Se pretende en este estudio cuestionarnos sobre el significado de Leer, y desde esta pregunta encaminarnos a la cuestión tratada por Heidegger en ¿qué significa pensar? sobre el pensar y el decir. Ello en el contexto de la indagación hermenéutica de las modalidades del decir de leer, interpretar y comprender en la obra de Martin Heidegger. Esto nos obliga, en primer lugar, escuchar los sentidos arcaicos en griego de légein y noeīn y sus derivas en la lengua castellana y el (...) alemán de Heidegger. (shrink)

En este trabajo se incurre en la temática de la "época de la acabada carencia de sentido" en el pensamiento de Martin Heidegger. Un ejercicio de pensar en la instancia de la pregunta por la verdad del ser y como esta misma nos interpela en el olvido del olvido del ser y en la carencia de necesidad. Aprender a preguntar es el requisito fundamental para poder aprender a pensar, por ello el juego de escritura que aquí se realiza es intentar (...) plantear las preguntas necesarias que nos encaminen en el desvelamiento (Aletheia) del Ser (SeynO. (shrink)

Pérez Carballo adopts an epistemic utility theory picture of epistemic norms where epistemic utility functions measure the value of degrees of belief, and rationality consists in maximizing expected epistemic utility. Within this framework he seeks to show that we can make sense of the intuitive idea that some true beliefs—say true beliefs about botany—are more valuable than other true beliefs—say true beliefs about the precise number of plants in North Dakota. To do so, however, Pérez Carballo argues that (...) we must think of the value of epistemic states as consisting in more than simply accuracy. This sheds light on which questions it is most epistemically valuable to pursue. (shrink)

En el presente texto se defenderá la idea según la cual, la filosofía y el filosofar están intrínsecamente ligados. Se partirá de un caso paradigmático, el caso de la filosofía analítica. A partir de su definición,se pretenderá mostrar que las características más sobresalientes de dicha corriente están fundamentalmente ligadas al acto de filosofar.Por medio de dicho ejemplo, se desea mostrar que enseñar la filosofía consiste en enseñar a filosofar, y que por lo tanto una no puede ser separada de la (...) otra. Aprender a filosofar es entonces, aprender a ver un problema detrás de cada página de un texto filosófico, una argumentación detrás de cada problema y finalmente, una verdad detrás de cada argumentación. El precio a pagar por dicha separación es bastante alto, se podría hablar de épocas de decadencia intelectual. (shrink)

Laura Specker Sullivan (2022) makes a fairly compelling case for the value of the perspectives of Buddhist practitioners in neuroethics. In this study, Tibetan Buddhist monks have been asked, among other things, whether consciousness, in brain-injured patients in a minimally conscious state, entails a duty to preserve life. In our view, some of the participants’ responses could be used to inform the bioethical debate on death determination.

The notion of a correct appreciation of nature, like the one put forward in Carlson’s environmental account, has been rejected by many other authors in the aesthetics of the natural environment. Their critics challenge the idea that only scientific cat- egories can ground the aesthetic appreciation of nature as nature, and they hold that there is not a correct way of appreciating nature. However, they may share with Carlson the idea of correctness under an objectivist paradigm of aesthetic appreciation, according (...) to which correctness means the adequation of the experi- ence to properties of the object. My aim in the article is to claim that it is necessary to endorse an aesthetic standard of correctness that takes into consideration the subjective character of aesthetic appreciation. An aesthetic standard of correct- ness implies universal assent, or validity for everyone in Kantian terms, in place of an objectivist notion. This notion of correctness permits the inclusion of expressive perception of nature as an essential form of aesthetic appreciation. (shrink)

Y-a-t-il une inconsistance entre la thèse d’un Dieu chrétien et l’existence du mal ? Notre argumentation se basera sur l´excellente thèse développée par Alvin Plantinga, qui soutient, contre John L. Mackie, la consistance du théisme face au problème du mal. Cependant, nous refuserons de suivre la métaphysique modale adoptée par Alvin Plantinga et proposerons une position actualiste, et plus précisément l’essentialisme sérieux prôné par E. J. Lowe. Nous montrerons qu’il est alors possible de suivre l’argumentation logique de Plantinga tout en (...) soutenant un essentialisme sérieux. (shrink)

We present a deductive theory of space-time which is realistic, objective, and relational. It is realistic because it assumes the existence of physical things endowed with concrete properties. It is objective because it can be formulated without any reference to cognoscent subjects or sensorial fields. Finally, it is relational because it assumes that space-time is not a thing but a complex of relations among things. In this way, the original program of Leibniz is consummated, in the sense that space is (...) ultimately an order of coexistents, and time is an order of succesives. In this context, we show that the metric and topological properties of Minkowskian space-time are reduced to relational properties of concrete things. We also sketch how our theory can be extended to encompass a Riemannian space-time. (shrink)

Is the boundary between the normal and the pathological real or fiction? Are health and disease just a matter of fact or are they value-laden? Here we present some examples of how alleged diseases can be invented and propagated by the industry (disease mongering) or by the methodology of medical science itself. We show that the boundary between health and disease is blurred and depends on individual and social representations, culture relative ways of categorising things and people, and by the (...) society’s degree of medicalisation. However, we do not mean that it is not real, rather that it is more complex than expected, as the subjectivity of social constructions and individual experiences makes them no less real. Finally, we conclude that health and disease belong to both objective and subjective kinds of reality, so the fictional can be real. (shrink)

We present an axiomatization of non-relativistic Quantum Mechanics for a system with an arbitrary number of components. The interpretation of our system of axioms is realistic and objective. The EPR paradox and its relation with realism is discussed in this framework. It is shown that there is no contradiction between realism and recent experimental results.

Background: Several countries have recently changed their model of consent for organ donation from opt-in to opt-out. We undertook a systematic review to determine public knowledge and attitudes towards these models in Europe. Methods: Six databases were explored between 1 January 2008 and 15 December 2017. We selected empirical studies addressing either knowledge or attitudes towards the systems of consent for deceased organ donation by lay people in Europe, including students. Study selection, data extraction, and quality assessment were conducted by (...) two or more reviewers independently. Findings: Awareness of the consent model was lower in opt-out countries than in opt-in countries. A majority of the public agrees with opt-in, regardless of the law in their own country. There are ambivalent attitudes regarding the opt-out system. The public tend to prefer opt-in and mandatory choice over opt-out when several options are offered. Interpretation: The assumption that people in opt-out countries are aware of the legal requirements to be excluded from the pool of potential donors is not supported by the results of this review. This is a concern, since ignorance hinders people's autonomy regarding organ donation decision-making. Higher awareness of consent model in opt-in countries may reflect greater efforts to inform the public through campaigns to motivate donation. Legal moves towards opt-out are at odds with people's expressed preferences. Main limitations of this review are the lack of data from some countries, study population heterogeneity, and methodological shortcomings. (shrink)

The field of Latin American philosophy has established itself as a relevant subfield of philosophical inquiry. However, there might be good reasons to consider that our focus on the subfield could have distracted us from considering another subfield that, although it might share some geographical proximity, does not share the same historical basic elements. In this paper, I argue for a possible and meaningful conceptual difference between Latin American Philosophy and Indigenous philosophy produced in Latin America. First, I raise what (...) I call Mariátegui’s Solidarity Challenge to show that there might be some neglectful treatment of the philosophical views of different Indigenous groups. I then depart from Mariátegui and engage in a critical exercise to show that even he would be guilty of failing in his own solidarity demands. I follow that by drawing out some implications of the argument. I first sketch how this differentiation would play out against the political project of “Mestizaje,” a project that seems to inform some of the Latin American philosophical tradition. I then speculate about the kinds of duties that the field of Latin American philosophy might have towards the field of Indigenous Philosophy produced in Latin America. (shrink)

A lo largo de la tradición psicopatológica, incluso de la pre-fenomenológica, se encuentra la categorización del delirio como creencia. Jaspers asumió ese uso y lo fundó fenomenológico-existencialmente, definiendo su carácter de convicción. El concepto de creencia ha tenido un largo recorrido dentro de la historia del pensamiento, aunque recientemente se ha intensificado el debate acerca de la visión doxástica del delirio. En virtud de lo ya mencionado, en el presente artículo presentamos un análisis conceptual de la creencia, con el objetivo (...) de identificar de manera precisa los aspectos esenciales que permiten al delirio definirse según ella. De esta manera, se discutirán algunas de las principales incursiones realizadas en el concepto desde la antigüedad periplatónica hasta José Ortega y Gasset, remarcando en cada pensador las directrices esenciales de su aproximación a la creencia. A su vez, introducir al filósofo español al debate psicopatológico permitirá incluir en la discusión dos aspectos importantes que creemos pueden ser fructíferos para la discusión filosófica sobre el delirio: la diferencia entre ideas y creencias, y la vitalidad de estas últimas. Finalmente, hacemos referencia al actual debate pro- y antidoxástico, haciendo hincapié en la necesidad de considerar la amplitud del concepto de creencia en su genealogía histórica. Con base en ello estaríamos en condición de acercarnos a la visión doxástica moderada que han defendido autoras como Lisa Bortolotti. (shrink)

In this paper I consider recent discussions within the representationalist theories of phenomenal consciousness, in particular, the discussions between first order representationalism (FOR) and higher order representationalism (HOR). I aim to show that either there is only a terminological dispute between them or, if the discussion is not simply terminological, then HOR is based on a misunderstanding of the phenomena that a theory of phenomenal consciousness should explain. First, I argue that we can defend first order representationalism from Carruthers' attacks (...) and ignore higher order thoughts in our account of phenomenal consciousness. Then I offer a diagnostic of Carruthers' misunderstanding. In the last section I consider further reasons to include mindreading abilities in an explanation of phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

According to an influential view, when it comes to representing reality, some words are better suited for the job than others. This is elitism. There is reason to believe that the set of the best, or elite, words should not be redundant or arbitrary. However, we are often forced to choose between these two theoretical vices, especially in cases involving theories that seem to be mere notational variants. This is the riddle of redundancy: both redundancy and arbitrariness are vicious, but (...) there are cases in which one must be picked. Logical realists admit that there are some logical constants among the elite words. This leads to awkward questions, such as which among conjunction and disjunction is elite. In this paper, I show how the riddle of redundancy arises for logical realists, and offer a solution. This approach requires us to change how we represent negation. Instead of using some particular symbol, we represent negation by flipping formulae over the horizontal axis. (shrink)

The classification of preserved hypothalamic activity in brain death and brainstem death as functional or non-functional has become a subject of debate. While proponents of the neurological criterion claim that these activities lack functional significance (Shemie et al. 2014), Nair-Collins and Joffe (2023) argue for their functional physiological role. However, the interpretation of the term "function" within the medico-legal framework, where death is characterized by the irreversible cessation of all brain functions, remains unclear. -/- My intention here is not to (...) engage in a debate over the validity of different viewpoints regarding the functional significance of preserved activities in the hypothalamus or the heart. Rather, I aim to highlight the critical importance of exploring and defining the concept of function in medicine, which currently lacks clarity. My point is that, whatever our position in the brain death debate, reaching a consensus on this conceptual matter would minimize misunderstandings and establish a robust foundation for further insightful analysis. (shrink)

Social ontology focuses on questions about the reality of human categories. The typical examples are gender and race. Common questions about them are: Do they exist? What is their nature? Do they exist in the best possible way? Meanwhile, the philosophy of psychiatry has been discussing the reality of psychopathology, what is the best way to classify mental disorders, and whether it is possible to define them without normative vocabulary. I think there is something not only strange but inadequate about (...) these discussions being held apart. Particularly, I hold that by being held separately these discussions are philosophically incomplete. In this paper, I argue that these debates are parallel in crucial aspects, but more importantly that they can benefit from each other if they start a dialogue. I suggest some paths we can take to start fruitful discussions and offer examples of the kind of outcomes we can expect. However, my main contribution is to sketch a common framework to map current discussions, make comparisons between them, and, more importantly, guide new research. (shrink)

50 years after its introduction, brain death remains controversial among scholars. The debates focus on one question: is brain death a good criterion for determining death? This question has been answered from various perspectives: medical, metaphysical, ethical, and legal or political. Most authors either defend the criterion as it is, propose some minor or major revisions, or advocate abandoning it and finding better solutions to the problems that brain death was intended to solve when it was introduced. Here I plead (...) for a different approach that has been overlooked in the literature: the philosophy of science approach. Some scholars claim that human death is a matter of fact, a biological phenomenon whose occurrence can be determined empirically, based on science. We should take this claim seriously, whether we agree with it or not. The question is: how do we know that human death is a scientific matter of fact? Taking the philosophy of science approach means, among other things, examining how the determination of human death became an object of scientific inquiry, exploring the nature of the brain death criterion itself, and analysing the meaning of its core concepts such as “irreversibility” and “functions”. (shrink)

Objectives To increase postmortem organ donation rates, several countries are adopting an opt-out (presumed consent) policy, meaning that individuals are deemed donors unless they expressly refused so. Although opt-out countries tend to have higher donation rates, there is no conclusive evidence that this is caused by the policy itself. The main objective of this study is to better assess the direct impact of consent policy defaults per se on deceased organ recovery rates when considering the role of the family in (...) the decision-making process. This study does not take into account any indirect effects of defaults, such as potential psychological and behavioural effects on individuals and their relatives. -/- Design Based on previous work regarding consent policies, we created a conceptual model of the decision-making process for deceased organ recovery that included any scenario that could be directly influenced by opt-in or opt-out policies. We then applied this model to internationally published data of the consent process to determine how frequently policy defaults could apply. -/- Main outcome measures We measure the direct impact that opt-in and opt-out policies have per se on deceased organ recovery. -/- Results Our analysis shows that opt-in and opt-out have strictly identical outcomes in eight out of nine situations. They only differ when neither the deceased nor the family have expressed a preference and defaults therefore apply. The direct impact of consent policy defaults is typically circumscribed to a range of 0%–5% of all opportunities for organ recovery. Our study also shows that the intervention of the family improves organ retrieval under opt-in but hinders it under opt-out. -/- Conclusions This study may warn policy makers that, by emphasising the need to introduce presumed consent to increase organ recovery rates, they might be overestimating the influence of the default and underestimating the power granted to families. (shrink)

This dissertation focuses on teleology and functions in biology. More precisely, it focuses on the scientific legitimacy of teleofunctional attributions and explanations in biology. It belongs to a multi-faceted debate that can be traced back to at least the 1970s. One aspect of the debate concerns the naturalization of functions. Most authors try to reduce, translate or explain functions and teleology in terms of efficient causes so that they find their place in the framework of the natural sciences. Our approach (...) here is radically different, as we question the premise that teleological explanations are disguised causal explanations. On the contrary, we defend that they are acceptable in natural sciences and in biology in particular. We challenge the idea that teleological explanations are immature causal explanations, as well as the idea that teleology and functions are some sort of intentional explanations. We therefore reject the accusations of anthropomorphism, vitalism and finalism. On the contrary, we defend that teleology, causality and intentionality correspond to different, autonomous and complementary modes of representation of the outside world. -/- ———[FRANÇAIS]——— -/- Ce travail de thèse porte sur la téléologie et les fonctions en biologie. Plus précisément, il porte sur la légitimité scientifique des attributions et des explications téléofonctionnelles en biologie. Il s’inscrit dans le cadre d’un débat à plusieurs facettes que l’on peut faire remonter au moins jusqu’aux années 1970 et qui est encore très actif aujourd’hui. L’un des aspects du débat porte sur la naturalisation des fonctions, c’est-à-dire sur la manière de les réduire, de les traduire ou de les expliciter en termes de causes efficientes de sorte qu’elles trouvent leur place dans le cadre des sciences de la nature. Notre approche ici est radicalement différente, car nous remettons en question la prémisse selon laquelle les explications téléologiques seraient des explications causales déguisées. Nous défendons au contraire qu’elles sont acceptables en tant que telles aussi bien de façon générale que dans le domaine scientifique et en particulier en biologie. De façon générale, nous remettons en question l’idée selon laquelle la pensée téléologique serait une pensée causale immature, ainsi que sa dépendance présumée vis-à-vis de la psychologie, c’est-à-dire de l’intentionnalité. Nous rejetons donc les accusations d’anthropomorphisme, de vitalisme et de finalisme formulées contre elle. Nous défendons au contraire que la téléologie, la causalité et l’intentionnalité correspondent à des modes différents, autonomes et complémentaires de représentation du monde extérieur. (shrink)

El arte no es solamente una fuente inagotable de goce estético, es además una huella, una evidencia de nuestro pasado histórico. A partir del arte es posible remitirnos a nuestra raíz cultural, y es por eso que la obra artística constituye una parte importante del patrimonio de un pueblo. Es evidente el estrecho vínculo entre el patrimonio artístico y la identidad cultural; por eso es importante dar un justo valor a ese patrimonio que, a su vez, se reflejará en la (...) consolidación de una identidad propia. De esas expresiones tomamos únicamente las de la arquitectura de algunas iglesias barrocas. En ellas podemos notar una serie de variables del mestizaje cultural. La arquitectura del barroco novohispano, como uno de los lenguajes del arte, generó una reflexión sobre la identidad del individuo iberoamericano. (shrink)

El imperativo cultural de la monogamia impregna toda la arquitectura jurídica del Estado y, al mismo tiempo, la excede, saturando las relaciones sociales de formas no siempre evidentes. A partir de ese presupuesto, este trabajo se centra, geográficamente, en Brasil y, temporalmente, en el contexto abierto por la pandemia de covid-19, con el objetivo de defender la hipótesis de que la monogamia se ha visto reforzada en cuanto principio organizador del campo de la sexualidad y de las relaciones de parentesco (...) durante el episodio pandémico. El análisis propuesto pretende alertar, además, sobre las formas en que las normas de excepción implementadas durante las crisis pandémicas se sedimentan en el cuerpo social, pasando así a formar parte constitutiva del orden público. (shrink)

En metafísica contemporánea, es común trabajar bajo una metodología basada en virtudes teóricas. En caso de disputa, esta metodología nos aconseja elegir la teoría que mejor satisfaga las virtudes teóricas estándar: precisión empírica, fecundidad, poder unificador, consistencia y simplicidad. Sin embargo, no hay consenso sobre cómo deben frasearse tales virtudes, ni sobre cómo ponderarlas. Aquí me concentraré en ofrecer razones a favor de una manera de frasear el principio de parsimonia ideológica, una especie de simplicidad. Defiendo que dicho principio debería (...) decir que, dadas dos teorías T1 y T2, ceteris paribus, si T1 postula menos tipos de expresiones primitvas que T2, entonces es más probable que T1 sea una teoría fiel a que T2 lo sea. Se elabora en qué consiste la cláusula ceteris paribus, qué quiere decir "postular menos tipos de expresiones primitivas" (parsimonia ideológica cualitativa) y en qué consiste la fidelidad teórica. (shrink)

Architecture and human-built structures are embedded with speciesist practices of domination over the environment, where humans are considered special and superior to other species. This (hu)man exceptionalism has driven architecture and the built environment to be conceived in opposition to ‘nature’, dominating natural terrains and consequently displacing or instrumentalizing the many other species that are given little to no ethical consideration. This way of intervening in the world is leading to the existential questions that must be posed given our global (...) climate crisis. A reframing of human intervention as ‘built environment’ placed in opposition to the ‘natural environment’ of supposedly passive nature, is urgently needed. The motivation for this paper is rooted in a deep concern for the role of humans in the climate crisis and a realization that architecture as a discipline is complicit in elevating the human category above all other beings in nature. There are biases embedded in the practices and teaching of architecture that need to be interrogated and reflected upon, starting with the role models and ideals that we unwittingly operate within. To contextualize the idea of human exceptionalism in architecture, we will explore deep-seeded ideals in architecture linked to the concept of Rectitude as a form of ‘rightness’ -or correct- mode of intervening in the world, conceptualized by Western men as a human-centric practice distinct from nature-made. Supported by Ecofeminist thought, the aim is to open alternative models for world-building and housing humans on earth living in its sixth extinction. (shrink)

The Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) provides that “an individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead.” We show that the UDDA contains two conflicting interpretations of the phrase “cessation of functions.” By one interpretation, what matters for the determination of death is the cessation of spontaneous functions only, regardless of their generation by artificial means. By the (...) other, what matters is the cessation of both spontaneous and artificially supported functions. Because each UDDA criterion uses a different interpretation, the law is conceptually inconsistent. A single consistent interpretation would lead to the conclusion that conscious individuals whose respiratory and circulatory functions are artificially supported are actually dead, or that individuals whose brain is entirely and irreversibly destroyed may be alive. We explore solutions to mitigate the inconsistency. (shrink)

In this work we argue that there is no strong demarcation between pure and applied mathematics. We show this first by stressing non-deductive components within pure mathematics, like axiomatization and theory-building in general. We also stress the “purer” components of applied mathematics, like the theory of the models that are concerned with practical purposes. We further show that some mathematical theories can be viewed through either a pure or applied lens. These different lenses are tied to different communities, which endorse (...) different evaluative standards for theories. We evaluate the distinction between pure and applied mathematics from a late Wittgensteinian perspective. We note that the classical exegesis of the later Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics, due to Maddy, leads to a clear-cut but misguided demarcation. We then turn our attention to a more niche interpretation of Wittgenstein by Dawson, which captures aspects of the aforementioned distinction more accurately. Building on this newer, maverick interpretation of the later Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics, and endorsing an extended notion of meaning as use which includes social, mundane uses, we elaborate a fuzzy, but more realistic, demarcation. This demarcation, relying on family resemblance, is based on how direct and intended technical applications are, the kind of evaluative standards featured, and the range of rhetorical purposes at stake. (shrink)

This article aims to explore, through the civil society’s opinion, the polarisation between ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ and the group of the ‘new excluded’, or ‘new poor’, that has emerged as a result of the European economic crisis and the social transformations that followed in the Greek society. Based on the Theory of Justice introduced by John Rawls (1971), and using the approach of Critical Discourse Analysis, this study focuses on the discourse analysis of the perception of 97 representatives of local (...) and national NGOs, both formal and informal. The main results focus on different self and others’ presentations, especially during the economic crisis, and on the creation of an unbalanced, fragmented and exclusion-cantered society. However, the definition of rich and poor appears ambiguous through the analysis of various linguistic strategies of Greek NGOs revealing a hidden face of the society. (shrink)

Les dernières décennies ont vu apparaître une nouvelle approche de l’histoire de la philosophie liée à la tradition analytique. L’auteur propose de montrer dans cette étude le lien entre la naissance de l’approche analytique de l’histoire de la philosophie et le travail réalisé par trois figures de l’histoire de la philosophie médiévale au XXème siècle : Kretzmann, Pinborg et Kenny. Malgré les nombreux travaux portant sur l’approche analytique, on continue à négliger le rôle joué par ces trois auteurs pour la (...) constitution de ladite approche. -/- . (shrink)

Explaining the behaviour of ecosystems is one of the key challenges for the biological sciences. Since 2000, new-mechanicism has been the main model to account for the nature of scientific explanation in biology. The universality of the new-mechanist view in biology has been however put into question due to the existence of explanations that account for some biological phenomena in terms of their mathematical properties (mathematical explanations). Supporters of mathematical explanation have argued that the explanation of the behaviour of ecosystems (...) is usually provided in terms of their mathematical properties, and not in mechanistic terms. They have intensively studied the explanation of the properties of ecosystems that behave following the rules of a non-random network. However, no attention has been devoted to the study of the nature of the explanation in those that form a random network. In this paper, we cover that gap by analysing the explanation of the stability behaviour of the microbiome recently elaborated by Coyte and colleagues, to determine whether it fits with the model of explanation suggested by the new-mechanist or by the defenders of mathematical explanation. Our analysis of this case study supports three theses: (1) that the explanation is not given solely in terms of mechanisms, as the new-mechanists understand the concept; (2) that the mathematical properties that describe the system play an essential explanatory role, but they do not exhaust the explanation; (3) that a non-previously identified appeal to the type of interactions that the entities in the network can exhibit, as well as their abundance, is also necessary for Coyte and colleagues’ account to be fully explanatory. From the combination of these three theses we argue for the necessity of an integrative pluralist view of the nature of behaviour explanation when this is given by appealing to the existence of a random network. (shrink)

La metafísica después de ser ignorada por años ha regresado al centro de la escena en la filosofía contemporánea. Tomás de Aquino ha vivido una historia muy parecida, lo que dio nacimiento al tomismo analítico. A pesar de los trabajos desarrollados en esta línea de investigación, la metafísica del Aquinate ha sido fuertemente ignorada. Sin embargo, la metafísica de Tomás de Aquino tiene una ventaja, poco discutida entre los tomistas y tomasinos, y es la de ser una metafísica esencialista. Así, (...) en armonía con el trabajo del metafísico E. J. Lowe, quien presenta su metafísica como “esencialista seria”, se quiere mostrar que la metafísica del Aquinate tiene las mismas virtudes del “esencialismo serio”, lo que permite postularla como una posición válida y plausible para la metafísica contemporánea. (shrink)

[ENGLISH] This article discusses the potential of synthetic biology to address fundamental questions in the philosophy of biology regarding the nature of life and biological functions. Synthetic biology aims to reduce living organisms to their simplest forms by identifying the minimal components of a cell and also to create novel life forms through genetic reprogramming, biobrick assembly, or novel proteins. However, the technical success of these endeavors does not guarantee their conceptual success in defining life. There is a lack of (...) consensus among researchers on how to define and classify the entities produced in the lab, whether they should be considered living or categorized differently. The criteria for minimal cells and minimal life are subject to arbitrary choices and varying interpretations. The concept of function, crucial to synthetic biology, is also difficult to define. The article highlights the need to consider the minimal set of functions that characterize life before determining the smallest genomes that code for those functions. The arbitrary nature of defining both life and function complicates the understanding and classification of these entities. The article suggests that the traditional dichotomy between the living and the non-living may no longer be valid and that the concept of life itself may not require precise scientific definition. As synthetic biology advances, the article emphasizes the importance of redefining or constructing new categories to encompass the expanding possibilities and creations in the field. The ability to create new life forms raises questions about recognition, identification, and ethical implications, requiring a conceptual and philosophical engagement beyond the technical achievements of synthetic biology. -/- [FRENCH] L'article aborde le potentiel de la biologie synthétique pour répondre à des questions fondamentales de la philosophie de la biologie concernant la nature de la vie et des fonctions biologiques. La biologie synthétique vise à réduire les organismes vivants à leurs formes les plus simples en identifiant les composants minimaux d'une cellule et à créer de nouvelles formes de vie grâce à la reprogrammation génétique, à l'assemblage de biobriques ou à des protéines nouvelles. Cependant, le succès technique de ces approches ne garantit pas leur réussite conceptuelle dans la définition de la vie. Il n'y a pas de consensus parmi les chercheurs sur la façon de définir et de classer les entités produites en laboratoire, qu'elles doivent être considérées comme vivantes ou catégorisées différemment. Les critères des cellules minimales et de la vie minimale sont soumis à des choix arbitraires et à des interprétations variables. La notion de fonction, essentielle en biologie synthétique, est également difficile à définir. L'article met en évidence la nécessité de prendre en compte l'ensemble minimal de fonctions qui caractérisent la vie avant de déterminer les plus petits génomes qui codent ces fonctions. La nature arbitraire de la définition de la vie et de la fonction complique la compréhension et la classification de ces entités. L'article suggère que la dichotomie traditionnelle entre le vivant et le non-vivant pourrait ne plus être valable et que le concept même de vie ne nécessite pas une définition scientifique précise. À mesure que la biologie synthétique progresse, l'article souligne l'importance de redéfinir ou de construire de nouvelles catégories pour englober les possibilités et créations croissantes dans le domaine. La capacité à créer de nouvelles formes de vie soulève des questions de reconnaissance, d'identification et d'implications éthiques, nécessitant une réflexion conceptuelle et philosophique au-delà des avancées techniques de la biologie synthétique. (shrink)

Finality, design and purpose have started to be excluded from the language of the natural sciences since the XVIIth century. Darwin succeeded in excluding them from his theory of evolution appealing to a blind and mechanical natural selection. Today, the most usual definitions for the concept of biological function take for granted that functions: 1) are not dependent on a goal; 2) are not dependent on observers, but only on nature; 3) are explicable in causal terms, either with reference to (...) the causal history of the organ (etiological definition), or with reference to its present structure and causal capabilities (dispositional definition). However, we shall see that such presuppositions cannot take into account the normative character of the concept of biological function. We show that a generalization of the concept of scientific objectivity lets us affirm that functions: 1’) are dependent on a goal; 2’) are dependent on both observers and nature; 3’) cannot be reduced to causality, nor break the laws of physics; and yet, 4) are truly objective. (shrink)

Many think that expressivists have a special problem with negation. I disagree. For if there is a problem with negation, I argue, it is a problem shared by those who accept some plausible claims about the nature of intentionality. Whether there is any special problem for expressivists turns, I will argue, on whether facts about what truth-conditions beliefs have can explain facts about basic inferential relations among those beliefs. And I will suggest that the answer to this last question is, (...) on most plausible attempts at solving the problem of intentionality, ‘no’. (shrink)

En nuestro artículo, analizaremos las diferencias y similitudes que podemos encontrar en el uso de diagramas entre dos prácticas matemáticas de la antigüe-dad. Mostraremos que no existe un solo uso posible de éstos, sino que tienen que considerarse como herramientas de razonamiento creadas y manipuladas de acuerdo con los propósitos de cada tradición. Argumentaremos que las diferencias en los procedimientos y organizaciones del conocimiento que ambas tradiciones presentan no implican ningún tipo de valoración acerca de su mayor o menor "matematicidad", (...) ya que ambas tradiciones llegaron a resultados matemáticos suficientemente generales y precisos, hecho que es característico de investigaciones matemáticas a un nivel teórico. (shrink)

On a view implicitly endorsed by many, a concept is epistemically better than another if and because it does a better job at ‘carving at the joints', or if the property corresponding to it is ‘more natural' than the one corresponding to another. This chapter offers an argument against this seemingly plausible thought, starting from three key observations about the way we use and evaluate concepts from en epistemic perspective: that we look for concepts that play a role in explanations (...) of things that cry out for explanation; that we evaluate not only ‘empirical' concepts, but also mathematical and perhaps moral concepts from an epistemic perspective; and that there is much more complexity to the concept/property relation than the natural thought seems to presuppose. These observations, it is argued, rule out giving a theory of conceptual evaluation that is a corollary of a metaphysical ranking of the relevant properties. -/- conceptual ethics, explanation, naturalness, epistemic value, concept/property, semantic internalism. (shrink)

Epistemic Utility Theory is often identified with the project of *axiology-first epistemology*—the project of vindicating norms of epistemic rationality purely in terms of epistemic value. One of the central goals of axiology-first epistemology is to provide a justification of the central norm of Bayesian epistemology, Probabilism. The first part of this paper presents a new challenge to axiology first epistemology: I argue that in order to justify Probabilism in purely axiological terms, proponents of axiology first epistemology need to justify a (...) claim about epistemic value—what I label ‘Downwards Propriety’—much stronger than any they have offered justification. The second part of this paper offers an argument that this challenge cannot be met: that there is no hope for providing a purely axiological justification of Downwards Propriety, at least given widely accepted assumptions about epistemic value. (shrink)

Families play an essential role in deceased organ procurement. As the person cannot directly communicate his or her wishes regarding donation, the family is often the only source of information regarding consent or refusal. We provide a systematic description and analysis of the different roles the family can play, and actions the family can take, in the organ procurement process across different jurisdictions and consent systems. First, families can inform or update healthcare professionals about a person’s donation wishes. Second, families (...) can authorize organ procurement in the absence of deceased’s preferences and the default is not to remove organs, and oppose donation where there is no evidence of preference but the default is to presume consent; in both cases, the decision could be based on their own wishes or what they think the deceased would have wanted. Finally, families can overrule the known wishes of the deceased, which can mean preventing donation, or permitting donation when the deceased refused it. We propose a schema of 4 levels on which to map these possible family roles: no role, witness, surrogate, and full decisional authority. We conclude by mapping different jurisdictions onto this schema to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the consent system for organ donation and some important nuances about the role of families. This classificatory model aims to account for the majority of the world’s consent systems. It provides conceptual and methodological guidance that can be useful to researchers, professionals, and policymakers involved in organ procurement. (shrink)

In this chapter, we will summarize recent empirical results highlighting how different groups of people solve pure coordination games. Such games are traditionally studied in behavioural economics, where two people need to coordinate without communicating with each other. Our results suggest that coordination choices vary across groups of people, and that people can adapt flexibly to these differences in order to coordinate between groups. We propose that pure coordination games are a useful empirical platform for studying aspects of mindshaping. Drawing (...) on existing psychological literature on alignment during interactions, we suggest that experience of successful interaction leads people to develop aligned intuitions about what is relevant and appropriate that support coordination when interaction and communication is not possible. Consistent with arguments made in the literature on mindshaping we believe that such alignment is more important for coordination than mindreading inferences about mental states, and indeed that mindreading is instead a form of coordination behaviour that is dependent upon intuitive alignment. (shrink)

It is a remarkable fact that all processes occurring in the observable universe are irre- versible, whereas the equations through which the fundamental laws of physics are formu- lated are invariant under time reversal. The emergence of irreversibility from the funda- mental laws has been a topic of consideration by physicists, astronomers and philosophers since Boltzmann's formulation of his famous \H" theorem. In this paper we shall discuss some aspects of this problem and its connection with the dynamics of space-time, (...) within the framework of modern cosmology. We conclude that the existence of cosmological horizons allows a coupling of the global state of the universe with the local events deter- mined through electromagnetic processes. (shrink)

El presente artículo se desarrolla en dos direcciones temporales opuestas. En la primera recurro a la contracultura drag negra y latina de los Estados Unidos para releer la negativa de Rosa Parks a ceder su asiento en el autobús. A continuación, se plantea una genealogía queer de los usos de la teatralidad en las formas contemporáneas del activismo urbano. A partir del encuentro entre ambas líneas temporales defiendo, en diálogo con la obra reciente de Judith Butler, la importancia de la (...) dimensión performativa de las intervenciones individuales en espacios de protesta para entender el alcance movilizador de la acción colectiva. (shrink)

Sacrificial dilemmas such as the trolley problem play an important role in experimental philosophy (x-phi). But it is increasingly argued that, since we are not likely to encounter runaway trolleys in our daily life, the usefulness of such thought experiments for understanding moral judgments in more ecologically valid contexts may be limited. However, similar sacrificial dilemmas are experienced in real life by animal research decision makers. As part of their job, they must make decisions about the suffering, and often the (...) death, of many non-human animals. For this reason, a context-specific investigation of so-called “3R dilemmas” (i.e., dilemmas where there is a conflict between the principles of replacement, reduction, and refinement of the use of animals in research) is essential to improve the situation of both non-human animals and human stakeholders. An approach well suited for such investigation is experimental philosophical bioethics (“bioxphi”), which draws on methods similar to x-phi to probe more realistic, practical scenarios with an eye to informing normative debates and ethical policy. In this article, we argue for a need to investigate 3R dilemmas among professional decision-makers using the tools of bioxphi. In a first step, we define 3R dilemmas and discuss previous investigations of professionals’ attitudes in such cases. In a second step, we show how bioxphi is a promising method to investigate the whys and hows of professional decision-making in 3R dilemmas. In a last step, we provide a bioxphi template for 3R dilemmas, give recommendations on its use, explore the normative relevance of data collected by such means, and discuss important limitations. (shrink)

Intellectual progress involves forming a more accurate picture of the world. But it also figuring out which concepts to use for theorizing about the world. Bayesian epistemology has had much to say about the former aspect of our cognitive lives, but little if at all about the latter. I outline a framework for formulating questions about conceptual change in a broadly Bayesian framework. By enriching the resources of Epistemic Utility Theory with a more expansive conception of epistemic value, I offer (...) a picture of our cognitive economy on which adopting new conceptual tools can sometimes be epistemically rational. (shrink)

Como parte del trabajo del taller interno permanente del Cuerpo Académico de Estética y Arte de la Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, el 12 de noviembre de 2013 se realizó una Mesa Redonda sobre el tema “Universalidad e identidad cultural”. En esta Mesa participaron los doctores José Ramón Fabelo Corzo, José Antonio Pérez Diestre y Ramón Patiño Espino, como ponentes principales; además, se contó con la asistencia del doctor Jesús Márquez Carrillo, quien se integró al debate. Diferentes disciplinas —la (...) filosofía, la antropología, la historia del pensamiento y del arte, incluso la biología— pueden, cada una, ofrecer sus aportes al tan socorrido tema de la relación entre lo universal y lo propio en la cultura latinoamericana. El debate suscitado puso de manifiesto esa diversidad de aportaciones. En este trabajo presentamos las intervenciones realizadas por cada uno de los integrantes de la mesa, en el orden en que se produjeron. (shrink)

Empiricist philosophers like Carnap invoked analyticity in order to explain a priori knowledge and necessary truth. Analyticity was “truth purely in virtue of meaning”. The view had a deflationary motivation: in Carnap’s proposal, linguistic conventions alone determine the truth of analytic sentences, and thus there is no mystery in our knowing their truth a priori, or in their necessary truth; for they are, as it were, truths of our own making. Let us call this “Carnapian conventionalism”, conventionalismC and cognates for (...) short. This conventionalistC explication of the a priori has been the target of sound criticisms. Arguments like Quine’s in “Truth by Convention” are in our view decisive: the truth of conventionalismC requires that the class of logical truths and logical validities be reductively accounted for as conventionally established; however, no such reduction is forthcoming, because logic is needed to generate the entire class from any given set of conventions properly so-called. Granted that conventionalismC is untenable, we want to take issue with a different, usually made criticism. Although the argument uncovers some difficulties for the way conventionalist claims are defended by some of its advocates, we will try to show that it fails. The criticism thus stands in the way of a proper appreciation of why the Carnapian account of the a priori is not correct. We will try to illustrate this by showing that the criticism we will dispute would dispose of conventionalist claims not only regarding philosophically problematic cases – logical and mathematical truths –, but also regarding cases for which they have some prima facie plausibility. One such case is that of truths that follow from mere abbreviations, “nominal” definitions; ‘someone is a bachelor if and only if he is an unmarried adult male’ can serve at this point for illustration. We will try to articulate a clear sense in which the contents of assertion such as this can be truths by convention. We do not need to prove that a conventionalist claim is true in those cases; it is enough for us to show that it is intelligible, for the arguments we will confront question even this. (shrink)

Symposium on Christopher Bennet's The Apology Ritual. A Philosophical Theory of Punishment [Cambridge University Press, 2008].

In this article, we discuss a number of challenges with the empirical study of emotion and its relation to moral judgment. We examine a case study involving the moral foreign-language effect, according to which people show an increased utilitarian response tendency in moral dilemmas when using their non-native language. One important proposed explanation for this effect is that using one’s non-native language reduces emotional arousal, and that reduced emotion is responsible for this tendency. We offer reasons to think that there (...) is insufficient evidence for accepting this explanation at present. We argue that there are three themes that constrain our current ability to draw firm empirical conclusions: 1) the frequent use of proxies or partial measures for emotions, 2) the lack of a predictive and generalizable theory of emotion and specific emotion-types, and 3) the obscurity of a baseline level of neutrality with respect to participant emotion. These lessons apply not only to research on the moral foreign-language effect, but to empirical research in moral psychology more generally. (shrink)

Resumen La discusión de las políticas culturales del duelo ofrecida por Judith Butler tras los atentados del 11 de septiembre servirá aquí para cuestionar las fracturas sexuales, genéricas y raciales, entre otras, que rigen la inteligibilidad cultural de la vulnerabilidad compartida en contextos pandémicos. Esta revisión de la idea de comunidad se pondrá en relación con el desarrollo de la medicina social urbana explorado por Michel Foucault para deslocalizar la resistencia a los procesos de estigmatización y normalización puestos en marcha (...) por la pandemia del sida para pensar, hoy, las biopolíticas emergentes en nombre del cuidado de la salud colectiva. -/- Abstract The discussion of the cultural politics of mourning offered by Judith Butler after the September 11 attacks will serve here to question the sexual, gender and racial fractures, among others, that govern the cultural intelligibility of shared vulnerability in pandemic contexts. This review of the idea of community will be related to the development of urban social medicine explored by Michel Foucault to delocalize the resistance to the stigmatization and normalization processes set in motion by the AIDS pandemic to think, today, emerging biopolitics in name of public health. (shrink)

Qu’est-ce que la théologie analytique ? Que veut la théologie analytique et que pouvons-nous attendre d’elle ? Ces questions semblent constituer le défi d’aujourd’hui pour la théologie analytique. Nous répondrons à ces questions, en proposant de la distinguer des autres disciplines avec lesquelles elle semble se confondre. Cette recherche nous conduira d’abord à proposer une nouvelle définition de la théologie analytique fondée sur trois critères et par la suite à distinguer deux manières de faire la théologie analytique: (i) une théologie (...) analytique de bas en haut et (ii) une théologie analytique de haut en bas. Selon notre thèse, seule une théologie analytique confessante de haut en bas peut être considérée comme une théologie analytique à part entière. (shrink)