El papa Francisco, por primera vez, extiende la jerarquía de verdades al ámbito propiamente moral de la Iglesia católica. Pero ciertamente también a semejante afirmación cabe introducirle un matiz, porque, de hecho, ya con anterioridad, el Magisterio había señalado una gradación de verdades, aunque lo había hecho en relación a la autoridad de la Iglesia y a la infalibilidad del Papa, tanto en formulaciones de fe como de costumbres. A este respecto son de interés tanto la «Professio fidei» y el (...) «Juramento de fidelidad» publicados en 1989 por la Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe, como la «Instrucción Donum veritatis sobre la vocación eclesial del teólogo» también de la Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe en 1990, como por último la «Carta apostólica en forma de “Motu proprio” Ad tuendam fidem» firmada por Juan Pablo II en 1998, y que pretende adecuar el Código de derecho canónico y el de cánones de las Iglesias orientales a la «Professio fidei» anteriormente mencionada. No vamos a entrar en un diálogo polémico sobre tales textos ni en los problemas surgidos de su interpretación1, sino simplemente señalar lo que suponen para la cuestión de la jerarquía de verdades en la teología moral católica. (shrink)

El objetivo de esta investigación consiste en indagar, desde una óptica interdisciplinar entre la sociología, la psicología, el derecho y la historia, la gestión de la crisis del coronavirus, la cual en el caso español se asienta en lógicas autoritarias lounge dure enraizadas en el XIX y el absolutismo. Con el uso de medidas impuestas por las autoridades y asumidas por una ciudadanía aterrorizada, los gobiernos y medios de comunicación han generado un punto de inflexión que ha desarticulado el tejido (...) asociativo y los movimientos sociales emergidos como respuesta al estallido de la burbuja inmobiliaria ocurrido en el Estado español. (shrink)

In Lukács: Praxis and the Absolute, Daniel Andrés López reassembles Lukács’s philosophy of praxis on a Hegelian basis, as a conceptual-historical totality, both defending him and proposing an unprecedented, immanent critique that raises problems for Marxian philosophy as a whole.

The purpose of this paper is to show how the degree of experimental validity of scientific procedures is crucially involved in determining two typical pragmatic modes in science, namely, the preservation of useful procedures and the disposal of useless ideas. The term 'pragmatic' will here be used following Schurz's characterisation of being internally pragmatic, as referring to that which proves useful for scientific or epistemic goals. The first part of the paper consists in a characterisation of the notion of experimental (...) validity. The second part is focused on several historical examples illustrating how the above pragmatic modes relate to the question of experimental validity. The Michelson-Morley experiment is presented as a case of a highly valid and useful experiment preserved through the development of different theories (like, on the one hand, the ether theory, upheld by Fitzgerald and Lorentz, and, on the other hand, Einstein's special theory of relativity). The concept of caloric will be discussed as an example of an idea that was discarded once it became useless, after heat was understood as a form of energy within the new frame provided by the kinetic theory of heat towards the middle of the 19th century. (shrink)

The incommensurability thesis, as introduced by T.S. Kuhn and P.K. Feyerabend, states that incommensurable theories are conceptually incompatible theories which share a common domain of application. Such claim has often been regarded as incoherent, since it has been understood that the determination of a common domain of application at least requires a certain degree of conceptual compatibility between the theories. The purpose of this work is to contribute to the defense of the notion of local or gradual incommensurability, as proposed (...) by late Kuhn. The application of this notion would allow to render the incommensurability thesis coherent. To support this view, a typical example of incommensurability will be formally analyzed by applying the structuralist metatheory developed, among others by W. Balzer, C.U. Moulines and J.D. Sneed. The structural reconstruction of the relation between the phlogiston theory and the oxygen theory offered here will reveal that they are locally incommensurable, and will even make possible to determine the ontological reduction relation that they also exemplify. (shrink)

In most domains of human life, we are willing to accept that there are experts with greater knowledge and competencies that distinguish them from non-experts or laypeople. Despite this fact, the very recognition of expertise curiously becomes more controversial in the case of “moral experts”. Do moral experts exist? And, if they indeed do, are there ethical reasons for us to follow their advice? Likewise, can emerging technological developments broaden our very concept of moral expertise? In this article, we begin (...) by arguing that the objections that have tried to deny the existence (and convenience) of moral expertise are unsatisfactory. After that, we show that people have ethical reasons to ask for a piece of moral advice in daily life situations. Then, we argue that some Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems can play an increasing role in human morality by becoming moral experts. Some AI-based moral assistants can qualify as artificial moral experts and we would have good ethical reasons to use them. (shrink)

Los estudios de géneros discursivos han prestado poca atención a las tesis o seminarios producidos para la obtención del grado de licenciatura. En este artículo se describe, desde el enfoque del genre analysis (Swales, 1990), la organización retórica del marco referencial de un conjunto de 30 tesis de pregrado elaboradas por estudiantes de la carrera de Trabajo Social de la UCSC. Se identifican cuatro movidas retóricas: teórico, conceptual, empírico y normativo. Se observa que cada una tiene propósitos diferentes sobre cuestiones (...) teóricas, prácticas y legales relacionadas con el problema social que aborda cada tesis. Se advierte la presencia de algunos pasos retóricos recursivo y, al mismo tiempo, un fuerte compromiso de la investigación con la resolución de un problema social real. Studies of discourse genre have paid little attention to graduation theses produced by undergraduate students. This article describes, from a genre analysis approach (Swales, 1990), the rhetorical organization of the reference framework of a set of 30 undergraduate theses prepared by social work students at the UCSC. The study identifies four rhetorical moves: theoretical, conceptual, empirical, and normative. It is observed that each move has different purposes on theoretical, practical, and legal issues related to the social problem addressed by each thesis. The presence of recursive rhetorical steps is apparent, along with a strong commitment to solving real social problems through research. (shrink)

El presente trabajo pretende dar respuesta a la demanda, abiertamente hecha por Kuhn y Feyerabend , así como por los impulsores de la corriente estructuralista, Balzer, Moulines & Sneed , sobre la necesidad de analizar estructuralmente casos históricos de teorías inconmensurables para llegar a precisar formalmente y dar soporte empírico a la noción de inconmensurabilidad. El trabajo se estructura en tres partes: en la primera, se aclara el tipo de entidad teórica que conformarían las teorías del flogisto y del oxígeno; (...) en la segunda, se presentan sus correspondientes reconstrucciones estructurales y finalmente, en la tercera, se desarrolla un análisis de las relaciones interteóricas entre la teoría del flogisto y la del oxígeno, mostrando cómo su modo de relacionarse satisface las condiciones establecidas en las definiciones de reducción ontológica débil y de inconmensurabilidad. (shrink)

Most philosophers would agree that loving one’s romantic partner (i.e., being in love) is, in principle, a good thing. That is, romantic love can be valuable. It seems plausible that most would then think that the process leading to being in love—i.e. falling in love—can be valuable too. Surprisingly, that is not the case: among philosophers, falling in love has a bad reputation. Whereas philosophy of love has started to depart from traditional (and often unwarranted or false) tropes surrounding romantic (...) life, this tendency has not yet reached the analysis of falling in love. The phenomenon continues to be looked at mostly through a compendium of generalisations taken as metaphysical truths—the view of falling in love being akin to “losing one’s mind” or “not being able to think about anything else”. Here, I analyse some of these generalisations to show that although they may reflect some experiences of what falling in love feels like, they wrongly reduce falling in love to two related, but distinct, phenomena: limerence and infatuation. My aim is to refine the current terminology to lay the foundations for a neutral view of falling in love. (shrink)

L’objectif de ce texte est double: expliquer certaines limitations des approches traditionnelles du succès des théories, et esquisser un critère pour l’évaluation comparative des succès empiriques d’une théorie. On insiste sur les points suivants: a) la supériorité de la prédiction sur l’adaptation, b) la résolution des anomalies non-réfutantes et c) l’utilisation limitée d’hypothèses ad hoc. Après une première partie consacrée à lever les ambiguïtés de l’expression « succès d’une théorie », la deuxième partie traite de quelques-unes des principales lacunes des (...) approches conséquentialistes traditionnelles du succès des théories. Enfin, dans la dernière section, on esquisse le critère de succès empirique d’une théorie et on donne quelques éléments pour renforcer ce critère. (shrink)

L’objectif de ce texte est double: expliquer certaines limitations des approches traditionnelles du succès des théories, et esquisser un critère pour l’évaluation comparative des succès empiriques d’une théorie. On insiste sur les points suivants: a) la supériorité de la prédiction sur l’adaptation, b) la résolution des anomalies non-réfutantes et c) l’utilisation limitée d’hypothèses ad hoc. Après une première partie consacrée à lever les ambiguïtés de l’expression « succès d’une théorie », la deuxième partie traite de quelques-unes des principales lacunes des (...) approches conséquentialistes traditionnelles du succès des théories. Enfin, dans la dernière section, on esquisse le critère de succès empirique d’une théorie et on donne quelques éléments pour renforcer ce critère. (shrink)

This book tells the story of the Scientific Buddha, "born" in Europe in the 1800s but commonly confused with the Buddha born in India 2,500 years ago. The Scientific Buddha was sent into battle against Christian missionaries, who were proclaiming across Asia that Buddhism was a form of superstition. He proved the missionaries wrong, teaching a dharma that was in harmony with modern science. And so his influence continues. Today his teaching of "mindfulness" is heralded as the cure for all (...) manner of maladies, from depression to high blood pressure.In this potent critique, a well-known chronicler of the West's encounter with Buddhism demonstrates how the Scientific Buddha's teachings deviate in crucial ways from those of the far older Buddha of ancient India. Donald Lopez shows that the Western focus on the Scientific Buddha threatens to bleach Buddhism of its vibrancy, complexity, and power, even as the superficial focus on "mindfulness" turns Buddhism into merely the latest self-help movement. The Scientific Buddha has served his purpose, Lopez argues. It is now time for him to pass into nirvana. This is not to say, however, that the teachings of the ancient Buddha must be dismissed as mere cultural artifacts. They continue to present a meaningful challenge, even to our modern world. (shrink)

In contrast to individualistic explanations of social injustice that appeal to implicit attitudes, structural explanations are unintuitive: they appeal to entities that lack clear ontological status, and the explanatory mechanism is similarly unclear. This makes structural explanations unappealing. The present work proposes a structural explanation of one type of injustice that happens in conversations, discursive injustice. This proposal meets two goals. First, it satisfactorily accounts for the specific features of this particular kind of injustice; and second, it articulates a structural (...) explanation that overcomes their unattractiveness. The main idea is that discursive injustice is not the result of biased interlocutors, but of problematic discursive norms. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the semantic relation between continental drift and plate tectonics. The numerous attempts to account for this case in either Kuhnian or Lakatosian terms have been convincingly dismissed by Rachel Laudan, who nevertheless acknowledged that there was not yet a plausible alternative to explain the so called “geological revolution”. Several decades later, the epistemological side of this revolution has received much attention, while the semantic relation between drift theory and plate tectonics has remained (...) mainly unexplored. In studying this case under a new light, the notion of embedding, as distinguished from other sorts of intertheoretical relations :11–27, 2011), will have a particular significance. After formally analyzing the relationship between continental drift and plate tectonics, it will become evident that the models of drift theory are part of the models of plate tectonics, thereby fulfilling the conditions for embedding. All theoretical concepts from drift theory are presupposed in some theoretical concepts from plate tectonics, and all empirical concepts of the former are shared by the latter. Furthermore, all the successful paradigmatic applications of continental drift are also successful applications of plate tectonics. As a consequence, under the label “geological revolution”, we actually find a salient historical case of cumulative progress across theory change. (shrink)

In Leibniz’s New Essays stands out, within many important topics, his doctrine of innate ideas, which supposes the division between sense knowledge and innate knowledge and implies the distinction between truths of reason and truths of fact. That doctrine is particularly relevant for Leibniz’s philosophy, but implicitly entails the epistemological difference between belief, on one hand, and certainty, on the other. In this paper I outline, according to my interpretation, how Leibniz explains that humans can have certainty about innate ideas. (...) This topic is important because if Leibniz demonstrates the possibility of having certainty of those ideas, then, it is feasible to believe in its existence. However, if his explanation is unsatisfactory his metaphysical doctrine would be seriously weakened and, at the same time, both skepticism and Locke’s empiricist doctrine would be reinforced. (shrink)

Hinge epistemology is a family of views that offers a novel approach to avoiding skeptical conclusions about the possibility of a posteriori justification of our empirical beliefs. They claim that at the basis of our empirical beliefs lie certain commitments whose rational status is not determined by our evidence. These are called hinge commitments. Prominent hinge epistemologists have claimed that hinge commitments are either rational or arational but yet not beliefs. I argue that such views are subject to decisive objections. (...) I then offer what I consider to be the best version of hinge epistemology. On this view, hinge commitments are best understood as arational beliefs that contingently inform our worldview. I call this view the Arational Beliefs View. (shrink)

Las variaciones en la forma en que los sujetos responden a las descripciones de un mismo asunto enmarcadas positiva o negativamente han sido objeto de atención por parte de la investigación en ciencias sociales, donde, sin embargo, una concepción insuficientemente desarrollada de la interpretación del discurso ha socavado las diferentes explicaciones ofrecidas. Los efectos marco suelen considerarse un signo de irracionalidad, ya que entrarían en conflicto con el "principio de extensionalidad", un supuesto habitual en la teoría de la elección racional, (...) que establece que las diferentes formas de presentar el mismo conjunto de opciones posibles no deberían cambiar las elecciones de los sujetos con respecto a esas opciones. El presente artículo explora la vertiente semántico-pragmática de los efectos marco y ofrece una explicación de este fenómeno en términos de un efecto conjunto de las presuposiciones pragmáticas y las implicaturas por defecto. La explicación sugerida desafía la visión tradicional de los efectos marco como signos de irracionalidad, desplazando el foco de la controversia, de la racionalidad del juicio (o la decisión), a la racionalidad de la interpretación. (shrink)

This article examines how problems of validity in empirical social research differ from those in natural science. Specifically, we focus on how some ontological peculiarities of the object of study in social science bear on validity requirements. We consider these issues in experimental validity as well as in test validity because, while both fields hold large intellectual traditions, research tests or questionnaires are less closely connected to natural science methodology than experiments.

As emphasized by Larry Laudan in developing the notion of non-refuting anomalies, traditional analyses of empirical adequacy have not paid enough attention to the fact that the latter does not only depend on a theory’s empirical consequences being true but also on them corresponding to the most salient phenomena in its domain of application. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the notion of non-refuting anomaly. To this end, I critically examine Laudan’s account and provide a criterion to determine (...) when a non-refuting anomaly can be ascribed to the applicative domain of a theory. Unless this latter issue is clarified, no proper sense can be made of non-refuting anomalies, and no argument could be opposed to those cases where an arbitrary restriction in a theory’s domain of application dramatically reduces the possibilities for its empirical scrutiny. In arguing for the importance of this notion, I show how several semanticist resources can help to reveal its crucial implications, not only for theory evaluation, but also for understanding the nature of a theory’s applicative domain. (shrink)

The variations in how subjects respond to positively or negatively framed descriptions of the same issue have received attention from social science research, where, nevertheless, a naïve understanding of speech interpretation has undermined the different explanations offered. The present paper explores the semantic-pragmatic side of framing effects and provides a unifying explanation of this phenomenon in terms of a combined effect of pragmatic presuppositions and default implicatures. The paper contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of representations and cognitive processes involved (...) in the framing bias by showing how well-entrenched linguistic practices associated to frame choice, and conducive to an implicit focus, result in default implicatures on the addressee’s side. (shrink)

The present work constitutes an attempt to make explicit those pragmatic norms successfully operating in empirical science. I will first comment on the initial presuppositions of the discussion, in particular, on those concerning the instrumental character of scientific practice and the nature of scientific goals. Then I will depict the moderately naturalistic frame in which, from this approach, the pragmatic norms make sense. Third, I will focus on the specificity of the pragmatic norms, making special emphasis on what I regard (...) as a key idea underlying them, namely, the view, vigorously advocated by classical pragmatists like C. S. Peirce and G. Vailati, that the best test for objectivity is the test of action. Finally, I am going to put forward a tentative list of pragmatic norms that can be abstracted from a careful observation and analysis of scientific practice as provided by current philosophers of experimentation (A. Franklin and F. Steinle among others). The norms will be divided into four classes corresponding to four aspects of science in which they rule, that is, self-correction, prediction, explanation and both experimentation and computation. In the following account, the formulation of those pragmatic norms successfully governing science will be understood as a contribution that scientifically-oriented pragmatism can make to the normative naturalistic project in epistemology. (shrink)

Why does social injustice exist? What role, if any, do implicit biases play in the perpetuation of social inequalities? Individualistic approaches to these questions explain social injustice as the result of individuals’ preferences, beliefs, and choices. For example, they explain racial injustice as the result of individuals acting on racial stereotypes and prejudices. In contrast, structural approaches explain social injustice in terms of beyond-the-individual features, including laws, institutions, city layouts, and social norms. Often these two approaches are seen as competitors. (...) Framing them as competitors suggests that only one approach can win and that the loser offers worse explanations of injustice. In this essay, we explore each approach and compare them. Using implicit bias as an example, we argue that the relationship between individualistic and structural approaches is more complicated than it may first seem. Moreover, we contend that each approach has its place in analyses of injustice and raise the possibility that they can work together—synergistically—to produce deeper explanations of social injustice. If so, the approaches may be complementary, rather than competing. (shrink)

This paper’s main contention is that some basically methodological developments in science which are apparently distant and unrelated can be seen as part of a sequential story. Focusing on general inferential and epistemological matters, the paper links occurrences separated by both in time and space, by formal and representational issues rather than social or disciplinary links. It focuses on a few limited aspects of several cognitive practices in medical and biological contexts separated by geography, disciplines and decades, but connected by (...) long term transdisciplinary representational and inferential structures and constraints. The paper intends to show a given set of knowledge claims based on organizing statistically empirical data can be seen to have been underpinned by a previous, more familiar, and probably more natural, narrative handling of similar evidence. To achieve that this paper moves from medicine in France in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century to the second half of the nineteenth century in England among gentleman naturalists, following its subject: the shift from narrative depiction of hereditary transmission of physical peculiarities to posterior statistical articulations of the same phenomena. Some early defenders of heredity as an important causal presence in the understanding of life adopted singular narratives, in the form of case stories from medical and natural history traditions, to flesh out a special kind of causality peculiar to heredity. This work tries to reconstruct historically the rationale that drove the use of such narratives. It then shows that when this rationale was methodologically challenged, its basic narrative and probabilistic underpinings were transferred to the statistical quantificational tools that took their place. (shrink)

This article discusses the category of foreigner in the context of academia. In the first part I explore this category and its philosophical significance. A quick look at the literature reveals that this category needs more attention in analyses of dimensions of privilege and disadvantage. Foreignness has peculiarities that demarcate it from other categories of identity, and it intersects with them in complicated ways. Devoting more attention to it would enable addressing issues affecting foreigners in academia that go commonly unnoticed. (...) In the second part of the article I argue that current efforts to make academia a more inclusive environment should address the disadvantages that many foreign academics face. I focus on two senses of foreigner: working and living in a country that is not your country of origin, and being a nonnative speaker of the language in which you work. (shrink)

Love enhancement can give us as a say on whom we love and thus ‘free’ us from our brain chemistry, which is mostly out of our control. In that way, we become more autonomous in love and in our life in general, as long as love enhancement is a free, voluntary choice. So goes the argument in favour of this addition to medical interventions of relationships. In this paper, I show that proponents of love enhancement have overlooked, or at least (...) underestimated, the fact that love itself impacts people’s choices. Since this could include the choice for love or anti-love drugs, I call for a re-formulation of the underlying view on autonomy before this medical intervention is made available to the public. (shrink)

In this note, my aim is to point out a phenomenon that has not received much attention; a phenomenon that, in my opinion, should not be overlooked in the professional practice of philosophy, especially within feminist efforts for social justice. I am referring to the way in which being a non-native speaker of English interacts with the practice of philosophy.1 There is evidence that non-native speakers are often perceived in prejudiced ways. Such prejudiced perception causes harm and, more importantly, constitutes (...) wrongdoing. As in other cases of prejudiced perception and biased behavior, it would be pretentious and misguided to expect philosophers and the philosophy profession to be free from this vice. There are good reasons to think that this prejudiced perception is bad not only for the persons who are perceived in such a way, but also for the profession, for it might make us miss important things that could improve philosophy in general. I claim we should be more sensitive to this phenomenon, both out of concern for justice, and for the sake of doing better philosophy. (shrink)

The activism we don’t appreciate: Your Honor Kent, my mother is a feminist and votes even if she doesn’t know she’s oppressed Resumen: Broncano mantiene que ocupar una situación de opresión no garantiza la lucidez necesaria para identificar la propia situación como injusta. Esta posición nos advierte que nos vamos a encontrar con casos de personas oprimidas que no tienen conocimiento sobre su situación de injusticia ni una actitud crítica hacia la misma. Lo que me interesa analizar en este comentario (...) es cómo afecta esto a la agencia política de esas personas. La conclusión que quiero evitar es la siguiente: Cuando no escuchamos a alguien que está oprimida pero que no conoce su situación de opresión, no la estamos traicionando como agente política, no la estamos silenciando como posible activista. En este comentario propongo un análisis de las quejas que nos permite escapar de esa conclusión. Las quejas de muchas mujeres han de entenderse como acción política, una acción política que no está necesariamente acompañada de conocimiento sobre la injusticia que sufren. Una vez entendemos sus quejas como activismo, ya no podemos excluir a estas mujeres como sujetos políticos en la lucha contra el sexismo. Este análisis de las quejas nos lleva a concluir que estas mujeres sí que pueden ser traicionadas como agentes políticas, aunque no tengan conocimiento de su situación de injusticia. Las traicionamos cuando no entendemos sus quejas como resistencia. Abstract: Broncano thinks that being oppressed does not guarantee knowing that you are oppressed. This view warns us that we are going to find people who are oppressed and who don’t have knowledge about their oppression nor a critical attitude towards their situation. What concerns me here is how this view affects the political agency of those people. The conclusion I want to avoid is as follows: When we don’t listen to someone who is oppressed but who doesn’t know their position as oppressed, we are not betraying them qua a political agent, we are not silencing them as a potential activist. I propose an analysis of complains that allows us to escape that conclusion. I propose that the complains expressed by many women should be understood as a political action, one that is not necessarily accompanied by knowledge of the injustice they are suffering. Once we see their complains as activism, we cannot exclude these women from the fight against sexism and deny their political agency. Under this analysis, women can be betrayed qua political agents even when they don’t have knowledge of their unjust situation. We betray them when we don’t understand their complains as resistance. Palabras clave: Conocimiento, agencia política, activismo, resistencia, quejas. Keywords: Knowledge, political agency, activism, resistance, complains. (shrink)

La historia del pueblo romaní es una de las grandes olvidadas de la enseñanza preuniversitaria y universitaria. Más aún lo es el Samudaripen, el Holocausto romaní, un episodio apenas citado en las clases de Historia tanto en Enseñanza Media como en los Grados y Másteres de las ramas de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales. En la primera parte de este artículo, se ofrece una revisión de la literatura en la que se exponen las principales reflexiones realizadas acerca de este vacío curricular (...) y se argumenta la necesidad de incorporar la enseñanza del Samudaripen a las clases de Historia Contemporánea del nivel universitario. La segunda parte describe una secuencia de actividades titulada “Samudaripen: de la persecución al genocidio del pueblo romaní”, diseñada como parte de un “ciclo de mejora docente” en la asignatura de Historia Contemporánea del 1er curso de Grado. (shrink)