In this paper I argue that some human reproductive genome editing interventions can be therapeutic in nature, and thus that it is false that all such interventions just create healthy individuals. I do this by showing that the conditions established by a therapy definition are met by certain reproductive genome editing interventions. I then defend this position against two objections: (a) reproductive genome editing interventions do not attain one of the two conditions for something to be a therapy, and (b) (...) some reproductive genome editing interventions are therapeutic but in a nonstandard way. In the Conclusion I call for a more nuanced discussion of the nature of reproductive genome editing interventions. (shrink)

Recent breakthroughs in stem cell differentiation and reprogramming suggest that functional human gametes could soon be created in vitro. While the ethical debate on the uses of in vitro generated gametes (IVG) was originally constrained by the fact that they could be derived only from embryonic stem cell lines, the advent of somatic cell reprogramming, with the possibility to easily derive human induced pluripotent stem cells from any individual, affords now a major leap in the feasibility of IVG derivation and (...) in the scope of their potential applications. In this paper we develop an ethical framework, rooted in recent scientific evidence, to support a robust experimental pipeline that could enable the first-in-human use of IVG. We then apply this framework to the following objectives: (1) a clarification of the genetic parenting options afforded by IVG, along with their ethical underpinnings; (2) a defence of the use of IVG to remedy infertility, broadening their scope to same-sex couples; (3) an assessment of the most far-reaching implications of IVG for multiplex parenting. These include, first, the liberation of parenting roles from the constraints of biological generations in vivo, allowing multiple individuals to engage in genetic parenting together, thus blurring the distinction between biological and social generations. Second, we discuss the conflation of IVG with sequencing technology and its implications for the possibility that prospective parents may choose among a hitherto unprecedented number of potential children. In view of these perspectives, we argue that, contrary to the exhausted paradigm according to which society lags behind science, IVG may represent instead a salient and most visible instance where biotechnological ingenuity could be used in pursuit of social experimentation. (shrink)

News about the first baby born after a mitochondrial replacement technique (MRT; specifically maternal spindle transfer) broke on September 27, 2016 and, in a matter of hours, went global. Of special interest was the fact that the mitochondrial replacement procedure happened in Mexico. One of the scientists behind this world first was quoted as having said that he and his team went to Mexico to carry out the procedure because, in Mexico, there are no rules. In this paper, we explore (...) Mexico's rule of law in relation to mitochondrial replacement techniques and show that, in fact, certain instances of MRTs are prohibited at the federal level and others are prohibited at the state level. According to our interpretation of the law, the scientists behind this first successful MRT procedure broke federal regulations regarding assisted fertilization research. (shrink)

Some Comments on de Melo-Martin and Harris.

Astrobiocentrism is a vision that places us in a scenario of confirmation of life in the universe, either as a second genesis or as an expansion of humanity in space. It manages to raise consistent arguments in relation to questions such as what would happen to knowledge if life were confirmed in the universe, how would this change the way we understand our place in the cosmos? Astrobiocentrism raises a series of reflections in the context of confirmed discovery, and it (...) develops concepts that work directly with what would happen after irrefutable evidence has been obtained that we are not alone in space. Unlike biocentrism or ecocentrism, the astrobiocentric view is not limited to the Earth-centric perspective, and for it incorporates a multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary understanding. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to make a reflection on the astrobiocentric issues related to the challenges and problems of the discovery of life in the universe and the expansion of mankind into space. Here we explore some aspects of the transition from biogeocentrism to astrobiocentrism, astrobiosemiotics, homo mensura, moral community, planetary sustainability and astrotheology. (shrink)

In a recent publication Tom Douglas and Katrien Devolder have proposed a new account of genetic parenthood, building on the work of Heidi Mertes. Douglas and Devolder’s account aims to solve, among other things, the question of who are the genetic parents of an individual created through somatic cell nuclear transfer (i.e. cloning): (a) the nuclear DNA provider or (b) the progenitors of the nuclear DNA provider. Such a question cannot be answered by simply appealing to the folk account of (...) genetic parenthood, according to which the genetic parents of an individual are those individuals who produced the egg and sperm, respectively, which fused to create the embryo. It cannot be so as in cloning there is no fertilization as such. In this article I critically examine Douglas and Devolder’s new account of genetic parenthood and demonstrate that it is vulnerable to counterexamples that exploit the lack of a condition specifying that genetic parents should cause a child’s coming into existence. (shrink)

Human eggs for basic, fertility and stem-cell research are in short supply. Many experiments that require their use cannot be carried out at present, and, therefore, the benefits that could emerge from these are either delayed or never materialise. This state of affairs is problematic for scientists and patients worldwide, and it is a matter that needs our attention. Recent advances in chimera research have opened the possibility of creating human/non-human animal chimeras intended for human gamete production (chimeras-IHGP). In this (...) paper, I examine four arguments against the creation of such chimeras and prove that all of them are found wanting. I conclude by showing that there is a strong moral reason for scientists to pursue this research avenue. (shrink)

In response to the COVID‐19 pandemic philosophers and governments have proposed scarce resource allocation guidelines. Their purpose is to advise healthcare professionals on how to ethically allocate scarce medical resources. One challenging feature of the pandemic has been the large numbers of patients needing mechanical ventilatory support. Guidelines have paradigmatically focused on the question of what doctors should do if they have fewer ventilators than patients who need respiratory support: which patient should get the ventilator? There is, however, an important (...) higher level allocation problem. Namely, how are we to ethically distribute newly obtained ventilators across hospitals: which hospital should get the ventilator(s)? In this paper, we identify a set of principles for allocating newly obtained ventilators across hospitals. We focus particularly on low and middle income countries, who frequently have limited pre‐existing intensive care capacity, and have needed to source additional ventilators. We first provide some background. Second, we argue that the main population healthcare aim during the COVID‐19 pandemic should be to save the most lives. Next, we assess a series of potential heuristics or principles that could be used to guide allocation: allocation to the most densely populated cities, random allocation, allocation based on the ratio of patients to ICU personnel, prioritisation in terms of intrahospital mortality, prioritisation of younger populations, and prioritisation in terms of population mortality. We conclude by providing a plausible ranking of the principles, while noting a number of epistemological challenges, in terms of how they best further the aim of increasing the probability of saving the most lives. (shrink)

Abstract Background The first live birth following the use of a new reproductive technique, maternal spindle transfer (MST), which is a mitochondrial replacement technique (MRT), was accomplished by dividing the execution of the MST procedure between two countries, the USA and Mexico. This was done in order to avoid US legal restrictions on this technique. -/- Sources of data Academic articles, news articles, documents obtained through freedom of information requests, laws, regulations and national reports. -/- Areas of agreement MRTs are (...) new reproductive techniques that present novel ethical and legal challenges, since genetic material from three people is employed to create a child. -/- Areas of controversy Could the first MST procedure that culminated in a live birth negatively impact reproductive medicine in Mexico? -/- Growing points The USA and Mexico need specific and clear legislation on MRTs, in order for such techniques not to be governed by prior existing legislation on assisted reproduction that is inadequate for dealing with the new challenges that these techniques present. -/- Areas timely for developing research There is a pressing need for work to be done on the international governance of new reproductive techniques. (shrink)

In 2015 the United Kingdom (UK) became the first nation to legalize egg and zygotic nuclear transfer procedures using mitochondrial replacement techniques (MRTs) to prevent the maternal transmission of serious mitochondrial DNA diseases to offspring. These techniques are a form of human germline genetic modification and can happen intentionally if female embryos are selected during the MRT clinical process, either through sperm selection or preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). In the same year, an MRT was performed by a United States (U.S.)-based (...) physician team. This experiment involved a cross-border effort: the MRT procedure per se was carried out in the US, and the embryo transfer in Mexico. The authors examine the ethics of MRTs from the standpoint of genetic relatedness and gender implications, in places that lack adequate laws and regulation regarding assisted reproduction. Then, we briefly examine whether MRTs can be justified as a reproductive option in the US and Mexico, after reassessing their legalization in the UK. We contend that morally inadequate and ineffective regulations regarding egg donation, PGD, and germline genetic modifications jeopardize the ethical acceptability of the implementation of MRTs, suggesting that MRTs are currently difficult to justify in the US and Mexico. In addition to relevant regulation, the initiation and appropriate use of MRTs in a country require a child-centered follow-up policy and more evidence for its safety. (shrink)

In the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers in some countries were forced to make distressing triaging decisions about which individual patients should receive potentially life-saving treatment. Much of the ethical discussion prompted by the pandemic has concerned which moral principles should ground our response to these individual triage questions. In this paper we aim to broaden the scope of this discussion by considering the ethics of broader structural allocation decisions raised by the COVID-19 pandemic. More specifically, we (...) consider how nations ought to distribute a scarce life-saving resource across healthcare regions in a public health emergency, particularly in view of regional differences in projected need and existing capacity. We call this the regional triage question. Using the case study of ventilators in the COVID-19 pandemic, we show how the moral frameworks that we might adopt in response to individual triage decisions do not translate straightforwardly to this regional-level triage question. Having outlined what we take to be a plausible egalitarian approach to the regional triage question, we go on to propose a novel way of operationalising the ‘save the most lives’ principle in this context. We claim that the latter principle ought to take some precedence in the regional triage question, but also note important limitations to the extent of the influence that it should have in regional allocation decisions. (shrink)

El Foro Global de Bioética en Investigación (GFBR por sus siglas en inglés) se reunió el 3 y 4 de noviembre en Buenos Aires, Argentina, con el objetivo de discutir la ética de la investigación con mujeres embarazadas. El GFBR es una plataforma mundial que congrega a actores clave con el objetivo de promover la investigación realizada de manera ética, fortalecer la ética de la investigación en salud, particularmente en países de ingresos bajos y medios, y promover colaboración entre países (...) del norte y del sur.a Los participantes en el GFBR provenientes de Latinoamérica incluyeron a eticistas, investigadores, miembros de comités de ética y representantes de autoridades sanitarias provenientes de Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panamá, Perú, Nicaragua y la República Dominicana. Una legítima preocupación por la protección de las mujeres embarazadas y sus embriones o fetos ha llevado a la mayoría de los países de la Región de las Américas a limitar la realización de estudios con mujeres embarazadas exclusivamente a aquellos estudios específicos sobre el embarazo, y a requerir la exclusión sistemática de las mujeres embarazadas o de las mujeres que quedan embarazadas en el curso del estudio. Ciertamente, a lo largo de la historia de la ética de la investigación, se ha creído erróneamente que proteger a una población es sinónimo de excluirla de los estudios. Se sabe ahora que proceder así implica exponer a riesgos mucho mayores a la población que se busca proteger. El embarazo implica cambios fisiológicos sustantivos e impacta profundamente la manera como el cuerpo metaboliza los medicamentos. Sin embargo, por evitar hacer investigación con mujeres embarazadas, no se ha producido la evidencia científica necesaria para tomar decisiones sobre tratamientos e intervenciones preventivas con dosis eficaces y seguras para ellas y sus embriones o fetos. A manera de ilustración, en el 2001 había en los Estados Unidos apenas más de una docena de medicamentos aprobados para uso en el embarazo (1) y en el 2011 la Food and Drug Administration (FDA) aprobó por primera vez en 15 años un medicamento para su uso en el embarazo (2). Como consecuencia de no haber producido la evidencia necesaria, se pone en riesgo la salud de las mujeres embarazadas cada vez que se les da atención médica. Las mujeres embarazadas se enferman y las mujeres enfermas se embarazan, y no se sabe si los medicamentos que se les da son eficaces o siquiera seguros para ellas y sus embriones o fetos. (shrink)

En cada página de este volumen sobre las concepciones filosóficas,psicológicas, políticas y sociológicas, se puede encontrar una serie de plan-teamientos, perspectivas y dudas que permitirán emprender nuevos abor-dajes investigativos que coadyuvarán para la comprensión de la esencia, delsentido y del significado del rol de la familia en el actual escenario signadopor la tendencia creciente en ciencia y en tecnología, mismas que, paulatinamente han ido transformando las diferentes formas de vivir, de ser, deenseñar y de aprender del ser humano. Nos encontramos (...) viviendo en unasociedad que exige el desarrollo de competencias diversas para responder alos nuevos requerimientos de la época, un contexto que evidencia el advenimiento de una verdadera revolución cognitiva, praxológica y metodológica que en conjunto va configurando un sujeto diferente. (shrink)

The structuralist reconstruction of the metabolic biochemistry here presented is a more complete and revised version than the one presented in Donolo, Federico & Lorenzano (2006). This version, as the previous one, continues with the reconstructive task initiated by César Lorenzano (2002), but advances further on those elements which remained pendent of reconstruction: applications subsequent to the paradigmatic one, for being these “too diversified and numerous” (p. 210).In line with which is said before, the objective of this new reconstruction (...) is to make the theoretical network of the biochemistry wider, in order to be able to capture the many successful applications (paradigmatic examples or exemplars) which appear in modern university textbooks. In order to accomplish this, major conceptual precisions are being introduced which will have repercussions in a modification and increased complexity of the fundamental law implicit in the text books, but still conserving the previous basic idea. Because of all this we can say that the present article goes further into the reconstruction task of the metabolic biochemistry theory. (shrink)

Spanish translation of Jussi Backman, "Divine and Mortal Motivation: On the Movement of Life in Aristotle and Heidegger,” Continental Philosophy Review 38 (2005): 241–261. -/- Translated by Fernando Huesca Ramón, translation revised by Jean Orejarena Torres and César Mora Alonso.

Cualquiera que sea la opinión que uno tenga sobre la participación de la Iglesia católica en los debates políticos del Ecuador, nadie negará que ha sido y sigue siendo un actor importante de estos debates. Conocer sus ideas políticas contribuye a entender mejor este rol y a juzgarlo con más fundamento y menos apasionamiento. Por esto, el actual volumen reúne textos selectos de cinco pensadores católicos ecuatorianos representativos, desde fines del siglo XIX hasta las últimas décadas del siglo XX. Hablamos (...) de: • Monseñor Federico González Suárez (1844 – 1917). Historiador, arqueólogo, Obispo de Ibarra (1895 – 1905) y Arzobispo de Quito (1906 – 1917). • Cardenal Carlos María de la Torre (1873 – 1968). Arzobispo de Quito (1933-1967) y Cardenal desde 1953. • Julio Tobar Donoso (1894 – 1981). Jurista, diplomático, historiador. • Cardenal Pablo Muñoz Vega (1903 – 1994). Arzobispo de Quito (1967- 1985) y Cardenal desde 1969. • Monseñor Leonidas Proaño (1910 – 1988). Obispo de Riobamba (1954-1985) y candidato al Premio Nobel de la Paz en 1986. El objetivo de esta publicación es ofrecer una síntesis coherente del pensamiento político de estos autores, a pesar de las diferencias que entre ellos existen. No ofrecemos una compilación sobre “el” pensamiento político católico, así dicho en general, porque sería exhaustivo y pretencioso. Nos limitaremos a presentar una síntesis que nos introduzca a las principales cuestiones sociales y políticas que han preocupado a estas cinco figuras. Este trabajo tiene naturalmente sus límites debidos al amplio espacio de tiempo considerado, las múltiples cuestiones políticas implicadas y la productividad de los autores, todos ellos pensadores a la vez que personas de acción. (shrink)

El presente texto busca difundir a un público más amplio el pensamiento del escritor e intelectual peruano Manuel González Prada (1844-1918), uno de los introductores del positivismo y del anarquismo en el Perú, quien ejerció una notable influencia sobre varios pensadores y literatos peruanos de comienzos del siglo XX, como José Carlos Mariátegui, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, César Vallejo, Jorge Basadre, entre otros. En ese sentido, mostraremos los juicios e ideas de Gonzalez Prada referidas a la relación (...) entre saber científico y poder político, enmarcado en un proyecto de emancipación social y cultural. (shrink)

La familia desde una relectura de la política de Aristóteles, elaborado por Pablo Andrés Heredia y Catya Ximena Torres Cordero, en el que se presenta un análisis de la obra de Aristóteles con la finalidad de establecer las diferencias existentes entre las percepciones clásica y moderna sobre la familia; a su vez, los autores se proponen reconocer la relevancia de la familia en la construcción de la sociedad y del Estado a partir del análisis dedos obras de la (...) filosofía política contemporánea: La condición humana de Hannah Arendt (1993) y Homo Saccer de Giorgio Agamben (1998); obras que a decir de los autores retoman, extienden el pensamiento aristotélico y establecen una serie de directrices para comprender el lugar de la familia en el ámbito público. (shrink)

The recent resurgence of extreme-right movements and the nationalist turn of many governments across the world have reignited the relevance of discussions within educational philosophy about the teaching of national identity in schools. However, the conceptualisation of national identity in previous iterations of these debates have been largely Western and Eurocentric, making the past theoretical literature about these questions less relevant for post-colonial settings. In this paper, I imagine a new approach for teaching national identity in post-colonial contexts, founded on (...) postcolonial conceptions of identity and in particular, the concept of hybridity. I first develop a postcolonial account of national identity by drawing on Homi Bhabha’s thinking about cultural identity, drawing on his concepts of liminality, splitting, and ambivalence. Then, building on Bhabha's notion of hybridity, I propose a distinction between national identity portrayals as either fixed or malleable. Finally, I demonstrate the implications of such a conceptual distinction on the way that national identity is taught in post-colonial schools; by way of an example, I envision a concrete approach to teaching national identity that views national identity as malleable rather than fixed, set in a hypothetical postcolonial school in the Philippines. By beginning from postcolonial assumptions about national identity, I hope to indicate new directions that the debates about the teaching of national identity in schools might proceed. (shrink)

Aquí se presenta un avance de la investigación acerca de la filosofíaandina prehispánica que parte de la organización de los fragmentos,textos o relatos hallados en los documentos de extirpación deidolatrías, de las crónicas de los españoles, de los informes de lacasta sacerdotal del virreinato, registrados durante la colonizaciónespañola del Perú. En éste, en lo fundamental, se presenta laargumentación sobre la teoría del pensamiento y los problemasfundamentales de la filosofía. Se trata del contenido monumentaldel pensamiento filosófico andino prehispánico perdido entre laabundancia (...) de argumentos y comunicaciones de carácter religioso,mágico y mítico dominante. Con esto esperamos demostrar que síexistió filosofía en el mundo andino prehispánico según un esquemaacorde a la matriz planteada por la filosofía occidental griega. (shrink)

It’s a common assumption in psychiatry and psychotherapy that mental health conditions are marked out by some form of epistemic irrationality. With respect to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), the mainstream view is that OCD causes irrational beliefs. Recently, however, this ‘doxastic view’ has been criticized from a theoretical and empirical perspective. Instead a more promising ‘zetetic view’ has been proposed which locates the epistemic irrationality of OCD not in irrational beliefs, but in the senseless inquiries it prompts. Yet, in this paper (...) I present a special class of cases—sexual obsessive-compulsive disorder (S-OCD)—which cannot be explained by existing doxastic and zetetic accounts of the epistemic irrationality of OCD. In addition, some people with S-OCD appear to be adhering too well to a plausible set of norms for inquiry. Their suffering seems to be partially caused by an excess of rationality, and not a lack thereof. They seem, if anything, too rational. This shows firstly that it’s unlikely that there is one form of epistemic irrationality common to all persons living with OCD. Secondly, it should lead us to rethink the epistemic categories we use in classifying mental health conditions such as OCD. (shrink)

En esta investigación se demuestra que no existe oposición antagónica entre la filosofía andina prehispánica y el desarrollo de la filosofía en general, ni con la filosofía occidental griega en particular, salvo en las formas de su temática especial o la profundización del problema filosófico concreto, por cuanto en ningún caso es contraria a la ley del desarrollo filosófico en general, y de ella debemos entender que los nombres, los términos o los vocablos con que designan los conceptos siendo distintos (...) tienen el mismo contenido y sigue igual lógica de desarrollo. Por ejemplo, “Pacha” resulta una formulación más cercana al concepto científico de espacio/tiempo, por cuanto adelanta la imposibilidad de separar el espacio y el tiempo de los objetos o fenómenos de la realidad objetiva, logrado no como un descubrimiento científico sino como una necesidad de formular el pensamiento acerca de dicho fenómeno, tan semejante a la ciencia moderna. O Cay y Camac, los conceptos de “materia” y de “realidad ideal”, perdidos u ocultos en los textos prehispánicos, son categorías que resuelven los problemas fundamentales de la filosofía, como acerca de “¿Cuál es el “verdadero ser”?”, o acerca de la relación ser y pensar. De igual modo consideramos que el idealismo andino prehispánico no difiere antagónicamente del idealismo griego clásico, contrariamente es posible discutir en el mismo nivel con Platón o con cualquier idealista de la filosofía clásica griega. (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)

The current assessment of behaviors in the inventories to diagnose autism spectrum disorders (ASD) focus on observation and discrete categorizations. Behaviors require movements, yet measurements of physical movements are seldom included. Their inclusion however, could provide an objective characterization of behavior to help unveil interactions between the peripheral and the central nervous systems. Such interactions are critical for the development and maintenance of spontaneous autonomy, self-regulation and voluntary control. At present, current approaches cannot deal with the heterogeneous, dynamic and stochastic (...) nature of development. Accordingly, they leave no avenues for real-time or longitudinal assessments of change in a coping system continuously adapting and developing compensatory mechanisms. We offer a new unifying statistical framework to reveal re-afferent kinesthetic features of the individual with ASD. The new methodology is based on the non-stationary stochastic patterns of minute fluctuations (micro-movements) inherent to our natural actions. Such patterns of behavioral variability provide re-entrant sensory feedback contributing to the autonomous regulation and coordination of the motor output. From an early age, this feedback supports centrally driven volitional control and fluid, flexible transitions between intentional and spontaneous behaviors. We show that in ASD there is a disruption in the maturation of this form of proprioception. Despite this disturbance, each individual has unique adaptive compensatory capabilities that we can unveil and exploit to evoke faster and more accurate decisions. Measuring the kinesthetic re-afference in tandem with stimuli variations we can detect changes in their micro-movements indicative of a more predictive and reliable kinesthetic percept. Our methods address the heterogeneity of ASD with a personalized approach grounded in the inherent sensory-motor abilities that the individual has already developed. (shrink)

This study presents and develops in detail (a new version of) the argumental conception of meaning. The two basic principles of the argumental conception of meaning are: i) To know (implicitly) the sense of a word is to know (implicitly) all the argumentation rules concerning that word; ii) To know the sense of a sentence is to know the syntactic structure of that sentence and to know the senses of the words occurring in it. The sense of a sentence is (...) called immediate argumental role of that sentence. According to the argumental conception of meaning a theory of meaning for a particular language yields a systematic specification of the understanding of every sentence of the language which consists in a specification of the immediate argumental role of the sentence. The immediate argumental role is a particular aspect of the use of a sentence in arguments. But it is not the whole use in arguments, nor is the whole use in arguments reducible to the immediate argumental role. That is why, by accepting the argumental conception of meaning, we can have epistemological holism without linguistic holism. The argumental conception distinguishes between the understanding and the correctness of a language. Such a distinction makes it possible to account for our understanding of paradoxical languages. Redundancy theory of truth, realistic conceptions of truth or epistemic conceptions of truth are all compatible with an argumental conception of sense. But here it is argued that an epistemic conception of truth is preferrable. Acceptance of the argumental conception of meaning and of an epistemic conception of truth leads to a rejection of the idea of analytic truth. The argumental conception is pluralistic with respect to the understandability of different logics, and neutral with respect to their correctness. (shrink)

In the following paper, I wish to examine a problem for the theist libertarian. On the one hand, libertarians insist that freedom requires possible alternatives open to the agent. On the other hand, God’s perfectly formed moral character implies that He always does the morally best. Give His moral character, then, it appears that there are no possible alternatives open to God. We thus get a dilemma for the theist libertarian: either a) God is not libertarian free – because His (...) moral character rules out possible alternatives; or b) God’s character is not perfectly formed – because libertarian freedom requires that it is possible for God to act out of character. In the present paper, I argue that Thomas Reid, a paradigmatic libertarian, has the theoretical tools to retain a robust account of libertarian freedom without compromising a robust account of perfectly formed characters. In sum, it is necessary that agents with fully formed characters always act in character (read de dicto), but it is possible that agents with fully formed characters act out of character (read de re). The former claim captures the robustness of perfectly formed moral characters and the latter claim captures the robustness of libertarian freedom. (shrink)

Call ‘a substance’ a person who is at home in a relatively stable and unified sense-making framework: a social structure that to some degree specifies which categories are important for interpreting reality, which goals are worth pursing, which character traits are admirable, etc. Call ‘an accident’ a person who is not at home in one such framework. It is tempting to think that being a substance is preferable, but I present some considerations for thinking otherwise. Mexican philosophers Emilio Uranga and (...) Jorge Portilla, I argue, present notions of accidentality as decolonial tools. Uranga’s account enables Mexicans to have positive valuation of their being independently of the approving gaze of the colonizers and their standards of value. Portilla’s thought distinguishes between pernicious accidentality resulting from the disintegration of sense-making frameworks and authentic accidentality as a condition for freedom, self-creation, and ultimately for individual and communal liberation. (shrink)

Based on Maldonado-Torres’s formulation of the term, we conceive the decolonial turn as a form of liberating and decolonising reason beyond the liberal and Enlightened emancipation of rationality, and beyond the more radical Euro-critiques that have failed to consistently challenge the legacies of Eurocentrism and white male heteronormativity (often Eurocentric critiques of Eurocentrism). We complement Maldonado-Torres’s account of the decolonial turn in philosophy, theory and critique by providing an analysis of the trajectories of academic philosophy and clarifying the (...) relevance of decolonising philosophy and of the decolonial turn for current efforts in transforming philosophy in face of the challenges of social movements such as the Third World Liberation Front and Black Lives Matter in the United States, and Rhodes Must Fall in South Africa and England. After a brief analysis of the trajectory and current status of philosophy as a discipline in the modern Western research university, we provide examples of the decolonial turn and of decolonising philosophy in three areas: the engagement with (1) Asian and (2) Latin American philosophies, and (3) debates in the philosophy of race and gender. (shrink)

There are various proposals for a general characterization of holism1. In this paper I propose the following: a variety of holism is the view that every X of an appropriate kind, which is part of a relevant whole W, cannot be legitimately separated or taken in isolation from W. Then, I distinguish two general kinds of holism, depending on two different reasons which can debar us from taking X in isolation from W. One reason can be that separating X from (...) W always amounts to transforming X into something else. Correspondingly, a strong holism is the view that if the whole W is modified anywhere, X ceases to be X and becomes something else. Another reason why it may be illegitimate to consider X in isolation from W can be that if we separate X from W, nothing that we know entitles us to exclude that X might be transformed into something else. Correspondingly, virtual holism is the view that if the whole W is modified anywhere, we can never rule out that X ceases to be X and becomes something else. (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)

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)

Jorge Portilla argues that authentic philosophical inquiry plays a liberating function. This function is that of bringing more fully to consciousness aspects of identities or ways of being‐in‐the world that have been, up until then, tacit or opaque to the agent herself to facilitate her endorsement, rejection, or modification of these identities. For Portilla, this function facilitates greater self‐mastery by increasing the range of free variations of subjectivity available to the agent, and this increase in self‐mastery itself constitutes a kind (...) of liberation. The main goal of this article is to provide a substantive interpretation of the nature of liberation Portilla thinks is embedded in this central function of authentic philosophical inquiry. I argue that this type of liberation should be understood ultimately in terms of increases in human agency, so I label it “agential liberation.” For Portilla, agential liberation involves two central elements: (i) a type of agential flourishing central to human flourishing, and (ii) an increase in the reach of intentional action that I describe as an expansion in the arena of human agency. (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)

I consider whether the self-ascription theory can succeed in providing a tenseless (B-theoretic) account of tensed belief and timely action. I evaluate an argument given by William Lane Craig for the conclusion that the self-ascription account of tensed belief entails a tensed theory (A-theory) of time. I claim that how one formulates the selfascription account of tensed belief depends upon whether one takes the subject of selfascription to be a momentary person-stage or an enduring person. I provide two different formulations (...) of the self-ascription account of tensed belief, one that is compatible with a perdurantist account of persons and the other that is compatible with an endurantist account of persons. I argue that a self-ascription account of tensed beliefs for enduring subjects most plausibly involves the self-ascription of relations rather than properties. I argue that whether one takes the subject of self-ascription to be a momentary personstage or an enduring person, the self-ascription theory provides a plausible B-theoretic account of how tensed belief and timely action are possible. (shrink)

I argue for a substantive interpretation of Carlos Vaz Ferreira’s account of intellectual flourishing as intellectual liberation. For Vaz Ferreira, I argue, there is an inescapable master-slave dynamic between language and language users, so that flourishing intellectually essentially involves a type of mastery of language that frees up thinking from enslaving linguistic/conceptual confusions and thus facilitates the acquisition of truth. Central to this project are Vaz Ferreira’s most interesting, and radical, views on the nature of language signification and thus on (...) human’s ability to accurately describe and know reality, for failing to keep these linguistic limitations in mind, Vaz Ferreira argues, is a central way for language to enslave humans to confused thinking and thus prevent their intellectual flourishing. (shrink)

Leibniz claims that for every possible substance S there is an individual concept that includes predicates describing everything that will ever happen to S, if S existed. Many commentators have thought that this leads Leibniz to think that all properties are had essentially, and thus that it is not metaphysically possible for substances to be otherwise than the way their individual concept has them as being. I argue against this common way of reading Leibniz’s views on the metaphysics of modality. (...) I develop a model in which individual concepts are innocent; that is, individual concepts are divine ideas that permit God to know everything that will ever happen to all possible substances, if created, but these individual concepts neither require that all properties are had essentially nor require that it is metaphysically necessary for substances to be the way their individual concepts have them as being. (shrink)

I address the objection that the concept of racism has become overly inflated. Critics of the conceptual inflation of “racism” argue that theories of institutional racism engage in untoward conceptual inflation insofar as they undermine our moral understanding of racial phenomena, hinder our ability to explain the causes of racial inequality, and even undercut struggles for racial justice. I develop an original account of institutional racism and show that it is immune to all three versions of the conceptual inflation challenge.

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)

Can an epistemic conception of truth and an endorsement of the excluded middle (together with other principles of classical logic abandoned by the intuitionists) cohabit in a plausible philosophical view? In PART I I describe the general problem concerning the relation between the epistemic conception of truth and the principle of excluded middle. In PART II I give a historical overview of different attitudes regarding the problem. In PART III I sketch a possible holistic solution.

It has been commonplace to equate Foucault’s 1979 series of lectures at the Collège de France with the claim that for neoliberalism, unlike for classical liberalism, the market needs to be artificially constructed. The article expands this claim to its full expression, taking it beyond what otherwise would be a simple divulgation of a basic neoliberal tenet. It zeroes in on Foucault’s own insight: that neoliberal constructivism is not directed at the market as such, but, in principle, at society, arguing (...) that the value of this insight goes beyond the critique of a neoliberal present. The neoliberal rationale rather helps him to reveal a unique historical architecture, a latent approach to the social dissimilar to the one that has long predominated in the human sciences. The inversion of homo œconomicus in neoliberal theory amounted to the unearthing of a ‘social subject of interest’ within civil society. Such a subject, barely recognized by neoliberals who simply instrumentalize it for the sake of the market, demonstrates that the social is not necessarily the natural product of ethical subjects; that society may also need to be constructed. (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)

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)

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)

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.

Can a person from Latin America be a Catholic, or a feminist, or a democratic socialist in an authentic way? These identities come from Europe, and given the colonial history of Latin America, it seems reasonable to think that decolonizing the Latin American mind is a condition for its authenticity. Further, it seems reasonable to think that decolonization itself requires extirpating ideas and identities originating from the colonizers, especially those used to establish the colonial order. Thus, it seems that Latin (...) Americans cannot adopt such identities; authentic decolonization demands otherwise. In this paper I argue that the thought of twentieth century Mexican philosopher Jorge Portilla provides a persuasive account of the nature of authentic self-creation that allows for a kind of decolonization that makes it conceptually possible for Latin Americans to be Catholics, feminists, or democratic socialists in an authentic fashion. That is, authentic decolonization of the mind, I argue, need not involve a blanket rejection of identities originating from the colonizers; instead, it can be understood as a particular kind of authentic self-creation: one that is appropriately sensitive to the colonial history of the identities freely chosen by the agent. (shrink)

Ideas on meaning, rules and mathematical proofs abound in Wittgenstein’s writings. The undeniable fact that they are present together, sometimes intertwined in the same passage of Philosophical Investigations or Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, does not show, however, that the connection between these ideas is necessary or inextricable. The possibility remains, and ought to be checked, that they can be plausibly and consistently separated. I am going to examine two views detectable in Wittgenstein’s works: one about proofs, the other (...) about meaning and rules. The first is the denial of the objectivity of proof. The second is a conception of meaning stemming from the rule-following considerations. I shall argue that, though Wittgenstein seems to conjoin the two views, they can be, and should be, separated1. (shrink)

This paper argues that racism should not only be conceived as a moral concept whose main aim is to condemn severe wrongs in the domain of race. The paper advances a complementary interpretation of racism as an explanatory concept--one that plays a key role in explaining race-based social problems afflicting members of subordinate racialized groups. As an explanatory concept, the term 'racism' is used to diagnose and highlight the causes of race-related social problems. The project of diagnosing race-based social problems (...) contributes to the pragmatic anti-racist end of developing better political and policy strategies for solving these social problems. The paper defends this interpretation of racism as an explanatory concept through a critical engagement with Urquidez's moral-philosophical account of racism. (shrink)