This book intends to make known, in a detailed but accessible way to the general public, an old idea, but which has had a renewed interest in recent years: the proposal of attributing an unconditional basic income for all. This idea, often discarded and disqualified for allegedly belonging to the mere domain of utopia, understood in a pejorative sense as something unrealizable, has been the target of the interest of many people (academics, politicians, businesspeople, activists and, of course, all citizens (...) concerned with the common good) is presented as being feasible through several concrete experiences and pilot projects. (shrink)

There are two major possible responses to the question: what (if anything) can justify a basic income experiment? An experiment might be justified either because it gathers positive empirical evidence supporting rolling out a basic income, or because it justifies the moral desirability of such a measure. This paper critically explores both responses, the “empirical” and “ethical claim” in light of the Barcelona B-MINCOME pilot, alongside other similar experiments. We sustained that although the empirical claim is necessary, there seems to (...) be sufficient data to easily predict that all future experiments are to gather positive results too. Consequently, we argue that experiments are particularly well-equipped to foster debates on the work ethics and on the ethical dimension of social policies and welfare regimes in general. (shrink)

The publication of "The Practice of Liberal Pluralism" by Willam Galston has appeared as an event of first importance regarding contemporary theory about the relation between pluralism and liberalism. William Galston’s theory has had a visible evolution: in "Liberal Purposes", the main object is a critique of neutralism and a defence of perfectionist liberalism, whereas "Liberal Pluralism" main concern was to draw the limits of state intervention. This evolution is the object of numerous questions in the following discussion. "The Practice (...) of Liberal Pluralism" operates an interesting synthesis on this point. Galston defines himself as a liberal pluralist such as Berlin, but although he acknowledges that conflict between values can be tragic, he minimizes this aspect in the following discussions, and considers the possibility of having prima facie duties. One of the main arguments for the defence of value pluralism is its capacity to explain the complexity of the moral universe. Galston endorses a political pluralism, which means that the sources of authority are multiple. Galston’s liberalism is very tolerant regarding non-liberal communitarian practices, although this tolerance is based on the defence of an exit right, which is a fundamental notion in his theory. In the following discussion, Galston proposes how to understand this right of exit in an adequate manner. (shrink)

In a larger context of an egalitarian project which aims to reformulate capitalism a job guarantee program in the form of a State as an Employer of Last Resort is considered superior to Unconditional Basic Income by many, namely Alan Thomas. This article claims that most of the arguments used to assert the superiority of SELR fail their objective, for the following reasons: first, SELR falls short in its reformulation of capitalism because neither SELR nor UBI alone can euthanize the (...) rentier class. Second, most accounts are based on a flawed assumption that UBI leads to rampage inflation. Third, if macroeconomic considerations are not enough to justify implementing SELR over UBI, then insisting on the superiority of SELR can only stem from two types of moral reasons: on one hand from a perfectionist view of empowering the worst-off through labor and on the other from demands and obligations of reciprocity. We argue that these two moral-based reasons fall short of providing a justification for the superiority of SELR over UBI. We conclude our paper defending the possibility of conciliating the two policies. (shrink)

The paper highlights the need to discuss the norm of reciprocity in the context of basic income experiments. Considering how the norm of reciprocity is an important objection to basic income, both at a normative level, but also in empirical discussions, a case is made for considering it in basic income experiments. The paper proposes several hypotheses on basic income and reciprocity and concludes with two distinct points: the first is focused on what in fact experiments could be telling us (...) about behaviours that seem relevant to reciprocity, and how this could enhance our understanding of both basic income and the norm of reciprocity. The second point is a reflection on how our theoretical debate is shaped on ideal settings, whereas experiments take place in real-world conditions, hence non-ideal ones. This reflection might contribute to the need to reframe our theoretical account of the norm of reciprocity. (shrink)

This high-level study discusses Newtonian principles and 19th-century views on electrodynamics and the aether. Additional topics include Einstein's electrodynamics of moving bodies, Minkowski spacetime, gravitational geometry, time and causality, and other subjects. Highlights include a rich exposition of the elements of the special and general theories of relativity.

Recordando a Bachelard a medio siglo de su muerte (2011) -- Filosofia de la relatividad (2011) -- La proliferación de los conceptos de especie en la biología evolucionista (2010).

Many debates in biomedical ethics today involve inconsistencies in defining the key term, person. Both sides of the abortion debate, for instance, beg the question about what constitutes personhood. This book explores the arguments concerning definitions of personhood in the history of modern philosophy, and then constructs a superior model, defined in terms of distinctive features. This model is shown to have distinct advantages over the necessary and sufficient condition models of personhood launched by essentialists. Philosophers historically have been correct (...) about what some of the pivotal distinctive features of personhood are, _e.q._, rationality, communications and self-consciousness, but they have been wrong about the _methods_ of recognizing and asserting personhood, and about the relative importance of feelings. In clinical care, complaints often surface that care is not personal. This book aims to improve care through providing a method of attending to patients as people. Charts in the Appendices show that where physicians attended to personal features important to their patients, sometimes the patients rated the care even higher than the physician did. The book will be useful to health-care providers whose goals include improving quality of care, listening to patients, and preventing malpractice. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 9, September 2019, Page 37-39.

Grice proposed to investigate 'the total signification of the utterance'. One persistent criticism of Grice's taxonomy of signification is that he missed an important category of information. This content, and/or the process of providing it, goes by a variety of labels: 'generalized implicature', 'explicature', 'unarticulated constituents', 'default heuristics', 'impliciture'. In this study we first take a sample of such phenomena and, from the point of view of pure pragmatics, survey the central descriptions of the content expressed and the mechanisms that (...) might deliver these contents. We then, from the point of view of experimental pragmatics, focus on two accounts: Levinson's I-heuristic, and Bach's standardization. We find experimental evidence for the existence of such implicitures, and for the use of language specific standardizations over language neutral background information. (shrink)

De Morgan's Formal Logic, which was published on virtually the same day in 1847 as Boole's The Mathematical Analysis of Logic, contains a logic of complex terms (LCT) which has been sadly neglected. It is surprising to find that LCT contains almost a full theory of Boolean algebra. This paper will: (1) provide some background to LCT; (2) outline its main features; (3) point out some gaps in it; (4) compare it with Boole's algebra; (5) show that it is a (...) lattice-theoretical formulation of Boolean algebra; (6) discuss some issues of historical priority; and (7) conclude with the puzzle of LCT's lack of influence. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to understand the method by which Thomas Solly (1816?1875), in his Syllabus of Logic (1839), provided a mathematical formulation of the traditional syllogism. The symbolism, in which analogues of multiplication, addition and subtraction are applied to term variables, is very puzzling at first. This paper provides a clear interpretation for this symbolism and explains why it works. It also addresses other notable features of the symbolism. The paper concludes by comparing the results which Solly obtained (...) by symbolic means with those which he obtained non?symbolically. (shrink)

A critical survey of the main philosophical theories about events and event talk, organized in three main sections: (i) Events and Other Categories (Events vs. Objects; Events vs. Facts; Events vs. Properties; Events vs. Times); (ii) Types of Events (Activities, Accomplishments, Achievements, and States; Static and Dynamic Events; Actions and Bodily Movements; Mental and Physical Events; Negative Events); (iii) Existence, Identity, and Indeterminacy.

This paper is concerned with certain ontological issues in the foundations of geographic representation. It sets out what these basic issues are, describes the tools needed to deal with them, and draws some implications for a general theory of spatial representation. Our approach has ramifications in the domains of mereology, topology, and the theory of location, and the question of the interaction of these three domains within a unified spatial representation theory is addressed. In the final part we also consider (...) the idea of non-standard geographies, which may be associated with geography under a classical conception in the same sense in which non-standard logics are associated with classical logic. (shrink)

This completely self-contained study, widely considered the best book in the field, is intended to serve both as an introduction to quantification theory and as ...

Two experiments are reported that evaluated route learning of youth with DS, youth with Intellectual Disability and not DS (ID), and typically developing children (TD) matched on Mental Age (MA). In both experiments, participants learned routes with eight choice-points presented via computer. Several objects were placed along the route that could be used as landmarks. Participants were shown the correct route once and then were asked retraced the route without assistance. In Experiment 1 we found that the TD children and (...) ID participants performed very similarly. They learned the route in the same number of attempts, committed the same number of errors while learning the route, and recalled approximately the same number of landmarks. The participants with DS performed significantly worse on both measures of navigation (attempts and errors) and also recalled significantly fewer landmarks. In Experiment 2, we attempted to reduce TD and ID vs DS differences by focusing participants’ attention on the landmarks. Half of the participants in each group were instructed to identify the landmarks as they passed them the first time. The participants with DS again committed more errors than the participants in the ID and TD groups in the navigation task. In addition, they recalled fewer landmarks. While landmark identification improved landmark memory for both groups, it did not have a significant impact on navigation. Participants with DS still performed more poorly than did the TD and ID participants. Of additional interest, we observed that the performance of persons with DS correlated with different ability measures than did the performance of the other groups. The results the two experiments point to a problem in navigation for persons with DS that exceeds expectations based solely on intellectual level. (shrink)

Neste artigo, temos como objetivo perscrutar o funcionamento da verbo-visualidade de uma perspectiva dialógica do discurso, utilizando, como material de análise, uma videomontagem humorística acerca do ator político Dilma Rousseff, durante a campanha presidencial brasileira do ano de 2010. Primeiramente, procuramos refletir acerca de alguns pressupostos teórico-metodológicos de Bakhtin e de Brait, qual seja, o de verbo-visualidade, alicerçado na concepção bakhtiniana de linguagem. Em um segundo momento, detivemo-nos na análise do texto objeto do artigo, que se pautou na seguinte indagação: (...) como contribuem e funcionam os elementos verbais e visuais para produção e direcionamento de sentidos na videomontagem? Nossa hipótese é a de que os discursos carregados pela montagem criam uma trilha ideológica de sentido que leva os interlocutores a interpretar a então candidata como uma pessoa sem discurso, manipulável. Diante do exposto, tentaremos demonstrar a hipótese que sustentamos. (shrink)