¿Existe tensión entre la democracia y el nacionalismo? Quizá deberíamos empezar por hacernos la pregunta. Los críticos del nacionalismo, desde luego, han puesto especial énfasis en la existencia de esa tensión, denunciando que el nacionalismo es incompatible con la democracia. Y la historia parece ofrecerles un amplio respaldo, pues no pocos de los peores acontecimientos del siglo pasado, de las dos guerras mundiales a la violencia interétnica en la antigua Yugoslavia, han dado una pésima reputación al nacionalismo, asociándolo con toda (...) clase de injusticias y atrocidades. Pero tal posición ha sido puesta en cuestión por quienes consideran que es injusto extender esas acusaciones a todo nacionalismo y sus simpatizantes alegan la existencia de discursos y políticas nacionalistas que se desarrollan dentro de los cauces y requisitos democráticos. (shrink)

En este trabajo quiero examinar la "Carta sobre la tolerancia" de John Locke, con el propósito de considerar los diferentes tipos de argumentos que propone para justificar la tolerancia en materia de religión y valorar su relevancia para el lector actual. Aunque la línea argumental principal de la "Carta" es insatisfactoria, cabe encontrar una justificación alternativa, mucho más afín con la defensa que el liberalismo contemporáneo hace de la libertad de conciencia.

In this paper I will examine the relationship between constitutionalism and democracy as the alleged tensions between them appear in diagnoses about the crisis of liberal democracy. The issue is approached through the arguments of the German jurist Martin Kriele, who holds the thesis that there can be no sovereign in the constitutional State. I will begin by explaining this thesis as well as the justification offered by Kriele. According to him, the guarantee of rights and freedoms is only possible (...) within the framework of the constitutional State. Hence, he advances a second related thesis, that democracy can only be developed in the constitutional State, that is, as constitutional democracy. However, this second thesis seems in contradiction with the first if the democratic principle implies popular sovereignty. To resolve this apparent antinomy, I will distinguish with Kriele two rival conceptions of democracy in order to point out the danger of misinterpreting the meaning of constitutional democracy. -/- En este trabajo examino la relación entre constitucionalismo y democracia, puesto que las supuestas tensiones entre ambos aparecen en los diagnósticos sobre la crisis de la democracia liberal. La cuestión se aborda a través de los argumentos del jurista alemán Martin Kriele, quien defiende la tesis de que no puede haber soberano en el Estado constitucional. Empezaré por explicar dicha tesis así como la justificación de ella que ofrece Kriele, para quien la garantía de los derechos y libertades sólo es posible en el marco del Estado constitucional. De ahí que avance una segunda tesis relacionada, cuando sostiene que la democracia sólo puede desarrollarse en dicho Estado constitucional, esto es, como democracia constitucional. Sin embargo, esta segunda tesis parece contradictoria con la primera si identificamos el principio democrático con la soberanía popular. Para resolver esa aparente antinomia, se distinguiré con Kriele dos concepciones rivales de la democracia, a fin de señalar el peligro de malinterpretar el sentido de la democracia constitucional. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the idea of human dignity has a precise and philosophically relevant sense. Following recent works,we can find some important clues in the long history of the term.Traditionally, dignity conveys the idea of a high and honourable position in a hierarchical order, either in society or in nature. At first glance, nothing may seem more contrary to the contemporary conception of human dignity, especially in regard to human rights.However,an account of dignity as high rank provides (...) an illuminating perspective on the role it plays in the egalitarian discourse of human rights. In order to preserve that relational sense regarding human dignity, we can use the notion of moral status, towhich somemoral philosophers have paid attention in recent years.I explore the possibilities of the idea of moral status to better understand the idea of human dignity and its close relationship with human rights. (shrink)

Stephen May (2011) holds that language rights have been insufficiently recognized, or just rejected as problematic, in human rights theory and practice. Defending the “human rights approach to language rights”, he claims that language rights should be accorded the status of fundamental human rights, recognized as such by states and international organizations. This article argues that the notion of language rights is far from clear. According to May, one key reason for rejecting the claim that language rights should be considered (...) as human rights is the widespread belief that language rights are collective rights. In order to address this kind of objection, the collective character attributed to language rights must be carefully assessed, distinguishing two different views of what a collective right is. (shrink)

While tolerance is acclaimed almost unanimously as an indispensable value in pluralistic and democratic societies, the meaning of this virtue is in fact far from obvious. There are good reasons to believe that the inflationary expectations addressed to it tend to cover up its specific difficulty. The A. therefore offers a conceptual analysis of the conditions of tolerance, placing particular emphasis on the conflict of reasons internal to the tolerating person, and pointing to the reflective structure of practical reason. In (...) this formal characterization, tolerance appears as a kind of permission grounded in the principle of exclusion of certain reasons for acting. If indeed tolerance presupposes such a complex balance of reasons, its moral value can never be taken for granted since it depends entirely on the quality of the reasons on the balance sheet. (shrink)

RESUMENEste trabajo se interesa por una acepción de cultura que ha cobrado una indudable importancia en los últimos timepos y que tiene que ver con la definición de identidades y delimitación de fronteras entr grupos. NUestro propósito es no tomar dicha acepción como algo obvio y para ello intentamos recuperar su historicidad refiriéndonos a la oposición entre cultura y civilización que se traza a finales del s. XVIII en Alemania. Lejos de ser un término neutro, el sesgo y las implicaciones (...) filosóficas de cultura nos remiten a lo que Berlin ha denominado la contra-ilustración. PALABRAS CLAVECULTURA-CIVILIZACION-CONTRA-INLUSTRACION-PLURALISMOABSTRACTTHis paper focuses on one respect of cultura that has drawn an unquestionable attention lately. This has to do with the definition of identities and with the drawing of boundaries among groups. Our aim is not to consider it as self-evident. To that end, we try to retrieve its historicity by reerring to the oposition of culture and civiltiation advanced in Germany by the end of the XVIIIth century. Far from being a neutral term, the feature and the philosophic implications of culture lead us to what Berlin has called the counter-Enlightement.KEYWORDSCULTURE-CIVILITATION-COUNTER-ENLIGHTEMENT-PLURALISM. (shrink)

A lo largo de su obra Ronald Dworkin ha planteado una cuestión crucial acerca de la libertad de expresión: ¿es un derecho tan importante que su protección exige permitir formas de expresión que consideramos despreciables, ofensivas o socialmente dañinas? En este trabajo me gustaría analizar la reflexión del filósofo en torno a tal cuestión, centrándonos en la pornografía y los discursos del odio. Estas formas de expresión constituyen un desafío para los defensores de esa libertad, pues nos obligan a revisar (...) los argumentos tradicionales empleados en su defensa. Para ello, consideraré en primer lugar la cuestión de si existe un derecho a la pornografía y cómo se podría justificar. Después revisaré su polémica con autoras feministas como Catharine MacKinnon a propósito de la prohibición de la pornografía, pues varias de las cuestiones son pertinentes en relación con los discursos del odio. Para concluir examinaré el modo en que R. Dworkin replantea la defensa de la libertad de expresión, pues tiene relevancia en el contexto de la discusión sobre la penalización de los discursos del odio. (shrink)

El derecho a la privacidad está en el centro de muchos de los debates públicos actuales. Sin embargo, a pesar de la extensa literatura filosófica y jurídica sobre el tema, no contamos con una explicación adecuada del sentido y del valor de la privacidad. Esta falta de acuerdo sobre cuestiones conceptuales y normativas ha llevado a algún autor a hablar del ‘caos de la privacidad’. Este artículo se centra en la exploración conceptual de la privacidad. Para ello, en primer lugar, (...) consideraré cómo el derecho a la privacidad fue formulado por primera vez en el célebre artículo de Warren y Brandeis. Segundo, en la medida en que el derecho a la privacidad es sistemáticamente traducido en español como ‘derecho a la intimidad’, resulta crucial analizar con cuidado la confusa relación entre intimidad y privacidad. Con este fin, en las dos últimas secciones del trabajo discutiré algunas explicaciones de cómo trazar la distinción entre ambas nociones y cómo entender su intrincada relación. (shrink)

RESUMENEn este trabajo quiero examinar la Carta sobre la tolerancia de John Locke, con el propósito de considerar los diferentes tipos de argumentos que propone para justificar la tolerancia en materia de religión y valorar su relevancia para el lector actual. Aunque la línea argumental principal de la Carta es insatisfactoria, cabe encontrar una justiicación alternativa, mucho más afin con la defensa que el liberalismo contemporáneo hace de la libertad de conciencia.PALABRAS CLAVETOLERANCIA-RELIGIÓN-LIBREALISMO-LOCKEABSTRACTIn this paper I will examine John Locke'se Letter (...) concerning toleration, with the aim of reviewing the different arguments he adduces to justify religious toleration and of assessing their relevance for the contemporary reader. Althought the Letter's main argument is not satisfactory, it is possible to find an alternative justification, in line with the freedom of conscience defended by contemporary liberalism.KEYWORDSTOLERATION-RELIGION-LIBERALISM-LOCKE. (shrink)

Recent debates on linguistic diversity inevitably raise questions about the value of languages. This paper deals with two descriptions of language’s value that play a prominent role in those debates: language considered as a means of communication and a cultural heritage. Its purpose is explanatory, providing an account of how languages are assessed in each of these descriptions. Moreover, the paper will also pay attention to the rhetorical uses of such value descriptions in the discourses on linguistic diversity, considering the (...) intrinsic value given to language as a cultural heritage. (shrink)

Automating Humanity is the shocking and eye-opening new manifesto from international award-winning designer Joe Toscano that unravels and lays bare the power agendas of the world's greatest tech titans in plain language, and delivers a fair warning to policymakers, civilians, and industry professionals alike: we need a strategy for the future, and we need it now. Automating Humanity is an insider's perspective on everything Big Tech doesn't want the public to know--or think about--from the addictions installed on a global (...) scale to the profits being driven by fake news and disinformation, to the way they're manipulating the world for profit and using our data to train systems that will automate jobs at an explosive, unprecedented scale. Toscano provides a critique of modern regulation, including parts of the new European Union's General Data Proctection Regulation (GDPR) suggesting how we can create proactive, adaptable regulation that satisfies both the needs of consumer safety and commercial success in the international economy. The content touches on everything from technology, economics, and public policy to psychology, history, and ethics, and is written in a way that is accessible to everyone from the average reader to the technical expert. (shrink)

The hopes fostered by the end of the Cold War have been shattered, in this troubled beginning of the XXI century, both by a new kind of extreme violence, transnational terrorism, and-more recently-by a global economic downturn with no end yet in sight. Facing these challenges, world governance suffers from the inadequacy both of political theory and of institutions. This book invites us to go back to basics, i.e. to revisit the very foundations of political and moral theory, and reconsider (...) in the light of the present global predicament the relationship between ends and means, the concept of liberty, the precept of solidarity. Terrorism is a test case of our capacity to look beyond our narrow political options in order to attain the common goal of banning it legally, politically and morally. In order to do that, we will have to be able to define terrorism in a way that recognizes it as distinct from other forms, sometimes equally repulsive but different, of violence. It is an effort that requires at the same time ethical sensitivity and a new kind if non-ideological realism. The same effort that must allow us to build and strengthen new international institutions, from the economy to international criminal law. (shrink)

Many prominent theories of moral responsibility rely on the notion of “tracing,” the idea that responsibility for an outcome can be located in (i.e., “traced back to”) some prior moment of control, perhaps significantly antecedent to the proximate sources of a considered action. In this article, I show how there is a problem for theories that rely on tracing. The problem is connected to the knowledge condition on moral responsibility. Many prima facie good candidate cases for tracing analyses appear to (...) violate the knowledge condition on moral responsibility. So, either we need to dispense with tracing approaches or we must refine our understanding of the knowledge condition or we are responsible less frequently than we suppose. (shrink)

This paper discusses the logical space of alternative conceptual engineering projects, with a specific focus on (1) the processes, (2) the targets and goals, and (3) the methods of such projects. We present an overview of how these three aspects interact in the contemporary literature and discuss those alternative projects that have yet to be explored based on our suggested typology. We show how choices about each element in a conceptual engineering project constrain the possibilities for the others, thereby giving (...) rise to distinct groupings of possible projects under the banner of conceptual engineering. We conclude with a critical reflection on the potential ethical issues that arise as a result of effectively putting conceptual engineering into practice. (shrink)

Among the non-monotonic reasoning processes, abduction is one of the most important. Usually described as the process of looking for explanations, it has been recognized as one of the most commonly used in our daily activities. Still, the traditional definitions of an abductive problem and an abductive solution mention only theories and formulas, leaving agency out of the picture. Our work proposes a study of abductive reasoning from an epistemic and dynamic perspective. In the first part we explore syntactic definitions (...) of both an abductive problem in terms of an agent’s information and an abductive solution in terms of the actions that modify the agent’s information. We look at diverse kinds of agents, including not only omniscient ones but also those whose information is not closed under logical consequence and those whose reasoning abilities are not complete. In the second part, we look at an existing logical framework whose semantic model allows us to interpret the previously stated formulas, and we define two actions that represent forms of abductive reasoning. (shrink)

We present a framework for understanding abduction within modal logic and Kripke semantics; worlds of a Kripke frame will represent possible theories, and a change in theory will be understood as a passage from one world to an adjacent possible world. Further, these steps may agree with the accessibility relation or may ‘backtrack’, accordingly as new information refutes or reinforces our present theory. Our formalism can be used to model not only abduction, but also to talk about the inner structure (...) of theories as well as relations between them, allowing us to interpret many ideas from philosophy of science within the well-understood framework of modal logic. (shrink)

Justice Across Ages offers an attractive account of justice between the young and the old that brings together three notable principles of age-group justice: complete-lives equality, relational equality, and prudence. Yet, the book says little about the fact that many of us live longer than others, and the little it does say casts doubt on whether lifespan inequality threatens justice as construed by the three principles. This essay argues, instead, that theories of justice between the young and the old should (...) not dispense with a conception of justice between different longevity groups. It concludes that we must be sensitive to lifespan variations when designing policies to promote justice across age groups. (shrink)

This is a topically organized introduction to the traditional problems of philosophy. It aims to introduce readers to traditional philosophical problems and to expose readers to philosophical argumentation in such a way that they will feel confident in handling abstract concepts.

This chapter contains sections titled: Ortega's Thought and the Spanish Philosophical Emigration to Latin America Ortega's Influence in Latin America References Further Reading.

La primera parte de este artículo expone la interpretación praxeológica del concepto noológico de “acto”. En la segunda, se muestra la crítica que Antonio González Fernández hace de esta. Su objeción consiste en que los actos no pueden ser considerados cosas reales, sino solo el surgir de estas. A partir de dicha observación a la noología, González Fernández no solo da surgimiento a su praxeología (también conocida como hiparqueología), sino que su sistema filosófico comienza a ser cuestionado por no explicar (...) qué son, en el mundo de los hechos, los actos, más allá de la suposición de que ellos están ahí a pesar de ser invisibles. En la tercera y última sección se presentan algunas hipótesis para procurar solucionar ciertas objeciones al concepto praxeológico de “acto”, tales como el anteriormente mencionado y las aparentes circularidades y posibles contradicciones que hay al interior del sistema praxeológico. (shrink)

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion.

The paper argues against a commitment to metaphysical necessity, semantic modalities are enough. The best approaches to elucidate the semantic modalities are (still) versions of lingustic ersatzism and fictionalism, even if only developed in parts. Within these necessary properties and the difference between natural and semantic laws can be accounted for. The proper background theory for this is an updated version of Logical Empiricism, which is congenial to recent trends in Structural Realism. The anti-metaphysical attitude of Logical Empiricism deserves revitalization. (...) Another target besides metaphysical necessity are substantial forms of iterated modalities, as used, for instance, in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

The formalization of abductive reasoning has received increasing attention from logicians. However, few work is found beyond abduction in propositional logic, given that in a first order formalism, the undecidability problem naturally appears, and therefore an abductive problem cannot even be appropriately formulated. Still, many applications in artificial intelligence allow finite domains to work with, and this gives an opportunity to apply abduction in first order logic with restricted domains. In this paper, we present an approach to abductive reasoning in (...) C-structures, first order structures with a finite domain in which each of its elements has a corresponding constant representing its interpretation. By using semantic tableaux with bounded depth, that is, C-tableaux (a modification of N-tableaux, introduced by the authors in previous papers) and δ-resolution calculus, we build an effective procedure for the searching of minimal abductive solutions within the proposed semantics. (shrink)

We explore the possibilities that dynamic epistemic logic offers to model abductive reasoning. We show that many of the problems with formal approaches to abduction based on classical logic can be solved when considering an epistemic agent that reasons and acts.Exploramos las posibilidades que ofrece la lógica epistémica dinámica para modelar el razonamiento abductivo. Mostramos que muchos de los problemas que encuentran los tratamientos formales de la abducción basados en lógica clásica pueden ser resueltos al considerar un agente epistémico que (...) razona y actúa. (shrink)

RESUMENRealizamos un acercamiento al razonamiento explicativo mediante estructuras modales. Usamos el formalismo bien conocido de los marcos de Kripke, pero asociamos a cada mundo, no una interpretación, sino una lógica. De este modo, definimos operadores que nos permiten expresar distintas modificaciones que puede sufrir una teoría, concretamente ampliaciones y contracciones. Mostramos cómo los tratamientos lógicos tradicionales del razonamiento abductivo pueden ser comprendidos desde nuestra propuesta.PALABRAS CLAVERAZONAMIENTO ABDUCTIVO, LÓGICAS NO CLÁSICAS, LÓGICA MODAL, MODELOS DE KRIPKE, EXPLICACIÓN CIENTÍFICA.ABSTRACTWe propose an approach to (...) explanatory reasoning through modal structures. We use the wellknown formalism of Kripke frames, but associated with each world, there is not an interpretation but a logic. Then, we define operators that allow us to express different modifications of a theory, specially expansions and contractions. We show that traditional logical treatments of abductive reasoning can be understood from our proposal.KEYWORDSABDUCTIVE REASONING, NON-CLASSICAL LOGICS, MODAL LOGIC, KRIPKE FRAMES, SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION. (shrink)

This papers presents δ-resolution, a dual resolution calculus. It is based on standard resolution, and used appropriate formulae equivalent to disjunctive normal forms, instead of conjunctive normal ones, as it is the case for resolution. This duality is then useful to create a calculus for abductive process, as a way to construct a set of abductive solutions. The proposed calculus is compared to semantic tableaux, an standard logical framework, aslo illuminating when studying abduction.δ-resolution calculus is a contribution to logic programming, (...) and it further suggests new possibilities to explore abduction at a first order level, in the lines of those proposed in [9]. (shrink)

Manuel Azaña nació en un Reino, presidió una República y murió cuando España ya estaba bajo el yugo de una dictadura. Vivió una vida llena de vicisitudes en los campos de la política, pero también de la literatura y el pensamiento, que él mismo se encargó de dejar para la posteridad.