La presente obra navega entre dos conceptos —la heterotopía y la utopía— en el contexto de la posmetrópolis. La heterotopía, tal y como explican en el prefacio los coeditores, ha atraído una innegable atención en el ámbito de las ciencias sociales desde que Foucault trasladara el concepto del ámbito médico al espacial. Frente al no espacio de la utopía y su carácter ideal y regulador, las heterotopías serían lugares reales, en los que la diferencia se manifiesta al invertir y subvertir (...) aquellos órdenes que configuran nuestros espacios cotidianos. Siendo uno de estos lugares cotidianos la ciudad, y atendiendo a las posibilidades emancipatorias y reactivas que pronto se asociaron a lo heterotópico, cabe preguntarse por el estado actual de las heterotopías urbanas: ¿son las heterotopías actuales, como registra el título de la obra, utopías liberales? León Casero y Urabayen ofrecen en el prefacio un amplio panorama al respecto. (shrink)

Reseña de la obra de Parellada, Ricardo. El orgullo ¿vicio o virtud? Madrid: Síntesis, 2019.

This volume tackles the slippery subject of 'meaning'.

Rebirth and the Stream of Life explores the diversity as well as the ethical and religious significance of rebirth beliefs, focusing especially on Hindu and Buddhist traditions but also discussing indigenous religions and ancient Greek thought. Utilizing resources from religious studies, anthropology and theology, an expanded conception of philosophy of religion is exemplified, which takes seriously lived experience rather than treating religious beliefs in isolation from their place in believers' lives. Drawing upon his expertise in interdisciplinary working and Wittgenstein-influenced approaches, (...) Mikel Burley examines several interrelated phenomena, including purported past-life memories, the relationship between metaphysics and ethics, efforts to 'demythologize' rebirth, and moral critiques of the doctrine of karma. This range of topics, with rebirth as a unifying theme, makes the book of value to anyone interested in philosophy, the study of religions, and what it means to believe that we undergo multiple lives. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein was an outstanding 20th-century philosopher whose influence has reverberated throughout not only philosophy but also numerous other areas of inquiry, including theology and the study of religions. Exemplifying how Wittgenstein's thought can be engaged with both sympathetically and critically, Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics pushes forward our thinking about religion and ethics and their place in the modern world. Bringing Wittgenstein's ideas into productive dialogue with several other important thinkers, including Elizabeth Anscombe, St Thomas Aquinas, Georg Cantor, Søren Kierkegaard (...) and George Orwell, this collection fosters a highly informative picture of how different strands of contemporary and historical thought intersect and bear upon one another. Chapters are written by leading scholars in the field and tackle current debates concerning religious and ethical matters, with particular attention to the nature of religious language. This is a substantial contribution to religion and ethics, demonstrating the significance of Wittgenstein's ideas for these and related subjects. (shrink)

Samkhya and Yoga are two of the oldest and most influential systems of classical Indian philosophy. This book provides a thorough analysis of the systems in order to fully understand Indian philosophy. Placing particular emphasis on the metaphysical schema which underlies both concepts, the author aptly develops a new interpretation of the standard views on Samkhya and Yoga. Drawing upon existing sources and using insights from both eastern and western philosophy and religious practice, this comprehensive interpretation is respectful to the (...) underlying spiritual purpose of the Indian systems. It serves to illuminate the relation between the theoretical and practical dimensions of Samkhya and Yoga. The book fills a gap in current scholarship. It will be of interest to those concerned with Indology as well as philosophies in general and their similarities and differences with other traditions. (shrink)

This book brings together several directions of work in model theory between the late 1950s and early 1980s.

In this paper, we explore the concept of bearing witness in nursing practice. We examine the description of bearing witness in the nursing literature, particularly that offered by William Cody who suggests that bearing witness results in the limited moral obligation of “true presence.” We then turn to Lorraine Code's work on testimony, drawing parallels between the concepts of testimony and bearing witness. Code suggests that receiving testimony results in a responsibility to respond, and that this is an ethico‐political obligation. (...) We discuss these ideas in relation to a Canadian exemplar of witnessing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada's work to understand and address the historical injustices done to Indigenous peoples in Canada. Here, we focus on the Commission's definition of witnessing and highlight the experience of Shelagh Rogers who served as an honorary witness. As an outcome of our analysis, we suggest that bearing witness in nursing practice is most usefully conceptualized as both a moral and a political obligation. Implications for nursing practice are suggested, including first, the need to critically examine our own understandings of power and privilege in order to authentically bear witness and avoid being complicit in injustice, and second, the concomitant responsibility to take action to challenge injustice once we have borne witness to it. (shrink)

The debate between the Better and the Worse Argument, between the old and the new education, in Aristophanes’ Clouds, is a scene full of caustic humour and exquisite irony. In this paper we will try to provide a detailed analysis of the linguistic features that characterize these two characters, in order to confront how two clearly opposite linguistic registers are outlined, in line with their confrontation of ideas. In general terms, the Better Argument exhibits a stronger conversational tone than his (...) adversary, a greater inclination to the use of asyndeton in his syntax, more vulgar and abusive terms, a virtual absence of both poetic and paratragic words and certain linguistic innovations and variants of a lesser literary quality. In contrast, the Worse Argument does just the opposite. (shrink)

From the fundamental issues of philosophical thought to the latest theories in the philosophy of mind, An Introduction to Philosophy provides clear and incisive ...

Presents a mathematically rigorous, philosophically sound foundation for a science of information.

The recent article “The Prospects of Artificial Consciousness: Ethical Dimensions and Concerns” by Elisabeth Hildt (2023) in the AJOB Neuroscience presents a thorough examination of the ethical imp...

Campaigning activities of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have increased public awareness and concern regarding the alleged unethical and environmentally damaging practices of many major multinational companies. Companies have responded by developing corporate social responsibility strategies to demonstrate their commitment to both the societies within which they function and to the protection of the natural environment. This has often involved a move towards greater transparency in company practice and a desire to engage with stakeholders, often including many of the campaign organisations that (...) have been at the forefront of the criticisms of their activity. This article examines the ways in which stakeholder dialogue has impacted upon the relationships between NGOs and businesses. In doing so, it contributes to the call for more ‘stakeholder-focused’ research in this field (Frooman in Acad Manag Rev 24(2): 191–205, 1999; Steurer in Bus Strategy Environ 15: 15–69 2006). By adopting a stakeholder lens, and focusing more heavily upon the impact on one particular stakeholder community (NGOs) and looking in depth at one form of engagement (stakeholder dialogue), this article examines how experiences of dialogue are strategically transforming interactions between businesses and NGOs. It shows how experiences of stakeholder dialogue have led to transformations in the drivers for engagement, transformations in the processes of engagement and transformations in the terms of engagement. Examining these areas of transformation, the article argues, reveals the interactions at play in framing and shaping the evolving relationships between business and its stakeholders. (shrink)

Este artículo describe la evolución de los recursos de acogimiento residencial en el contexto del Estado Español, comenzando por la época de la dictadura franquista hasta la actualidad. Explicamos cómo fueron financiados los recursos mediante los cuales se daba ayuda a las personas menores de edad en situación de vulnerabilidad. Asimismo, se analiza la evolución de dichos recursos hasta hoy en día. Estos recursos se han ido profesionalizando a lo largo del tiempo y, hoy en día, dan respuestas especificas a (...) diferentes necesidades de los niños, niñas, adolescentes y jóvenes del territorio histórico de Bizkaia.Recibido. (shrink)

Bringing together powerful new tools from set theory and the philosophy of language, this book proposes a solution to one of the few unresolved paradoxes from antiquity, the Paradox of the Liar. Treating truth as a property of propositions, not sentences, the authors model two distinct conceptions of propositions: one based on the standard notion used by Bertrand Russell, among others, and the other based on J.L. Austin's work on truth. Comparing these two accounts, the authors show that while the (...) Russellian conception of the relation between sentences, propositions, and truth is crucially flawed in limiting cases, the Austinian perspective has fruitful applications to the analysis of semantic paradox. In the course of their study of a language admitting circular reference and containing its own truth predicate, Barwise and Etchemendy also develop a wide range of model-theoretic techniques--based on a new set-theoretic tool, Peter Aczel's theory of hypersets--that open up new avenues in logical and formal semantics. (shrink)

The present volume collects some of Barwise's papers written since then, those directly concerned with relations among logic, situation theory, and situation semantics. Several papers appear here for the first time.

the aim of this paper is to prove that secession is inherently undemocratic. We will review the secessionist arguments: the one that starts from a wrong idea of selfgovernment and the one that starts from liberalism. then, we will oppose objections to both: defending the value of equality; rejecting internal homogeneity claims; picking up Buchanan’s classic objections; and finally, reformulating, with Habermas and Pogge, a concept of self-government in order to deduce that it is not legitimate to draw more boundaries (...) because an ideal democracy would require to eliminate the current borders. (shrink)

A pesar de ser una de las principales teorías de la justicia, el enfoque de las capacidades no ha abordado las cuestiones de las obligaciones hacia el medio ambiente y las generaciones futuras. Para corregir este problema, Gómez ha presentado ideas valiosas sobre cómo el enfoque podría incorporar estas obligaciones. Aunque las ideas de Gómez representan una meritoria aportación a la literatura sobre el enfoque de las capacidades, en este artículo defiendo que deben completarse con argumentos a favor de la (...) obligación de reducir el sufrimiento extremo. En particular, el enfoque de las capacidades debe defender el veganismo/vegetarianismo, la ayuda a los animales en la naturaleza y la reducción de la superpoblación humana. (shrink)

This paper responds to Severin Schroeder's recent charge that Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion contains an ‘unresolved tension’ between three propositions, namely: (1) ‘As a hypothesis, God's existence (&c) is extremely implausible’; (2) ‘Christian faith is not unreasonable’; and (3) ‘Christian faith does involve belief in God's existence (&c)’. I argue as follows: that the first of these propositions has no place in Wittgenstein's thinking on religion; that the second is ill-phrased and should be re-worded as the proposition that ‘Christian faith (...) is neither unreasonable nor reasonable’; and that the third proposition (contrary to what Schroeder seems to assume) tells us nothing about the nature of the objects of religious belief. It follows from my argument that Schroeder has not exposed a tension in Wittgenstein's thoughts on religion. I end with some positive remarks about Wittgenstein's method. (shrink)

My dissertation deals with the Master Argument of Diodorus Cronus, a contemporary of Aristotle's. The argument was one of the most famous pieces of temporal and modal reasoning in ancient philosophy. It purports to prove that a proposition is possible if and only if it is true or will be true. The argument runs as follows: Everything that is past and true is necessary; The impossible does not follow the possible; Therefore, nothing is possible which neither is nor will be (...) true. Unfortunately, all accounts of the Master that have survived are so sketchy that we cannot determine whether the argument is valid or not. ;Several reconstructions of Diodorus' argument have been proposed. The purpose of the reconstructions is to show, using the resources of modal and tense logics, that the argument is valid. I analyze and critique most of these proposals, arguing in the final chapter for a new reconstruction which I believe to be more defensible than existing ones. ;The Master Argument is important for several reasons. It elicited much discussion among ancient philosophers and logicians both because of its reduction of modal logic to tense logic and its bearing on the free will/determinism debate. But, its influence also extends to contemporary philosophy and logic. In the 1950s and 60s, the Master inspired formal work on Diodorean systems. Much of the work on the calculus of tenses, e.g., by Prior, was undertaken in view of investigating Diodorus' argument. Finally, the literature that the argument has spawned has enriched and deepened our understanding of the connections between matters modal and temporal. (shrink)

The semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce is irreducibly triadic, positing that a sign mediates between the object that determines it and the interpretant that it determines. He eventually holds that each sign has two objects and three interpretants, standardizing quickly on immediate and dynamical for the objects but experimenting with a variety of names for the interpretants. The two most prominent terminologies are immediate/dynamical/final and emotional/energetic/logical, and scholars have long debated how they are related to each other. This paper seeks (...) to shed new light on the matter by reviewing the numerous manuscript drafts where Peirce develops the latter nomenclature while attempting to introduce his pragmatism to a general audience. It then goes on to examine an additional set of interpretants, intentional/effectual/communicational, and shows that the three different trichotomies can be understood as complementary, rather than redundant or conflicting. (shrink)

The study we report in this article addresses the results of comparing the rhetorical trees from two different languages carried out by two annotators starting from the Rhetorical Structure Theory. Furthermore, we investigate the methodology for a suitable evaluation, both quantitative and qualitative, of these trees. Our corpus contains abstracts of medical research articles written both in Spanish and Basque, and extracted from Gaceta Médica de Bilbao. The results demonstrate that almost half of the annotator disagreement is due to the (...) use of translation strategies that notably affect rhetorical structures. (shrink)

This article reflects upon the debate, initiated by Bernard Williams in 1973, concerning the desirability of immortality, where the latter expression is taken to mean endless bodily life as a human or humanoid being. Williams contends that it cannot be desirable; others have disputed this contention. I discuss a recent response from Timothy Chappell and attempt to pinpoint the central disagreement between Chappell and Williams. I propose that neither side in the debate has firm grounds for its claims, and then (...) proceed to consider four reasons for suspecting that the whole debate has yet to be placed on a conceptually coherent footing. (shrink)

The Problem of Iterated Ground is to explain what grounds truths about ground: if Γ grounds φ, what grounds that Γ grounds φ? This paper develops a novel solution to this problem. The basic idea is to connect ground to explanatory arguments. By developing a rigorous account of explanatory arguments we can equip operators for factive and non-factive ground with natural introduction and elimination rules. A satisfactory account of iterated ground falls directly out of the resulting logic: non- factive grounding (...) claims, if true, are zero-grounded in the sense of Fine. (shrink)

How can _Wii Sports_ teach us about metaphysics? Can playing _World of Warcraft_ lead to greater self-consciousness? How can we learn about aesthetics, ethics and divine attributes from _Zork_, _Grand Theft Auto_, and _Civilization_? A variety of increasingly sophisticated video games are rapidly overtaking books, films, and television as America's most popular form of media entertainment. It is estimated that by 2011 over 30 percent of US households will own a Wii console - about the same percentage that owned a (...) television in 1953. In _Philosophy Through Video Games, _Jon Cogburn and Mark Silcox - philosophers with game industry experience - investigate the aesthetic appeal of video games, their effect on our morals, the insights they give us into our understanding of perceptual knowledge, personal identity, artificial intelligence, and the very meaning of life itself, arguing that video games are popular precisely because they engage with longstanding philosophical problems. Topics covered include: * The Problem of the External World * Dualism and Personal Identity * Artificial and Human Intelligence in the Philosophy of Mind * The Idea of Interactive Art * The Moral Effects of Video Games * Games and God's Goodness Games discussed include: _Madden Football_, _Wii Sports_, _Guitar Hero_, _World of Warcraft_, _Sims Online_, _Second Life_, _Baldur's Gate_, _Knights of the Old Republic_, _Elder Scrolls_, _Zork_, _EverQuest_ _Doom_, _Halo 2_, _Grand Theft Auto_, _Civilization_, _Mortal Kombat_, _Rome: Total War_, _Black and White_, _Aidyn Chronicles_. (shrink)

Modern philosophy recognizes two major ethical theories: deontology, which encourages adherence to rules and fulfillment of duties or obligations; and consequentialism, which evaluates morally significant actions strictly on the basis of their actual or anticipated outcomes. Both involve the systematic application of universal abstract principles, reflecting the culturally dominant paradigm of technical rationality. Professional societies promulgate codes of ethics with which engineers are expected to comply, while courts and the public generally assign liability to engineers primarily in accordance with the (...) results of their work, whether intended or unintended. A third option, prominent in ancient philosophy, has reemerged recently: virtue ethics, which recognizes that sensitivity to context and practical judgment are indispensable in particular concrete situations, and therefore rightly focuses on the person who acts, rather than the action itself. Beneficial character traits—i.e., virtues—are identified within a specific social practice in light of the internal goods that are unique to it. This paper proposes a comprehensive framework for implementing virtue ethics within engineering. (shrink)

The Dempster–Shafer approach to expressing beliefabout a parameter in a statistical model is notconsistent with the likelihood principle. Thisinconsistency has been recognized for some time, andmanifests itself as a non-commutativity, in which theorder of operations (combining belief, combininglikelihood) makes a difference. It is proposed herethat requiring the expression of belief to be committed to the model (and to certain of itssubmodels) makes likelihood inference very nearly aspecial case of the Dempster–Shafer theory.

In 1980 Morris Kline wrote this engaging book, in which he took on many of the myths about the nature and history of mathematics. This new edition will probably be as seldom read as the original, which is too bad because it contains important messages, including perhaps some comfort for anomalies researchers. I will briefly present an overview of the book’s contents, and then say what I think these comforts are. · · · The ancient Greeks developed the seed of (...) what we now think of as mathematics. Kline points out that their mathematical concepts arose from consideration of the natural world, and then the fact that numbers, shapes, and relationships corresponded to things in the real world convinced them that reality itself was in some mystical way generated by numerical principles. The regular patterns that they found in geometric forms and simple integers reflected the regularities of nature, and so provided keys to understanding how things were, and why they were that way. The faith that mathematics lay behind the mundane world of observations became an unquestioned truth, at least as important as the practical techniques the Greeks devised, and passed along through the Middle East and the medieval period to modern Europe. (shrink)

The great problem in writing a theory of everything is that it may turn out to be a theory of nothing. Here is how it works. If you develop a theory that only explains some small, simple Thing, then the theory is very strong. It is precise, understandable, and it always works. As you expand the theory to encompass another Thing, it becomes weaker. It may still be precise and understandable, but it is now more complicated, and because it involves (...) two things rather than one, it starts to become conditional. This means that in order for it to work with regard to the second Thing, we may have to take into account something about the first Thing. And so it goes. As the theory covers more and more Things, it becomes less precise, less understandable, and parts need to be added on in order cover multiple contingencies. People who go down this path inevitably come to a critical point, at which their theory has become so precisely complicated that it can barely be understood, and gargantuan efforts become necessary to make it work at all. To resolve this impasse, they have a terminological epiphany. They suddenly find a language (that is, an arcane vocabulary) which confers the appearance of simplicity to the morass they have created. Precision is replaced by undefined terms and relationships, described in forceful but impenetrable prose. Argumentation becomes not an activity of rational thought, but a magical experience in which a swirling array of undefined concepts assembles itself in just the right way to come to whatever conclusion is desired. In the mouth of its inventor the theory does indeed explain everything, but in the ears of the audience it explains nothing. (shrink)