire all their meaning if they are compared with the ethical notion of alterity in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. -/- El problema de la alteridad puede plantearse en dos ámbitos: a) el de la alteridad absoluta, que Descartes desarrolla en la Tercera Meditación cuando el ego descubre su finitud como una negación y una aspiración de infinito; b) el de la alteridad relativa que me distingue de mi semejante. En primer lugar, arriesgamos una síntesis de los modos en que el alter ego pierde su alteridad al ser concebido como objeto de representación o de deseo. En segundo lugar, proponemos que Descartes piensa la alteridad en sentido puramente ético, como capacidad de bien y de mal. Nuestra tesis es, primero: el amor puro (sin deseo) es el amor paterno —el único dirigido al otro sí mismo por sí mismo y que abre la posibilidad de la donación de sí, el sacrificio; segundo: los textos de Descartes adquieren todo su sentido si se los compara con la noción ética de alteridad en la filosofía de Emmanuel Levinas. (shrink)

This paper offers a justification of labor rights based on an interpretation of the idea of human dignity. According to the dignitarian approach, we have reason to organize social life in such a way that we respond appropriately to the valuable capacities of human beings that give rise to their dignity. That dignity is a deontic status in virtue of which people are owed certain forms of respect and concern. Dignity at work involves the treatment of people in accordance to (...) the ideal of solidaristic empowerment as it pertains to their life as workers. This requires that we generate feasible and reasonable social schemes to support each other as we pursue the development and exercise of our valuable capacities to produce in personally and socially beneficial ways. The spectrum of dignitarian justice goes from basic rights to decent working conditions to maximal rights to flourish in working practices that are free from domination, alienation, and exploitation. (shrink)

Vivian Maier’s street photography shows us a sudden transfiguration of reality, by which persons, scenes and things become faerical (neologism that also receives one of the senses of the French féerie , a play where supernatural, or, in this case, also infranatural creatures appear). We propose that this transfiguration is an apparition – a faerical epiphany (always earthy and fleshy) that follows two ways, one sunny and luminous, the other obscure and subterranean. We will examine Maier’s body, reflected in her (...) self-portraits in order to propose that her sight (therefore her photography) is a daemonic one, an intermediary between our and other worlds. -/- La fotografía callejera de Vivian Maier nos hace ver una súbita transfiguración de la realidad por la cual las personas, las escenas y las cosas devienen féricas , neologismo que nos permitimos para recoger del inglés el universo de las faeries y traducir a la vez uno de los sentidos del francés féerie , pieza de teatro en la que aparecen seres sobrenaturales (o, en este caso, infranaturales). Esa transfiguración, proponemos, es en rigor una verdadera aparición: una epifanía feérica (siempre carnal) que se despliega en dos direcciones, solar y subterránea. Nos detendremos en el cuerpo de Maier, reflejado en sus autorretratos, para proponer, finalmente, que su mirada es un daimon, intermediaria entre éste y otros mundos. (shrink)

In this comment on the work by Ulises Moulines I shall not refer to the interesting analysis of the ontological commitments that depends the treatment of the so-called «data models», nor shall I debate the general metaphysical principles proposed in his approach, adopting an experimentalist, instrumentalist, anti-realistic, positivist or empirical stance. I shall focus on the last part of his article in which he elaborates on the links between Wesley Salmon's causalist approach and the structuralist analysis of explanation viewed as (...) theoretical embedding, as he relates it to the structural analysis of the theoretical terms in light of a certain general shared understanding of epistemology's job. (shrink)

Supervaluationism is a well known theory of vagueness. Subvaluationism is a less well known theory of vagueness. But these theories cannot be taken apart, for they are in a relation of duality that can be made precise. This paper provides an introduction to the subvaluationist theory of vagueness in connection to its dual, supervaluationism. A survey on the supervaluationist theory can be found in the Compass paper of Keefe (2008); our presentation of the theory in this paper will be short (...) to get rapidly into the logical issues. This paper is relatively self-contained. A modest background on propositional modal logic is, though not strictly necessary, advisable. The reader might find useful the Compass papers Kracht (2011) and Negri (2011) (though these papers cover issues of more complexity than what is demanded to follow this paper). (shrink)

The article has two aims: (a) to show how the notion of self proposed by Zahavi allows to underlie different aspects of personal identity; (b) to provide some elements that strengthen and complement the arguments of the Danish philosopher. First, I begin with a phenomenological analysis of the acts. Second, I study the identity and the various levels of the self that underlie it. Finally, I present some elements to constitute a metaphysics of the human person as a complement to (...) Zahavi’s phenomenology, considering the philosophy of mind as a framework for reflection. (shrink)

In a common, pejorative sense of it, ideology consists in attitudes whose presence contributes to sustaining, by making them seem legitimate, social orders that are problematic. An important way a social order can be problematic concerns the prospects for well-being facing the people living in it. It can make some people wind up worse off than they could and should be. They have “real interests” that are not properly served by the social order, and the interests aligned with it are (...) in fact “false,” merely “apparent,” or “distorted.” Ideology critique consists in part in noting the existence of such different interests, and in challenging the latter to facilitate the fulfillment of the former. This picture of ideology critique implies that ideology thwarts well-being. This paper aims to clarify, develop, and vindicate this picture. It argues that ideology critique should indeed draw (inter alia) on prudential considerations, and that a specifically objectivist view of well-being would be fitting. The fruitfulness of this approach is shown by exploring the specific case of the critique of working practices in contemporary capitalism. (shrink)

The topic of alienation has fallen out of fashion in social and political philosophy. It used to be salient, especially in socialist thought and in debates about labor practices in capitalism. Although the lack of identification of people with their working lives—their alienation as workers—remains practically important, normative engagement with it has been set back by at least four objections. They concern the problems of essentialist views, a mishandling of the distinction between the good and the right, the danger of (...) paternalistic impositions, and the significance of democratic authorization. This paper recasts the critique of alienation in a way that vindicates its importance for social and political philosophy and rebuts these objections. First, it provides an analytic framework to understand alienation—distinguishing its various conceptual, explanatory, and normative dimensions. Second, it accounts for the normative aspect of the critique of alienation by articulating it in terms of prudential and moral ideas of positive freedom regarding human flourishing and solidaristic empowerment. Finally, the normative account is developed further, and sharpened to respond to the four objections, through the introduction of the Dignitarian Approach—the view that we have reason to organize social life in such a way that we respond appropriately to the valuable features of individual human beings that give rise to their dignity. (shrink)

This paper presents a reconstruction of and some constructive comments on Thomas Pogge’s conception of global justice. Using Imre Lakatos’s notion of a research program, the paper identifies Pogge’s “hard core” and “protective belt” claims regarding the scope of fundamental principles of justice, the object and structure of duties of global justice, the explanation of world poverty, and the appropriate reforms to the existing global order. The paper recommends some amendments to Pogge’s program in each of the four areas.

Con la finalidad de fundamentar y reforzar su teoría de los bienes primarios, J. Rawls introduce, en el §65 de Una teoría de la justicia, la idea de “principio aristotélico”. Se discuten las dificultades que implica aceptar dicha noción, así como las limitaciones de la idea de bien que subyace en dicho principio. Se busca mostrar que la concepción de bien que Rawls presenta allí padece de “insuficiencia moral” y se defiende la tesis de que su aproximación a la idea (...) de bien opaca la dimensión práctica de la racionalidad. (shrink)

This paper explores the relations between self-esteem and competition. Self-esteem is a very important good and competition is a widespread phenomenon. They are commonly linked, as people often seek self-esteem through success in competition. Although competition in fact generates valuable consequences and can to some extent foster self-esteem, empirical research suggests that competition has a strong tendency to undermine self-esteem. To be sure, competition is not the source of all problematic deficits in self-esteem, and it can arise for, or undercut (...) goods other than self-esteem. But the relation between competition and access to self-esteem is still significant, and it is worth asking how we might foster a desirable distribution of the latter in the face of difficulties created by the former. That is the question addressed in this paper. The approach I propose neither recommends self-denial nor the uncritical celebration of the rat race. It charts instead a solidaristic path to support the social conditions of the self-esteem of each individual. The paper proceeds as follows. I start, in section 2, by clarifying key concepts involved in the discussion. In section 3, I identify ten mechanisms that support individuals’ self-esteem and impose limits on competition. I focus, in particular, on the challenges faced by people in their practices of work. In section 4, I outline prudential and moral arguments to justify the use of the proposed mechanisms. Section 5 concludes with remarks on the role of social criticism in the processes of change implementing the mechanisms. (shrink)

Planteamos el problema siguiente: Descartes contesta la acusación irracional de Voetius interpretando, excepcionalmente, los Evangelios y afirma que las _leyes de caridad _son _afines _a las _leyes de la amistad natural _que rigen las funciones del pastor y del profesor. Proponemos que Descartes excluye el examen de las virtudes teologales e incursiona en el derecho privado y civil para probar que Voetius no es un _verdadero _profesor, ni un _verdadero _pastor, y usurpa las atribuciones del juez. Frente a la irracionalidad, (...) la búsqueda de la verdad se despliega en el alegato jurídico. -/- Descartes and the laws of charity. Public and private law in the Letter to Voetius Abstract. We pose this problem: Descartes responds to Voetius’ irrational accusation by resorting once, on his own initiative, to Gospel, an interpretation that reviews the laws of charity as akin to the laws of natural friendship governing pastor and teacher roles. We propose that the Letter be a legal argument. Descartes has no interest in theological virtues: facing irrationality, he delves into private law to prove that Voetius is not a true teacher, or a true pastor, and encroaches on the function of judge. (shrink)

This paper offers a normative exploration of what exploitation is and of what is wrong with it. The focus is on the critical assessment of the exploitation of workers in capitalist societies. Such exploitation is wrongful when it involves a contra-solidaristic use of power to benefit oneself at the expense of others. Wrongful exploitation consists in using your greater power, and sometimes even in making other less powerful than you, in order to get them to benefit you more than they (...) ought to. This account of exploitation is appealing because it simultaneously captures three morally significant dimensions of exploitation—its material and social background, the relational (interpersonal and systemic) attitudes it enacts, and the final distributive results it generates. Exploitation is indeed a multidimensional social process. The flipside of the proposed critical characterization of this process is a positive ideal of solidaristic empowerment in the allocation and use of economic power, which the paper articulates in terms of the socialist Abilities/Needs Principle (“from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”). The Abilities/Needs Principle is grounded in human dignity. (shrink)

Deontic logic is devoted to the study of logical properties of normative predicates such as permission, obligation and prohibition. Since it is usual to apply these predicates to actions, many deontic logicians have proposed formalisms where actions and action combinators are present. Some standard action combinators are action conjunction, choice between actions and not doing a given action. These combinators resemble boolean operators, and therefore the theory of boolean algebra offers a well-known athematical framework to study the properties of the (...) classic deontic operators when applied to actions. In his seminal work, Segerberg uses constructions coming from boolean algebras to formalize the usual deontic notions. Segerberg’s work provided the initial step to understand logical properties of deontic operators when they are applied to actions. In the last years, other authors have proposed related logics. In this chapter we introduce Segerberg’s work, study related formalisms and investigate further challenges in this area. (shrink)

El objetivo de este trabajo es ofrecer una serie de vı́nculos teóricos entre la filosofı́a de Theodor W. Adorno y la de Judith Butler con el propósito de buscar ciertos gérmenes de la teorı́a queer más allá de sus principales referentes en algunas posiciones teóricas que se trazaron desde la teorı́a crı́tica. Se trata de señalizar una serie de simultaneidades que existen entre ambos pensadores, ası́ como de impulsar una lectura de Adorno como un desmitificador de conceptos. Se intentará argumentar (...) cómo el análisis que plantea Adorno de conceptos como el de sujeto, naturaleza, inhumanidad o historia puede relacionarse con las propuestas de refundación de la ética que plantea Judith Butler en sus últimos escritos. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce a quasi-set theory without atoms. The quasi-sets (qsets) can have as elements completely indiscernible things which do not turn out to be the very same thing as it would be implied if its underlying logic was classical logic. A quasi-set can have a cardinal, called its quasi-cardinal, but this is made so that, at least for the finite case, the quasi-cardinal is not an ordinal, and hence the indistinguishable elements of a quasi-set cannot be ordered. (...) In the last sections, we show how the theory can be used to ground a quantum metaphysics of properties, which sees the quantum entities as bundles of properties, and we also introduce a new approach for the use of quantifiers in quantum physics. (shrink)

En Razón, Verdad e Historia Hilary Putnam caracterizó la racionalidad informal como una alternativa que permite superar las limitaciones evidenciadas por las concepciones formalistas de la racionalidad. Se revisa inicialmente la caracterización ofrecida por Putnam y se establece que si bien Putnam niega todo principio universal de racionalidad, admite principios relativos, generales e indeterminados, que permanecen sujetos a necesidades de interrelación cognitiva con el entorno. A continuación, se muestra que los principios aceptan excepciones, y, a partir de aquí se defiende (...) y analiza la posibilidad de revisión de principios cuya negación no resulta actualmente concebible. Finalmente, se afirma que tanto exponer como preservar creencias de la controversia constituyen elementos históricos que deben ser contemplados por una concepción informal de la racionalidad. In Reason, Truth and History, Hilary Putnam characterized informal rationality as an alternative that allows to overcome limitations evidenced by the formalist conceptions of rationality. Initially, the paper reviews the characterization provided by Putnam and establishes that, while Putnam denies any universal principle of rationality, he accepts relative, general and vague principles, that remain subject to needs of cognitive interrelationship with the environment. Secondly, we show that principles make exceptions and defend the possibility of reviewing principles whose denial is currently not conceivable. Finally, we state that both expressing and maintaining beliefs of controversy are historical elements that should be contemplated by an informal conception of rationality. (shrink)

Effort and the feeling of effort play important roles in many theoretical discussions, from perception to self-control and free will, from the nature of ownership to the nature of desert and achievement. A crucial, overlooked distinction within the philosophical and scientific literatures is the distinction between theories that seek to explain effort and theories that seek to explain the feeling of effort. Lacking a clear distinction between these two phenomena makes the literature hard to navigate. To advance in the unification (...) and development of this area, this article provides an overview of the main theories of the nature of effort and the nature of the feeling of effort, and then discusses how efforts and their feelings are related. Two key takeaways emerge. First, there is widespread agreement that efforts are goal-directed actions. Second, one of the main philosophical issues to be decided is whether feelings of effort should be defined by reference to efforts (effort-first approach), or whether efforts are defined by reference to the feeling of effort (feeling-first approach). (shrink)

Este artículo constituye un comentario a Peri Hermeneias 16a 4-9 y a otros pasajes del corpus aristotélico concernientes a las relaciones entre lenguaje y pensamiento, así como a las consecuencias que estas relaciones puedan tener en tomo al problema de la representación lingüística del mundo. En la primera parte el A. sostiene, en confrontación con la interpretación de Max Black, que la distinción aristotélica entre, de un lado, lenguaje oral y escrito, y del otro, afecciones del alma, es nominal y (...) no real, lo cual conduce a replantear el tema del realismo en Aristóteles. En la parte final del artículo se analiza las relaciones en el texto mencionado del Peri Hermeneias. Tales relaciones sugieren entender la representación lingüística del mundo no como mero reflejo, sino como un acto de interpretación y, en consecuencia, de atribución de significado, lo que constituye propiamente la naturaleza apofántica del logos. (shrink)

In line with recent efforts to empirically study the folk concept of weakness of will, we examine two issues in this paper: (1) How is weakness of will attribution [WWA] influenced by an agent’s violations of best judgment and/or resolution, and by the moral valence of the agent’s action? (2) Do any of these influences depend on the cognitive dispositions of the judging individual? We implemented a factorial 2x2x2 between–subjects design with judgment violation, resolution violation, and action valence as independent (...) variables, and measured participants’ cognitive dispositions using Frederick’s Cognitive Reflection Test [CRT]. We conclude that intuitive and reflective individuals have two different concepts of weakness of will. The study supports this claim by showing that: a) the WWA of intuitive subjects is influenced by the action’s (and probably also the commitment’s) moral valence, while the WWA of reflective subjects is not; b) judgment violation plays a small role in the WWA of intuitive subjects, while reflective subjects treat resolution violation as the only relevant trait. Data were collected among students at two different universities. All subjects (N=710) answered the CRT. A three-way ANOVA was first conducted on the whole sample and then on the intuitive and reflective groups separately. This study suggests that differences in cognitive dispositions can significantly impact the folk understanding of philosophical concepts, and thus suggests that analysis of folk concepts should take cognitive dispositions into account. (shrink)

Human rights are particularly relevant in contexts in which there are significant asymmetries of power, but where these asymmetries exist the human rights project turns out to be especially difficult to realize. The stronger can use their disproportionate power both to threaten others’ human rights and to frustrate attempts to secure their fulfillment. They may even monopolize the international discussion as to what human rights are and how they should be implemented. This paper explores this tension between the normative ideal (...) of human rights and the facts of asymmetric power. It has two objectives. The first, pursued in section 2, is to reconstruct and assess a set of important power-related worries about human rights. These worries are sometimes presented as falsifying the view that human rights exist, or at least as warranting the abandonment of human rights practice. The paper argues that the worries do not support such conclusions. Instead, they motivate the identification of certain desiderata for the amelioration of human rights practice. The paper proceeds to articulate twelve such desiderata. The second objective, pursued in section 3, is to propose a strategy for satisfying the desiderata identified in the previous section. In particular, the paper suggests some ways to build empowerment into the human rights project that reduce the absolute and relative powerlessness of human rights holders, while also identifying an ethics of responsibility and solidarity for contexts in which power asymmetries will not dissolve. Power analysis does not debunk the human rights project. Properly articulated, it is an important tool for those pursuing it. (shrink)

This paper discusses Fara's so-called 'Paradox of Higher-Order Vagueness' concerning supervaluationism. In the paper I argue that supervaluationism is not committed to global validity, as it is largely assumed in the literature, but to a weaker notion of logical consequence I call 'regional validity'. Then I show that the supervaluationist might solve Fara's paradox making use of this weaker notion of logical consequence. The paper is discussed by Delia Fara in the same volume.

Se propone un examen crítico de la última obra de J.-L. Marion titulada, dedicada a la unión de alma y cuerpo, y cuya tesis principal es: los problemas que esta unión suscita confunden dos términos, cuerpo y mi cuerpo. Esta confusión lleva a que se apliquen al primero categorías propias del segundo. Se examinan las "paradojas ónticas" que mi cuerpo (la carne) inaugura (a); se despeja la tesis de dos interpretaciones de las meditaciones primera y sexta (b); se discute la (...) "excepción a la metafísica" instaurada por el conocimiento de mi cuerpo (c); se arriesga, siguiendo una indicación del autor, la apertura a una dimensión ética que exige examinar ya no la unión de cuerpo y alma, sino la unión por el amor a un semejante y a la comunidad de semejantes (d). -/- The article carries out a critical examination of J.-L. Marion's latest work, "Sur la pensée passive de Descartes", whose main thesis is that the problems posed by the union of body and soul confuse two terms: body and my body. This confusion leads to the application to the former of categories inherent to the latter. The paper examines the "ontic paradoxes" that my body (the flesh) gives rise to (a); it clarifies the thesis of two interpretations of the First and Sixth Meditations (b); it discusses the "exception to metaphysics" established by the knowledge of my body (c); and, following an indication by the author, it proposes an opening to the ethical dimension, which demands an examination of the union, through love, with a fellow human being and with the community of human beings, rather than of the union of body and soul (d). -/- Neste artigo, propõe-se um exame crítico da última obra de J.-L. Marion, intitulada "Sur la pensée passive de Descartes", dedicada à união de alma e corpo, e cuja tese principal é: os problemas que essa união suscita confundem dois termos, corpo e meu corpo. Essa confusão leva a que se apliquem ao primeiro categorias próprias do segundo. Examinam-se os "paradoxos ônticos" que meu corpo (a carne) inaugura; a tese de duas interpretações das medita ccedil;ões primeira e sexta é esclarecida; arrisca-se, seguindo uma indicação do autor, a abertura a uma dimensão ética que exige examinar já não a união de corpo e alma, mas sim a união pelo amor a um semelhante e à comunidade de semelhantes. (shrink)

The main purpose of these introductory remarks is to give the reader a sense of Philip Rossi’s philosophical project and its importance. I will then advance an interpretation of what motivates Kant’s commitment to community, and, on its basis, object to Rossi’s views on radical evil –a point which affects how one should conceive the moral vocation of humanity and the role that politics and religion play within it. My reconstruction concludes with a sketch of how the five contributions to (...) this Symposium fit together and deepen our understanding of Rossi’s overall project. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the claim that supervaluationist consequence is not classical for a language including an operator for definiteness. Although there is some sense in which this claim is uncontroversial, there is a sense in which the claim must be qualified. In particular I defend Keefe's position according to which supervaluationism is classical except when the inference from phi to Dphi is involved. The paper provides a precise content to this claim showing that we might provide complete (and (...) sound) systems of deduction for supervaluationist consequence in which proofs are completely classical with the exception of a single last step (involving the above mentioned inference). (shrink)

Mediante una investigación teórica y de trabajo de campo en relación a la adaptación de la titulación de arquitectura al EEES y con el objetivo de hacer efectivo un despliegue gradual del desarrollo de las competencias del submódulo de dibujo, se exponen los resultados de la coordinación entre asignaturas y una selección crítica y comparativa de actividades de aprendizaje. Se indaga además en la dispar distribución de las materias de dibujo de la adaptación al plan de bolonia, concluyendo con una (...) propuesta de despliegue independiente y mejorada del submódulo desvinculado de las materias que no le son afines. (shrink)

El objeto de este escrito es el de responder a las críticas que Juliana da Silveira Pinheiro hiciera a mi libro (Pavesi, 2008) en la reseña publicada por Kriterion en junio del año pasado (Pinheiro, 2011). Ensayaremos pues una defensa de nuestra tesis sin renunciar, sin embargo, a otra aspiración más amplia: la de abrir un campo de discusión sobre un texto, Las Pasiones del Alma y un problema muy vigente en los estudios cartesianos actuales, este es: el que se (...) refiere al valor explicativo del cuerpo como causa segunda de las pasiones. (shrink)

A general mathematical framework, based on countable partitions of Natural Numbers [1], is presented, that allows to provide a Semantics to propositional languages. It has the particularity of allowing both the valuations and the interpretation Sets for the connectives to discriminate complexity of the formulas. This allows different adequacy criteria to be used to assess formulas associated with the same connective, but that differ in their complexity. The presented method can be adapted potentially infinite number of connectives and truth values, (...) therefore, it can be considered a general framework to provide semantics to several of the known logic systems (eg, LC, L3 LP, FDE). The presented semantics allow to converge to different standard semantics if the separation complexity procedure is annulled. Therefore, it can be understood as a framework that allows greater precision (in complexity terms) with respect to formula satisfaction. Naturally, because of how it is built, it can be incorporated into non-deterministic semantics. The presented procedure also allows generating valuations that grant a different truth value to each formula of propositional language. As a positive side effect, our method allows a constructive proof of the equipotence between N and N^n for all Natural n. (shrink)

L’orthodoxie dans la littérature florissante au sujet de la fondation (grounding) suggère que cette notion ne peut être analysée ou exprimée en terme d’aucune autre. Par ailleurs, le primitivisme à propos de l’essence est considéré comme très plausible depuis l’article influent de Kit Fine à ce sujet. Cela contraint les philosophes qui emploient ces deux notions à accepter une position doublement primitiviste. Mon objectif principal est de proposer une définition de la fondation en terme d’essence. Je commencerai par présenter la (...) conception positive en question, puis je montrerai la façon dont elle répond à un certain nombre d’objections à son encontre. L’apport d’une telle approche, si elle est couronnée de succès, devrait être évident : les philosophes qui acceptent la fondation comme notion primitive n’auront plus à le faire, pour autant qu’ils emploient déjà la notion d’essence. Pour ceux qui refusaient de parler de fondation sous prétexte que la notion était indéfinissable, la présence d’une définition éliminera ipso facto leur raison d’être sceptique. (shrink)

Perfectionism about well-being is, at a minimum, the view that people’s lives go well when, and because they realize their capacities. It is common to link perfectionism with an idea of human essence or nature, to yield the view that what constitutes people’s well-being is the development and exercise of characteristically human capacities. The first part of this paper considers the very serious problems associated with the idea of human nature or essence, and argues that perfectionism would be more plausible (...) if it abandons reliance on it and focuses instead on the unfolding of some valuable capacities that need not be unique to, or shared by all human beings. This revised perfectionism is evaluative all the way down, pragmatic but not unprincipled, and holistic. In its second part, the paper articulates this account in terms of the dignitarian approach—the view that we have reason to organize our personal and social life in such a way that we respond appropriately to the valuable features of individuals that give rise to their dignity. Dignity is a non-conventional, normative status based on a diverse and disjunctive set of valuable capacities. The dignitarian approach helps develop, defend, and identify the implications of the revised perfectionism suggested in the previous part of the paper while also allowing us to make sense of the role of some generalizations that animated some of the plausibility of traditional perfectionism—and this without the pitfalls of reliance on an idea of human nature. On this paper’s proposed view—Dignitarian Perfectionism—human individuals’ well-being consists, at least in part, in developing and exercising the capacities at the basis of their dignity. (shrink)

This is a revised version of a Licenciatura Thesis (defended at the Universidad de Buenos Aires in 1997).