Si la teoría del derecho persigue suministrar herramientas a los operadores jurídicos para gestionar los problemas de la práctica, resulta necesario disminuir la actual separación entre la actividad teórico-jurídica y la práctica del derecho. De ahí que, este trabajo persigue contribuir a reducir dicha distancia mediante el análisis de las principales propuestas en materia de ontología de las normas. Esta revisión se realiza a la luz de un extendido problema de los ordenamientos jurídicos contemporáneos: la identificación del derecho y sus (...) limitaciones conceptuales. El examen explicita cierta concomitancia entre las propuestas teóricas y presenta una serie de consideraciones necesarias para identificar el derecho y, en concreto, contribuir a la solución del citado problema. De esta manera, se sugiere girar la discusión sobre la ontología de las normas hacia la identificación de ellas y evaluar las discusiones teórico-jurídicas con base en las exigencias de la práctica normativa. (shrink)

Las propuestas de la teoría del derecho se pueden entender como un conjunto de soluciones a diversos problemas teórico-jurídicos. Esta manera de presentar la actividad resulta atractiva, pero no siempre es trasparente, porque no explicita qué se debe conocer para entender su carácter problemático. Por ello, en este trabajo analizo el concepto de problema a través de la noción de predicado relacional, y a partir de ahí extraigo criterios que permiten determinar qué debe ser considerado como tal y a partir (...) de qué consideraciones deben ser evaluadas sus soluciones. Luego, los resultados del análisis son utilizados para examinar un conocido problema normativo, mostrando así su utilidad analítica. En definitiva, se busca contribuir a un debate escasamente desarrollado en torno al concepto de problema. (shrink)

What should we believe when epistemic and practical reasons pull in opposite directions? The traditional view states that there is something that we ought epistemically to believe and something that we ought practically to (cause ourselves to) believe, period. More recent accounts challenge this view, either by arguing that there is something that we ought simpliciter to believe, all epistemic and practical reasons considered (the weighing view), or by denying the normativity of epistemic reasons altogether (epistemic anti-normativism). I argue against (...) both accounts and defend the traditional view. An agent can be blameworthy in doxastic dilemmas for complying with their practical but not their epistemic reasons. This reveals how epistemic reasons are normative: the concept of epistemic blame helps us track epistemic normativity. (shrink)

'Everyone knows what attention is’ according to William James. Much work on attention in psychology and neuroscience cites this famous phrase only to quickly dismiss it. But James is right about this: ‘attention’ was not introduced into psychology and neuroscience as a theoretical concept. I argue that we should therefore study attention with broadly the same methodology that David Marr has applied to the study of perception. By focusing more on Marr's Computational Level of analysis, we arrive at a unified (...) answer to the question of what attention is, what role it plays in the mind, and why organisms like us have that capacity. I propose a methodology for studying attention at Marr's Computational Level that optimizes in a three-dimensional space: it should capture core aspects of our first-person experience of attention, be explanatorily powerful in psychology and neuroscience, and fertile in an interdisciplinary context. I show how this methodology leads to what I call the priority structure account of attention. Attention is what organizes current information to make it more useful for the organism. We can identify it by four features. Attention, in this way, helps a cognitive system to integrate its informational state with its current motivational state. I describe how this account improves on alternatives and shows why attention is a useful concept in many disciplines and for connecting them. -/- This article is categorized under: Philosophy > Psychological Capacities Psychology > Attention Philosophy > Foundations of Cognitive Science. (shrink)

Theories of Information, Communication and Knowledge.

The normative force of evidence can seem puzzling. It seems that having conclusive evidence for a proposition does not, by itself, make it true that one ought to believe the proposition. But spelling out the condition that evidence must meet in order to provide us with genuine normative reasons for belief seems to lead us into a dilemma: the condition either fails to explain the normative significance of epistemic reasons or it renders the content of epistemic norms practical. The first (...) aim of this paper is to spell out this challenge for the normativity of evidence. I argue that the challenge rests on a plausible assumption about the conceptual connection between normative reasons and blameworthiness. The second aim of the paper is to show how we can meet the challenge by spelling out a concept of epistemic blameworthiness. Drawing on recent accounts of doxastic responsibility and epistemic blame, I suggest that the normativity of evidence is revealed in our practice of suspending epistemic trust in response to impaired epistemic relationships. Recognizing suspension of trust as a form of epistemic blame allows us to make sense of a purely epistemic kind of normativity the existence of which has recently been called into doubt by certain versions of pragmatism and instrumentalism. (shrink)

When reasoning about dependence relations, philosophers often rely on gradualist assumptions, according to which abrupt changes in a phenomenon of interest can result only from abrupt changes in the low-level phenomena on which it depends. These assumptions, while strictly correct if the dependence relation in question can be expressed by continuous dynamical equations, should be handled with care: very often the descriptively relevant property of a dynamical system connecting high- and low-level phenomena is not its instantaneous behaviour but its stable (...) fixed points (those in the vicinity of which it spends most of the time, after comparatively short transitory periods), and stable fixed points can change abruptly as a result of infinitesimal changes of the low-level phenomenon. We illustrate this potential gradualist trap by showing that Chalmers’ fading qualia argument falls into it. (shrink)

It is often argued that there are no practical reasons for belief because we could not believe for such reasons. A recent reply by pragmatists is that we can often believe for practical reasons because we can often cause our beliefs for practical reasons. This paper reveals the limits of this recently popular strategy for defending pragmatism, and thereby reshapes the dialectical options for pragmatism. I argue that the strategy presupposes that reasons for being in non-intentional states are not reducible (...) to reasons to act. Pragmatists who want to preserve a motivational constraint on reasons therefore have exactly two options: either arguing that there are irreducible reasons for being in non-intentional states ; or arguing that we can believe directly for practical reasons. I argue that the prospects for the former option are dim because irreducible reasons to be in states are hard to square with the motivational constraint on reasons. Returning to the more traditional route of arguing for pragmatism by defending a version of doxastic voluntarism therefore seems to be the more promising way for pragmatists to go. (shrink)

One objection that has been raised for meta-ethical expressivism is that expressivists must give an account of the nature of the attitude which constitutes moral thinking, but that any expressivist account that attempts to do seems to fail. Call this objection the “moral attitude problem.” In this article I suggest a strategy for expressivists to escape this problem: I argue that the moral attitude problem is a problem that arises not only for expressivists but also for meta-ethical cognitivists, and that (...) expressivists can use the same resources used by cognitivists to escape this problem. (shrink)

Many of our attitudes are non-culpable: there was nothing that we should have done to avoid holding them. I argue that we can still be blameworthy for non-culpable attitudes: they can impair our relationships in ways that make our full practice of apology and forgiveness intelligible. My argument poses a new challenge to indirect voluntarists, who attempt to reduce all responsibility for attitudes to responsibility for prior actions and omissions. Rationalists, who instead explain attitudinal responsibility by appeal to reasons-responsiveness, can (...) make sense of blameworthiness for non-culpable attitudes. In response, voluntarists could propose a revision of our actual practices. This would lead us into a quite different debate. (shrink)

Introduction: Congruence, understood as the agreement between the patient's preferred place of death and their actual place of death, is emerging as one of the main variables indicating the quality of end-of-life care. The aim of this research was to conduct a systematic literature review on levels and determinants of congruence in palliative patients over the period 2010–2021.Method: A systematic review of the literature in the databases of PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Cuiden, the Cochrane Library, CSIC Indexes, (...) and IBECS. Information was extracted on research characteristics, congruence, and associated factors.Results: A total of 30 studies were identified, mainly of retrospective observational design. The congruence values varied substantially between the various studies, ranging from 21 to 100%. The main predictors of congruence include illness-related factors, individual factors, and environmental factors.Conclusion: This review, in comparison with previous studies, shows that treatment-related factors such as physical pain control, marital status, having a non-working relative, age, discussing preferred place of death with a healthcare professional, and caregiver's preference have been associated with higher levels of congruence. Depending on the study, other factors have been associated with either higher or lower congruence, such as the patient's diagnosis, gender, or place of residence. This information is useful for designing interventions aimed towards greater congruence at the end of life. (shrink)

Traditional agricultural systems in Mediterranean Europe were characterised by diversity and multifunctionality, and polycultures played a fundamental role in them. Some of these farm systems and the traditional agricultural practices linked to them have now largely disappeared, but they are increasingly recognised as a valuable source of agroecological knowledge. In this study, we seek to recover the long-lost experience from a traditional Mediterranean intercropping system that combined the cultivation of vines and cereals. Using local historical resources available for a Catalan (...) village for the second half of the nineteenth century, we compare the characteristics and functioning of intercropping and monocultures of vines and cereals using socioeconomic and agrarian metabolism indicators, and discuss the advantages of the traditional intercropping system as an adaptation to the productive limitations of the agroecosystem (particularly in terms of soil quality and productivity, and availability of labour and draft force), but also as a peasant economy strategy that responded to a multifunctional balancing rationale. This way, this research contributes to recovering the knowledge and experience of a long-lasting traditional crop system that had been used until the second half of the twentieth century, and provides an understanding of the rationale and advantages of traditional Mediterranean crop systems beyond productivity and profit maximisation strategies. (shrink)

According to ordinary language philosophy (OLP), philosophical problems can be solved by investigating ordinary language, often because the problems stem from its misuse. According to ideal language philosophy (ILP), on the other hand, philosophical problems exist because ordinary language is flawed and has to be improved or replaced by constructed languages that do not exhibit these flaws. OLP and ILP together make up linguistic philosophy, the view that philosophical problems are problems of language. Linguistic philosophy is opposed to what may (...) be called, for lack of a better word, ‘traditional philosophy’ (TP), the view that philosophical problems can be solved by discovering non-linguistic facts. In the following, OLP, ILP, and TP are taken to be methodologies, that is, frameworks in which to interpret and evaluate different philosophical methods (i.e., argumentative strategies). The two linguistic methodologies are discussed separately with TP as a foil, and then used to interpret the status of different philosophical methods. While each of the methods discussed here finds a plausible interpretation in each methodology, there are other arguments for and against linguistic philosophy in general, and for and against ILP and OLP in particular. As none of these arguments is decisive, I conclude with a superficial moral about peaceful co-existence. (shrink)

Relying on some auxiliary assumptions, usually considered mild, Bell’s theorem proves that no local theory can reproduce all the predictions of quantum mechanics. In this work, we introduce a fully local, superdeterministic model that by explicitly violating ‘settings independence’—one of these auxiliary assumptions, requiring statistical independence between measurement settings and systems to be measured—is able to reproduce all the predictions of quantum mechanics. Moreover, we show that contrary to widespread expectations, our model can break settings independence without an initial state (...) that is too complex to handle, without visibly losing all explanatory power, and without outright nullifying all of experimental science. Still, we argue that our model is unnecessarily complicated and does not offer true advantages over its non-local competitors. We conclude that while our model does not appear to be a viable contender to its non-local counterparts, it provides the ideal framework to advance the debate over violations of statistical independence via the superdeterministic route. (shrink)

Die sogenannte individualisierte Medizin (IM) ist in den letzten Jahren zu einem Schlagwort in Wissenschaft, Politik und Öffentlichkeit geworden. Wie jede technologische Neuentwicklung hat sie jedoch (potentielle) ethische Implikationen, die es zu berücksichtigen gilt, um eine angemessene Entwicklung und Anwendung individualisierter Präventions- und Therapiemaßnahmen zu ermöglichen. Allerdings steht eine ethische Bewertung der IM vor verschiedenen methodischen Herausforderungen, die sich insbesondere aus der Heterogenität des Problembereichs, begrifflicher Unklarheit sowie dem Frühstadium ihrer Entwicklung ergeben. Der vorliegende Beitrag spezifiziert zunächst den Begriff der (...) IM, um den Kontext der weiteren Überlegungen einzugrenzen. Anschließend wird eine heuristisch zu verstehende Typologie (möglicher) individual- und sozialethischer Implikationen der IM entwickelt. Sie verdeutlicht, dass die IM vorwiegend ethische Probleme aufwirft, die aus anderen biomedizinischen Bereichen bekannt sind. Welche dieser Probleme tatsächlich relevant sind, ist allerdings abhängig von der jeweils spezifischen IM-Maßnahme. Eine adäquate ethische Bewertung kann daher nur durch die Evaluation jedes einzelnen individualisierten Ansatzes erfolgen. (shrink)

Die sogenannte individualisierte Medizin (IM) ist in den letzten Jahren zu einem Schlagwort in Wissenschaft, Politik und Öffentlichkeit geworden. Wie jede technologische Neuentwicklung hat sie jedoch (potentielle) ethische Implikationen, die es zu berücksichtigen gilt, um eine angemessene Entwicklung und Anwendung individualisierter Präventions- und Therapiemaßnahmen zu ermöglichen. Allerdings steht eine ethische Bewertung der IM vor verschiedenen methodischen Herausforderungen, die sich insbesondere aus der Heterogenität des Problembereichs, begrifflicher Unklarheit sowie dem Frühstadium ihrer Entwicklung ergeben. Der vorliegende Beitrag spezifiziert zunächst den Begriff der (...) IM, um den Kontext der weiteren Überlegungen einzugrenzen. Anschließend wird eine heuristisch zu verstehende Typologie (möglicher) individual- und sozialethischer Implikationen der IM entwickelt. Sie verdeutlicht, dass die IM vorwiegend ethische Probleme aufwirft, die aus anderen biomedizinischen Bereichen bekannt sind. Welche dieser Probleme tatsächlich relevant sind, ist allerdings abhängig von der jeweils spezifischen IM-Maßnahme. Eine adäquate ethische Bewertung kann daher nur durch die Evaluation jedes einzelnen individualisierten Ansatzes erfolgen. (shrink)

It has been argued that the explanation of self-control requires positing special motivational powers. Some think that we need will-power as an irreducible mental faculty; others that we need to think of the active self as a dedicated and depletable pool of psychic energy or – in today more respectable terminology – mental resources; finally, there is the idea that self-control requires postulating a deep division between reason and passion – a deliberative and an emotional motivational system. This essay argues (...) that no such special motivational powers are necessary. Yet, at the same time, self-control does powerfully illustrate the importance of a feature of the mind. What it illustrates, I argue, is the importance of the mental activity of attention in the control of all action. It is by appeal to this mental activity that we can dispense with special motivational powers. If we think of Humeanism as the view that there is fundamentally only one kind of motivational system and that all action is based in that system, then this essay contributes to a defense of Humeanism. On the other hand, the essay also shows that any model of agency in terms of only beliefs and desires, motivational and representational states, or preferences and credences is incomplete. A different conception of Humeanism as the view that every mental state is either motivational, representational, or a combination of them, is false. (shrink)

En el presente artículo analizamos en sus aspectos fundamentales la evolución teórica que ha experimentado la interpretación de la obra de Marx desde las primeras corrientes que se derivan de ella hasta las más actuales. Nos ocupamos primero del marxismo tradicional, de su concepción determinista del materialismo histórico y su interpretación historicista de la teoría del valor. Abordamos después las corrientes del marxismo occidental que se oponen a las concepciones reduccionistas y economicistas de la interpretación marxista dominante, para centrarnos finalmente (...) en las interpretaciones más recientes de la teoría social de Marx como crítica del carácter fetichista de las formas de conciencia burguesas y las categorías de la economía política. (shrink)

This article focuses on the question of whether the task of the security authorities to protect public safety can justify unlawful encroachments on fundamental rights committed by them. First, the concept of security is analysed and criticised. This is followed by an analysis of the normative compatibility of the concept of security with the legal system. In particular, the legal principles and the concepts of possibility, probability and risk as standards of assessment for the justification of encroachments on fundamental rights (...) by security authorities as well as predictive policing as measures for determining the concepts are discussed. It is shown that the task of the security authorities to protect public safety cannot justify unlawful encroachments on fundamental rights in any way. (shrink)

Für Aristoteles ist das Kontinuum ein potentiell Unendliches. Dieser Unendlichkeitsbegriff, den er neben dem prozessualen und aktualen einführte, wurde im Laufe der Philosophiegeschichte nicht mehr berücksichtigt. So verwenden ihn u.a. weder Kant noch Weyl in ihren Kontinuumsbetrachtungen, obwohl ihr Kontinuumsverständnis ihn geradezu nahelegt. - In dieser Arbeit werden zum einen die ontologischen Kontinuumslehren des Aristoteles und späterer Philosophen und Mathematiker behandelt, zum anderen erfährt die von Aristoteles im 6. Buch der «Physik» vorgelegte strukturelle Kontinuumsuntersuchung eine eingehende Würdigung.

What is attention? How does attention shape consciousness? In an approach that engages with foundational topics in the philosophy of mind, the theory of action, psychology, and the neurosciences this book provides a unified and comprehensive answer to both questions. Sebastian Watzl shows that attention is a central structural feature of the mind. The first half of the book provides an account of the nature of attention. Attention is prioritizing, it consists in regulating priority structures. Attention is not another element (...) of the mind, but constituted by structures that organize, integrate, and coordinate the parts of our mind. Attention thus integrates the perceptual and intellectual, the cognitive and motivational, and the epistemic and practical. The second half of the book concerns the relationship between attention and consciousness. Watzl argues that attentional structure shapes consciousness into what is central and what is peripheral. The center-periphery structure of consciousness cannot be reduced to the structure of how the world appears to the subject. What it is like for us thus goes beyond the way the world appears to us. On this basis, a new view of consciousness is offered. In each conscious experience we actively take a stance on the world we appear to encounter. It is in this sense that our conscious experience is our subjective perspective. (shrink)

Soilless crops are commonly used in rooftop agriculture because they easily adapt to building constraints. However, acceptance of the produce derived from this system may be controversial. This paper evaluates consumers’ acceptance of food from RA in Mediterranean cities, focusing on the quality of the product, production system, and consumers’ motivations. We surveyed 238 respondents on the UAB university campus as potential consumers. The survey was distributed via an Internet-link that was provided along with a sample of tomatoes from RA. (...) The results showed that most people approved the quality of RA products and perceived them to be local and fresh. The respondents exhibited acceptance of soilless-produced tomatoes and considered them to be environmentally better than conventionally produced ones. Cluster analysis revealed that consumers with high income levels and a university education had a better perception of the quality and proposed a higher price for RA products, but no difference was found regarding their environmental perception of this products. Moreover, people who possessed more information about the product also had a higher perception of the quality and production system and would pay more for them. The main concerns of consumers were related to food safety and the social impact of RA. Additional research is needed to improve the sustainability of RA, and the applied measures should be communicated to potential consumers to enhance their acceptance and success. (shrink)

The three ancient philosophical introductions translated in this volume flesh out our picture of what it would have been like to sit in a first-year Philosophy course in ancient Alexandria. Ammonius (AD 445-517/26) set up a new teaching programme in Alexandria with up to six introductions to the philosophy curriculum, which made it far more accessible, and encouraged its spread from Greek to other cultures. This volume's three introductory texts include one by his student Olympiodorus and one each by Olympiodorus' (...) students Elias and David. Elias' Introductions to Philosophy starts with six definitions of Philosophy, to which David adds replies to the sceptical question whether there is such a thing as Philosophy. Olympiodorus' text translated here is an Introduction to Logic, which is just one of the three introductions he wrote himself. (shrink)

Representations are not only used in our folk-psychological explanations of behaviour, but are also fruitfully postulated, for example, in cognitive science. The mainstream view in cognitive science maintains that our mind is a representational system. This popular view requires an understanding of the nature of the entities they are postulating. Teleosemantic theories face this challenge, unpacking the normativity in the relation of representation by appealing to the teleological function of the representing state. It has been argued that, if intentionality is (...) to be explained in teleological terms, then the function of a state cannot depend on its phylogenetical history, given the metaphysical possibility of a duplicate of an intentional being that lacks an evolutionary history. In this paper, I present a method to produce, according to our current knowledge in genetic engineering, human-like individuals who are not the product of natural selection in the required sense. This variation will be used to shed light on the main replies that have been offered in the literature to the Swampman thought experiment. I argue that these replies are not satisfactory: representations should better not depend on natural selection. I conclude that a non-etiological notion of function is to be preferred for characterizing the relation of representation. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is the enterprise of evaluating and improving our representational devices. But how should we conduct this enterprise? One increasingly popular answer to this question proposes that conceptual engineering should proceed in terms of the functions of our representational devices. In this paper, we argue that the best way of understanding this suggestion is in terms of normative functions, where normative functions of concepts are, roughly, things that they allow us to do that matter normatively (for example, things in (...) virtue of which we have normative reasons to have these concepts). Not only does this introduce a novel view about functions to the literature. This proposal also fits more naturally than the alternatives with conceptual engineering as a normative enterprise, and it allows functions to play all of the explanatory roles assigned to them in the conceptual engineering literature. Our discussion of the explanatory advantages of normative functions also advances the understanding of the ways in which concepts can be authoritative, what this means for conceptual engineering, and highlights the importance of political philosophy for thinking about conceptual engineering in practice. Furthermore, the paper explicates what kind of role considerations about function can and should actually play in conceptual engineering. (shrink)

El estado del avance tecnológico actual permite pensar en formas en las que la humanidad podría tener una mejor vida, pero, por el contrario, las condiciones parecen ser peores cada día. Las propuestas de Nick Srnicek y Alex Williams, y de Franco Berardi, abordan el problema de superar la sujeción de la tecnología al neoliberalismo, para permitir un mejor vivir. Sin embargo, sus propuestas, contrahegemonía y liberación del conocimiento, se separan en la forma, entre un proyecto político y la morfogénesis (...) producto de la comunidad. (shrink)

The traditional approach in cognitive sciences holds that cognition is a matter of manipulating abstract symbols followingcertain rules. According to this view, the body is merely an input/output device, which allows the computationalsystem—the brain—to acquire new input data by means of the senses and to act in the environment following its com-mands. In opposition to this classical view, defenders of embodied cognition (EC) stress the relevance of the body inwhich the cognitive agent is embedded in their explanation of cognitive processes. (...) From a representationalist frameworkregarding our conscious experience, in this article, I will offer a novel argument in favor of EC and show that cognitionconstitutively—and no merely causally—depends upon body activity beyond that in the brain. In particular, I will arguethat in order to solve the problem derived from the empirical evidence in favor of the possibility of shifted spectrum,representationalist should endorse the view that experiences concern its subject: the content of experience isde se.Ishow that this claim perfectly matches the phenomenological observation and helps explaining the subjective characterof the experience. Furthermore, I argue that entertaining this kind of representation constitutively depends on bodilyactivity. Consequently, insofar as cognition depends on consciousness, it is embodied. (shrink)

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine raises fundamental ethical issues. As one example, AI systems in the field of mental health successfully detect signs of mental disorders, such as depression, by using data from social media. These AI depression detectors (AIDDs) identify users who are at risk of depression prior to any contact with the healthcare system. The article focuses on the ethical implications of AIDDs regarding affected users’ health-related autonomy. Firstly, it presents the (ethical) discussion of AI (...) in medicine and, specifically, in mental health. Secondly, two models of AIDDs using social media data and different usage scenarios are introduced. Thirdly, the concept of patient autonomy, according to Beauchamp and Childress, is critically discussed. Since this concept does not encompass the specific challenges linked with the digital context of AIDDs in social media sufficiently, the current analysis suggests, finally, an extended concept of health-related digital autonomy. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

The well-known distinction between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness has moved away from the conceptual domain into the empirical one, and the debate now is focused on whether the neural mechanisms of cognitive access are constitutive of the neural correlate of phenomenal consciousness. In this paper, I want to analyze the consequences that a negative reply to this question has for the cognitive phenomenology thesis – roughly the claim that there is a “proprietary” phenomenology of thoughts. If the mechanisms responsible (...) for cognitive access can be disentangled from the mechanisms that give rise to phenomenology in the case of perception and emotion, then the same disentanglement is to be expected in the case of thoughts. This, in turn, presents, as I argue, a challenge to the cognitive phenomenology thesis: either there are thoughts with cognitive phenomenology we lack cognitive access to or there are good reasons to doubt that there is such a thing as cognitive phenomenology. I discuss a... (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

This paper elaborates on a theory of the ideological public sphere in the age of digital media. It describes the public sphere as an initially ascending and then descending communication process that includes both polarising and integrating publics, which are organised by antagonistic media and compromise-building mass media. This framework allows us to distinguish between hegemonic, populist, and popular-oriented flows of communication, as well as register changes in the interplay of different publics driven by digital media platforms. Digital transformations of (...) the public sphere give rise to antagonistic and networked-individualistic flows of populist communication that put public hegemony under constant pressure. The challenge is to find ways to strengthen popular communications that enable democratic learning processes and the flourishing of communicative competences of all citizens. (shrink)

This article explores the concept of non-personal immortality. Non-personal theories of immortality claim that even though there is no personal or individual survival of death, it is still possible to continue to exist in a non-personal state. The most important challenge for non-personal conceptions of immortality is solving the apparent contradiction between on the one hand accepting that individual existence ends with death and on the other hand maintaining that death nevertheless is not equal to total annihilation. I present two (...) theories of non-personal immortality found in Schopenhauer and William James and derive a set of systematic core theses from them. Finally, I discuss whether the notion of non-personal immortality is consistent, and whether a non-personal afterlife could be desirable. (shrink)

This entry reviews Rudolf Carnap's philosophical views on the quantum mechanics of his time. It also offers some thoughts on how Carnap might have reacted to some recent developments in the foundations of quantum mechanics.

The online version of the original article can be found under doi:10.1007/s11948-007-9045-2.

En el presente trabajo se aborda el significado de los límites de la dialéctica en el pensamiento de Marx, lo que permite determinar la diferencia fundamental que separa la concepción marxiana de la dialéctica de la concepción hegeliana. Para analizar lo que significa para Marx este concepto es necesario distinguir entre el desarrollo conceptual de la exposición y el lugar que le corresponde a la investigación de la evolución histórica, de lo cual nos ocupamos en los primeros apartados del trabajo. (...) A partir de aquí, examinamos en los siguientes apartados el sentido y las implicaciones teóricas de los límites de la exposición dialéctica. (shrink)