"El ser es uno con la comida; ser significa comer; es (ist) lo que come (isst) y lo que ha comido. Comer es la forma subjetiva, activa, siendo lo comido la forma objetiva, pasiva, pero ambas son inseparables. Por tanto, únicamente comiendo se llena el concepto vacío del ser y se revela el carácter absurdo de la pregunta: ¿el ser y el no ser son idénticos, es decir, comer y pasar hambre son idénticos?".

En 1968 Raquel Carson comenzaba una revolución en el pensamiento, quizá una de las de mayor peso en la actualidad. En su libro "La primavera silenciosa" acusaba del deterioro ambiental al poder ilimitado del ser humano. La creencia surgida en la modernidad de que todo lo que el hombre decidía era en sí mismo lo mejor por haber sido fruto de una voluntad libérrima, daba primacía y legitimidad absoluta a su acción sobre la naturaleza. Surgieron con gran fuerza numerosos grupos (...) ecologistas que adoptaron un pensamiento que responde al nombre de "ecología profunda" o "Deep Ecology" descrito por primera vez por Arme Naess en un artículo publicado por la revista Inquiry y titulado "The Shallow and the Deep, Long Range Ecology Movement". Los principios que proponía este movimiento (Naess 1984) pueden ser resumidos en ocho grandes puntos: 1) la vida de los seres no humanos es un valor en sí: 2) la riqueza y la diversidad de estas formas de vida son también valores en sí; 3) los seres humanos no pueden intervenir de manera destructiva en la vida; 4) a este respecto, la intervención humana actual es eminentemente excesiva; 5) por consiguiente, las reglas de juego deben ser radicalmente modificadas; 6) esta modificación radical debe hacerse tanto a nivel de las estructuras económicas como de las estructuras ideológicas y culturales; 7) a nivel ideológico, el cambio principal consiste en apreciar más la calidad de la vida que el goce de los bienes materiales; 8) las personas que acepten estos principios tienen la obligación de contribuir, directa o indirectamente a la realización de los cambios fundamentales que aquellos implican. (shrink)

Self-control is deemed crucial for reasons-responsive agency and a key contributor to long-term wellbeing. But recent studies suggest that effortfully resisting one’s temptations does not contribute to long-term goal attainment, and can even be harmful. So how does self-control improve our lives? Finding an answer requires revising the role that overcoming temptation plays in self-control. This paper distinguishes two forms of self-control problems: temptation (the presence of a strong wayward motivation) and apathy (the lack of commitment-advancing motivation). This distinction makes (...) it possible to separate negative self-control (aimed at overcoming temptation) from positive self-control (aimed at overcoming lack of motivation). The paper argues that temptation should not play a central role in our conception of self-control, since overcoming temptation is neither necessary nor sufficient for successful self-control. (shrink)

This work deals with the particular nature of consciousness in comparison to matter, as well as with the question of how conscious subjective experience can be possible at all. Based on a step-by-step derivation, a new approach is introduced and a theory for a possible explanation is proposed, named C-Pattern Theory. The statements and implications resulting from C-Pattern Theory reveal new perspectives on elementary aspects of reality and open up new possibilities with regard to fundamental questions.

El autor Luis Rodríguez Manzanera propone el concepto de macrocriminalidad al referirse a una etapa histórica que involucra el desarrollo de manifestaciones delictivas, que se mantienen por una justificación sociopolítica y que implica a toda una sociedad. Esta definición fue propicia incorporarla para el análisis de Noticia de un secuestro (1996), debido a que, en esta novela periodística, se narran sucesos vinculados con acciones subversivas que respaldan el tráfico ilícito de drogas, junto con atentados que provocó Pablo Escobar, (...) organizador del Cartel de Medellín (Colombia), a las entidades gubernamentales. Algunos indicadores que se apropian a esta conceptualización son la violencia, la locura y el narcoterrorismo. (shrink)

Noticia de un secuestro (1996), del Premio Nobel de Literatura Gabriel García Márquez, representa a la sociedad colombiana que atraviesa por un período caracterizado por el desarrollo de actos narcoterroristas, del cual se detecta el funcionamiento de Pablo Escobar —jefe del Cartel de Medellín— hacia el Gobierno. El presente artículo tiene como finalidad hallar aquellos referentes que permiten ubicar esta obra literaria en lo histórico y lo social —definidos desde la percepción del criminólogo Luis Rodríguez Manzanera al precisar (...) sobre la forma delictiva y la tensión provocada en la ciudadanía para denominarlas como macrocriminalidad—, junto con lo político-filosófico (el capitalismo definido desde el marxismo-leninismo) y lo literario —considerando el posboom como una manifestación artística que permite la incorporación de elementos propios de los Estudios Culturales; como, por ejemplo, la articulación de lo nacional y la crítica ideológica al sistema que los impera. (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 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)

Consider a certain red rose. The proposition that the rose is red is true because the rose is red. One might say as well that the proposition that the rose is red is made true by the rose’s being red. This, it has been thought, does not commit one to a truthmaker of the proposition that the rose is red. For there is no entity that makes the proposition true. What makes it true is how the rose is, and how (...) the rose is is not an entity over and above the rose. It is against this view that I shall argue in this paper. I shall argue that a significant class of true propositions, including inessential predications like the proposition that the rose is red, are made true by entities. "No truthmaking without truthmakers" is my slogan. Although I have my view about what kinds of entities are truthmakers, I shall not argue for or presuppose that view here. All I shall argue for here is that if a proposition is made true by something, it is made true by some thing, but my argument will leave it open what kind of thing that thing is: it could be a fact or state of affairs, a trope, or any other sort of entity. (shrink)

The paper argues that grounding is neither irreflexive, nor asymmetric, nor transitive. In arguing for that conclusion the paper also arguesthat truthmaking is neither irreflexive, nor asymmetric, nor transitive.

The object of this paper is to provide a solution to Nelson Goodman’s Imperfect Community difficulty as it arises for Resemblance Nominalism, the view that properties are classes of resembling particulars. The Imperfect Community difficulty consists in that every two members of a class resembling each other is not sufficient for it to be a class such that there is some property common to all their members, even if ‘x resembles y’ is understood as ‘x and y share some property’. (...) In the paper I explain and criticise several solutions to the difficulty. Then I develop my own solution, which is not subject to the objections I make to the other solutions, and which accords completely with the basic tenets of Resemblance Nominalism. (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 bulletin contains a summary of the main topics of discussion in truthmaker theory, namely: the definition of truthmakers, problems with Truthmaker Necessitarianism and Truthmaker Maximalism, the ontological burden of truthmakers and the recalcitrant topic of truthmakers for negative truths.

Peter Milne has tried to refure Truthmaker Maximalism. the thesis that every truth has a truthmaker, by producing a simple and direct counterexample to it, the sentence M: This sentence has no truthmaker. I argue that, contrary to what Milne argues, on Truthmaker Maximalism M is equivalent to the Liar, which gives the truthmaker maximalist a way to defend his position from Milne's counterexample: to argue that M expresses no proposition.

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)

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)

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)

El daño ambiental ha despertado el interés de la doctrina en Colombia, aunque aún no se aborda con rigor y profundidad. La razón, entre otras, es la omisión de los avances que ha dado el derecho comparado, donde la concepción del rol de las instituciones jurídicas va hasta una comprensión integral del daño a partir de la alteración funcional de los sistemas. Existe hoy cierto consenso respecto al deber ser del régimen de responsabilidad aplicable a esta noción integral del daño (...) ambiental, capaz de hacer frente a los componentes del medio natural y a todos los que lo conforman. El libro busca aportar al estudio del daño ambiental desde los avances antes descritos en la materia. (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)

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)

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)

En el presente artículo se abordarán los aportes realizados por Gramsci en la construcción de la figura del intelectual. Para ello, se caracterizarán los rasgos distintivos del determinismo histórico marxista, para luego enfocarnos en el pensamiento gramsciano. A partir de allí nos centraremos de manera expresa en los argumentos desplegados por Gramsci al procurarle una función activa a la figura del intelectual, en tanto intelectual colectivo que se va conformando encarnado en el partido revolucionario de la clase obrera. De esta (...) manera, plantearemos que esta disposición del intelectual colectivo se enlaza con los problemas de la vida social en la búsqueda de unificar teoría y praxis, y pretende crear así una nueva hegemonía, puesto que admite la indeterminabilidad de la historia según leyes. (shrink)

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)

This paper is a response to replies by Dan López de Sa and Mark Jago to my ‘Truthmaking, Entailment, and the Conjuction Thesis’. In that paper, my main aim was to argue against the Entailment Principle by arguing against the Conjunction Thesis, which is entailed by the Entailment Principle. In the course of so doing, although not essential for my project in that paper, I defended the Disjunction Thesis. López de Sa has objected both to my defence of the Disjunction (...) Thesis and my case against the Conjunction Thesis. I shall show that his objections are unfounded and based on serious misunderstandings of my position, what the relevant debate is, and some fundamental notions of Truthmaker Theory. Jago argues that accepting the Disjunction Thesis and rejecting the Conjunction Thesis is hard to maintain. But I show that Jago has not shown that accepting the Disjunction Thesis while rejecting the Conjunction Thesis is impossible or even hard to maintain. Jago believes that, to accept the Disjunction Thesis while rejecting the Conjunction Thesis, one needs to reject his axiom (T3), which says that all the truthmakers for <P&P> are truthmakers for <P>. I argue that there are reasons to reject such a principle, and the version of it that says that what makes <P&P> true makes <P> true. (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)

1. The Bundle Theory I shall discuss is a theory about the nature of substances or concrete particulars, like apples, chairs, atoms, stars and people. The point of the Bundle Theory is to avoid undesirable entities like substrata that allegedly constitute particulars. The version of the Bundle Theory I shall discuss takes particulars to be entirely constituted by the universals they instantiate.' Thus particulars are said to be just bundles of universals. Together with the claim that it is necessary that (...) particulars have constituents, the fundamental claim of the Bundle Theory is: (BT) Necessarily, for every particular x and every entity y, y constitutes x if and only ify is a universal and x instantiates y. 2 The standard and supposedly devastating objection to the Bundle Theory is that it entails or is committed to a false version of the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles (Armstrong 1978: 91, Loux 1998: 107), namely: (Pll) Necessarily, for all particulars x and y and every universal z, if z is instantiated by x if and only if z is instantiated byy, then x is numerically identical with y. The most famous counterexample to the Identity of Indiscernibles is that put forward by Max Black, consisting of a world where there are only two iron spheres two miles apart from each other, having the same diameter, temperature, colour, shape, size, etc (Black 1952: 156). Let us from now on think of the properties of the spheres in this world as universals. The possibility of this world, which I shall hereafter refer to as 'Black's world', makes (Pll) false.' And according to common philosophical opinion this means that the Bundle Theory is false.. (shrink)

At a crucial juncture in Plato’s Sophist, when the interlocutors have reached their deepest confusion about being and not-being, the Eleatic Visitor proclaims that there is yet hope. Insofar as they clarify one, he maintains, they will equally clarify the other. But what justifies the Visitor’s seemingly oracular prediction? A new interpretation explains how the Visitor’s hope is in fact warranted by the peculiar aporia they find themselves in. The passage describes a broader pattern of ‘exploring both sides’ that lends (...) insight into Plato’s aporetic method. (shrink)

This paper explores the significance of dignity for our understanding of the rights of workers. It surveys important uses of the idea of dignity in several discursive contexts, and offers an interpretation that illuminates the content, scope, and normative force of labor rights. The discursive contexts considered include human rights, socialism, Kantian practical philosophy, and Christian social thought. The interpretation of dignity offered illuminates basic rights to decent conditions in which workers for example choose their occupation, receive adequate remuneration, and (...) are able to form unions to defend their interests. It is also illuminates more ambitious rights to work in ways that fully further workers’ interests in flourishing and involve avoidance or minimization of their domination, exploitation, and alienation. (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)

Leibniz’s short letter to the mathematician and physicist Ludovico Casati of 1689 is a short but interesting text on the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles, to which it is entirely dedicated. Since there is no watermark in the paper of the letter, the letter is difficult to date, but it is likely that it was written during Leibniz’s stay in Rome, sometime between April and November of 1689 (A 2 2 287–8). When addressing the letter, Leibniz wrote ‘Casani’, but this (...) seems to be a mistake and the real addressee is thought to be Ludovico Casati, nephew of Paolo Casati, the Jesuit mathematician. The letter, reproduced in the Berlin’s Academy edition of Leibniz’s works, was first published by Gerhardt in the Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie in 1892 (Gerhardt 1892: 53–54). It also appears in Robinet’s Iter Italicum (Robinet 1988: 134–35). But neither Gerhardt nor Robinet provide a philosophical discussion of the letter, and I am not aware of any other philosophical discussion of it. Furthermore, as far as I know, the letter has never been translated into any language. Thus I shall here provide a transcription (from A 2 2 288–89) and a translation of the letter into English, and a philosophical discussion of its treatment of the Identity of Indiscernibles. (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)

how does one inquire into the truth of first principles? Where does one begin when deciding where to begin? Aristotle recognizes a series of difficulties when it comes to understanding the starting points of a scientific or philosophical system, and contemporary scholars have encountered their own difficulties in understanding his response. I will argue that Aristotle was aware of a Platonic solution that can help us uncover his own attitude toward the problem.Aristotle's central problem with first principles arises from the (...) fact that they cannot be demonstrated in the same way as other propositions. Since demonstrations proceed from prior and better-known principles, if the principles themselves were in need of... (shrink)

Background Consent policies for post-mortem organ procurement (OP) vary throughout Europe, and yet no studies have empirically evaluated the ethical implications of contrasting consent models. To fill this gap, we introduce a novel indicator of governance quality based on the ideal of informed support, and examine national differences on this measure through a quantitative survey of OP policy informedness and preferences in seven European countries. -/- Methods Between 2017–2019, we conducted a convenience sample survey of students (n = 2006) in (...) Austria (AT), Belgium (BE), Denmark (DK), Germany (DE), Greece (GR), Slovenia (SI) and Spain (ES), asking participants about their donation preferences, as well as their beliefs and views about the policy in place. From these measures, we computed indices of informedness, policy support, and fulfilment of unexpressed preferences, which we compared across countries and consent systems. -/- Results Our study introduces a tool for analyzing policy governance in the context of OP. Wide variation in policy awareness was observed: Most respondents in DK, DE, AT and BE correctly identified the policy in place, while those in SI, GR and ES did not. Respondents in opt-out countries (AT, BE, ES and GR) tended to support the policy in place (with one exception, i.e., SI), whereas those in opt-in countries (DE and DK) overwhelmingly opposed it. These results reveal stark differences in governance quality across countries and consent policies: We found a preponderance of informed opposition in opt-in countries and a general tendency towards support–either informed or uninformed–in opt-out countries. We also found informed divergence in opt-in countries and a tendency for convergence–either informed or uninformed–among opt-out countries. -/- Conclusion Our study offers a novel tool for analyzing governance quality and illustrates, in the context of OP, how the strengths and weaknesses of different policy implementations can be estimated and compared using quantitative survey data. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell argued that any attempt to get rid of universals in favor of resemblances fails. He argued that no resemblance theory could avoid postulating a universal of resemblance without falling prey to a vicious infinite regress. He added that admitting such a universal of resemblance made it pointless to avoid other universals. In this paper I defend resemblance nominalism from both of Russell's points by arguing that (a) resemblance nominalism can avoid the postulation of a universal of resemblance without (...) falling into a vicious infinite regress, and (b) even if resemblance nominalism had to admit a universal of resemblance, this would not make it pointless to avoid postulating other universals. (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)

Con el objetivo de reflexionar sobre la potencialidad filosófica y política que tienen los afectos “negativos”, me interesa repensar el rol social de estos afectos a partir de abordar los efectos, en términos de agencialidad, que pueden propiciar en el ámbito político. Para ello, comenzaré con una breve caracterización sobre las implicancias del concepto de “olas” del feminismo, para entender a grandes rasgos los cambios históricos conquistados por las luchas feministas y los activismos. En este sentido, me situaré en la (...) “cuarta ola” del feminismo para abordar las nociones vinculadas al giro afectivo, a partir del fuerte cuestionamiento que esta matriz teórica le realiza a la noción de temporalidad lineal. Finalmente, analizaré la potencialidad que portan los afectos “negativos” en la escena política, a partir de resaltar el fuerte tono revolucionario que estas emociones, en tanto expresiones de la visceralidad, pueden tener en la transformación de la sociedad cuando irrumpen en el orden público. (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)

Interpretando a Nietzsche, podríamos afirmar que la embriaguez dionisíaca le posibilita al humano dirigirse afectivamente hacia lo externo, borrando incluso y paradójicamente ese límite que determinaría dónde empieza su ser y dónde aquello a lo que su ser es empujado. Trías recoge esta determinación en un concepto clave de su filosofía al denominarnos “ser del límite”. En ambos filósofos somos radicalmente pasión creadora; somos un animal límite y caótico, sufriente por queriente, y potencialmente feliz por el mismo motivo. Está en (...) nuestras manos investigar, tras el reconocimiento de esta condición estética, sensible e insalvable de lo humano, cómo vivir. (shrink)

This article will address the considerations that must be examined in the design of public policies and government programs to achieve an intercultural approach to the health of the Pu Mapuce Zomo (Mapuce women). In this sense, the proposed objective is to formulate three essential aspects that serve as a basis to promote adequate frameworks for public health policies oriented towards an intercultural approach. For this, methodologically, from a qualitative approach, the ethical, gender(s) and epistemic aspects that must be considered (...) in the configuration of health programs that favor the health care of indigenous women will be investigated. With this purpose, it begins by delimiting the unavoidable ethical-normative and gender approach to highlight the basic needs of Mapuce women. This approach seeks to establish a parameter about the obligations that States have in relation to the development of human capabilities. Finally, three aspects will be presented that the State must replicate in its health proposals to guarantee the construction of an intercultural approach to health, appropriate to the basic needs of Mapuce women in Argentina. (shrink)

The subtraction argument, originally put forward by Thomas Baldwin (1996), is intended to establish Metaphysical Nihilism, the thesis that there could have been no concrete objects. Some modified versions of the argument have been proposed in order to avoid some difficulties faced by the original argument. In this paper I shall concentrate on two of those versions, the so-called subtraction argument* (presented and defended in Rodriguez-Pereyra 1997, 2000, 2002), and Efird and Stoneham’s recent version of the argument (Efird and Stoneham (...) 2005). I shall defend the subtraction argument* from Alexander Paseau’s (2006) objection that because a crucial premise of the subtraction argument* may have no plausibility independent from Metaphysical Nihilism, the subtraction argument* is not suasive. Although Paseau focuses on the subtraction argument*, I shall point out that Efird and Stoneham could reply to Paseau’s objection in the same way. Thus there are (at least) two suasive versions of the subtraction argument that establish Metaphysical Nihilism. But are those two arguments equally good? I shall argue that the subtraction argument* is preferable to Efird and Stoneham’s argument. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen has given an answer to the question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’. His answer is: Because there being nothing is as improbable as anything can be: it has probability 0. Here I shall examine his argument for this answer and I shall argue that it does not work because no good reasons have been given for two of the argument’s premises and that the conclusion of the argument does not constitute an answer to the question (...) van Inwagen wanted to answer. (shrink)

Este trabajo se propone documentar y reflexionar sobre la utilización de herramientas pedagógico-didácticas en tiempos de SAR-COV-2 desde el espacio de la Práctica Docente de los Institutos de Formación Docente del Distrito 040-General Madariaga, provincia de Buenos Aires (ISFD N°169; ISFDyT N°59). Motiva la investigación que existen pocos trabajos empíricos que documenten las experiencias de la práctica docente en esta zona y en este contexto sanitario. Desde una perspectiva crítica se dará cuenta de las concepciones, utilización de herramientas y estrategias (...) que se ponen en juego desde las prácticas y residencia de los Profesorados de Inicial y Primaria, durante la pandemia mencionada. Se trata de una investigación cualitativa, exploratoria. Como resultados principales se abordarán la resignificación de distintas herramientas pedagógico-didácticas, como las videollamadas; la organización de contenidos mediante Classroom, Plataformas digitales y el dictado de clases por canales de YouTube. La finalidad es subrayar como común denominador la búsqueda de alternativas de interacción gratuitas, por parte de las docentes que, en casi la totalidad de los casos, tuvieron que garantizar la continuidad pedagógica mediante la propia construcción de dichos canales de comunicación. (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)

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)