The approach to issues such as good and evil from philosophy leads us to specify what is understood by ethics and morals. Canonically, ethics is a branch of philosophy that studies and systematizes these concepts and aims to rationally define what constitutes a good or virtuous act, regardless of the culture in which it is framed. Morality is defined as the set of norms that govern the behavior of people who are part of a given society, thus contributing to the (...) maintenance of stability and social structure. Based on these definitions, naturalization consists of seeking foundations in the empirical sciences to justify moral principles. The objective of this work is to see to what extent science can contribute knowledge that supports ethics and moral principles, a project based on the naturalization of philosophy, questioning any apriorism that ignores science. First, the naturalizing program and its main variants in philosophy will be examined. Second, two proposals from the philosophy of science that can be framed in naturalism will be analyzed, namely: Philip Kitcher and Patricia S. Churchland. Next, some of the main theses that provide scientific explanation of human behavior from the point of view of moral virtues will be addressed. (shrink)

An approach to the philosophy of biology in the 21st century requires going beyond its epistemological side, betting on pragmatic aspects, in the sense of the social impact of the instrumentalization of biological developments. These advances have both beneficial and harmful consequences for humanity. Among the latter, it is its use for military conflicts, as a result of advances in biotechnology. The objective of this work is to address the role of biological knowledge in wars, analyzing some especially relevant cases (...) such as bioterrorism, but also other types of conflicts in which biology, broadly understood with its different branches, plays an important role. First, I will introduce the most important concepts in the relationship between biology and war, taking into account historical precedents in this area. Secondly, since biology enters in military conflicts, I will address the case of bioterrorism as one of the most pressing problems in that it is one of the forms that war is currently taking, as well as one of its derivatives, “agroterrorism”, which consists in causing the destruction of crops or the death of livestock that feeds the population. In this regard, I will examine other ways of resolving conflicts in which biological factors play an important role in establishing dominance between two or more nations or populations facing each other, paying special attention to agriculture and livestock. Regarding the possible theoretical models to analyze these conflicts, I will focus on the relationship between pure, applied science and technology, the methodological models of design sciences and ethical and moral reflection. (shrink)

An approach to the philosophy of biology in the 21st century requires going beyond its epistemological side, betting on pragmatic aspects, in the sense of the social impact of the instrumentalization of biological developments. These advances have both beneficial and harmful consequences for humanity. Among the latter, it is its use for military conflicts, as a result of advances in biotechnology. The objective of this work is to address the role of biological knowledge in wars, analyzing some especially relevant cases (...) such as bioterrorism, but also other types of conflicts in which biology, broadly understood with its different branches, plays an important role. First, I will introduce the most important concepts in the relationship between biology and war, taking into account historical precedents in this area. Secondly, since biology enters in military conflicts, I will address the case of bioterrorism as one of the most pressing problems in that it is one of the forms that war is currently taking, as well as one of its derivatives, “agroterrorism”, which consists in causing the destruction of crops or the death of livestock that feeds the population. In this regard, I will examine other ways of resolving conflicts in which biological factors play an important role in establishing dominance between two or more nations or populations facing each other, paying special attention to agriculture and livestock. Regarding the possible theoretical models to analyze these conflicts, I will focus on the relationship between pure, applied science and technology, the methodological models of design sciences and ethical and moral reflection. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze a philosophical question (neutrality vs. theory-ladenness of observation) taking into consideration the empirical results of Cognitive Psychology (theories of perception). This is an important debate because the objectivity of science is at stake. In the Philosophy of Science there are two main positions with regard to observation, those of C. Hempel and N. R. Hanson. In the Philosophy of Mind there are also two important contrasting positions, those of J. Fodor and Paul (...) M. Churchland. I will analyze the consequences of recent theories of perception and vision developed within Cognitive Science for classical epistemological theses about observation. (shrink)

There are (at least) two ways to think of the differences in basic concepts and typologies that one can find in the different scientific practices that constitute a research tradition. One is the fundamentalist view: the fewer the better. The other is a non-fundamentalist view of science whereby the integration of different concepts into the right abstraction grounds an explanation that is not grounded as the sum of the explanations supported by the parts. Integrative concepts are often associated with idealizations (...) that can successfully set the stage for different phenomena to be compared or for explanations of different phenomena to be considered as jointly increasing our understanding of reality beyond that which each explanation provides separately. In this paper, our aim is to argue for the importance of the notions of an ?affordance? and ?scaffolding? as integrative concepts in the cognitive sciences. The integrational role of the concept of affordance is closely related with the capacity of affordances to generate the scaffoldings leading to the integration. The capacities of affordances that turn them into (stable) scaffoldings explain why such notions are often used interchangeably (as we shall see). On this basis, we aim to show that the concepts of affordance and scaffolding provide the sort of epistemic perspective that can overcome common complaints about the limits and unity of the cognitive sciences once claims about extended cognition are taken seriously. (shrink)

Abordar los modelos sanitarios supone situarnos frente a fenómenos complejos que implican perspectivas diversas que van desde la medicina hasta el diseño de los espacios sanitarios pasando por la salud de los ciudadanos. Esto requiere una aproximación innovadora y democrática en la que hay que tener en cuenta valores epistémicos, cognitivos y contextuales. Para ello es ineludible abordar los marcos teóricos que engloban las posibilidades de un cambio de paradigma en los modelos sanitarios, entre los que podemos destacar los siguientes: (...) las teorías del diseño y su consideración como tercera cultura entre las humanidades y las ciencias; la gestión de la complejidad y su importancia para la interacción a fin de llevarla a cabo con eficacia; el papel de las instituciones en tanto constituyen un elemento clave de los modelos sanitarios; y la relevancia del factor cognitivo en una explicación naturalizada del diseño institucional. (shrink)

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion.

Starting from the naturalistic program and within the framework of cognitive sciences, issues such as the representation of knowledge, the role of technology, the relationship between theory and experiment and the theoretical burden of observation have been addressed. In any of these analyses, the idea is to contrast the philosophical proposal with some of the theories and results of the cognitive sciences, with the purpose of seeing to what extent they reinforce each other, one reinforces the other but not the (...) other way around, or they are irrelevant. The objective of this work is to place design at the center of philosophical analysis from the perspective of cognitive science. However, the cognitive approach has been applied much less to the analysis of design sciences, despite the fact that its possibilities are not less when it comes to addressing the challenges involved in the application of scientific knowledge to the transformation of the world. The starting hypothesis is that there are implications between design sciences and motor cognition; therefore, they are not irrelevant. The degree of connection and neurocognitive foundation of the design sciences will be elucidated as the analysis progresses in order to draw conclusions, both for the design processes and for the cognitive approach in general. (shrink)

The approach to issues such as good and evil from philosophy leads us to specify what is understood by ethics and morals. Canonically, ethics is a branch of philosophy that studies and systematizes these concepts and aims to rationally define what constitutes a good or virtuous act, regardless of the culture in which it is framed. Morality is defined as the set of norms that govern the behavior of people who are part of a given society, thus contributing to the (...) maintenance of stability and social structure. Based on these definitions, naturalization consists of seeking foundations in the empirical sciences to justify moral principles. The objective of this work is to see to what extent science can contribute knowledge that supports ethics and moral principles, a project based on the naturalization of philosophy, questioning any apriorism that ignores science. First, the naturalizing program and its main variants in philosophy will be examined. Second, two proposals from the philosophy of science that can be framed in naturalism will be analyzed, namely: Philip Kitcher and Patricia S. Churchland. Next, some of the main theses that provide scientific explanation of human behavior from the point of view of moral virtues will be addressed. (shrink)

The approach to issues such as good and evil from philosophy leads us to specify what is understood by ethics and morals. Canonically, ethics is a branch of philosophy that studies and systematizes these concepts and aims to rationally define what constitutes a good or virtuous act, regardless of the culture in which it is framed. Morality is defined as the set of norms that govern the behavior of people who are part of a given society, thus contributing to the (...) maintenance of stability and social structure. Based on these definitions, naturalization consists of seeking foundations in the empirical sciences to justify moral principles. The objective of this work is to see to what extent science can contribute knowledge that supports ethics and moral principles, a project based on the naturalization of philosophy, questioning any apriorism that ignores science. First, the naturalizing program and its main variants in philosophy will be examined. Second, two proposals from the philosophy of science that can be framed in naturalism will be analyzed, namely: Philip Kitcher and Patricia S. Churchland. Next, some of the main theses that provide scientific explanation of human behavior from the point of view of moral virtues will be addressed. (shrink)

Recoge: Aspectos históricos de la revolución química; Aplicación de los modelos; Nuevo enfoque para la construcción de modelos de dinámica científica.

El objetivo de este artículo es analizar y revisar las normas que filosóficamente asociamos al proceso de testimonio, inquiriendo hasta qué puntoson0 consistentes con los conocimientos empíricos de las ciencias cognitivas.Tradicionalmente, el problema del testimonio surgía cuando, desde una epistemología de corte individualista, se suponía, siguiendo el dictum ya marcado en la Modernidad tanto por racionalistas como por empiristas, de que el conocimiento debía ser testado personalmente. Sin embargo, disciplinas y enfoques recientes, como la Cognición Socialmente Distribuida y la Epistemología (...) Social ofrecen otra vía al considerar al grupo la unidad cognitiva realmente significativa e intentar solucionar el problema del testimonio desde esa perspectiva. Nuestro objetivo es analizar los motivos por los que la CSD es un buen modelo para explicar algunas de las paradojas y problemas epistemológicos cuando tenemos en cuenta el papel del testimonio en el desarrollo de la ciencia. The goal of this paper is to review and analyze norms philosophically associated with the process of testimony and to investigate to what extent they are consistent with empirical knowledge supplied by cognitive science. Traditionally, the problem of testimony used to arise when it was supposed, from the viewpoint of an individualistic epistemology, that followed the dictum stated by rationalists and empiricists in Modernity, that knowledge had to be tested personally. However, recent disciplines and approaches, like Socially Distributed Cognition and Social Epistemology, provide alternative ways of thinking. This is the case when we consider the group as the truly significant cognitive unit and from such perspective we try to solve the problem of testimony. Therefore, our aim is to examine the reasons why SDC offers a good model for explaining some of the paradoxes and epistemological problems that arise when we consider the issue of testimony in the development of science. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary volume gathers selected, refereed contributions on various aspects of public health from several disciplines and research fields, including the philosophy of science, epidemiology, statistics and ethics. The contributions were originally presented at the 1st Barcelona conference of “Philosophy of Public Health”. This book is intended for researchers interested in public health and the contemporary debates surrounding it.

The purpose of this essay is to offer a Wide view of the diverse currents of thought and debates that have emerged due to the so called: “naturalistic program in epistemology and the philosophy of science”. The cognitive sciences have been of great importance due to their relationship to thought, and to the fact that philosophy has been, from the beginning, part of the interdisciplinary frame that groups: cognitive science, computer science, neurology, anthropology, psychology and linguistics.

El objetivo de este artículo es mostrar no sólo que no hay incompatibilidad entre los factores cognitivos y sociales en el análisis de fenómenos científicos y tecnológicos, sino que se complementan. Esta idea se ejemplifica con el estudio del error humano desde una doble perspectiva: la de un científico cognitivo como James Reason y la de un ingeniero como Henry Petroski. El análisis de catástrofes a causa de fallos en estructuras arquitectónicas o en procesos industriales muestra que sólo teniendo en (...) cuenta sus elementos cognitivos y sociales podemos disminuir los fracasos y aumentar los éxitos de la actividad científico-tecnológica. (shrink)

While the extended cognition (EC) thesis has gained more followers in cognitive science and in the philosophy of mind and knowledge, our main goal is to discuss a different area of significance of the EC thesis: its relation to philosophy of science. In this introduction, we outline two major areas: (I) The role of the thesis for issues in the philosophy of cognitive science, such as: How do notions of EC figure in theories or research programs in cognitive science? Which (...) versions of the EC thesis appear, and with which arguments to support them? (II) The potentials and limits of the EC thesis for topics in general philosophy of science, such as: Can naturalism perhaps be further advanced by means of the more recent EC thesis? Can we understand “big science” or laboratory research better by invoking some version of EC? And can the EC thesis help in overcoming the notorious cognitive/social divide in science studies? (shrink)

Design has usually been linked to art and applied in scenarios related to everyday life. Even when design has, on occasion, made its way into the world of academia, it has always been closely linked to art and scenarios related everyday life. At last, however, the idea of design has reached the field of epistemology: an area within the very heart of philosophy that has always focused, in theory, on the foundations of knowledge. Consequently, design is being studied from different (...) approaches interested in the foundation of knowledge, theoretical and practical. This is one of the reasons why abduction and pragmatism have been considered relevant from a design perspective. This paper first shows the main features of abduction and pragmatism, describes their evolution and considers their mutual implications. Second, the epistemology of design is analysed considering its most relevant characteristics. Third, the connection between abduction and, on the one hand, pragmatism and, on the other, design epistemology is addressed. Finally, the role of abductive inference in grounding a real epistemology for design theory from the naturalised cognitive perspective of abduction is outlined. The central proposition is that this approach is essential as a methodological innovation, as it allows us to analyse both the inquiry process and the design process as interdependent when dealing with practical problems of a social and cultural nature. This approach allows us to analyse how human actions determine changes in the theoretical framework from which we make our inquiry. In short, the world is an open-ended project that humans design through our daily inquiry. (shrink)

Este artículo parte del debate en filosofía de la ciencia entre la tradición teórica y la experimental, y muestra su relación con el estudio de los procesos de innovación e invención en ciencia, cruzando así los planteamientos de análisis más teóricos de la filosofía de la ciencia con cuestiones más relacionadas con la filosofía de la tecnología y la ciencia aplicada. De esta manera, analizamos la interrelación entre experimento y teoría en los procesos de invención e innovación y conectamos los (...) campos de la ciencia teórica y la aplicada, mostrando la continuidad entre ambas. Así, podemos mostrar también cómo en ciencia hay siempre dependencia mutua de teoría y experimentación, y cómo esa dependencia es extrapolable también a los procesos de innovación e invención.Tomando como punto de partida el debate en torno a las tradiciones teóricas y experimentales, veremos hasta qué punto los argumentos que cuestionan las tradiciones teóricas y apuestan por las tradiciones experimentales encajan con los fenómenos de invención e innovación. El caso que vamos a tomar como referencia para aplicar este análisis es el de «aprendizaje automático», como una rama de los algoritmos computacionales diseñados para emular la inteligencia humana aprendiendo del entorno. Este campo es relevante pues, a pesar de su naturaleza eminentemente teórica —en substancia es matemática aplicada—, presenta toda una serie de características que lo hacen muy afín al análisis desde las tradiciones experimentales. (shrink)

En este artículo se reconocen los aportes de la flosofía de las prácticas experimentales en torno al debate teoría – práctica y se destaca su infuencia en el papel del experimento en la enseñanza de las ciencias, particularmente en el uso por parte de los libros de texto, tomando como ejemplo un caso en electricidad.

Es, quiza, la coleccion mas abierta que existe en cuestiones de etica, aunque se ha ocupado tambien de antropologia, estetica, ontologia, teoria del conocimiento e historia de la filosofia. El primer titulo que se publico en la coleccion fue la gran Historia de la filosofia y de la ciencia en tres volumenes de Ludovico Geymonat. A este le han seguido obras de A. J. Ayer, A. MacIntyre, Ernst Tugendhat, Antoni Domenech, Anna Estany, Agnes Heller, F. Fernandez Buey, Carlos (...) Paris, Emilio Lledo, Manuel Sacristan, John Rawls o Ludwig Wittgenstein. Victoria Camps ha dirigido, ademas, una gran Historia de la etica, en tres volumenes, en la que han colaborado los mejores especialistas espanoles. Para el autor solo el analisis de la evolucion biologica permite comprender el concepto de cultura como desarrollo y desembocadura de la vida. Es un proceso que culmina en la realidad humana y que la presente obra examina en sus grandes lineas. (shrink)

Es, quiza, la coleccion mas abierta que existe en cuestiones de etica, aunque se ha ocupado tambien de antropologia, estetica, ontologia, teoria del conocimiento e historia de la filosofia. El primer titulo que se publico en la coleccion fue la gran Historia de la filosofia y de la ciencia en tres volumenes de Ludovico Geymonat. A este le han seguido obras de A. J. Ayer, A. MacIntyre, Ernst Tugendhat, Antoni Domenech, Anna Estany, Agnes Heller, F. Fernandez Buey, Carlos (...) Paris, Emilio Lledo, Manuel Sacristan, John Rawls o Ludwig Wittgenstein. Victoria Camps ha dirigido, ademas, una gran Historia de la etica, en tres volumenes, en la que han colaborado los mejores especialistas espanoles. Manual al dia y de lectura agil y amena sobre valores y conceptos como el de igualdad y prioridad, fundamentales en los estudios de la filosofia de hoy. (shrink)

Es, quiza, la coleccion mas abierta que existe en cuestiones de etica, aunque se ha ocupado tambien de antropologia, estetica, ontologia, teoria del conocimiento e historia de la filosofia. El primer titulo que se publico en la coleccion fue la gran Historia de la filosofia y de la ciencia en tres volumenes de Ludovico Geymonat. A este le han seguido obras de A. J. Ayer, A. MacIntyre, Ernst Tugendhat, Antoni Domenech, Anna Estany, Agnes Heller, F. Fernandez Buey, Carlos (...) Paris, Emilio Lledo, Manuel Sacristan, John Rawls o Ludwig Wittgenstein. Victoria Camps ha dirigido, ademas, una gran Historia de la etica, en tres volumenes, en la que han colaborado los mejores especialistas espanoles. (shrink)

Es, quiza, la coleccion mas abierta que existe en cuestiones de etica, aunque se ha ocupado tambien de antropologia, estetica, ontologia, teoria del conocimiento e historia de la filosofia. El primer titulo que se publico en la coleccion fue la gran Historia de la filosofia y de la ciencia en tres volumenes de Ludovico Geymonat. A este le han seguido obras de A. J. Ayer, A. MacIntyre, Ernst Tugendhat, Antoni Domenech, Anna Estany, Agnes Heller, F. Fernandez Buey, Carlos (...) Paris, Emilio Lledo, Manuel Sacristan, John Rawls o Ludwig Wittgenstein. Victoria Camps ha dirigido, ademas, una gran Historia de la etica, en tres volumenes, en la que han colaborado los mejores especialistas espanoles. Los trabajos que componen este volumen recorren los conceptos centrales de la Ilustracion: razon, critica, autonomia, naturaleza humana, humanidad, libertad, solidaridad, igualdad, justicia y emancipacion, cuyo fracaso etico obliga a replantear las formulaciones de la filosofia ilustrada, y a someter a critica sus presupuestos. (shrink)

Es, quiza, la coleccion mas abierta que existe en cuestiones de etica, aunque se ha ocupado tambien de antropologia, estetica, ontologia, teoria del conocimiento e historia de la filosofia. El primer titulo que se publico en la coleccion fue la gran Historia de la filosofia y de la ciencia en tres volumenes de Ludovico Geymonat. A este le han seguido obras de A. J. Ayer, A. MacIntyre, Ernst Tugendhat, Antoni Domenech, Anna Estany, Agnes Heller, F. Fernandez Buey, Carlos (...) Paris, Emilio Lledo, Manuel Sacristan, John Rawls o Ludwig Wittgenstein. Victoria Camps ha dirigido, ademas, una gran Historia de la etica, en tres volumenes, en la que han colaborado los mejores especialistas espanoles. Manual al dia y de lectura agil y amena sobre valores y conceptos como el de igualdad y prioridad, fundamentales en los estudios de la filosofia de hoy. (shrink)

This article defends the Harm Principle, commonly attributed to John Stuart Mill, against recent criticism. Some philosophers think that this principle should be rejected, because of severe difficulties with finding an account of harm to plug into it. I examine the criticism and find it unforceful. Finally, I identify a faulty assumption behind this type of criticism, namely that the Harm Principle is plausible only if there is a full-blown, and problem-free, account of harm, which proponents of the principle can (...) refer to. (shrink)

This paper aims to extend the discussion of silencing beyond the realm of speech and to the domain of conversational silences – that is, silences that have communicative functions in our conversational exchanges. I argue that, insofar as we can use silences to communicate, we can also be prevented from doing things with these silences. Alongside a three- fold taxonomy I show the different ways in which this can happen, utilizing and extending Maitra’s (2009) account of silencing to illustrate the (...) wrong happening in these cases. This discussion not only highlights a new domain of silencing that has, so far, been underexplored, but also uncovers just how deep linguistic injustices can run. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on somatosensory attenuation of bodily signals as a core mechanism underlying the phenomenon of 'losing' one's sense of self in meditation. Specifically, I argue that somatosensory attenuation of bodily signals does not make the bodily self 'disappear' experientially. Rather, during the subjectively reported phenomena of 'self-loss', bodily sensory signals are self-attenuated, physiologically, and experientially processed in the background. Hence the term 'losing' the self or 'selfless' states may be misleading in describing these peculiar types of (...) experiences reported during deep meditative states. What is 'lost', I claim, is a particular, ordinary way to explicitly, mentally model oneself in relation to the body and the world. Yet, the experience of being a living body, i.e.a self-organizing organism, is never 'lost' in this process. The proposal is that the explicit feeling of selfless minds may be tacitly accompanied by the implicit feeling of unlimited body, as two sides of the same coin. (shrink)

For Aristotle, animals, by contrast to plants, possess a perceptual soul. However, there is disagreement concerning the point at which the perceptual soul is acquired, for him. On one influential interpretation, Aristotle thinks that the perceptual soul is acquired not during the initial formation of the embryo, but at some later stage of its development. On such interpretations of Aristotle’s view, the newly formed embryo is not yet an actual animal, but a plant-like living being or even inanimate matter. We (...) argue, by contrast, that Aristotle views the embryo, from the very beginning, as an actual animal exercising basic nutritive and perceptual functions. We show that this interpretation is consistent with Aristotle’s views on embryogenesis in the GA, HA, PA, and the Metaphysics. (shrink)