Online research in philosophy

In 1997, five decades after the publication of the landmark Hempel-Oppenheim article "Studies in the Logic of Explanation"([1948], 1970) Wesley Salmon published Causality and Explanation, a book that re-addresses the issue of scientific explanation. He provided an overview of the basic approaches to scientific explanation, stressed their weaknesses, and offered novel insights. However, he failed to mention Mary Hesse's approach to the topic and analyze her standpoint. This essay brings front and center Hesse's approach to scientific explanation formulated in the (...) 1960s and argues that rereading Hesse's account one can overcome the criticisms addressed towards another influential theory of explanation that of Bas van Fraassen's. Furthermore, it could bring the traditional philosophy of science into a fruitful conversation with science and technology studies and gender studies in science, technology and medicine. (shrink)

The case of women radium dial painters — women who tipped their brushes while painting the dials of watches and instruments with radioactive paint — has been extensively discussed in the medical and historical literature. Their painful and abhorrent deaths have occupied the interest of physicians, lawyers, politicians, military agencies, and the public. Hardly any discussion has concerned, however, the use of those women as experimental subjects in a number of epidemiological studies that took place from 1920 to 1990. This (...) article addresses the neglected issue of human experimentation in relation to the radium dial painters. Although women’s medical examinations have been classified as simple, routine measurements of radiation burden on the body and presented as a great offer to humanity, for more than fifty years those women had been repeatedly used as experimental subjects without proper consent. I argue that through this case it becomes obvious that the issue of defining what counts as human experimentation shifts from an epistemological to a serious ethical and political question, concerning the making of scientific knowledge while issues of gender related to this process are also discussed. (shrink)

Fue en Inglaterra donde apareció por vez primera un individualismo virtuoso comprometido con la defensa pública de la libertad frente a la amenaza del absolutismo. Allí surgió un discurso político liberal-republicano que defendió que el bien público y el interés privado fueran de la mano. Así, el liberalismo nació como un discurso público y privado de la virtud individual que tenía la vocación de frenar cualquier arrogancia despótica. Pero en la segunda mitad del siglo XX una tendencia neoliberal y libertaria (...) convirtió el mercado en una abstracción dogmática que justificaba un egoísmo descontrolado y sin límites. En Liberales, José María Lassalle expone la necesidad de que el liberalismo del siglo XXI vuelva a los principios virtuosos de sus padres fundadores, John Locke, Adam Smith y Edmund Burke. Los liberales tienen por delante la responsabilidad de enfrentarse a sus propios fantasmas y liderar nuevamente la defensa de una política del deber, y no del beneficio. Una política al servicio de la libertad: preocupada por el c ontrol del poder; que asegure el establecimiento de mecanismos institucionales que impidan la corrupción y las conspiraciones contra el mercado que se urden a las sombras de los gobiernos; que combata el dogmatismo y que defiende la tolerancia como una seña de identidad de nuestra cultura. Ante la mayor crisis de las últimas décadas, urge recuperar la virtud y los valores, una tarea para la que los liberales están mejor capacitados que nadie. (shrink)

This article analyzes efforts in Nicaragua to create ethical organizations and an ethical economy. Three societal ethea found in contemporary Nicaragua are examined: the ethos of revolution, the ethos of corruption, and the ethos of human development. The emerging ethos of human development provides the most hope for the nation's social and economic evolution. The practices of three successful economic development organizations explicitly aligned with the ethos of human development are described and evaluated: (1) a microfinance foundation (FDL), (2) a (...) federation of cooperatives (FENACOOP), and (3) a local branch of an international NGO (IO-Nicaragua). The article concludes with additional reflections on the meaning of ethical organizations and an ethical economy in the context of contemporary Nicaragua. (shrink)

1. As John Hawthorne and Maria Lasonen-Aarnio appreciate, some of the central issues raised in their ‘Knowledge and Objective Chance’ arise for all but the most extreme theories of knowledge. In a wide range of cases, according to very plausible everyday judgments, we know something about the future, even though, according to quantum mechanics, our belief has a small but nonzero chance (objective probability) of being untrue. In easily constructed examples, we are in that position simultaneously with respect to (...) many different propositions about the future that are equiprobable and probabilistically independent of each other, at least to a reasonable approximation. (shrink)

Surprising as it may appear, the philosophical writings of political economist Karl Marx (1818–1883), and those of philosopher, educator Maria Montessori(1870–1952), show thematic resemblances that invite further exploration. These resemblances reflect both keen awareness of the historical period they shared, but also important common threads in their philosophical anthropology, ethical and political values, and goals. In this paper, I examine one central thread which both take as fundamental, namely, the centrality of work in achieving the harmonious development of humankind. (...) I critique Marx’s description of the dynamic process leading to his classless society, because he fails to supply the proximate, efficient cause or middle term that effects this goal. My thesis is that Montessori supplies this missing causal link through her scientific demonstration of the work and function of the child and her holistic understanding of the human person in its full historical dimension, and human and cosmic telos. (shrink)

Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kafalas, Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s10806-010-9266-2 Authors Doug Seale, 21 Turner Ridge Road Marlborough MA 01752 USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863.

: One of the most influential branches of nineteenth-century American feminism was a resistance movement committed to the idea that the key to social reform was the recognition and maintenance of human differences. This approach, which became central to American pragmatism, had its roots in a tradition of American women writers including Lydia Maria Child. This paper examines Child's work and focuses on her conception of pluralism and its role in sustaining diverse communities.

RESENHA VILHENA, Maria Ângela. Salvação solidária : o culto às almas à luz da teologia das religiões. São Paulo: Paulinas, 2012. 173 p.

Este trabajo ofrece el contexto de la vida y la obra de María Zambrano - sus orígenes intelectuales; su vida itinerante y de exilio; la correspondencia con su hermana Araceli; la España soñada; las claves humanas del exilio y el ...

Josep Maria Capdevila (1892-1972) és un dels intel·lectuals més destacats de la primera meitat del segle XX a Catalunya. L’autor n’ha resseguit el pensament, reconstruint-ne significativament la formació intel·lectual, el món ideològic i les idees estètiques, per acabar amb una digressió sobre el punt de partença de la filosofia.

Este trabajo tiene por propósito presentar de manera secuencial dos puntos asociados a la actualidad filosófica de lo religioso en el contexto de un pensamiento como el de María Zambrano. Por qué María Zambrano, pues porque nos da dos cosas:1) nos ubica en un tejido hermenéutico que califica de filosófica la cuestión religiosa y, 2) si bien lo religioso como problema tiene su tiempo, Zambrano recupera el tono de actualidad de la relación Dios-persona, vale decir, su pertinencia para la descripción (...) de la impronta del lugar primario de lo religioso en la comunidad humana. Además, que ante la tarea de validar sus objetivos filosóficos, ve en la razón la capacidad de elaborar discursos explicativos sobre la presencia o no de lo sacro en la existencia. This paper has for intention to present sequentially two points associated with the philosophical current importance of the religious thing in a context of a thought as that of Maria Zambrano. Why Maria Zambrano, because she gives us two things: 1) She locates us in a hermeneutical tissue who qualifies of philosophical the religious question and 2) though the religious thing like problem has his time, Zambrano recovers the tone of current importance of the relationship God-person, that is, its pertinence for the description of the stamp of primary place that the religious thing take place in the human community. In addition, that before the task of validating her philosophical aims, she sees in the reason the aptitude to elaborate explanatory speeches about the presence or not of the sacred thing in the existence. (shrink)

Ser, pensar, ver, mirar son el sustrato de la escritura de María Zambrano, que se apoya y brota de una irrenunciable voluntad de pensar y trazar la palabra que la vida necesita. Por ello escribe con la intención de reconducir la filosofía a la concreción de la existencia, para hacer del pensamiento, como ha dicho Wanda Tommasi, una instancia mediadora capaz de llevar a la luz de la conciencia las realidades oscuras del cuerpo, del sentir, de la pasión. María Zambrano (...) se mueve en la frontera entre filosofía y poesía. En los ensayos de Entre el alba y la aurora alienta algo de la investigación filosófica que los unifica: la voluntad de hacer de la lectura experiencia y de la escritura su articulación. En todos ellos la investigación ha sido reflexión sobre el modo en el que la obra de esta autora nos interpela y sobre el porqué de esta interpelación, dirigiendo la atención al contexto de las propias expectativas, a lo que el encuentro con sus páginas obliga a recomponer, al sentido que de aquí nace abriendo posibilidades de comprensión e interpretación. María Zambrano ayuda a pensar el fondo originario del vivir personal y enseña a darle un cauce, pone así de manifiesto el sentido del filosofar, acción reflexiva dirigida a la apertura de un futuro en tarea de creación que no es impositiva, sino liberadora. Carmen Revilla Guzmán es profesora de Filosofía contemporánea en la Universidad de Barcelona. Sobre María Zambrano, entre otras cosas, dirige la revista Aurora y ha editado el libro Claves de la razón poética (Trotta, 1998); recientemente ha publicado Simone Weil: nombrar la experiencia (Trotta, 2003). (shrink)

In this paper, I examine a new line of response to Frankfurt’s challenge to the traditional association of moral responsibility with the ability to do otherwise. According to this response, Frankfurt’s counterexample strategy fails, not in light of the conditions for moral responsibility per se, but in view of the conditions for action. Specifically, it is claimed, a piece of behavior counts as an action only if it is within the agent’s power to avoid performing it. In so far as (...) Frankfurt’s challenge presupposes that actions can be unavoidable, this view of action seems to bring his challenge up short. Helen Steward and Maria Alvarez have independently proposed versions of this response. Here I argue that this response is unavailable to Frankfurt’s incompatibilist opponents. This becomes evident when we put this question to its proponents: “Are actions that originate deterministically ipso facto unavoidable?” If they answer “yes,” they encounter one horn of a dilemma. If they answer “no,” they encounter the other horn. Since no one has a clearer stake in meeting Frankfurt’s challenge than these theorists do, it is significant that the Steward-Alvarez response is unavailable to them. (shrink)

This is a rebuttal of influential attempts to appropriate Murdoch for either Christianity or Buddhism. I show that Maria Antonaccio and Peter Byrne ignore Murdoch's explicit statements and misunderstand Murdoch’s interest in the Ontological Argument. I explain how St. Anselm’s remark ‘I believe in order to understand’ is properly connected with Murdoch’s parable of the Mother-in-Law: Murdoch is here offering support for a virtue epistemology. Later, I explore the merits and dangers of exegesis from Peter J. Conradi and Gordon (...) Graham treating Murdoch as a kind of Buddhist. I argue that the sense in which Murdoch is speaking as a ‘Buddhist Christian’ makes her a third kind of thinker resembling a Buddhist on some points, and a Christian on others. (shrink)

I want to explore strategic expressions of ignorance against the background of Charles W. Mills's account of epistemologies of ignorance in The Racial Contract (1997). My project has two interrelated goals. I want to show how Mills's discussion is restricted by his decision to frame ignorance within the language and logic of social contract theory. And, I want to explain why Maria Lugones's work on purity is useful in reframing ignorance in ways that both expand our understandings of ignorance (...) and reveal its strategic uses. I begin with Mills's account of the Racial Contract, and explain how it prescribes for its signatories an epistemology of ignorance, which Mills characterizes as an inverted epistemology. I briefly outline his program for undoing white ignorance and indicate that retooling white ignorance is more complex than his characterization suggests. Making this argument requires an abrupt shift from the white-created frameworks of social contract theory to Lugones's system of thinking rooted in the lives of people of color. So, the next section outlines Lugones's distinction between the logic of purity and the logic of curdling and explains its usefulness in addressing ignorance. With both accounts firmly in place the third section demonstrates how the Racial Contract produces at least two expressions of ignorance and explains how the logic of purity underlying the Contract shapes each expression in ways that limit possibilities for resistance. I don't mean to suggest that the social contract theory's love of purity invalidates Mills's work, only that this framework limits prospects for long-term change by neglecting the relationship between white ignorance and non-white resistance. The final sections explain how people of color use ignorance strategically to their advantage , and argue that examining ignorance through a curdled lens not only makes strategic ignorance visible, but also points to alternatives for retooling white ignorance. (shrink)

This paper strengthens the theoretical ground of feminist analyses of anger by explaining how the angers of the oppressed are ways of knowing. Relying on insights created through the juxtaposition of Latina feminism and Zen Buddhism, I argue that these angers are special kinds of embodied perceptions that surface when there is a profound lack of fit between a particular bodily orientation and its framing world of sense. As openings to alternative sensibilities, these angers are transformative, liberatory, and deeply epistemological.