The Religion is a fascinating topic despite it has some hurdles. Although the study of its constitution, objective and relevance has been understood with effort for different research fields, most of its meaningful contributions do not get more than refuse each other. This research, which presents the main proposals of the United States philosopher Daniel Dennett about religion as natural phenomenon in contrast with the proposal of distinguished religion philosopher, has as a propose to point the less inhospitable lands, in (...) the center of the debate in which it can be possible, making an interdisciplinary proposal, a less conflictive comprehension about religion that can allow those limits that sometimes are imposed to it in a conclusive way for the scientific convictions, biologists postulates, or even for the metaphysics speculations of some theologist forms. (shrink)

La religión es un tema apasionante, aunque sembrado por escollos. Si bien el estudio de su constitución, finalidad y pertinencia ha sido emprendido por diferentes campos de investigación, gran parte de sus más significativos aportes no consiguen más que rebatirse entre sí. Esta investigación, que aborda los planteamientos principales del filósofo estadounidense Daniel Dennett sobre el tema de la religión como fenómeno natural en contraste con los planteamientos de distinguidos filósofos de la religión, tiene como propósito señalar terrenos menos inhóspitos (...) en medio del debate en los que sea posible, haciendo una apuesta interdisciplinar, una comprensión menos conflictiva de la religión que pueda franquear esos límites que se le imponen a veces de manera tan concluyente ya sea por parte de las certezas científicas, de los postulados biologicistas, o incluso de las especulaciones metafísicas de algunas formulaciones teológicas. (shrink)

El término competencias profesionales se define en la actualidad, como la posesión por parte del individuo de los conocimientos, destrezas y actitudes necesarias para realizar su actividad. El actual estudio tiene como objetivo profundizar en el análisis de la literatura sobre las competencias profesionales con un enfoque de formación y desarrollo de la expresión escrita en las universidades médicas. Con la revisión documental, se corroboró que en estas instituciones, el tratamiento de los contenidos de los programas de las asignaturas, no (...) garantizan el desarrollo de las competencias profesionales, atendiendo a que los currículos están diseñados por habilidades lo que trae como resultado que sus egresados no cuenten con el desarrollo adecuado de tales competencias, en particular las que garantizan la práctica afectiva de la expresión escrita. Professional competencies are currently defined as an individual's knowledge, skills and attitudes required to work in a specific profession. The current study aimed to further examine the literature related to professional skills with a focus on the development of writing in medical universities. Through document review, it was confirmed that in these institutions, the syllabi do not ensure the development of professional competencies since curricula are skills based. This in turn hinders the proper development of professional competencies, particularly those that guarantee strong writing practices. (shrink)

La condición de discapacidad es una realidad antropológica que no sólo afecta la integridad biológica de los individuos que la padecen sino también su interacción social y hasta su experiencia religiosa. Como una vía de aproximación a dicha realidad, el presente artículo propone un marco histórico-literario que permita comprender el trasfondo teológico de dos situaciones de discapacidad concretas, la ceguera y la sordera, a través de un estudio sobre tales condiciones en las tradiciones bíblicas y extra-bíblicas y en la literatura (...) judía y greco-romana contemporánea a la redacción del Nuevo Testamento. The disability condition is an anthropological reality that affects not only the biological integrity of the individuals who suffer it but also their social interaction and even their religious experience. As a way of approach to such reality, this article proposes a historical and literary framework which leads to understand the theological background of two disabilities situations in specific, blindness and deafness, throughout a study about such conditions on the biblical and extra-biblical traditions and on the Jewish and Greco-Roman literature contemporary to the New Testament redaction. (shrink)

«Palabra de Dios» no se dice sólo con referencia a las Sagradas Escrituras; Jesucristo es la Palabra de Dios por antonomasia frente a la cual las demás expresiones de Palabra de Dios, incluyendo la Biblia, lo serán en sentido análogo y dependiente. Esto significa que tras la hermenéutica bíblica cristiana subyace la fe cristológica, de tal modo que lo que se predica de la naturaleza de la Sagrada Escritura, Palabra de Dios puesta por escrito, sea consecuencia directa de lo que (...) se predica de Jesucristo, Palabra de Dios encarnada. Ello, además de incidir en la vida y la fe del creyente, tiene importantes implicaciones epistemológicas, metodológicas y práxicas para la hermenéutica bíblica hoy. «Word of God» doesn’t onlj refer to the Holj Scaptures; Jesús Christ is the Word of God par excellence against which all other expressions of God’s Word, including the Bible, are anahgous and dependent. This means that behind Christian biblical hermeneutics lies faith in Christ, so that what is preached on the nature of the Holj Scripture, the written Word of God, is directlj dependent on what is preached about Jesús Christ, the Word of God incarnate. This, besides influencing the ufe and faith of the beüever, has important epistemological, methodological and practical consequences for current biblical hermeneutics. (shrink)

Reseña del libro Tiempo de Revueltas. Cuatro: nota roja y sentido trágico [La firma de José Revueltas].

Resumen Desde una visión de fe, la comunión supone la posibilidad de que la existencia criatural participe, por la gracia, de la comunión divina trinitaria. El presente artículo, ubicado en el ámbito de la teología bíblica, busca aportar a la reflexión teológica sistemática a través del rastreo sobre el modo como “la realidad comunional” ha sido percibida, comprendida y expresada por parte del hombre bíblico por medio del recurso a imágenes tomadas de su experiencia histórica y cotidiana. Tales imágenes son, (...) principalmente, la unidad orgánica del cuerpo, la unión esponsal y la mesa compartida.From a faith perspective, communion supposes the possibility that the existence of the creature could be part, through the grace, of Trinitarian divine communion. This article, located in the field of the biblical theology, seeks to contribute to the systematic theological reflection by probing about the way as the “reality of communion” has been perceived, understood, and expressed by the biblical man using images taken from historical and everyday experience. Such images are, mainly, the organic unity of the body, the spousal union, and the shared table. (shrink)

En este breve comentario discuto algunos aspectos de la interpretación de la epistemología de Davidson que sugiere Willian Duica en su reciente libro. Luego de una presentación somera del libro me centro en tres asuntos centrales de la interpretación de Duica. En primer lugar, argumento que su lectura de la crítica de Davidson al dualismo esquema/contenido es muy restrictiva y deja abierta la posibilidad de un realismo directo empirista. En segundo lugar, argumento que en su lectura el propio Duica se (...) compromete inadvertidamente con un empirismo de este tipo y, de este modo, su interpretación entra en tensión con el coherentismo de Davidson. Finalmente, discuto algunos aspectos de la interpretación que hace Duica de la tesis davidsoniana de la triangulación. In this short comment I discuss some aspects of William Duica's interpretation of Davidson's epistemology in a recent book. After a brief review of the book, I focus on three central issues of Duica's interpretation. First, I argue that his reading of Davidson's criticism of the scheme/content dualism is too restrictive and leaves open the possibility of an empiricist direct realism. Second, I argue in his reading Duica inadvertently commits himself to an empiricism of this sort and, as a result, his interpretation is in tension with Davidson's own coherentism. Finally, I discuss some aspects of Duica's interpretation of Davidsonian triangulation. (shrink)

Discussion about one of my papers on Berkeley.

RESUMEN Se aborda el pensamiento de E.M. Cioran desde la perspectiva de un sinsabor vital denominado sentimiento de muerte. El término, aunque aparece solo en su primer escrito, es transversal a toda su obra, puesto que para el autor los seres humanos nos intuimos como posesos de la muerte en cada momento de nuestra existencia. Esto cambia el tono normal de la vida, al poner frente a la persona una realidad carente de sentido y dominada por circunstancias radicales y limitantes (...) como el dolor y la agonía, que culmina en una atmósfera gobernada por la intuición trágica de la vida. ABSTRACT The article addresses the thought of E.M. Cioran from the perspective of that vital uneasiness known as the sentiment of death. Although the term appears only in his first book, the idea cuts across his entire work given that, for Cioran, human beings intuit themselves as possessed by death at every moment of their lives. When persons are faced with a meaningless reality, dominated by radical and limiting circumstances such as pain and agony, the whole tenor of life changes until it becomes a tragic intuition of life. (shrink)

Este trabajo profundiza en un momento importante en la historia de la comunicación como lo fue el de la difusión de la imprenta y el desarrollo de las técnicas del grabado aplicadas a la impresión. Se estudian las imágenes del libro bíblico del Apocalipsis, ilustrado por el artista alemán Alberto Durero a finales del siglo XV. Para ello se ha ahondando en el contexto histórico en el que fueron producidas, en la personalidad y circunstancias que rodearon la vida del (...) artista y en las propias imágenes xilográficas rastreando sus antecedentes y características propias. This work focuses on an important moment in the history of communication such as the diffusion of the printing press and the development of the engraving techniques applied to printing. It studies in depth the images of the biblical book of the Apocalypse illustrated by the German artist Alberto Durero by the end of the fifteenth century. This article analyzes the historical context where they were produced, the personality of the artist and the circumstances surrounding his life, and the very own xylographic images, whose antecedents and characteristics are traced. (shrink)

Este trabajo cuestiona el supuesto carácter intuitivo o natural del escepticismo acerca del mundo externo. En §1 examinamos una versión del argumento escéptico que se sostiene a partir de dos principios: clausura del conocimiento e indiferencia. Para profundizar la postura que ha defendido Michael Williams, en §2 ofrecemos un examen novedoso de la argumentación escéptica cartesiana que nos permite establecer que en dos argumentos de esta estrategia argumentativa resulta claro que la presunta naturalidad que el escéptico reclama es falsa y (...) que, antes bien, para lograr su conclusión, necesita asumir compromisos con el realismo epistémico, es decir, con la tesis de que nuestras creencias se ubican al interior de una jerarquía epistemológica de acuerdo únicamente con su contenido y en abstracto. Finalmente, basados en argumentos de inspiración wittgensteiniana, en §3 mostramos cómo es que, en contra del realismo epistémico, cada creencia desempeña un papel justificativo según el contexto pertinente. (shrink)

Está escrito que escribe ensayísticamente el que compone experimentando, el que vuelve, interroga, palpa, examina y atraviesa el objeto de su reflexión. Por ser así, la escritura ensayística está presente en novelas, cuentos, poemas y en mayor grado en los ensayos. El parecido de la escritura ensayística con el "pensar" es evidente. Exceptuando al monologo interior –hallazgo de la narrativa– no hay ninguna escritura que se asemeje más al fluir del pensamiento.

El contexto actual de las desigualdades sociales en Latinoamérica cuestiona y, al mismo tiempo, desafía el escenario de la educación superior en la búsqueda de procesos de transformación social. Estos desafíos se comprenden, en el marco de esta ponencia, desde la justicia educativa, entendida como la posibilidad de acceso con calidad a la enseñanza-aprendizaje como consecuencia de prácticas individuales y acciones colectivas. A partir de este panorama, y desde una reflexión teórica, se intentan identificar los aportes que ofrece la perspectiva (...) pedagógica y filosófica de la Fundación Universitaria Claretiana en su apuesta de educación superior de frontera, con mirada humanista, liberadora, crítica y contextual, como respuesta a las aspiraciones que tienen aquellas comunidades que afrontan realidades de pobreza, exclusión y violencia sociopolítica, especialmente indígenas, afrodescendientes y campesinas, de acceder a una universidad que se ajuste a su contexto y dinámicas de vida; no obstante, las exigencias del modelo socioeconómico y del sistema educativo en particular dificultan su materialización. (shrink)

It is often said in physics that if two models of a theory are related by a symmetry, then the two models provide (or could provide) two different representations of the very same situation, alike the case of two maps of different color for the very same city. It is also said that the situations represented by two models of a theory are indiscernible in some ways when the models in question are related by a symmetry of the theory, just (...) like the situation in the interior of the cabin of a train when the train is at rest in the station is empirically indiscernible from the situation in the interior when the train is moving uniformly (in classical mechanics, these two situations are represented by two models related by a boost). In recent years, philosophers of physics have focused a lot of attention in developing various principles that aim to elucidate these and similar remarks on symmetries, models, physical equivalence, and representation that are widespread in physics practice. The goal of the current article is to provide a critical review of these principles, and suggest a new framework for thinking about these kinds of questions. One important upshot of the paper is that questions of indiscernibility, and questions of the representational capacity of models, must be distinguished from one another. (shrink)

Imagine that we are on a train playing with some mechanical systems. Why can’t we detect any differences in their behavior when the train is parked versus when it is moving uniformly? The standard answer is that boosts are symmetries of Newtonian systems. In this paper, I use the case of a spring to argue that this answer is problematic because symmetries are neither sufficient nor necessary for preserving its behavior. I also develop a new answer according to which boosts (...) preserve the relational properties on which the behavior of a system depends, even when they are not symmetries. (shrink)

Consensus in the contemporary philosophical literature has it that conserved quantity theories of causation such as that of Dowe [2000]—according to which causation is to be analysed in terms of the exchange of conserved quantities (e.g., energy)—face damning problems when confronted with contemporary physics, where the notion of conservation becomes delicate. In particular, in general relativity it is often claimed that there simply are no conservation laws for (say) total-stress energy. If this claim is correct, it is difficult to see (...) how conserved quantity theories of causation could survive. In this article, we resist the above consensus and defend conserved quantity theories from this conclusion, at least when focusing on the apparent problems posed by general relativity. We argue that this approach to causation can continue to be defended in general relativity, once one appreciates (a) the availability of approximate symmetries in generic general relativistic spacetimes, and (b) the role of modelling and idealisation in that theory. Given these points, conserved quantity theories of causation must stand or fall on other grounds. (shrink)

In this text, I consider two examples in the history of emancipation and manumission of enslaved, Black populations in the Caribbean and South America in order to theorize a colonial mode of conceiving of freedom at play in the first half of the nineteenth century. This mode is marked by the figure of the promise, enacting a notion of freedom as a constantly deferred, external compensation. Indeed, instead of an immediate decision deeming the practice of enslavement and trade of human (...) beings unacceptable, and an effective liberation of the enslaved Black populations in these different emancipation proclamations, the various histories of manumission in Latin America and the Caribbean show a long series of political and legal attempts to reduce and limit the extent of the slave trade that deferred the process of liberation for decades. Moreover, in many of these territories the practice did not end with the official proclamation of emancipation but was continued by illegal practices and mutations into legal forms of exploitation and oppression that are still operative today. After outlining this first trajectory, reconstructing the promise of manumission in the historical examples of Martinique (as read by Édouard Glissant) and La Gran Colombia and the Republic of Nueva Granada (contemporary Panamá, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador), I analyze a second mode of investigation in examples of individual and collective strategies of liberation coming from the enslaved themselves, as reconstructed by contemporary feminist scholars in South America. These strategies appropriate liberation not as a promise, but as a negotiation and calculation that begins with the enslaved’s resistance to their oppressive conditions and that ultimately depends on the external concession by juridical authorities. In the third section of the chapter, I read these practices not as marronage, as they are sometimes approached, but as a different mode of turning back to these glimpses of freedom that more effectively challenge the narrative of emancipation and, with it, the promise of manumission in our present. -/- . (shrink)

En la actualidad, el festival literario Centroamérica Cuenta tiene en su haber seis ediciones realizadas desde 2013. Esta iniciativa internacional, coordinada por el escritor nicaragüense Sergio Ramírez, año con año ha forjado un espacio de intercambio y reflexión para la narrativa centroamericana, proyectando las identidades, literaturas y realidades de la región a diversas zonas del orbe. Desde su inicio, el festival ha contado con la participación de más de 500 escritores del istmo, entre los cuales se encuentran la salvadoreña (...) Vanessa Núñez y el nicaragüense Alberto Sánchez Argüello, representantes de una nueva generación centroamericana de narradores. En el caso de la escritora Vanesa Núñez (1973, San Salvador), también abogada, docente y editora, incluimos un cuento inédito; “La familia”, de carácter amargo y afilado en su desenlace, como las vidas de muchas personas centroamericanas. Núñez ha publicado los libros: Los locos mueren de viejos (FyG Editores, 2008 y La Pereza, 2015), Dios tenía miedo (FyG Editores, 2011 y Editorial Piedrasanta, 2016), La caja de cuentos (libro objeto) (Alas de Barrilete, 2015), Espejos (Uruk Editores, 2015), Animales Interiores (en coautoría con Frida Larios, 2015), así como varios relatos en diversas antologías y revistas de España, Francia, Alemania, Suiza, Estados Unidos, Colombia, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala y México. Su obra ha sido igualmente traducida al francés, alemán e inglés. En cuanto al narrador Alberto Sánchez Argüello (1976, Managua), también psicólogo, ilustrador y reconocido tuitero (de la aplicación Twitter), quien ha creado varios libros de micro-relatos a partir de tuits entrelazados (Parafernalia Ediciones Digitales), publicamos el micro-cuento “La estatua”. El relato se encuentra en diálogo con el cuento de Núñez, a partir de una visión cruda de los mandatos patriarcales imperantes en nuestras sociedades. Sánchez se ha enfocado en literatura juvenil e infantil, con la publicación de las siguientes obras: La casa del agua (Fondo Editorial Libros para niños, 2003), Mi amigo el dragón (Fondo Editorial Libros para niños, 2014), Los Monstruos bajo la cama (Loqueleo Santillana, 2016), Chico Largo y Charco Verde (Loqueleo Santillana, 2017) e Ítaca (Fondo Editorial Libros para niños, 2017). Su obra se ha publicado en antologías en Nicaragua, México, España, El Salvador, Bolivia, Chile y Perú. Algunos de sus cuentos están traducidos al inglés, portugués, italiano, alemán y vietnamita. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that two claims usually included in any minimally detailed presentation of the epistemic closure principle are inconsistent, namely, that closure explains how we extend our knowledge through deduction and that it is different from another epistemic principle, to wit, transmission. The attempt to offer a correct diagnosis of reasonings such as the one involved in Dretke’s zebra case is an instance of a discussion in which the distinction takes part. My argument has the following structure. (...) First, I introduce the distinction between closure and transmission following the standard presentation. Second, I introduce the main motivations behind the principles; in particular, I establish that the main motivation behind closure consists in explaining the phenomenon of the advancement of knowledge through deductive reasoning. Third, based on the identification of a restriction on any plausible formulation of closure capable of explaining the phenomenon aforementioned, I cast doubts on the distinction between this principle and transmission. I conclude that any formulation of the epistemic principle of closure which satisfies its main motivation collapses into the epistemic principle of transmission. (shrink)

Cultural evolution studies are characterized by the notion that culture evolves accordingly to broadly Darwinian principles. Yet how far the analogy between cultural and genetic evolution should be pushed is open to debate. Here, we examine a recent disagreement that concerns the extent to which cultural transmission should be considered a preservative mechanism allowing selection among different variants, or a transformative process in which individuals recreate variants each time they are transmitted. The latter is associated with the notion of “cultural (...) attraction”. This issue has generated much misunderstanding and confusion. We first clarify the respective positions, noting that there is in fact no substantive incompatibility between cultural attraction and standard cultural evolution approaches, beyond a difference in focus. Whether cultural transmission should be considered a preservative or reconstructive process is ultimately an empirical question, and we examine how both preservative and reconstructive cultural transmission has been studied in recent experimental research in cultural evolution. Finally, we discuss how the relative importance of preservative and reconstructive processes may depend on the granularity of analysis and the domain being studied. (shrink)

The recent debate about whether gauge symmetries can be empirically significant has focused on the possibility of 'Galileo's ship' types of scenarios, where the symmetries effect relational differences between a subsystem and the environment. However, it has gone largely unremarked that apart from such Galileo's ship scenarios, Greaves and Wallace (2014) proposed that gauge transformations can also be empirically significant in a 'non-relational' manner that is analogous to a Faraday-cage scenario, where the subsystem symmetry is related to a change in (...) a charged boundary state. In this paper, we investigate the question of whether such non-relational scenarios are possible for gauge theories. Remarkably, the answer to this question turns out to be closely related to a foundational puzzle that has driven a host of recent developments at the frontiers of theoretical physics. By drawing on these recent developments, we show that a very natural way of elaborating on Greaves and Wallace's claim of non-relational empirical significance for gauge symmetry is incoherent. However, we also argue that much of what they suggest is correct in spirit: one can indeed construct non-relational models of the kind they sketch, albeit ones where the empirical significance is not witnessed by a gauge symmetry but instead by a superficially similar boundary symmetry. Furthermore, the latter casts doubt on whether one really abandons Galileo's ship in such scenarios. (shrink)

Resumen: La influencia de Schopenhauer en la filosofía de la ciencia del siglo XX ha sido poco estudiada. En este artículo defiendo que la teoría del conocimiento de Schopenhauer impulsó históricamente la idea de que al menos un objetivo de la investigación científica estriba en la exploración tenaz y creativa del potencial heurístico de un sistema teórico, de una matriz disciplinar o de un programa de investigación científica. Sostengo que en ella también se origina una ambigüedad en el significado de (...) los conceptos de descubrimiento objetivo e innovación epistémica.: Little research has been done on Schopenhauer’s influence on twentieth-century philosophy of science. This article defends the thesis that Schopenhauer’s epistemology historically promoted the idea that at least one of the objectives of epistemic research is the tenacious and creative exploration of heuristic potential of a theoretical system, a disciplinary matrix and a scientific research program. I further state that his theory of science leads to ambiguity about the meaning of concepts such as objective discovery and epistemic innovation. (shrink)

La tesis principal que aquí se defiende es que, para Popper, la validez del conocimiento estuvo vinculada siempre a la dimensión pragmática del contexto de descubrimiento (e incluso dependía de ella). Constituye, pues, un error afirmar que, para él, 1) dicha validez estaba ligada a un "empirismo encubierto" (opuesto a la tesis sobre la carga teórica de toda observación), según lo ha planteado Ana Rosa Pérez Ransanz, y que 2) en sus ideas, los factores pragmáticos carecían de importancia epistemológica, como (...) lo ha afirmado Ambrosio Velasco. Para justificar esta tesis, se examinan tres argumentos expuestos en The Logic of Scientific Discovery, enfatizando el que se refiere al carácter disposicional de los términos con los que, para Popper, se formulan los enunciados descriptivos. The main thesis I assert here is that for Popper validity of knowledge was always linked to (and even supported by) the pragmatic dimension of the context of discovery. I hold it's wrong to claim that for this author 1) validity of knowledge was linked to a "hidden empiricism" (opposed to the theory-laden character of observation), such as Ana Rosa Pérez Ransanz had propounded, and 2) pragmatic issues were epistemologically irrelevant in his philosophy, such as Ambrosio Velasco has argued. To justify my thesis I examine three arguments exposed in The Logic of Scientific Discovery, emphasizing especially Popper's argument about the dispositional character of the concepts in which descriptive statements are formulated. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Knock at the Door: Utopian Dreams for Post-Covid TimesPedro Mora-Ramírez, María Amo-Hernández, and Paula García-RodríguezAnswering the Knock at the Door, Welcoming Utopian Futures, The Knock at the Door: Utopian Dreams for Post-Covid Times, May 21–24, 2023, University of Huelva, Spain, and University of Calgary, CanadaThe COVID-19 pandemic has fostered new adversities and vulnerabilities, prompting reflection on the economic, social, and political paradigms that endanger human and nonhuman (...) lives. For many, it was anxiety and uncertainty that “knock[ed] at the door”; for others, however, those same feelings of unease prompted one of hopefulness: reflecting on the possibilities for resilience and regeneration in the process of changing our vision of the world.1 The Knock at the Door conference brought contemporary utopianism to the forefront of thinking about how to respond to global crises while remaining attentive to other adversities of daily life. Scholars and artists answered the knock in an attempt to examine paths toward utopia, and to take advantage of the regenerative and resilient potential of the present.The conference was the culmination of author/activist Larissa Lai’s fellowship period at the University of Huelva. The 2022–23 María Zambrano Fellowship for the academic year2 allowed Lai to complete the project “Utopian Dreams for Post-Covid Times,” carried out in collaboration with the Huelva research group led by Professor Pilar Cuder-Domínguez, who hosted a number of online and in-person seminars on speculative fiction with Lai. The Knock at the Door conference, marking the end of Lai’s fellowship, created yet another space for scholars, artists, and critics to discuss the potential of utopian narratives. Lai asks: “What does our cultural moment require, and how can we get where we need to go from where we are? How can literature, especially speculative fiction literature, help us get from here to there?”3 [End Page 641] The intention of the conference was to encourage others to continue Lai’s work on how to imagine futures where human and posthuman beings need to remain vigilant to adversities. Utopian scholars, among others, might find the complications of “getting there from here” closely related to Lai’s conception of “insurgent utopias,” or “emergent insurgency.” They could find Lai’s concept of “insurgent utopianism” interesting as it lays the foundations of futurity in terms of crisis responses.The aim of the conference was to explore the imagination of better futures through utopian thinking and practice. In addition, it focused on “the knock at the door,” which is “a moment of contingent arrival... open to cooptation, destruction, bastardization, incorporation, death, or defusal.” Yet, it presents “the powerful possibility of critique—narratively or discursively, in its very materiality.”4 One way of doing this might be to look back at the past century of utopianism and ask who or what has been missing. The conference took up Lai’s idea of insurgent utopianism as a method of paving a path toward a multitude of dreams and actions, all shaped by the unique circumstances of one’s positionality.After the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for utopian thinking has become more pressing than ever. New horizons of hope must be created in the face of emerging anxieties. In a world where anthropocentrism is showing signs of its deadly potential, conference participants reflected on the relevance of the utopian imagination to political resistance and resilience building.Utopian Visions: Contesting Better Worlds in Neoliberal and Feminist UtopiasThe first two panels of the conference addressed the critique of two dominant theoretical (and interrelated) frameworks: capitalism and neoliberalism. Speakers reflected on both in light of theoretical interventions by theorists Rosi Braidotti and Francesca Ferrando. Panelists Benjamin Ghan and Marc Lynch reflected on how creative writers envision ideal worlds and temporalities. In Ghan’s view, utopian narratives create a symphony of voices historically excluded from the category of “the human”: women; LGBTQ+ people; Indigenous peoples. In a similar vein, Lynch described his own novel, A Wasp’s Waist, as highlighting the impossibility of imagining utopias within the capitalist paradigm—and thus the necessity of imagining futures beyond capitalism, and beyond... (shrink)

Este trabajo esboza una forma de justificar el principio estructurador central de una teoría veritista de la evaluación epistémica, en respuesta a críticas planteadas por Eleonora Cresto a mi defensa del veritismo frente a una serie de objeciones en el sentido de que no es capaz de explicar la naturaleza y el valor del entendimiento. La primera sección presenta el esbozo de justificación del núcleo de una teoría veritista; la segunda responde a críticas más específicas de Cresto. This paper sketches (...) a way to justify the central tenet of a veritistic theory of epistemic evaluation, in response to problems raised by Eleonora Cresto concerning my defense of veritism, against a series of objetions to the effect that veritistic epistemology is uncapable of explaining the nature and value of understanding. The first section presents the sketch of justification of the nucleus of a veritistic theory, the second responds to some of Cresto's more specific criticisms. (shrink)

La ciencia se sustenta en la veracidad de los datos de investigación, y por ende, en la confianza sobre la integridad moral y profesional de los investigadores. Sin embargo, diversos factores ocasionan que la conducta inapropiada en la investigación sea un problema vigente. Revisamos los problemas éticos en el ensayo _Evaluation of XIENCE versus Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery for Effectiveness of Left Main Revascularization_ (EXCEL), que comparó el intervencionismo coronario percutáneo frente a la cirugía de revascularización en la enfermedad del (...) tronco coronario izquierdo con un SYNTAX score ≤32. Preocupaciones sobre la metodología, actividades asociadas a la veracidad de los datos, y conducta inapropiada durante la investigación son advertidas en este estudio de caso. Se concluye sobre la necesidad de revisar y reconsiderar la vigencia e importancia de los aspectos bioéticos en la investigación clínica, aspectos que no pueden soslayarse. (shrink)

In this paper, I accomplish a conceptual task and a historical task. The conceptual task is to argue that (1) Einstein’s Principle of Separability (henceforth “separability”) is not a supervenience principle and that (2) separability and entanglement are compatible. I support (1) by showing that the conclusion of Einstein’s incompleteness argument would still follow even if one assumes that the state of a composite system does not supervene on the states of the subsystems, and by showing that what Einstein says (...) in “Quantum Mechanics and Reality” (1948) strongly suggests that separability is not a principle about how subsystem states relate to the state of composite systems. I support (2) by showing that if separability was incompatible with entanglement, then Einstein’s argument would be incoherent in a trivial way. Thus, by arguing for (1) and (2) I directly challenge what has been, and still is, a very common reading of separability. The historical task is to offer the first detailed review of the different ways in which separability has been defined by physicists and philosophers in the last 60 years. Among other things, such a review distinguishes three different definitions of the principle, and shows that since the 1990s and up until the present date, it became standard to take separability (as presented by Einstein) to be a supervenience principle. (shrink)

In Ockhamist branching-time logic [Prior 67], formulas are meant to be evaluated on a specified branch, or history, passing through the moment at hand. The linguistic counterpart of the manifoldness of future is a possibility operator which is read as `at some branch, or history (passing through the moment at hand)'. Both the bundled-trees semantics [Burgess 79] and the $\langle moment, history\rangle$ semantics [Thomason 84] for the possibility operator involve a quantification over sets of moments. The Ockhamist frames are (3-modal) (...) Kripke structures in which this second-order quantification is represented by a first-order quantification. The aim of the present paper is to investigate the notions of modal definability, validity, and axiomatizability concerning 3-modal frames which can be viewed as generalizations of Ockhamist frames. (shrink)

Let ${\cal I}$ be an ideal on ω. By cov${}_{}^{\rm{*}}$ we denote the least size of a family ${\cal B} \subseteq {\cal I}$ such that for every infinite $X \in {\cal I}$ there is $B \in {\cal B}$ for which $B\mathop \cap \nolimits X$ is infinite. We say that an AD family ${\cal A} \subseteq {\cal I}$ is a MAD family restricted to${\cal I}$ if for every infinite $X \in {\cal I}$ there is $A \in {\cal A}$ such that $|X\mathop (...) \cap \nolimits A| = \omega$. Let a$\left$ be the least size of an infinite MAD family restricted to ${\cal I}$. We prove that If $max${a,cov${}_{}^{\rm{*}}\}$ then a$\left = {\omega _1}$, and consequently, if ${\cal I}$ is tall and $\le {\omega _2}$ then a$\left = max$ {a,cov${}_{}^{\rm{*}}\}$. We use these results to prove that if c$\le {\omega _2}$ then o$= \overline o$ and that as$= max${a,non$\}$. We also analyze the problem whether it is consistent with the negation of CH that every AD family of size ω1 can be extended to a MAD family of size ω1. (shrink)

Este artículo trata el problema de los objetos creados que pueden ser repetidos, como las obras musicales y las literarias. En la sección 2 presentamos una serie de desiderata intuitivos que toda teoría debe satisfacer. En las secciones 3 y 4 presentamos un silogismo disyuntivo extendido. Los objetos en cuestión pueden ser o bien universales concretos, particulares concretos, universales abstractos o particulares abstractos. Mostramos cómo es que las teorías que consideran que son cualquiera de las tres últimas opciones fracasan. Por (...) lo tanto, debemos entender a dichos objetos como universales concretos. En la sección 5 ofrecemos una teoría breve pero detallada de la naturaleza metafísica de los universales concretos para después mostrar cómo esta propuesta permite dar cuenta de los desiderata intuitivos a la vez que se evitan las objeciones presentadas en contra de teorías alternativas. (shrink)

What do we mean when we describe the history of the Caribbean as traumatic? Is it possible to use the term ‘trauma’ here in a more technical sense, or should we give it the less strict connotation of an extreme form of an event in which the past no longer stays just in the past and the future never ceases to demand something from the present? In this paper I analyze the image of the abyss, used by Édouard Glissant to (...) evoke poetically one of the beginnings of the Caribbean, as leading to a paradox on the attitude toward history: Caribbean communities have been burdened with a non-history that feels, at the same time, like too much history. I show that this image resembles the paradoxical structure of trauma developed in the works of Cathy Caruth, according to whom trauma is a paradoxical structure of experience in which the subject (or a community) is painfully possessed by an image that they have barely perceived and that is so minimal that it cannot be controlled. However, I argue, there are limits to this resemblance. I focus on the question whether the (traumatic) paradox is escapable in this region of the world, that is, whether Caribbean communities can be de-traumatized, and what are the connections of this possibility with the question, central to Glissant, of decolonization. In order to answer these questions, I analyze a central feature of the Caribbean history according to Glissant, transversality, to show in what way the paradox of history can be loosened. (shrink)

The place of Glissant’s philosophy of decolonisation in relation to Fanon and Césaire has been theorised by some authors, but the emphasis has not been placed on the fact that Glissant refers to both his predecessors as examples of the absence of a link between the two tactics of resistance – un détour [a tactical diversion] and un retour [a return]. For Glissant, both Césaire and Fanon are still diverters and not properly producers of a new reality, of a real (...) Caribbean territory and history. Thus, following previous analyses by commentators, but departing from them (or adding a new layer, the layer of spatiality that should be combined with a traditional analysis of temporality), this chapter defends the idea that Glissant locates his decolonial thought between Césaire and Fanon: it neither advocates a reconstruction that points to a past located elsewhere (Africa), nor recommends the rejection and replacement of the here/now with a different, unknown spatiality and temporality. For Glissant, the locus of resistance is located in the present and in the possibilities of decolonisation already contained in the Caribbean, although concealed and understated. This chapter begins by showing what is, according to Glissant, the necessary conjunction between the different tactics of resistance, then focuses on some of Césaire’s and Fanon’s texts in order to show why they do not offer this necessary link. The final section comes back to Glissant to analyse the notion of l’antillanité as the possibility of truly focusing on a here/now as a multilayered strategy of resistance. (shrink)

"Un escritor ejemplar", texto de Hernando Téllez sobre Gómez Dávila, quizás una de las primeras aproximaciones hechas a una figura autoral que ya empezaba a despertar un profundo interés en la crítica literaria colombiana.

En este texto reconstruyo una concepción decolonial de la belleza, a partir del pensamiento de Robin Wall Kimmerer y Édouard Glissant, de acuerdo con la cual la belleza constituye una condición del mundo que, no obstante, debemos cuidar. En estos dos pensamientos, provenientes de tradiciones diferentes, la belleza es tanto lo que se ve amenazado por el proyecto colonial occidental, como lo que permite su resistencia decolonial. Reconstruir la belleza del mundo es necesario y, sin embargo, imposible: su búsqueda implica (...) no solo atender al llamado de las diferencias, sino también a las instancias en las que se niegan a ser escuchadas. (shrink)

People’s awareness of tactile stimuli has been investigated in far less detail than their awareness of stimuli in other sensory modalities. In an attempt to fill this gap, we provide an overview of studies that are pertinent to the topic of tactile consciousness. We discuss the results of research that has investigated phenomena such as “change blindness”, phantom limb sensations, and numerosity judgments in tactile perception, together with the results obtained from the study of patients affected by deficits that can (...) adversely affect tactile perception such as neglect, extinction, and numbsense. The similarities as well as some of the important differences that have emerged when visual and tactile conscious information processing have been compared using similar experimental procedures are highlighted. We suggest that conscious information processing in the tactile modality cannot be separated completely from the more general processing of spatial information in the brain. Finally, the importance of considering tactile consciousness within the larger framework of multisensory information processing is also discussed. (shrink)