Lately, nanotechnology has become one of the main topics in the debates regarding what has been called the _Next Industrial Revolution_ within what are known as _emergent technologies_. This paper contains a comparative analysis of the different philosophical groundings, arguments and principles invoked in the official ethical approaches proposed by each of two of the main Western communities. By _official ethical approaches_ or _official positions_ we mean the opinions officially expressed by the government institutions about how ethical considerations prompted by (...) nanotechnologies should be tackled. The analysis is based, then, on the official points of view, expressed through two documents, namely two official releases issued by governmental offices or institutions in both communities, Europe and the United States of America, and considered by the authors as representative of the official opinions of the governmental institutions in each society. (shrink)

Aristotle argued that you need some wealth to live well. The Stoics argued that you could live well with or without wealth. But the Cynics argued that wealth is a hinderance. For the Cynics, a good life consists in self-sufficiency, or being able to rule and help yourself. You accomplish this by living simply and naturally, and by subjecting yourself to rigorous philosophical exercises. Cynics confronted people to get them to abandon extraneous possessions and positions of power to live better. (...) And while the Cynics were experts in living in this way, their ascetic lifestyles made their message curious to some audiences. This paper reflects on Cynic ascetic practices and the ways others perceived them. (shrink)

When considering the value of friendship, most philosophers ignore the negatives. Most assume that humans need friends to flourish, and some argue that friendships can be good, no matter the risks entailed. This makes conversations about the value of friendship one-sided. Here, I argue that Cynics and Pessimists have an important view on friendship, despite it being ignored. They hold that: (a) friendship is unnecessary for flourishing, and (b) friendship presents ethical risks, especially to one’s own self-sufficiency. I defend these (...) views. Then I conclude with reflections on why Cynics and Pessimists actually make great friends. By helping people to focus on vulgar human nature and the flaws that humans have, they create an unpretentious basis for friendship. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se centrará en localizar las relaciones intertextuales entre dos obras de la literatura mexicana: El vendedor de silencio, la última novela publicada por Enrique Serna, y A ocho columnas, una obra de teatro escrita por Salvador Novo. Se tratará de demostrar cómo la obra de teatro influye en la configuración narrativa de la novela. Asimismo, la novela de Serna propone la hipótesis de que los personajes principales de A ocho columnas son Carlos Denegri y su jefe, don (...) Rodrigo de Llano. Por medio de un recorrido literario e histórico, se verán dos puntos de vista distintos —el narrativo y el dramático— desde los que se aborda la influencia de la política y los intereses económicos en los modos de escribir periodismo en el México de mediados del siglo XX. (shrink)

This paper does two things. First, it interprets the work of W. E. B. Du Bois to reveal that the meanings of race terms are grounded by both a historical and an aspirational component. Race terms refer to a backward-looking component that traces the history of the group to its present time, as well as a forward-looking component that sets out values and goals for the group. Race terms thus refer to a complex cluster of concepts that involve biological, sociological, (...) historical, moral, and political properties. Second, the paper defends W. E. B. Du Bois’s conservationist thesis about races, which holds that we should maintain race talk and racial distinctions. But instead of offering philosophical evidence, this paper defends the plausibility of the conservationist thesis with evidence from contemporary biology and psychology. It argues that, instead of eliminating race terms or concepts, we should conserve and revise them. (shrink)

A partir del reconocimiento de problemas curriculares y pedagógicos que presentan instituciones educativas observadas en la ciudad de Bogotá, se da a conocer la justificación y la trascendencia de la educación intercultural y su correspondiente pedagogía diferenciada para abordar problemas de calidad, integración, participación, pertinencia y democratización de dichas escuelas.

Computer simulations have conventionally been understood to be either extensions of formal methods such as mathematical models or as special cases of empirical practices such as experiments. Here, I argue that computer simulations are best understood as instruments. Understanding them as such can better elucidate their actual role as well as their potential epistemic standing in relation to science and other scientific methods, practices and devices.

In this paper I argue that Artificial Intelligence and the many data science methods associated with it, such as machine learning and large language models, are first and foremost epistemic technologies. In order to establish this claim, I first argue that epistemic technologies can be conceptually and practically distinguished from other technologies in virtue of what they are designed for, what they do and how they do it. I then proceed to show that unlike other kinds of technology (_including_ other (...) epistemic technologies) AI can be uniquely positioned as an epistemic technology in that it is primarily designed, developed and deployed to be used in _epistemic contexts_ such as inquiry, it is specifically designed, developed and deployed to manipulate _epistemic content_ such as data, _and_ it is designed, developed and deployed to do so particularly through _epistemic operations_ such as prediction and analysis. As has been shown in recent work in the philosophy and ethics of AI (Alvarado, AI and Ethics, 2022a), understanding AI as an epistemic technology will also have significant implications for important debates regarding our relationship to AI technologies. This paper includes a brief overview of such implications, particularly those pertaining to explainability, opacity, trust and even epistemic harms related to AI technologies. (shrink)

El objetivo de este texto es determinar las formas como se ha constituido el campo de la educación en Colombia, en el plano epistemológico. A partir de la identificación de sus principales discontinuidades y rupturas en una perspectiva que privilegia el análisis historiográfico, reflexiono sobre las definiciones que ofrece la categoría de campo, las tendencias investigativas a nivel local y los diversos desdoblamientos epistemológicos que han delineado su devenir como campo de estudio en el contexto nacional. De este modo, propongo (...) la construcción de una suerte de topografía del campo educativo que de luces sobre sus nuevos horizontes de sentido. (shrink)

This paper examines the association between board characteristics and the ethical reputation of financial institutions. Given the pivotal governance role of the board of directors and the value-relevance of ethical corporate behavior, we postulate a positive relationship between ethical reputation and board features that foster more effective monitoring and oversight. Using a sample of large financial institutions from 13 different countries, we run several alternative panel regressions of ethical reputation on board characteristics and firm-specific controls. Our results demonstrate that the (...) ethical reputation of financial institutions is positively associated with board size, gender diversity, and CEO duality, while being negatively related to the busyness of the board members and a composite index reflecting poor monitoring. Nevertheless, inconsistent with our hypothesis, we also document that financial institutions with less frequent board meetings have better ethical reputation. Overall, our empirical findings suggest that stronger board oversight may promote ethical behavior in the financial industry. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 2, Page 121-133, February 2022.

It is widely supposed that evolutionary debunking arguments against morality constitute a type of epistemological objection to our moral beliefs. In particular, the debunking force of such arguments is not supposed to depend on the metaphysical claim that moral facts do not exist. In this paper I argue that this standard epistemological construal of EDAs is highly misleading, if not mistaken. Specifically, I argue that the most widely discussed EDAs all make key and controversial metaphysical claims about the nature of (...) morality or the possibility of moral truth that belie their apparently epistemological character. I show that the debunking force of these EDAs derives largely from metaphysical claims about morality and their implications for the possibility of moral reduction, rather than from epistemological worries associated with the existence of an causal/non-moral explanation of our moral judgments. The paper briefly concludes with a dilemma that I believe confronts all EDAs such as those discussed in this paper: either such arguments are unsound, or else they prove too much, debunking our knowledge of science and the external world, as well as morality. (shrink)

A ‘companions in guilt’ strategy against moral error theory aims to show that the latter proves too much: if sound, it supports an implausible error-theoretic conclusion in other areas such as epistemic or practical reasoning. Christopher Cowie [2016 Cowie, C. 2016. Good News for Moral Error Theorists: A Master Argument Against Companions in Guilt Strategies, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94/1: 115–30.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar]] has recently produced what he claims is a ‘master argument’ against (...) all such strategies. The essence of his argument is that CG arguments cannot work because they are afflicted by internal incoherence or inconsistency. I argue, first, that Cowie's master argument does not succeed. Beyond this, I argue that there is no good reason to think that any such argument—one that purports to identify an internal incoherence in CG arguments—can succeed. Second, I argue that the main substantive area of disagreement between error theorists and CG theorists essentially concerns the conceptual profile of epistemic reasons—specifically, whether they are strongly categorical—not the ontological question of whether such reasons exist. I then develop an argument in favour of the CG theorist's position by considering the moral error theorist's arguments in support of the conceptual claim that moral reasons are strongly categorical. These include, notably, criticisms made by Joyce [2011] and Olson [2014] of Finlay's [2008] ‘end relational’ view of morality, according to which moral reasons are relative to some end or standard, hence not strongly categorical. Examining these criticisms, I argue that, based on what moral error theorists have said regarding the conceptual profile of moral reasons, there is a strong case to be made that moral reasons are strongly categorical if and only if epistemic reasons are. (shrink)

This paper aims to establish the importance of mathematical thinking in the work of Vilém Flusser. For this purpose highlights the concept of escalation of abstraction with which the Czech German philosopher finishes by reversing the top of the traditional pyramid of knowledge, we know from Plato and Aristotle. It also assumes the implicit cultural revolution in the refinement of the numerical element in a process of gradual abandonment of purely alphabetic code, highlights the new key code, together with the (...) technological and telematic culture and uses the concepts of game theory, of probability theory and computing to analize the society and culture. Of particular importance is the affirmation of a new kind of imagination, a projective one, ranging from the model to the world. Today's society and culture can´t be understood without resorting to the concepts and results coined and made ​​in the course of developing a type of thinking entirely dominated by the mathematics. The limits and boundaries of scientific disciplines overlap under number development, requiring reflection and rethinking traditional concepts of social and natural sciences. (shrink)

The rapid development of large language models (LLM’s) and of their associated interfaces such as ChatGPT has brought forth a wave of epistemic and moral concerns in a variety of domains of inquiry...

Many fans of Diogenes of Sinope laud his parrhesia, free speech used for critique. However, Diogenes abused not only the powerful but also the socially marginalized. We argue that interpreters of Diogenes cannot explain away the undeniably troublesome things that Diogenes said about those at the margins. But we also argue that Diogenes ought nonetheless to be preserved. Some of his chreiai can be reminders of how to be courageous and fight for the downtrodden, and others can serve as reminders (...) of how easily those aspirations can be forgotten. We offer a variety of ways to interpret Diogenes, especially since the figure of Diogenes is an historical composite from centuries of sources. But we arrive at a position of loving antagonism toward Diogenes, loving Cynic commitments to autarkeia and against wealth and power, and disapproving when Cynics fell short of their commitments and critical aspirations. (shrink)

The rapid expansion of computational tools and of data science methods in healthcare has, undoubtedly, raised a whole new set of bioethical challenges. As Laacke and colleagues rightly note,...

Within the climate justice debate, the ‘beneficiary pays’ principle holds that those who benefit from greenhouse emissions associated with industrialization ought to pay for the costs of mitigating and adapting to their adverse effects. This principle constitutes a claim of inter-generational justice, and it is widely believed that the non-identity problem raises serious difficulties for any such claim. After briefly sketching the rationale behind ‘beneficiary pays,’ this paper offers a new way of understanding the claim that persons in developed societies (...) have benefited from industrialization. It argues that when we think of the claim in this new way, it evades the non-identity problem entirely. Some objections to this approach are then considered and rebutted. The paper concludes by comparing the present, relatively modest solution to the nonidentity problem with a much more ambitious attempt from the recent literature. (shrink)

Emil Cioran offers novel arguments against suicide. He assumes a meaningless world. But in such a world, he argues, suicide and death would be equally as meaningless as life or anything else. Suicide and death are as cumbersome and useless as meaning and life. Yet Cioran also argues that we should contemplate suicide to live better lives. By contemplating suicide, we confront the deep suffering inherent in existence. This humbles us enough to allow us to change even the deepest aspects (...) of ourselves. Yet it also reminds us that our peculiar human ability—being able to contemplate suicide—sets us above anything else in nature or in the heavens. This paper assembles and defends a view of suicide written about in Cioran’s aphorisms and essays. (shrink)

Este escrito trata de explicar algunas cuestiones acerca del papel de la poesía en la hermenéutica de Gadamer. Poesía significa, en primer lugar, no solamente un tipo de expresión artística, sino, en general, el hacer creativo por medio de palabras. La poesía es, además, el modelo explicativo de las distintas funciones del lenguaje. A través de la noción gadameriana de poesía pueden ser iluminadas determinadas claves de la hermenéutica filosófica: el carácter especulativo del lenguaje, la idea de verdad, la mimesis, (...) el mito y el carácter derivado de toda subjetividad. (shrink)

Este artículo plantea una relectura de John Dewey con la intención de analizar y dar algunas respuestas a la actual crisis de la democracia representativa o liberal. Esta crisis guarda relación con procesos globalizadores contradictorios que, de un lado, alimentan una utopía futurista confiada en el progreso tecnológico, y de otro, el regreso “retrotópico”, nostálgico y emocional, a lo tribal. Esta relectura se centra en obras fundamentales de Dewey, pero especialmente Democracia y Educación y otros textos de carácter pedagógico. El (...) artículo desarrolla una serie de argumentos que concluyen en torno a la idea de “democracia creativa”, que Dewey planteó en su madurez, como referencia para una deseable reactivación de la democracia entendida como ideal ético. (shrink)

Le but de cet article consiste à présenter des influences de l’évolutionnisme Darwinien et des idées de Frederick Matthias Alexander sur l’esthétique naturaliste de John Dewey. Ces influences menaient Dewey à sa propre version de l’esthétique naturaliste, c’est-à-dire une conception large, non cartésienne, dynamique d’un sujet, qui peut aussi inclure des animaux. Par conséquent John Dewey construisait une sorte d’anti-anthropocentrisme, ce qui décidait que son esthétique était en avance sur son temps.

The article seeks to investigate the role that censorship had in the history of modern Colombian theater during the decades from 1950 to 1980, on the basis of a journey through the trajectory of groups such as Candelaria, TEC and Escuela Municipal de Teatro, as well as its directors Santiago García, Enrique Buenaventura and Gilberto Martínez. The censorship usually came from government institutions, Church ministers, or educational institutions such as universities and colleges. In addition to the analysis of direct censorship (...) phenomena such as the prohibition of performances and the expulsion of members of theater formations, or more indirect ones such as red tape or excessive tax collection, we are interested in highlighting the strategies and practices of resistance and opposition generated by playwrights and theater groups during this time before the censorial actions and speeches. Among these strategies to fight censorship, we highlight the collectivization of structured cultural formations or guilds that brought together various theater groups at the national level, as was the case with the formation of the Colombian Theater Corporation. Collectivization was the strategy against power through which the theater guild fought to resist the repressive effects of censorship. It is necessary to shed light on the role that censorship played in the life of Colombian groups and theater in general. This approach will allow us to see the history of modern theater in Colombia as the history of resistance strategies against censorship and power. (shrink)

Siempre se ha reconocido en Pirrón de Élide el inicio puntual del escepticismo griego. Sabemos ya hoy que esta información, sesgada, proviene más de la necesidad de Enesidemo de refundar el movimiento, que de la realidad filosófica. En este artículo demostramos que Pirrón, ni tuvo consciencia de ser un escéptico, ni, en rigor, inició ninguna nueva corriente. Su deslizamiento, y posterior reconocimiento, hacia el escepticismo, debe más bien encuadrarse en el natural desarrollo de la filosofía abderita, a través de Metrodoro (...) de Quíos, discípulo de Demócrito, Anaxarco maestro de Pirrón y Nausífanes su discípulo. Y todo debido al afán aventurero del personaje de Élide al enrolarse en el séquito de Alejandro Magno. (shrink)