La capacidad de elegir se ha erigido como una de las notas características de la libertad en la cultura contemporánea, pero si esta capacidad se ejerce de modo autorreferente puede meter a las personas en dinámicas que les suman en la incertidumbre. Partiendo de un estudio interdisciplinar en el que interactúan filosofía, sociología y teología, en este artículo se pretende analizar la categoría «elección» desde una de las espiritualidades más influyentes de la historia de la Iglesia Católica moderna, la espiritualidad (...) ignaciana. El hecho de que los proyectos vitales, en los que desplegar y cargar de significado la existencia, se vean inmersos en la incertidumbre nos avoca al diálogo interdisciplinar desde el cual colaborar a la toma de decisiones del sujeto contemporáneo. (shrink)

IntroductionTranscranial magnetic stimulation is a consolidated procedure for the treatment of depression, with several meta-analyses demonstrating its efficacy. Theta-burst stimulation is a modification of TMS with similar efficacy and shorter session duration. The geriatric population has many comorbidities and a high prevalence of depression, but few clinical trials are conducted specifically for this age group. TBS could be an option in this population, offering the advantages of few side effects and no pharmacological interactions. Therefore, our aim is to investigate the (...) efficacy of TBS in geriatric depression.Clinical trial registration[https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/], identifier [NCT04842929]. (shrink)

In this paper, we raise two points. First, any rights‐based theory should provide a method by which to guide reasoning in addressing conflicts of rights. The reason, we argue, is that these theories must provide guidance on what should be done. Second, this method must contain two key recommendations: (1) We should try to find a deliberative mechanism through which none of the rights is simply eliminated from the scene; (2) these rights may be balanced against each other to define (...) which right should prevail, but without considering non‐rights‐interests as if they were rights in the process. These recommendations instantiate two crucial principles that underlie our common intuitions on rights, namely, the principle that rights deserve equal respect and the principle that rights should be taken seriously. (shrink)

When the richest 85 individuals in the world own as much as the poorest 3 billion people, one must ask about equity and social justice. Yet, the problem is not just individual, but also systemic. Just as nations have developed poverty lines to identify people who need help, so too, as this book argues, we need a measure of relative wealth that can guide policy makers, governments, development specialists, and economists. Approaching the question through theological, ethical, and economic analysis, the (...) book probes the dynamics of wealth creation, the effectiveness of national and international policies, and the underlying questions of poverty, wealth, and widening economic disparities. [Subject: Religious Studies, Ethics, Social Justice, Economic Policy]. (shrink)

Kitcher has proposed an ideal-theory account—well-ordered science (WOS)— of the collective good that science’s research agenda should promote. Against criticism regarding WOS’s action-guidance, Kitcher has advised critics not to confuse substantive ideals and the ways to arrive at them, and he has defended WOS as a necessary and useful ideal for science policy. I provide a distinction between two types of ideal-theories that helps clarifying WOS’s elusive nature. I use this distinction to argue that the action-guidance problem that WOS faces (...) remains even under the aims/means distinction, because the WOS’s failure is more basic than critics have suggested. (shrink)

Um marco sobre a questão do tempo na História da Filosofia, o livro XI das Confissões de Agostinho de Hipona (354–430) ainda hoje recebe interpretações. O presente artigo menciona pontos que já apresentei noutro texto sobre o tempo como espelho da alma, no entanto ele recebe o acréscimo de dois pontos que mudam a ênfase de minha interpretação prévia: (1) a citação a Josué e (2) a escolha de Deus creator ominum para exemplificar a relação, via tempo, entre ser humano, (...) Deus e o mundo. Mediante a análise textual do livro XI, a seguinte conclusão será encaminhada: embora Agostinho não recuse a existência do tempo como uma realidade independente das vivências humanas, ele privilegia outro aspecto do tempo, medular nas Confissões, a saber, a relação humana com o tempo em correspondência com a intenção da vontade pela qual a vida humana é governada. Em Agostinho, o tempo da vida se compromete com a ética, e reflete o modo como a vontade habita a vida. Tempo e alma, nas Confissões, são interdependentes a ponto de a experiência humana do tempo ser um espelhamento da vontade. (shrink)

Is it justified to hold that an agent S has a (moral) right to P if the duty-bearer is not specified? There is an intense ongoing debate on this question. There are two positions in the literature. On the one hand, O´Neill´s much-discussed account of rights holds that it is justified to say that an agent S has a right to P if and only if the duty-bearer is sufficiently determined – i.e. if and only if it is clear against (...) whom S may claim her right to P (O’Neill 1986, 1988, 1996, 2000, 2005, 2016). Call this, the ‘claimability condition’. On the other hand, interest-based theorists argue that it can be justified to say that an agent S has a right to P even if the duty-bearer is not sufficiently determined (Caney 2007; Griffin, 2008; Raz 1988; Tasioulas 2007; see also: Etinson, 2013; Ypi 2010). Who (if anyone) is correct in this fundamental discussion about the very nature of rights? In this paper, I provide an answer to this crucial question. Neither O´Neill nor interest-based theorists provide good reasons to justify their positions. However, I argue, the claimability condition is an existence condition of rights justified on the basis of their action-guiding character. The reason is that if the duty-bearer is not specified, the content of the right (its correlative obligation) does not sufficiently guide what the agent should do because it is indeterminate who is required to act (or refrain from acting). (shrink)

Intellectual property regimes necessarily create artificial scarcity leading to wastage, both by blocking follow-up research and hindering access to those who are only able to pay less then the actual retail price. After revising the traditional arguments to hinder access to people’s intellectual labour we will examine why we should be more open to allow free-riding of inventive efforts, especially in cases where innovators have not secured the widest access to the fruits of their research and failed to cooperate with (...) follow-up innovators. We will do so by questioning the voluntariness involved in consumption of objects of innovation, restating the positive social externalities that arise when wider access to the fruits of innovation is assured, and examining the eventual harms innovators face. (shrink)

Food security brings a number of benefits to humanity from which nobody can be excluded and which can be simultaneously enjoyed by all. An economic understanding of the concept sees food security qualify as a global public good. However, there are four other ways of understanding a public good which are worthy of attention. A normative public good is a good from which nobody ought to be excluded. Alternatively, one might acknowledge the benevolent character of a public good. Others have (...) argued that public goods demand being public in the sense of being visible to all. Finally, it has also been argued that public goods are those goods which need joint action to be produced and maintained. This chapter discusses these five understandings of the public good in relation to food security and highlights the advantage of assessing policies from each of these perspectives. (shrink)

This article presents the results of the analysis of a number of linguistic metaphors found in a corpus of opinion articles published in the Spanish newspaper El País. The authors included in the corpus, who tend towards the left of the political spectrum, use metaphor to express moral judgements on the actions and decisions of the conservative, centre-right People’s party, which governs Spain with an overall majority. With the aim of describing this discourse, we have undertaken a qualitative analysis with (...) a conceptual framework deriving from CDA and cognitive linguistics. First, therefore, we have made use of the methodology developed by Steen and the Pragglejaz group to extract the discourse units that could be considered as the lexical expression of an underlying mapping between domains, that is, the metaphors; second, according to the descriptions of Talmy, Croft, Sweetser, Sullivan, and Dancygier and Sweetser, we have verified that the different types of grammatical structure in which the lexical items appeared also indicated the existence of a metaphorical thought process; and third, in the words of van Dijk, we have studied the ideological semantics underlying conceptual structures and conceptual content. As we have demonstrated, all the samples of linguistic metaphors found led readers to construct the same interpretation of the meaning: The Spanish People’s party government is the past, a past that provokes rejection and which was thought to be definitively ended. (shrink)

The debate about how neurotechnologies impact authenticity has focused on two inter-related dimensions: self-discovery and self-creation. In this paper, we develop a broader framework that includes the experimental and relational dimensions of authenticity, both understood as decisive for shaping one’s narrative identity. In our view, neurointerventions that alter someone’s personality traits will also impact her very own self-understanding across time. We argue that experimental authenticity only needs a minimum conception of narrative coherence of the self and that reversibility should remain (...) a key feature in the ethical assessment of neurotechnologies. The relational dimension of authenticity derives from the fact that a process of self-constitution is never a solitary business. The significant others act not just as subsequent judges of one’s life decisions, but as real co-authors of one’s self. We discuss relevant cases in which others are actively contributing to the meaning-making process, as to the direction one’s life is taking. We also claim that the experimental and the relational dimensions of authenticity should aim to correct each other. The relational dimension introduces socially approved standards as well as limitations to the array of available possibilities of self-fashioning or human enhancement. The experimental side enables us to avoid confusing one’s personal identity with a social and narrative construct that only bears the mark of social pressure and conformism. (shrink)

The much-discussed “claimability objection” holds that it is unjustified to believe that all individuals have a human right to subsistence because the bearers of the correlative duties are not sufficiently determined. This argument is based on the so-called “claimability-condition”: S has a right to P if and only if the duty-bearer is sufficiently determined. Practice-based theorists defend the human right to subsistence by arguing that if we take the existing human rights practice seriously, there is no indeterminacy about the allocation (...) of duties. In this paper, I challenge this (apparently compelling) defense of the human right to subsistence with a dilemma. If the claimability condition is true, the practice-based defense fails to undermine the claimability objection because the duty-bearer is determined in some, but not all, cases. If practice-based theorists reject the claimability condition, they generate an account of human rights that is problematic from the practical perspective because it may contain duties that are unable to guide action. (shrink)

The mixture of political, social, cultural and economic environments in Latin America, together with the enormous diversity in climates, natural habitats and biological resources the continent offers, make the ethical assessment of agricultural policies extremely difficult. Yet the experience gained while addressing the contemporary challenges the region faces, such as rapid urbanization, loss of culinary and crop diversity, extreme inequality, disappearing farming styles, water and land grabs, malnutrition and the restoration of the rule of law and social peace, can be (...) of great value to other regions in similar latitudes, development processes and social problems. This chapter will provide a brief overview of these challenges from the perspective of a continent that is exposed to the consequences of extreme inequality in multiple dimensions and conclude by arguing for the need to have a continuous South-South dialogue on the challenges of establishing socially and environmentally sustainable food systems. (shrink)

The forfeiture thesis is posed as an independent thesis in moral philosophy according to which agents forfeit (or lose) rights if they perform certain act-types. According to many, this thesis plays a crucial role in the justification of (legal) punishment. In this paper, I argue that the forfeiture thesis is unnecessary – we can simply dismiss it without any substantive loss. Echoing an aspect of the specificationist approach to rights, the reason is that we may replace the forfeiture thesis with (...) an exception clause in the very content of the right not to be subjected to hard treatment: P has no right not to be subjected to hard treatment simpliciter, but a right not to be subjected to hard treatment unless P performs an act-type φ – e.g., murdering an innocent person. This alternative has substantive advantages over the forfeiture thesis, which, in turn, shows that the former cannot be reduced to the latter. (shrink)

J. S. Mill and the Art of Compromise The word compromise means a kind of agreement and a concession to something harmful or wrong. I argue that particularly this second sense is quite relevant in the ethics of political action. John Stuart Mill focused upon this issue in his Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform 1859. I outline Mill's doctrine on compromise looking at the external and internal features of an acceptable measure of compromise. These features provide a set of conditions necessary (...) in order for compromise to take place, but they do not guarantee sufficient conditions. In order to assess Mill's political coherence and to draw a general distinction between strategic and ethical compromises the paper concludes by considering two compromise measures that Mill adopted while he was a Member of Parliament. (shrink)

The organizational account of biological functions interprets functions as contributions of a trait to the maintenance of the organization that, in turn, maintains the trait. As has been recently argued, however, the account seems unable to provide a unified grounding for both intra- and cross-generation functions, since the latter do not contribute to the maintenance of the same organization which produces them. To face this ‘ontological problem’, a splitting account has been proposed, according to which the two kinds of functions (...) require distinct organizational definitions. In this article, we propose a solution for the ontological problem, by arguing that intra- and cross-generation functions can be said to contribute in the same way to the maintenance of the biological organization, characterized in terms of organizational self-maintenance. As a consequence, we suggest maintaining a unified organizational account of biological functions. (shrink)

Entre 1843 y 1844, uno de los conceptos centrales del pensamiento de Karl Marx es el de ser genérico. Es indudable en este concepto la herencia terminológica feuerbachiana, cuya principal referencia es el concepto de género. Sin embargo, este trabajo muestra que en su funcionamiento el ser genérico, lejos prolongar el concepto feuerbachiano, implica su refutación. Esto permite comprenderlo en una problemática más amplia de la obra de Marx: el proceso histórico de sustitución de las interrelaciones fundantes de los cuerpos (...) por su forma representada. (shrink)

ENTREVISTA COM PROFESSORAS (ES) DE FILOSOFIA DO ENSINO SUPERIOR DO CEARÁ – BLOCO IICom: Cristiane Maria Marinho, Francisco José da Silva, Camila do Espírito Santo Prado de OliveiraPor: Antônio Alex Pereira de Sousa, Paulo Willame Araújo de Lima.

Barnes (2014) has argued in this journal for the following conditional: If there is any metaphysical indeterminacy, this must be at the most fundamental level of reality. To argue for this claim, Barnes relies on two principles that I shall call bivalent completeness and determinate link. According to the former, a complete description is a bivalent assignment of truth values to every sentence. The determinate link, instead, establishes that the determination relation between levels of reality preserves determinacy from one level (...) to another. In response to Barnes’ conclusion, Eva (2018) has recently pointed out that bivalent completeness is question begging. In this paper, I will first show why Eva's line of reasoning can be resisted. My aim will then be to present a stronger case against Barnes’ argument by challenging the determinate link. In the presence of metaphysical indeterminacy, the link between fundamental and derivative facts might itself be the locus of indeterminacy. I will conclude by showing that Barnes and Eva make many unwarranted assumptions regarding both indeterminacy and fundamentality. The logical space around the connection between these two notions appears to be much wider than what they seem to be aware of, or so I will argue. (shrink)

The paper proposes (1.) a non-standard interpretation of the proverbial expression “deuteros plous” by giving a fresh look to Phaedo, 99c9-d1. Then (2.) it proceeds to the philosophical problem raised in this passage according to this interpretation, that is, the problem of the “hypothesis” or the “unproved principle”. It indicates finally (3.) the kernel of truth contained in the standard Interpretation and it concludes with some remarks on the “weakness of the logoi”.

El presente texto tiene como propósito analizar teórico-conceptualmente las prácticas pedagógicas de la ética implementadas por los docentes en la universidad tradicional y la universidad popular en los años 2010 – 2020. Teniendo en cuenta, primero, las características inherentes de la universidad tradicional tanto en sus orígenes y principios fundamentales; segundo, las practicas pedagógicas de la ética en el rol docente; y tercero, el advenimiento, desarrollo y propuesta de la Universidad popular. Mediante este análisis fue posible develar los paralelismos entre (...) sus divergencias y puntos de encuentro con base en la ética-práctica del rol docente, para el mejoramiento continuo tanto de esta área del conocimiento como de los demás saberes en general. (shrink)

En este artículo defendemos la existencia de un perspectivismo ontológico pluralista inherente a la filosofía de Baruch Spinoza. Indispensable para la constitución de esta noción es la relación establecida entre su teoría general de composición de los cuerpos y los conceptos de “afecto”, “inmanencia”, “potencia” y “multitud”. El objetivo de este análisis es una fundamentación interior del concepto de “puntos de vista”: es imposible pensarlo como una característica epistemológica de un individuo aislado, pero tampoco es posible unificarlo mediante el postulado (...) de una propiedad común. En consecuencia, el perspectivismo ontológico espinosista implica una teoría del punto de vista pluralista que elude los problemas planteados por la clausura del modelo Uno-Todo. (shrink)

What are the main conditions that any theory of human rights should satisfy to guide action? If agents must take action for a fairer world as human rights discourse suggests, this is a crucial question to reflect upon. In this paper, I make a proposal. I argue that any theory of (moral) human rights that guides action on the basis of correlative duties must satisfy three key conditions. The first condition is focused on the specification of act-types, the second concerns (...) the distribution of correlative duties, and the third is focused on the resolution of (resolvable) conflicts of human rights. I show that this proposal has substantive implications because it implies to reject, challenge and, in some cases, resist ideas that are commonly accepted in the literature on human rights. (shrink)

Agostinho de Hipona recebeu uma formação intelectual nos moldes da cultura clássica, tendo sido educado segundo o ciclo disciplinar varroniano. Provém dessa educação sua apreciação da dialética como arte que instrui argumentar corretamente e que permite discernir, nos discursos, os elementos que geram a falsidade da conclusão. É a dialética que permite conectar proposições verdadeiras para alcançar conclusões também verdadeiras e é elaa ciência que deflagra a falsidade e a dissimulação nos argumentos. Ora, na obra Contra Crescônio, gramático e donatista, (...) Agostinho defende-se da acusação descabida de ser ele um homo dialecticus que, por sua habilidade de argumentar, falsearia o verdadeiro e tornaria o verdadeiro falso. Crescônio, para acusar Agostinho, acusa a dialética. Em sua réplica, Agostinho defenderá a eminência e importância dessa ciência para, a partir desse fundamento, atacar o donatismo e, finalmente, liquidar Crescônio. É precisamente essa apreciação positiva da dialética que este artigo pretende destacar, ressaltando assim a importância do estudo de Contra Crescônio para o estudo da dialética agostiniana. Abstract:Augustine of Hippo received an intellectual formation in the molds of the classical culture, having been educated according to Varro’s disciplinary cycle. This educational background provided him an appreciation of Dialectics as the liberal art which instructs to reason correctly, and allows discerning, in discourses, the elements that generate false conclusions. It is Dialectics that allows connecting true propositions to reach true conclusions, and it is the science that deflagrates falsehood and dissimulation in arguments. In his work, Against Cresconius, grammarian and Donatist, Augustine defends himself against the unreasonable charge of being a homo dialecticus, who, by his ability to argue, would falsify the truth and turn it false. Cresconius, to accuse Augustine, charges dialectics. In his reply, Augustine will defend the eminence and importance of this science to, from this foundation, attack Donatism and, finally, liquidate Cresconius. It is precisely this positive appreciation of Dialectics that this article intends to highlight, thus highlighting the importance of studying Contra Cresconius for the study Augustinian Dialectics. (shrink)

Resumen: El siguiente artículo parte reconociendo el carácter protector de la téchne y sus momentos constitutivos. De acuerdo a esta determinación es posible advertir el límite de la téchne a partir de la cuestión socrática de la virtud. La virtud, en la medida que no es un asunto análogo a los objetos de la téchne, precisa de un especial acceso. Desde la constatación del diálogo como el único modo de conocer la virtud, se pone de relieve su sentido comunitario y (...) el carácter del examen socrático. En el diálogo socrático se anuncia, así, que la virtud no es nunca algo técnicamente clausurado ni epistémicamente conceptualizado, sino el mayor bien humano que se cumple en su aproximación a través del examen conjunto de la propia vida.: This article starts by recognizing the protective nature of téchne and its development. It is thereby possible to understand the limits of téchne based on the Socratic question of virtue. Virtue, insofar as it is not a matter analogous to the objects of téchne, requires a special access. The communitarian sense and the character of the Socratic inquiry are made plain, given dialogue as the only way of knowing virtue. Socratic dialogue discloses that virtue is never technically closed or epistemically conceptualized, but that this greatest human good is fulfilled through the joint examination of life itself. (shrink)

Aunque el contenido del Eutifrón se revela en saber qué es la piedad, este diálogo, pese a una inevitable apariencia, no tiene como fin último proporcionar una definición proposicional de este fenómeno. La piedad se pone al descubierto a partir de la dialéctica de Sócrates, cuya insistencia en volver al principio del problema no proviene de una incapacidad del interlocutor de definir el asunto, sino de la debilidad misma del discurso. La necesidad de plantear otra vez desde el principio la (...) cuestión suscita en el intérprete advertir la importancia de la ejecución misma del diálogo como testimonio y acreditación de su propio contenido. De acuerdo a esta ejecución se podrá comprender en qué medida el sentido de la piedad se encuentra en relación al carácter principiante de Sócrates. (shrink)

De ce a fost fondată Uniunea Europeană? Un prim răspuns ar fi dorinţa de pace după un război devastator şi umilitor. Un al doilea răspuns ar fi realizarea importanţei unităţii. O unitate care se va caracteriza printr-o diversitate a culturilor şi a limbilor. Statele europene nu au dorit să renunţe la suveranitatea lor, au vrut să devină un corp comun pentru a nu a mai putea fi călcate în picioare de iureşul istoriei. Ca orice unitate, UE avea nevoie de un (...) cadru de reglementare oferit de instituţii şi politici europene. De asemenea, pentru a armoniza ceva trebuie să poţi pune împreună anumite elemente separate. Armonizarea Uniunii a fost realizată prin fondarea instituţiilor şi a reglementărilor acestora (structura instituţională a UE este prezentată în Anexa nr. 1). Instituţionalizarea Uniunii Europene este cheia de boltă a construcţiei istorice europene. Început în anul 1957, acest proces a lăsat urme adânci în conştiinţa politică europeană. Dacă la început a fost privită cu reticenţă, acum Uniunea nu poate exista fără instituţii. (shrink)

This paper argues for a revised concept of authenticity entailing two demands that must be balanced. The first demand moves authenticity from the position of a strictly self-regarding virtue towards the position of a fully social virtue, acknowledging the crucial feature of steadiness, i.e. self-consistency, as being precisely what we ‘naturally’ lack. Nevertheless, the value of personal authenticity in a modern, open society comes from the fact that it brings about not only steadiness, but also the public development of a (...) variety of existential options that can be understood as Millian ‘original experiments in living’. Thus the second demand of authenticity is a demand for ‘experimental’ authenticity which covers the whole spectrum of technologies of the self, from Nietzschean ‘brief habits’, to the use of enhancement technologies. (shrink)

A strange dialectical reversal characterizes the oppositions which psychoanalysis posits against philosophy and neuroscience: what psychoanalysis intervenes with as a unique and missing quality of these subjects, reveals itself upon enquiry as already having been a feature of said subjects. This article first discusses the failed intervention of psychoanalysis within the perceived totalities and absolutes of German idealism. Psychoanalysis, founded on an ontological division and internal inconsistency with a retroactive logic, finds this internal contradiction already reflected within the supposed totalities (...) of Schelling and Hegel. Schelling’s “blind act,” a decision with no prior foundation that grounds an abstract identity-in-itself, appears as the counterpart to what Badiou calls the strictly “analytic act.” Hegel’s Science of Logic, in which the inconclusive interpenetration of being and nothing presupposes its own conclusion in the transitions to essence, and in which an internal incompleteness and contradiction are retroactively constitutive of the concept, similarly nullifies the intervention of psychoanalysis. Finally, precisely such a reversal is presented in neuroscience, where the constitutive contradiction of contingently functional neuronal formations in the adaptive “multiple demand” model of executive functioning repeats the contingent and self-contradicting psychoanalytic subject as being its own deference within linguistic, discursive formations. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to examine the problematic frontier that separates the phenomenology of the body and the phenomenology of animality. The main difficulty is to differentiate phenomenologically not only between embodiment and animality, but also between specifically human embodied experience and what is accessible to us through empathy in relation to the corporeality of the animal. I will tackle these questions by considering relevant textual material from the writings of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. On the one (...) hand, I will show that although embodiment and animality are convergent on the level of the naturalistic attitude in Husserl’s Ideas II, they are divergent as soon as we place ourselves in the personalistic attitude, where the body enters into a different conjunction—namely, with the idea of person and of the spiritual world. On the other hand, Heidegger claims that, in spite of the abysmal bodily kinship with the animal, there is an essential difference between the human body and the animal organism, thus opposing the tendencies to humanize the animal and to animalize the human. (shrink)

*Winner of the American Philosophical Association's 2020 Essay Prize in Latin American Thought* This essay offers a novel account of the secularity of Latin American liberation philosophy. It challenges the accepted notion that liberation philosophy applies the methods and approaches of Latin American liberation theology to the philosophical arena, thus putting liberation theology on secular grounds. While this formulation is true insofar as liberation philosophy is not bound by the hermeneutics of any particular religious tradition, this formulation could be misconstrued (...) given that liberation philosophy does not premise such secularization in an undialectical understanding of secularity as secularism that disavows religion. Rather, liberation philosophy’s secularity is dialectical in that it requires constant engagement with re-ligion, not in the hermeneutics of any specific tradition but with “the traditional question of the Absolute.” Due to this often-misunderstood element of liberation philosophy, it has frequently been “ghettoized and relegated to the ‘safe’ area of theological studies,” as Eduardo Mendieta argues. However, I contend that liberation philosophy’s secular grounds offer an original contribution to philosophy as a decolonial and postsecularist liberation philosophy, one that conceives of secularism as an aspect of coloniality to be overcome, an obstacle rather than a benefit for Latin American philosophers seeking to gain a better understanding of our historical conditions. (shrink)

The paper presents some knowledge of history of medicine – especially those from the embryological field – correlated with theological marks in order to motivate the rightfulness of the method of „bringing the mind down into the heart”, a procedure during the Jesus Prayer. The ascetic Fathers mentioned that the mind is an energy which starts from the heart and reaches the brain – which offers the possibility to express itself. It is possible to consider that this transfer begins since (...) the primitive heart is in the same plane and before the cerebral area. Then, after the folding of the embryo, the heart will be placed under the brain. So “bringing the mind down into the heart” is also biologically feasible. Although the primitive heart is structured after the neural tube, it starts beating at 21 to 22 days, unlike the brain which began its function on the 40th day. This explains the theological meaning of the heart, wider than the signification of the mind (attribute of the brain). (shrink)

Explanations of the genuine openness of the future often appeal to objective indeterminacy. According to the received view, such indeterminacy is indeterminacy of certain future-tensed state of affairs that presently obtain. We shall call this view the weak indeterminate present, to distinguish it from the view we will defend in this paper, which we dub the strong indeterminate present. According to our view, unsettledness of the future is grounded on the present indeterminacy of some present-tensed state of affairs. In order (...) for an indeterminate present-tensed state of affairs to explain the unsettledness of a future-tensed state of affairs, there has to be a connection between the two. We argue that this connection can only be provided if we look at the internal structure of the relevant state of affairs. Finally, we will suggest that the best background theory to explain the connection are the so-called spontaneous collapse models of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

We reply to Artiga and Martinez’s claim according to which the organizational account of cross-generation functions implies a backward looking interpretation of etiology, just as standard etiological theories of function do. We argue that Artiga and Martinez’s claim stems from a fundamental misunderstanding about the notion of “closure”, on which the organizational account relies. In particular, they incorrectly assume that the system, which is relevant for ascribing cross-generation organizational function, is the lineage. In contrast, we recall that organizational closure refers (...) to a relational description of a network of mutual dependencies, abstracted from time, in which production relations are irrelevant. From an organizational perspective, ascribing a function to an entity means locating it in the abstract system that realizes closure. In particular, the position of each entity within the relational system conveys an etiological explanation of its existence, because of its dependence on the effects exerted by other entities subject to closure. Because of the abstract relational nature of closure, we maintain that the organizational account of functions does not endorse a backward looking interpretation of etiology. As a consequence, it does not fall prey of epiphenomenalism. (shrink)