In light of some Gilles Deleuze’s texts in which he studies the stupidity and error problems, the conflict between heterodox investigations and traditional methods that The X-Files raises can be studied. One discovers that the reasons why Mulder wants to replace a kind of investigation with another and the process through which he performs this transformation are similar to the ones that work on Deleuze’s Images of Thought. Taking into account the impossibility of solving certain problems, which are usually understood (...) as empirical setbacks or insolvable by right, Mulder and Deleuze defend giving up the police method and the dogmatic image of thought, respectively, and searching for other possible structures that do enable them to face up to these problems. Although this non-detective, non-thinker condition must be crossed in order to solve them, this state that makes any supposedly universal method dubious is by the French thinker called "stupidity.". (shrink)

This unpublished manuscript of the Spanish Dominican Domingo Báñez reflects his personal account of the proceedings held during July 1602 in Valladolid in defense of his own doctrine against suspicious theses formulated by some Jesuits from Alcalá de Henares the previous March. The Jesuits denied that the adhesion of faith to the Roman Pontiff included him as a specific man, e.g. Pope Clement VIII. In support of their thesis, they provided the authority of Báñez. The Dominican theologian clarified in (...) Valladolid that the fact that Clement VIII was Pope did belong to the faith indeed but not in a primary and immediate sense, although this was later supported by other Jesuits in a third session held a few days later, again in Valladolid. (shrink)

In 1601 certain Jesuits in Alcalá de Henares defended the following thesis: «It is not by faith that we confess that this man, for example, Clement VIII, is Pope.» During 1602 this fact became known in Rome and the Pope urged that the Spanish Inquisition imprison these Jesuits. To defend themselves, they alleged that the thesis was not unusual among scholars, indicating the names of several authors who defended it, among them, the eminent professor emeritus of Salamanca Domingo Báñez. (...) However, he convened an academic act in Valladolid on July 2, 1602 to show that his position was not such. Shortly thereafter, the Jesuits held another event in the same town to challenge the thesis of their coreligionists, underscoring their opposition even more than Báñez. New, partly unknown material on the subject is copied in these pages: the letters from the nuncio to the head of the Vatican State, with annotations written by the Pope, and a letter from the King of Spain to his ambassador; the complete text of the theses defended by Báñez and by the Jesuits in July 1602, as well as two unpublished letters from Báñez on the occasion of his act, one to the master general of his Order and the other to the Pope. (shrink)

The “theses of Alcalá” were two controversial statements defended by certain Jesuits at the University of Alcalá de Henares in 1601. One of them was perceived by the Pope as particularly offensive: “It does not belong to Faith that this concrete man, for example, Clement VIII, is the Roman Pontiff”. When Pope Clement learned of this theological act, the Spanish Inquisition intervened, since it attempted to prevent the Supreme Pontiff from reserving the cause for himself. In this article, (...) we delve into these events thanks to several hitherto unpublished manuscripts. Among these documents we highlight several by F. Peña, a Spaniard who interpreted this statement as a subterfuge by the Society of Jesus to avoid the supposedly imminent condemnation of Luis de Molina, a Jesuit whose book on divine predestination and human freedom was being examined in Rome at the time. The documents transcribed here provide us with new details, such as the precise text of the conclusions defended in Alcalá. In addition, it is noteworthy that Peña was the first to understand correctly the position of the Dominican Domingo Báñez, because according to him it does belong to faith that Clement VIII is Pope, even though not in a primary way. (shrink)

Following Post program, we will propose a linguistic and empirical interpretation of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem and related ones on unsolvability by Church and Turing. All these theorems use the diagonal argument by Cantor in order to find limitations in finitary systems, as human language, which can make “infinite use of finite means”. The linguistic version of the incompleteness theorem says that every Turing complete language is Gödel incomplete. We conclude that the incompleteness and unsolvability theorems find limitations in our finitary (...) tool, which is our complete language. (shrink)

During the 2010s, a radical transformation took place in the Spanish philosophical landscape: most philosophy journals started releasing their papers for free under a creative commons licence. Thanks to open access publication, Spanish philosophy has a bigger audience today than never before. Drawing on the authors’ experience as editors of two of these journals, Theoria and Recerca, this paper discusses what made this transformation possible, its consequences for the assessment of the Spanish philosophical output and, finally, how to strengthen Spanish (...) philosophy journals to confront the forthcoming challenges in open access publishing. (shrink)

La autonomía constituye uno de los pilares básicos de un sistema político como el democrático que se asocia a la capacidad de toma de decisiones de la ciudadanía como su núcleo moral principal. Los descubrimientos en el ámbito de las neurociencias y su aplicación al campo del marketing y a la comunicación política despiertan hoy en día las sospechas por la posible capacidad de activar el "botón del voto" de los electores. Este artículo tiene como objetivo adentrarse en el estudio (...) de los principales trabajos desarrollados sobre el neuromarketing político y la neuropolítica. La finalidad de esta propuesta consiste en presentar los debates éticos que irrumpen con el neuromarketing político. Autonomy is one of the basic pillars of a political system like democracy, which is associated with citizens’ decision-making capacity as its main moral core. Discoveries in the neurosciences domain and their application to the marketing and political communication field now arouse suspicions about the possible capacity of activating voter’s "voting button". The objective of this article is to examine the main works on political neuromarketing and neuropolitics. The purpose of this proposal consists in presenting the specific ethical debates that emerge around political neuromarketing. (shrink)

This article seeks to reconstruct Derrida’s position regarding the phenomenological problem of givenness. Using Jean-Luc Marion’s description of saturated phenomena as a reference point, I argue that Derrida questions the possibility of an excess of intuition. I propose an interpretation of key moments in his thought to demonstrate that the generalization of writing implicitly attributes impure donation to all phenomena. In other words, a donation from which absolute certainty cannot be derived and which necessitates rejecting the supposed singularity of any (...) phenomenon, including aesthetic ones that serve as a paradigm for the saturation trope. (shrink)

Este trabalho tem por tema a técnica moderna e sua relação com a ciência; sendo o ensaio heideggeriano (A questão da técnica) leitmotiv à discussão. Para tanto, o objetivo que cerca esta pesquisa diz respeito à pergunta - que é a técnica moderna? A esta interrogação se dá, portanto, uma questão ontológica de investigação. Todavia, o modo de se proceder ao exame deste objeto se faz por um caminho exploratório de cunho teórico, baseado na proposta hermenêutica, a fim de entender (...) o que ela é, bem como a força que poderia exercer sobre o modo de ser e pensar científicos. Com efeito, a explicação metafísica (filosófica) sobre o item em análise, a técnica, pôs em questão o mecanismo que ocultamente operaria em todas as expressões da técnica; demonstrando sua essência que atravessa todo o método científico, e o próprio status de conhecimento sobre os objetos observados e criados pela ciência. Fato este que, finalmente, destituiria a técnica enquanto meio, dando a ela, no mundo científico moderno, o estatuto de causa ontológica, razão de existência das coisas. (shrink)

El trabajo realiza un recorrido panorámico por las investigaciones axiológicas que su autor, José Ramón Fabelo Corzo, ha desarrollado por más de cuarenta años y expone cómo el enfoque dialéctico-complejo ha sido siempre herramienta básica de las mismas. Con ese fin se abordan las tres etapas por las que ha atravesado esa trayectoria investigativa, los propósitos diferenciados de ellas y, en cada caso, el uso de la dialéctica y la complejidad para la obtención de los resultados fundamentales alcanzados. Entre (...) esos resultados cabe mencionar los siguientes: 1.- el estudio de los procesos de reproducción valorativa de la realidad; 2.- la propuesta de una teoría pluridimensional de los valores; 3.- el registro de las particularidades propias de una axiología estética; 4.- la fundamentación de la comprensión de la vida como criterio fundamental de lo valioso. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyze the origin of the links between global bioethics (which we differentiate from biomedical bioethics) and human rights. We understand that we are in a global civilizational crisis, whose roots extend to 1492 today, in which the modern-capitalist model used the discourse of human rights to justify its predatory technocracy. There are three theoretical assumptions that support our analysis: 1) The current conditions in which the technique shows its destructive power over nature (Anthropocene) indicate that none (...) of the ethical antecedents are applicable to such circumstances. In this new context, the kantian categorical imperative has been reconverted into a moral and political duty to not instrumentalize either human beings or nature. We call this new ethical consideration bioethics. 2) The current geopolitical composition of the world must be thought in terms of the global North and the global South, as two regions that are forged in the midst of important processes of globalization of the world-system, and whose main consequence lies in the absence of equity in the distribution of wealth and well-being between the two. 3) The current environmental crisis or climate change, the product of an economic model based on extractive technology, has become one of the most serious threats against human rights. (shrink)

Se trata de una antología que recoge los más importantes pasajes del pensamiento sobre los valores de Risieri Frondizi (1910-1983), uno de los más importantes axiólogos de América Latina. Además de la selección de fragmentos que integra la antología, José Ramón Fabelo Corzo escribe el Prólogo (que busca ubicar a Frondizi en el contexto histórico del pensamiento axiológico latinoamericano) y el Epílogo (en el que se realiza una valoración crítica de las propuestas de este destacado pensador argentino.

En el trabajo se hace un recorrido por los principales autores latinoamericanos que trabajan el tema de los valores en el siglo XX. Se trata de apresar algunas regularidades generales en el itinerario del pensamiento axiológico en América Latina durante la pasada centuria.

Original title: 「諸鳥会合シテ法世ヲ論ズ」『安藤昌益全集6巻』 [Opera completă a lui Andō Shōeki, vol. 6], Tōkyō: Nōsangyoson Bunka Kyōkai, 1997, 34–87).

That we may rely on our knowledge seems like a platitude. Yet, the view that knowledge is sufficient for permissible reliance faces a major challenge: when much hangs on whether we know, relying on our knowledge seems to license irrational action. Unfortunately, extant proposals to meet this challenge (Hawthorne & Stanley, 2008; Williamson, 2005a; Schulz, 2017, 2021b) either fail to make the correct predictions about high-stakes cases or, as I will argue, face a substantial objection. In this paper, I will (...) offer two novel proposals for defending the sufficiency of knowledge for permissible reliance. My favoured proposal, which I call Flexible Fallibilism, is based on the idea that stakes can affect how we rely on our knowledge and how our knowledge determines what is rational for us to do. Besides making the correct predictions about high-stakes cases, I will argue that Flexible Fallibilism also provides us with a knowledge-based account of when to simplify our practical reasoning. Afterwards, I will present another proposal, which I call Dual Infallibilism, that combines two recent claims by Moss (2013, 2018) and Jackson (2019a) about credal knowledge and the metaphysics of doxastic states. While the offered proposals share various virtues, I will argue that we ultimately should prefer Flexible Fallibilism. (shrink)

Cambios estructurales en el modelo económico apuntan a revalorizar el papel del trabajo en Cuba, indican expertos en mesa redonda convocada por BOHEMIA. Apremia descentralizar gestiones administrativas y que cada individuo sea responsable y participante, coinciden. Las motivaciones efectivas han de convertir al trabajo en primera necesidad y, junto a la educación de la familia, borrar la cultura del "rebusque". Formar en los valores del trabajo debe encontrar sustento en la realidad y sus ejemplos.

In a recent paper, Jie Gao (Synthese 194:1901–17, 2017) has argued that there are acceptance-based counterexamples to the knowledge norm for practical reasoning (KPR). KPR tells us that we may only rely on known propositions in practical reasoning, yet there are cases of practical reasoning in which we seem to permissibly rely on merely accepted propositions, which fail to constitute knowledge. In this paper, I will argue that such cases pose no threat to a more broadly conceived knowledge-based view of (...) practical reasoning. I will first motivate the view that rational acceptance depends on a knowledge-based condition being met. I will then show how KPR can be amended—yielding what I call KPR+—to include this condition. I will argue that KPR+ not only avoids Gao’s counterexample, but harbours additional explanatory power by providing an account of the normative role of acceptance in practical reasoning. Finally, I will defend KPR+ against objections by employing theoretical tools that are readily available to those sympathetic to knowledge-based views. (shrink)

Se trata de una Mesa Redonda organizada por la revista Bohemia de Cuba sobre los jóvenes, la historia y la formación de valores. El texto es la transcripción del debate en el que participaron 7 especialistas de diferentes áreas.

Prefacio al libro Karl Marx en el siglo XXI. Crítica y alternativa a la fractura capitalista del metabolismo natural y humano, en el cual se destaca que este trabajo se agrega a una larga lista de libros de los que el Dr. Camilo Valqui Cachi ha sido autor y/o coordinador, todos ellos críticos del capitalismo y con un alto nivel de compromiso con la salvaguarda de la naturaleza y con los procesos emancipadores del mundo y de Nuestra América, así como (...) de rescate del pensamiento de Marx. (shrink)

En marzo de 2023, en la Facultad de Humanidades de UAEMéx, se llevó a cabo el primer congreso internacional dedicado específicamente a la Filosofía Mexicana, coincidiendo con los 80 años de la publicación de la Historia escrita por Ramos. En este evento, se mostró el avance enorme y la consolidación nacional e internacional de nuestra filosofía. En la presente obra se da cuenta de parte de los trabajos presentados en este evento académico, dejando al lector un acercamiento al mundo plural (...) y amplio que en la actualidad representa esta línea de investigación. (shrink)

Comentaba en el Prólogo a la 1ª edición que nos cuesta distinguir las técnicas de los métodos y aceptar que la buena investigación clínica es la que se realiza con método riguroso. Este método reposa en cuatro pilares: que la pregunta o cuestión formulada sea relevante, que esté enunciada de manera precisa y operativa, que sea abordada o respondida con el mejor medio disponible en cada circunstancia, y que evite redundancias o repeticiones de cuestiones que ya han sido examinadas por (...) otros investigadores. Añadía que es imprescindible una dosis de curiosidad y de entusiasmo por lo que se examina. Como se ha dicho con frecuencia, el ensayo clínico es, entre los métodos de investigación clínica, el "patrón oro", el que, gracias a su característica inherente (la distribución aleatoria), está sujeto a menores posibilidades de sesgos. Esta consideración no ha cambiado. Sin embargo, mayor validez interna del método no implica mayor relevancia de los resultados obtenidos. Actualmente es común examinar protocolos de ensayos clínicos bien diseñados, cuyo "único" problema es que pretenden evaluar aspectos de escaso interés farmacológico, terapéutico, epidemiológico o sanitario. ¿Qué interés tiene la evaluación del quinto fármaco de una serie en una indicación para la que ya hay cuatro análogos que le han precedido en su desarrollo? ¿Qué interés tiene la evaluación de un nuevo hipocolesterolemiante o de un nuevo fármaco para la osteoporosis si no se conocen, respectivamente, el impacto de la hipercolesterolemia como factor de riesgo de cardiopatía isquémica o la epidemiología de las fracturas en mujeres postmenopáusicas en nuestro medio? En relación con estos ejemplos, tendría mucho más interés conocer los determinantes epidemiológicos y la historia natural de la cardiopatía isquémica en nuestro medio y conocer la epidemiología de las fracturas "espontáneas" y su impacto sobre la demanda asistencial; para ello serían de mucha utilidad métodos de investigación cuya validez intrínseca podría ser considerada "subóptima" en comparación con el ensayo clínico. En los últimos años ha irrumpido con fuerza en numerosísimas publicaciones el concepto de la "medicina basada en pruebas". Esta moda refleja en parte la importancia que de manera creciente reguladores e industria farmacéutica han concedido a los ensayos clínicos: se ha alcanzado un consenso global sobre la necesidad de demostrar la "eficacia" de los nuevos medicamentos por medio de ensayos clínicos controlados. De este modo, los organismos reguladores y autoridades sanitarias exigen ensayos clínicos como uno de los elementos necesarios para obtener el registro de un nuevo medicamento. Como consecuencia, se realizan y publican muchos más ensayos clínicos que antaño, y actualmente se pueden encontrar ensayos que sustentan la eficacia de la mayoría de los medicamentos disponibles en indicaciones específicas. Si hace unos años bastaba con examinar si había ensayos clínicos que demostraran la eficacia de un determinado medicamento antes de adoptarlo como uno de los de uso común (o de incluirlo en el formulario de un hospital), en la actualidad estas decisiones son más complejas, y se basan sobre todo en una consideración atenta de los objetivos, los métodos y los resultados de cada ensayo o de otros estudios destinados a evaluar eficacia, seguridad, conveniencia o comodidad y coste. Un buen clínico debe saber a la vez leer críticamente las publicaciones científicas y producir información relevante. Leer críticamente significa evaluar la pertinencia de los problemas investigados, los métodos aplicados y la interpretación de los resultados obtenidos. Producir información relevante implica saber identificar los problemas que deben y pueden ser objeto de investigación, formularlos, y ser protagonista (generalmente como parte de un equipo) de la elaboración del plan de investigación. En los últimos años se han publicado varios textos similares al que tiene en sus manos, todos ellos de gran calidad. El presente no pretende ser el más exhaustivo, sino sobre todo interesar a los profesionales sanitarios en el apasionante campo de la investigación clínica, en su sentido más amplio, estimulando la autonomía del lector para investigar un problema o una situación, y para aprender a leer las publicaciones científicas clínicas. Su lectura debe contribuir a que términos como "doble ciego", "p<0,05", "casos y controles", etc. dejen de ser fetiches-misterios, para convertirse en herramientas conceptualmente sencillas, útiles para la evaluación de la actividad asistencial. Esta nueva edición está muy ampliada respecto a la anterior. Se han reorganizado las generalidades sobre los objetivos y métodos de la investigación clínica, se han ampliado algunos aspectos del ensayo clínico, como el análisis de subgrupos, los aspectos estadísticos y éticos y las publicaciones sobre ensayos clínicos, se han añadido cuatro nuevos capítulos, sobre efectividad y eficacia, metaanálisis, ensayos en un solo paciente y farmacoeconomía, y el Glosario ha sido revisado y ampliado (sobre todo con términos de farmacocinética, desarrollo preclínico de fármacos, estadística y biotecnología genética), e incluye casi 750 términos. Para su elaboración me he basado en numerosos textos y diccionarios,a aunque he reformulado la mayoría de las definiciones y he optado por añadir en ocasiones algún comentario personal a muchas de ellas. Carles Vallvé ha escrito el capítulo sobre Normas de Buena Práctica Clínica. Agradezco asimismo las precisones y comentarios de Eulalia Dalmau, Javier Jiménez, Josep Maria Castel y Xavier Vidal, así como los comentarios a versiones anteriores de Fernando Antezana y Jorleny Rojas. Eduard Diogène me sugirió la idea de la portada, El sueño de la razón produce monstruos, que Goya comentaba así: " La fantasía abandonada de la razón produce monstruos imposibles: unida con ella es madre de las artes y origen de sus marabillas" La 1ª edición de este libro, que fue promovida por Zeneca, tuvo una amplia difusión, en España y en América Latina. AstraZeneca me propuso preparar esta 2ª edición del mismo modo abierto que en ocasión de la primera; su actual Director Médico Ramón Estiarte me ha ayudado en la selección de términos para el Glosario. A él y al anterior Director Médico de Zeneca, Manuel Martín, agradezco su idea inicial, su estímulo y ayuda, y las facilidades que han dado para la difusión de este libro. Joan-Ramon Laporte. (shrink)

According to J=K, only beliefs that qualify as knowledge are epistemically justified. Traditionalists about justification have objected to this view that it predicts that radically deceived subjects do not have justified beliefs, which they take to be counter-intuitive. In response, proponents of J=K have argued that traditionalists mistake being justified with being excused in the relevant cases. To make this response work, Timothy Williamson has offered a dispositional account of excuse which has recently been challenged by Jessica Brown. She has (...) presented cases in which Williamson’s account excuses subjects believing things in an epistemically reckless fashion. To steer clear of Brown’s counterexamples, I argue for a modification of Williamson’s account that employs a more fine-grained notion of the dispositions involved. (shrink)

Gases reach equilibrium when left to themselves. Why do they behave in this way? The canonical answer to this question, originally proffered by Boltzmann, is that the systems have to be ergodic. This answer has been criticised on different grounds and is now widely regarded as flawed. In this paper we argue that some of the main arguments against Boltzmann's answer, in particular, arguments based on the KAM-theorem and the Markus-Meyer theorem, are beside the point. We then argue that something (...) close to Boltzmann's original proposal is true for gases: gases behave thermodynamic-like if they are epsilon-ergodic, i.e., ergodic on the entire accessible phase space except for a small region of measure epsilon. This answer is promising because there are good reasons to believe that relevant systems in statistical mechanics are epsilon-ergodic. (shrink)

Entropy is ubiquitous in physics, and it plays important roles in numerous other disciplines ranging from logic and statistics to biology and economics. However, a closer look reveals a complicated picture: entropy is defined differently in different contexts, and even within the same domain different notions of entropy are at work. Some of these are defined in terms of probabilities, others are not. The aim of this chapter is to arrive at an understanding of some of the most important notions (...) of entropy and to clarify the relations between them, After setting the stage by introducing the thermodynamic entropy, we discuss notions of entropy in information theory, statistical mechanics, dynamical systems theory and fractal geometry. (shrink)

Physicalism is the default position in science and in the philosophy of mind, but it should not be, I argue, because of two errors. By its epistemological error, physicalism gives physics priority over the evidence of first person experience. Only what I experience in first person is certain, so observation is prior to any theory. Physics itself is based on observation, avoiding the epistemological error, and then physics can progress, even changing its own ontology. However, physicalism imposes the ontology of (...) physics on every science, and in physics everything is causal. By its ontological error, physicalism tries to explain causally what is intentional. And it happens that causality and intentionality are mutually exclusive, showing that the ontology of physics is insufficient wherever intentions are present. This ontological insufficiency prevents that physicalism can repeat the success of physics with any science where intentions play a rôle, and thus it is blocking the advance of both the social sciences and the philosophy of mind. To overcome this obstacle, I propose to go back to the essentials: we should consider again the transcendental problem raised by Descartes and its solutions by Hume and Kant. On top of this subjectivist solution, we should take advantage of Darwin and Turing, and we should extend our ontology beyond causality to include intentionality, and here my proposal is problem solving. Then you could join our Post-Kantian subjectivism and say with me: The world is not a huge machine, as physicalism proposes, but an enigmatic problem. (shrink)

The work presented has the following approach: starting from the Pope's reflection on the planet and ecological problems, it is intended to show the philosophical influences that underlie Francisco's exposition. These influences make it possible to describe a philosophical profile present in the encyclical Laudato si’. In addition, since philosophy claims to know, it is not exhausted only in knowledge, but tries to know in order to act; therefore, the presence of an ethical proposal follows; and since all ethics leads (...) to action, it follows that action cannot be without some indicators, without an axiology on which human action on the planet revolves. The result is that Francisco offers an ethic of otherness that feels the other as an authentic neighbor, even those who are in the future. It is an ethic of common benefit and caring for the other whose fundamental axis is the person and for this reason he reflects the phenomenon of human life within life on Earth, with which its philosophical approach seems personalist, from a point of Christian view. (shrink)

Williams’s famous argument against immortality rests on the idea that immortality cannot be desirable, at least for human beings, and his contention has spawned a cottage industry of responses. As I will intend to show, the arguments over his view rest on both a difference of temperament and a difference in the sense of desire being used. The former concerns a difference in whether one takes a forward-looking or a backward-looking perspective on personal identity; the latter a distinction between our (...) normal desire to continue living and the kind of desire implied in desiring immortality. Showing that there is some sense of identity and desire that support Williams’s conclusion goes some way toward providing support for his argument, if not a full-fledged defense of it. (shrink)

El trabajo, escrito a modo de prólogo para el libro Contribuciones a la epistemología crítica de la complejidad dialéctica en el siglo XXI, busca poner en relación los conceptos de dialéctica, complejidad y epistemología crítica. En tal sentido, se analiza la relación entre las ideas de Karl Marx y las de Edgar Morin. Se muestra cómo hay mucho de complejidad en el pensamiento de Marx y mucho de dialéctica en el de Morin. A pesar de que también hay diferencias importantes (...) entre ellos, nos interesa más aquí mostrar lo que de común y/o complementario existe entre sus respectivos pensamientos, como nutrientes necesarios para una epistemología crítica. (shrink)

Why are we so many? Or, in other words, Why is our species so successful? The ultimate cause of our success as species is that we, Homo sapiens, are the first and the only Turing complete species. Turing completeness is the capacity of some hardware to compute by software whatever hardware can compute. To reach the answer, I propose to see evolution and computing from the problem solving point of view. Then, solving more problems is evolutionarily better, computing is for (...) solving problems, and software is much cheaper than hardware, resulting that Turing completeness is evolutionarily disruptive. This conclusion, together with the fact that we are the only Turing complete species, is the reason that explains why we are so many. Most of our unique cognitive characteristics as humans can be derived from being Turing complete, as for example our complete language and our problem solving creativity. (shrink)

The story of the Ship of Theseus is one of the most venerable conundrums in philosophy. Some philosophers consider it a genuine puzzle. Others deny that it is so. It is, therefore, an open question whether there is or there is not a puzzle in the Ship of Theseus story. So, arguably, it makes sense to test empirically whether people perceive the case as a puzzle. Recently, David Rose, Edouard Machery, Stephen Stich and forty-two other researchers from different countries have (...) undertaken that task. We argue that their tests do not provide any evidence that bears on the question as to whether the Ship of Theseus case is a genuine puzzle. In our discussion we address also what should be taken into account if one wishes to test the puzzling, or not puzzling, status of the Ship of Theseus story. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to sketch a theory of emotion. Our thesis is that emotional experience is a type of perceptual experience. Agents perceive emotionally the world whose objects and situations present to them as being relevant to their well-being and they do it by means of practical relations towards their environment. Our proposal attempts to avoid, in this way, the problem of some classical theories of emotions such as James’s theory of emotions as feelings and cognitivist theories (...) of emotions (Deigh 2004). Moreover, contrary to what we call priopioceptive theories of emotions (Damasio1994, Prinz 2004), our theory is an ecological approach, according to which the world belongs to the conditions of individuation of emotional episodes. (shrink)

Consider a gas confined to the left half of a container. Then remove the wall separating the two parts. The gas will start spreading and soon be evenly distributed over the entire available space. The gas has approached equilibrium. Why does the gas behave in this way? The canonical answer to this question, originally proffered by Boltzmann, is that the system has to be ergodic for the approach to equilibrium to take place. This answer has been criticised on different grounds (...) and is now widely regarded as flawed. In this paper we argue that these criticisms have dismissed Boltzmann’s answer too quickly and that something almost like Boltzmann’s answer is true: the approach to equilibrium takes place if the system is epsilon-ergodic, i.e. ergodic on the entire accessible phase space except for a small region of measure epsilon. We introduce epsilon-ergodicity and argue that relevant systems in statistical mechanics are indeed espsilon-ergodic. (shrink)

Narrative views of agency and identity arise in opposition to reductionism in both domains. While reductionists understand both identity and agency in terms of their components, narrativists respond that life and action are both constituted by narratives, and since the components of a narrative gain their meaning from the whole, life and action not only incorporate their constituent parts but also shape them. I first lay out the difficulties with treating narrative as constitutive of metaphysical identity and turn to its (...) function in practical identity. I then explore the ways narrative shapes our agency—by tapping into our motivational structures, providing an understanding of the social background within which our agency operates, guiding our agency through an understanding of our histories and aspirations, providing the links that structure actions internally, and allowing us to change the meaning of our pasts. I suggest that putting these functions of narrative together may allow us to genuinely shape our past motivational structures through our actions. Finally, if life has the form of a narrative, it may seem as if mortality is necessary for our lives and their contents to be meaningful: a narrative, it might seem, relies on the ending for its meaning. If so, an immortal life would be meaningless. I examine the possibility that even an immortal life may draw meaning from local narratives that constitute projects within such a life, while arguing that, to the contrary, narrative may be a tool exclusively adapted to mortal lives. (shrink)

We find meaning and value in our lives by engaging in everyday projects. But, according to a recent argument by Samuel Scheffler, this value doesn’t depend merely on what the projects are about. In many cases, it depends also on the future generations that will replace us. By imagining the imminent extinction of humanity soon after our own deaths, we can recognize both that much of our current valuing depends on a background confidence in the ongoing survival of humanity and (...) that the survival and flourishing of those future generations matters to us. After presenting Scheffler’s argument, I will explore two twentieth century precursors—Hans Morgenthau and Simone de Beauvoir—before returning to Scheffler to see that his argument can not only show us why future generations matter, but it can also give us hope for immortality and a blueprint for embracing a changing future. (shrink)

For Putnam in "Representation and Reality", there cannot be any intentional science, thus dooming cognitive science. His argument is that intentional concepts are functional, and that functionalism cannot explain anything because "everything has every functional organization", providing a proof. Analyzing his proof, we find that Putnam is assuming an ideal interpreting subject who can compute effortlessly and who is not intentional. But the subject doing science is a human being, and we are not that way. Therefore, in order to save (...) cognitive science, we propose to replace the ideal subject with a real and intentional human subject, and we propose to model intentionality by using a problem theory which is an intuitionist set theory where the resolving subject is a computing device. We are intentional because we are living beings, where life is the intention of not to die, so we are embodied intentions designed by evolution. We are real and then we have to compute our resolutions to the survival problem, and fortuitously we are computationally Turing complete, so our language is complete and then full and self referable. In summary, evolutionary subjectivism modeled as problem solving by computing should save cognitive science. Or, in other words, we are proposing to update Kant with Darwin and Turing. (shrink)

El texto aborda el problema de lo irracional en el pensamiento del filósofo estadounidense Donald Davidson. En consecuencia, representa un estudio de la evolución del conjunto de los artículos académicos publicados por Davidson. Los artículos publicados por Davidson, permiten organizar la evolución de su preocupación por el problema de la racionalidad-irracionalidad. Así, el problema de la racionalidad-irracionalidad encontrará recurrentemente un lugar en el marco más amplio del desarrollo de la obra filosófica de Donald Davison en torno a metafísica, lenguajes, verdad (...) e historia. (shrink)

John Fischer has recently argued that the value of acting freely is the value of self-expression. Drawing on David Velleman’s earlier work, Fischer holds that the value of a life is a narrative value and free will is valuable insofar as it allows us to shape the narrative structure of our lives. This account rests on Fischer’s distinction between regulative control and guidance control. While we lack the former kind of control, on Fischer’s view, the latter is all that is (...) needed for self-expression. I first develop Fischer’s narrative account, focusing on his reliance on temporal loops as giving us control over the value of our lives. Second, I argue that the narrative account grants us greater power over the past than Fischer would allow: since narrative allows not only for changes in how we feel about episodes in our past but what those episodes in fact were, it allows for a kind of retroactive self-constitution. Finally, I suggest that this modification of the narrative view opens the possibility of a conception of freedom far stronger than guidance control. It does not give us the libertarian control over whether to choose A or B in the present, but it does provide a measure of control over the sort of person an agent has been, and thus whether she is the sort of person who will choose A or B in the future. (shrink)

Авторами розглянуто вплив провідних світових кредитних рейтингових агентств на фінансову безпеку емітентів цінних паперів. Обґрунтовано перформативний характер діяльності кредитних рейтингових агентств з позицій моделі «Les economies de la grandeur» нового соціологічного французького інституціоналізму, що дає змогу розв’язати протиріччя щодо сильної опозиції стосовно їх функціонування з одночасним збереженням діючої системи нормативного використання кредитних рейтингів.

Heidegger, like Kierkegaard, has recently been claimed as a narrativist about selves. From this Heideggerian perspective, we can see how narrative expands upon the psychological view, adding a vital teleological dimension to the understanding of selfhood while denying the reductionism implicit in the psychological approach. Yet the narrative approach also inherits the neo-Lockean emphasis on the past as determining identity, whereas the self is fundamentally about the future. Death is crucial on this picture, not as allowing for the possibility of (...) a final meaning to our lives, but as determining Dasein as ‘pure unactualizable possibility.’ Ultimately, therefore, narrative is not what constitutes selfhood – but this does not mean that narrative is not relevant to personal identity, because narrative allows identity to be expressed in action. (shrink)

The digitalization of human society continues at a relentless rate. However, to develop modern information technologies, the increasing complexity of the real-world must be modeled, suggesting the general need to reconsider how to carry out conceptual modeling. This research proposes that the often-overlooked notion of ‘‘system’’ should be a separate, and core, conceptual modeling construct and argues for incorporating it and related concepts, such as emergence, into existing approaches to conceptual modeling. The work conducts a synthesis of the ontology of (...) systems and general systems theory. These modeling foundations are then used to propose a CESM+ template for conducing systems-grounded conceptual modeling. Several new conceptual modeling notations are introduced. The systemist modeling is then applied to a case study on the development of a citizen science platform. The case demonstrates the potential contributions of the systemist approach and identifies specific implications of explicit modeling with systems for theory and practice. The paper provides recommendations for how to incorporate systems into existing projects and suggests fruitful opportunities for future conceptual modeling research. (shrink)

We introduce a new product bilattice con- struction that generalizes the well-known one for interlaced bilattices and others that were developed more recently, allowing to obtain a bilattice with two residuated pairs as a certain kind of power of an arbitrary residuated lattice. We prove that the class of bilattices thus obtained is a variety, give a finite axiomatization for it and characterize the congruences of its members in terms of those of their lat- tice factors. Finally, we show how (...) to employ our product construction to define first-order definable classes of bi- lattices corresponding to any first-order definable subclass of residuated lattices. (shrink)

The paper contains some algebraic results on several varieties of algebras having an (interlaced) bilattice reduct. Some of these algebras have already been studied in the literature (for instance bilattices with conflation, introduced by M. Fit- ting), while others arose from the algebraic study of O. Arieli and A. Avron’s bilattice logics developed in the third author’s PhD dissertation. We extend the representation theorem for bounded interlaced bilattices (proved, among others, by A. Avron) to un- bounded bilattices and prove analogous (...) representation theorems for the other classes of bilattices considered. We use these results to establish categorical equivalences between these structures and well-known varieties of lattices. (shrink)

Looking into the future is always a risky endeavour, but one way to anticipate the possible future shape of AI-driven societies is to examine the visionary works of some sci-fi writers. Not all sci-fi works have such visionary quality, of course, but some of Stanisław Lem’s works certainly do. We refer here to Lem’s works that explore the frontiers of science and technology and those that describe imaginary societies of robots. We therefore examine Lem’s prose, with a focus on the (...) Cyberiad stories, to see what challenges our future technological societies may face when they entrust their lives to AI technology. For example, what questions should we ask, and what questions do we forget to ask, when developing AI systems and allowing these systems to control our lives. The technologically honed minds of our current technocrats are perhaps too limited to guide us into this future, because AI-based technology is relatively unchartered territory, as any new, complex technology is by nature. Lem’s visions of future societies oriented around AI and robotics portray AI technology in a deeper and more nuanced way than the current technological visions offered by our leading technological prophets. Based on Lem’s visions, what is to come may not turn out to be an AI-driven nirvana. (shrink)

Авторами рассмотрены основные подходы к моделированию процесса принятия финансово- экономических решений в контексте учета поведенческого фактора соблюдения принятых со- циальных норм, что позволяет выйти за рамки классического представления о мотивации экономических агентов. Ключевые слова: социальная норма, моральные эмоции, экономико-математическое моделирование, процесс принятия решений, «теория игр».

The stronger the level of economic integration between countries, the greater the need to study the formation patterns of the stock market reaction to the financial information signals. This concerns the Ukrainian stock market, which is now in its infancy, and which reaction to financial information signals is sometimes ambiguous. The research aims to identify the formation patterns of return and volatility indicators of the Ukrainian stock market reaction to the US financial information signals. To assess the direct nature of (...) US financial information signals effect on the PFTS stock index, the GARCH econometric modeling toolkit was applied. The research information base is the PFTS stock index and the Federal Reserve System financial information signals at the discount rate for 2000–2019. The fetch is divided into intervals corresponded to the ascent and decline phases of the financial cycle. It was found that an unforeseen increase in the discount rate at the financial cycle decline phase by 25 basis points decreases the PFTS stock index return, on average by 2.9%. Besides, the hypothesis about the general change stabilizing effect in the discount rate on the Ukrainian stock market volatility at the financial cycle growth phase was confirmed. Nevertheless, for investors, the most essential is the regulator’s monetary signals in the discount rate at the financial cycle decline phases rather than at the ascent phases because there is a more significant increase in the volatility level. (shrink)

El trabajo que se presenta intenta mostrar, por un lado y siguiendo a Ortega y Gasset, la complejidad del fenómeno de la política; y por otro lado, a partir de la constatación anterior, la necesidad de una ética que haga de la política una actividad presidida por el diálogo, la integración y la búsqueda de soluciones a las complejidades de la sociedad actual. Son relevantes en este aspecto Apel y Habermas.

Explainability and comprehensibility of AI are important requirements for intelligent systems deployed in real-world domains. Users want and frequently need to understand how decisions impacting them are made. Similarly it is important to understand how an intelligent system functions for safety and security reasons. In this paper, we describe two complementary impossibility results (Unexplainability and Incomprehensibility), essentially showing that advanced AIs would not be able to accurately explain some of their decisions and for the decisions they could explain people would (...) not understand some of those explanations. (shrink)