It would be ahistorical to ridicule vitalists. When one reads the writings of one of the leading vitalists like Driesch one is forced to agree with him that many of the basic problems of biology simply cannot be solved by a philosophy as that of Descartes, in which the organism is simply considered a machine…. The logic of the critique of the vitalists was impeccable.At the turn of the new millennium, concomitant with the development of the evo-devo and eco-devo disciplines (...) within developmental biology, critical appraisals of the reductionist stance of the molecular biology revolution became more numerous and noticeable. Several books and papers address the problems posed by this reductionist agenda and suggest... (shrink)

The somatic mutation theory (SMT) of cancer has been and remains the prevalent theory attempting to explain how neoplasms arise and progress. This theory proposes that cancer is a clonal, cell‐based disease, and implicitly assumes that quiescence is the default state of cells in multicellular organisms. The SMT has not been rigorously tested, and several lines of evidence raise questions that are not addressed by this theory. Herein, we propose experimental strategies that may validate the SMT. We also call attention (...) to an alternative theory of carcinogenesis, the tissue organization field theory (TOFT), which posits that cancer is a tissue‐based disease and that proliferation is the default state of all cells. Based on epistemological and experimental evidence, we argue that the TOFT compellingly explains carcinogenesis, while placing it within an evolutionarily relevant context.magnified imagemagnified imageAna Soto and Carlos Sonnenschein are at Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA. (shrink)

The Estrogen Elixir: A History of Hormone Replacement Therapy in America by Elizabeth Siegel Watkins is a thoroughly documented cautionary tale of the information and advice offered to women in the perimenopausal period of their life, and the consequences of exposure to sexual hormones on their health and wellbeing.

The Estrogen Elixir: A History of Hormone Replacement Therapy in America by Elizabeth Siegel Watkins is a thoroughly documented cautionary tale of the information and advice offered to women in the perimenopausal period of their life, and the consequences of exposure to sexual hormones on their health and wellbeing.

David Waldron Smithers was, among other things, a physician and a pioneer of cancer radiotherapy and a well-respected figure in British medicine and public health. From the 1940s until his retirement from medical practice in 1973, he was the director of the Radiotherapy Department at the Royal Marsden Hospital and London University Chair of Radiotherapy at the Institute of Cancer Research. Using massive amounts of clinical observations, which he interpreted from an organicist viewpoint, and his impressive synthetic thinking, he proposed (...) a coherent alternative perspective to the somatic mutation theory (SMT) which was then, and still is, the dominant theory of cancer. The purpose of this essay is to acquaint the modern audience with his seminal paper, published in 1962, because it deserves to be recognized as a true classic. In it, he examined the lack of fit between clinical observations and the SMT and proposed the rejection of this reductionist perspective. In addition, he built an organicist alternative in which carcinogenesis is seen as a problem of biological organization. His conceptual contribution to the cancer problem has inspired us and other authors over the last two decades. His essay “Cancer: An Attack on Cytologism,” originally published in The Lancet in 1962, is available as supplementary material in the online version of this article. (shrink)

The somatic mutation theory has been the prevailing paradigm in cancer research for the last 50 years. Its premises are: (1) cancer is derived from a single somatic cell that has accumulated multiple DNA mutations, (2) the default state of cell proliferation in metazoa is quiescence, and (3) cancer is a disease of cell proliferation caused by mutations in genes that control proliferation and the cell cycle. From this compelling simplicity, an increasingly complicated picture has emerged as more than 100 (...) oncogenes and 30 tumor suppressor genes have been identified. To accommodate this complexity, additional ad hoc explanations have been postulated. After a critical review of the data gathered from this perspective, an alternative research program has been proposed. It is based on the tissue organization field theory, the premises of which are that carcinogenesis represents a problem of tissue organization, comparable to organogenesis, and that proliferation is the default state of all cells. The merits of these competing theories are evaluated herein. BioEssays 26:1097–1107, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

For the last 50 years the dominant stance in experimental biology has been reductionism in general, and genetic reductionism in particular. Philosophers were the first to realize that the belief that the Mendelian genes were reduced to DNA molecules was questionable. Soon, experimental data confirmed these misgivings. The optimism of molecular biologists, fueled by early success in tackling relatively simple problems has now been tempered by the difficulties encountered when applying the same simple ideas to complex problems. We analyze three (...) examples taken from experimental data that illustrate the shortcomings of this sort of reductionism. In the first, alterations in the expression of a large number of genes coexist with normal phenotypes at supra-cellular levels of organization; in the second, the supposed intrinsic specificity of hormonal signals is negated; in the third, the notion that cancer is a cellular problem caused by mutated genes is challenged by data gathered both from the reductionist viewpoint and the alternative view proposing that carcinogenesis is development gone awry. As an alternative to reductionism, we propose that the organicist view is a good starting point from which to explore these phenomena. However, new theoretical concepts are needed to grapple with the apparent circular causality of complex biological phenomena. (shrink)

Cet article se propose d'analyser les relations entre l'anthropologie et l'indigénisme au Brésil. Pour cela, il retrace le processus de migration des savoirs indigénistes depuis leur contexte d'origine au Mexique jusqu'au Brésil, et les transformations qu'ils connaissent au cours de leur trajectoire jusqu'à aujourd'hui, en s'appuyant sur la notion de « traditions de savoirs » pour la gestion des populations qui se sont développées à partir de l'époque coloniale. Cette approche participe d'une anthropologie du colonialisme, en ce qu'elle étudie les (...) conceptions de la diversité culturelle des populations dans les administrations publiques brésiliennes et les façons de gouverner celles-ci. (shrink)

This paper explores aspects of GPT-3 that have been discussed as harbingers of artificial general intelligence and, in particular, linguistic intelligence. After introducing key features of GPT-3 and assessing its performance in the light of the conversational standards set by Alan Turing in his seminal paper from 1950, the paper elucidates the difference between clever automation and genuine linguistic intelligence. A central theme of this discussion on genuine conversational intelligence is that members of a linguistic community never merely respond “algorithmically” (...) to queries through a selective kind of pattern recognition, because they must also jointly attend and act with other speakers in order to count as genuinely intelligent and trustworthy. This presents a challenge for systems like GPT-3, because representing the world in a way that makes conversational common ground salient is an essentially collective task that we can only achieve jointly with other speakers. Thus, the main difficulty for any artificially intelligent model of conversation is to account for the communicational intentions and motivations of a speaker through joint attention. These joint motivations and intentions seem to be completely absent from the standard way in which systems like GPT-3 and other artificial intelligent systems work. This is not merely a theoretical issue. Since GPT-3 and future iterations of similar systems will likely be available for commercial use through application programming interfaces, caution is needed regarding the risks created by these systems, which pass for “intelligent” but have no genuine communicational intentions, and can thereby produce fake and unreliable linguistic exchanges. (shrink)

What are the limits of the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the relational aspects of medical and nursing care? There has been a lot of recent work and applications showing the promise and efficiency of AI in clinical medicine, both at the research and treatment levels. Many of the obstacles discussed in the literature are technical in character, regarding how to improve and optimize current practices in clinical medicine and also how to develop better data bases for optimal parameter (...) adjustments and predictive algorithms. This paper argues that there are also in principle obstacles to the application of AI in clinical medicine and care where empathy is important, and that these problems cannot be solved with any of the technical and theoretical approaches that shape the current application of AI in specific areas of clinical medicine in which care for patients is fundamental. This is important, because it generates specific risks that may be overlooked otherwise, and it justifies the necessity of human monitoring and emotional intervention in clinical medicine. Consequently, difficult issues concerning moral and legal responsibility may ensue if these in principle problems are ignored. (shrink)

In this book, Carlos Montemayor and Harry Haladjian consider the relationship between consciousness and attention. The cognitive mechanism of attention has often been compared to consciousness, because attention and consciousness appear to share similar qualities. But, Montemayor and Haladjian point out, attention is defined functionally, whereas consciousness is generally defined in terms of its phenomenal character without a clear functional purpose. They offer new insights and proposals about how best to understand and study the relationship between consciousness and attention (...) by examining their functional aspects. The book's ultimate conclusion is that consciousness and attention are largely dissociated. -/- Undertaking a rigorous analysis of current empirical and theoretical work on attention and consciousness, Montemayor and Haladjian propose a spectrum of dissociation—a framework that identifies the levels of dissociation between consciousness and attention—ranging from identity to full dissociation. They argue that conscious attention, the focusing of attention on the contents of awareness, is constituted by overlapping but distinct processes of consciousness and attention. Conscious attention, they claim, evolved after the basic forms of attention, increasing access to the richest kinds of cognitive contents. -/- Montemayor and Haladjian's goal is to help unify the study of consciousness and attention across the disciplines. A focused examination of conscious attention will, they believe, enable theoretical progress that will further our understanding of the human mind. (shrink)

There has been much debate recently on the question whether essence can explain modality. Here, I examine two routes to an essentialist account of modality. The first is Hale's argument for the necessity of essence, which I will argue is — notwithstanding recent attempted defences of it — invalid by its very structure. The second is the proposal that it is essential to essential truth that it is necessary. After offering three possible versions of the view, I will argue that (...) each fails to provide a metaphysical explanation of necessity in terms of essence. (shrink)

Hegel afirma que la perspectiva del “alma bella” es sostenida por seguidores de Fichte que confunden el Yo absoluto con el yo psicofísico. Estos pensadores y literatos son reconocidos como miembros del Romanticismo alemán. Curiosamente, Hegel no menciona la obra de Jean Paul Richter entre estos casos. Jean Paul sostiene la identificación entre el Yo absoluto fichteano y la conciencia individual. Además, el autor de Hesperus define a los personajes principales de su novela como “almas bellas” y les atribuye cualidades (...) similares a las expuestas por Hegel en la concepción de su figura del Espíritu. El objetivo del presente artículo es demostrar la coincidencia entre la noción hegeliana de “alma bella” y la representación de la subjetividad expuesta por Jean Paul Richter en Hesperus. (shrink)

On a highly influential way to think of modality, that I call ‘relationalism’, the modality of a state is explained by its being composed of properties, and these properties being related by a higher-order and primitively modal relation. Examples of relationalism are the Dretske-Tooley-Armstrong account of natural necessity, many dispositional essentialist views, and Wang’s incompatibility primitivism. I argue that relationalism faces four difficulties: that the selection between modal relations is arbitrary, that the modal relation cannot belong to any logical order, (...) that to explain how the modal relation can relate properties of different adicities additional ideological complexity has to be introduced, and that not all modal constraints are relational. From the discussion, I will extract desiderata for a successor theory of modality. (shrink)

This article aims to clarify the sharp contrast between the “short path” of Heideggerian ontology and the “long path” adopted by Ricoeur as a representation of the many necessary mediations in the constitution of his philosophical anthropology. Heidegger breaks into contemporary thought with the publication of his treatise “Being and Time” (1927) as a kind of direct settlement in the field of ontology. In contrast, Ricoeur is seen - and sees himself - as a thinker of conceptual mediations in his (...) long itinerary, since adherence to Husserlian phenomenology and subsequent hermeneutic inflection, passing through confrontations with Freudian psychoanalysis, structuralism and analytical philosophy, to the creation of the book “Oneself as Another” (1990). However, the two philosophers built their works on the common horizon of hermeneutics; therefore, are there possible points of convergence between them? And how could we interpret the relevance of this possible interlocution? These questions cannot be answered without a thorough comparative reading. This text does not intend to answer them, but only to suggest elements for further investigations. (shrink)

This article presents what I call the Central Normative Proposal of Luis Villoro. This proposal is based on an interpretation of the principle of non-exclusion in ethics and epistemology. The core argument of the paper is based on a linguistic analogy that demonstrates the importance of reasonable communication for non-exclusion in epistemology, which is assumed in various theses of Villoro. A consequence of this analogy for non-exclusion in ethics is that Villoro defends basing what is reasonable on the concrete possibilities (...) of mutual understanding, starting with asymmetries and injustices that are obfuscated or eliminated in a contractualist analysis, or one that begins with strictly egalitarian principles. This criticism is compatible with egalitarian views, but it assumes a radically different point of departure. Although various theses by Villoro are compatible with egalitarian notions, given this point of departure based on asymmetries of power his proposal should be understood based on our cognitive capacities to understand and appreciate such asymmetries. For this reason, the paper concludes with an analysis of the notion of reasonableness, which under my interpretation Villoro defines in terms of our capacities for attention, that are not reducible to beliefs or systems of beliefs. In this way, the Central Normative Proposal of Villoro depends on the convergence between truth and the dignity of the members of communities in which as matter-of-fact asymmetries exist and must be eliminated through concrete communicative efforts. (shrink)

In 1836, at 19 years of age, Colombian philosopher José Eusebio Caro wrote a sociological and anthropological treatise titled Mecánica social that illustrates in context the reception of French philosophy in 19th-century Colombian philosophical thought. The purpose of this paper is to present critically Caro’s theory of the will and to bring to light the philosophical sources from which he draw, especially physiology and its role as theoretical basis for both ideology and a new “scientific” anthropology that could, in turn, (...) provide support for a science of morals and legislation, a major goal of French radical liberal thought. (shrink)

Después de enseñar la asignatura de Ética, y de la aplicar unas normas familiares escolares tradicionales, los estudiantes no se apropian de elementos éticos por varias causas: no les ven utilidad, no comprenden el contexto, o simplemente no les afecta, anulando cualquier interés al respecto. Esto impide que su obrar en la cotidianidad no sea tolerante en su ambiente escolar, generando dificultades en el docente para mediar comportamientos opuestos a una cultura de paz. Ante esto, se propone la Filosofía para (...) Niños (FpN) como apuesta ético-política que permita robustecer el pensamiento crítico, creativo y cuidadoso para mirar hacia una cultura de paz. Diego Pineda, el fundador de FpN en Colombia, sostiene que es necesario desarrollar en los estudiantes habilidades de pensamiento que, adicionales a conocimientos éticos-ciudadanos, los lleve a tomar decisiones acertadas en el abordaje pacífico del conflicto. El desarrollo paulatino del pensamiento, la cercanía a las comunidades de indagación, la incursión en habilidades cognitivas y éticas producto de las herramientas pedagógicas propias del programa de FpN, constituyen una preparación para asumir posiciones argumentadas frente a dilemas que acontecen dentro de los conflictos escolares, ello facilitará al estudiante estructurarse y lograr tomar decisiones iluminadas por la razón. (shrink)

The present text surveys and reevaluates the meaning and scope of Ortega y Gasset’s philosophy. The chapters reveal the most important aspects of his history such as the Neokantian training he went thru in Germany as well as his discovery of Husserl’s phenomenology around 1912. The work also covers his original contributions to philosophy namely vital and historical reason - and the cultural and educational mission he proposed to achieve. The Spanish – and to a certain extent the European – (...) circumstance was the milieu from which his work emerged but this does not limit Ortega’s scope. Rather, he believed that universal truths can only emerge from the particulars in which they are embedded. The publication in 2010 of a critical edition of his Complete Works opened worldwide access for many unpublished manuscripts, and some of his lectures. There is renewed interest among students and researchers in Ortega and this book uniquely delivers scholarship on his content in English. (shrink)

This commentary focuses on the importance of attention skills in the development of universal associative learning, and it explains why the centrality of attention in UAL presents a considerable difficulty for the UAL approach. Attentional abilities are not just developmentally related to UAL but are in fact explanatory of UAL. The main problem is that all the types of attention involved in UAL can be dissociated from consciousness. This means that while attention skills for UAL might be necessary for consciousness, (...) they are not sufficient because they can all occur unconsciously. Thus, the possibility that UAL capacities might not be sufficient for consciousness cannot be eliminated, thereby challenging the key claim of the UAL approach. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques are used to model human activities and predict behavior. Such systems have shown race, gender and other kinds of bias, which are typically understood as technical problems. Here we try to show that: 1) to get rid of such biases, we need a system that can understand the structure of human activities and;2) to create such a system, we need to solve foundational problems of AI, such as the common-sense problem. Additionally, when informational platforms uses these (...) models to mediate interactions with their users, which is a commonplace nowadays, there is an illusion of progress, for what is an increasingly higher influence over our own behavior is took for an increasingly higher predictive accuracy. Given this, we argue that the bias problem is deeply connected to non-technical issues that must be discussed in public spaces. -/- Técnicas de inteligência artificial (IA) são utilizadas para modelar as atividades humanas e gerar predições comportamentais. Estes sistemas têm apresentado vieses diversos, inclusive de raça e gênero, tipicamente tomados como problemas de engenharia. Realiza-se aqui um esforço argumentativo para mostrar que: 1) escapar dos vieses demanda um sistema que compreenda a estrutura das atividades humanas e; 2) criar um sistema que apresente tal compreensão, demanda a solução de problemas fundacionais da IA, em particular, o problema de como modelar o senso comum. No caso de plataformas informacionais que usam desses modelos para mediar interações com seus usuários, algo cada vez mais comum, o não reconhecimento disso dá margem a uma ilusão de progresso, em que uma crescente influência sobre nosso comportamento é tomada como uma crescente acurácia preditiva. Nesse cenário, argumenta-se que o problema dos vieses está associado a questões não técnicas que devem ser discutidas em espaços públicos. (shrink)

Abstract Nowadays, there is a deep and widespread feeling of discomfort among academics due to the psychological and labor pressures that universities exert upon their researchers by demanding endless publications. In this paper, I offer numerous pieces of evidence of this crisis, which affects primarily those who inhabit academic ecologies. First, I argue that it is convenient to understand the current situation as an expression of technologies and individual apparatuses shaped by subjectivizing ideologies, and mechanisms of exclusion, stigmatization, and replacement. (...) Second, I examine two proposals against the crisis produced by the pace of academic production framed by the Slow movement. Lastly, after making explicit some of the assumptions that undergird the university’s epistemological machine, I propose to complement Ulmer and Mountz’s project with two suggestions. On the one hand, I extend an invitation to reflect on and with students as a means to redirect the university’s teleology. On the other hand, I suggest incorporating an ontogogic approach as a resistance apparatus against the pressure from the university’s production machine. The article’s point of departure is anti-dicotonegative because it is based on a summative approach rather than in an agonistic procedure. In other words, I propose two additional tools that can be put to the test to contribute to solving the university publication crisis. (shrink)

¿Qué tipo de agencia es necesaria para la personalidad jurídica? ¿Cuáles son los requisitos cognitivos y racionales que los sistemas legales asumen acerca de los sujetos de la ley? ¿Cómo es que los seres humanos cumplen con estos requisitos? En trabajo previo (Cáceres y Montemayor, 2016), hemos argumentado que estas preguntas requieren un nuevo acercamiento a la teoría del derecho, basado en hallazgos recientes en ciencia cognitiva, que van más allá de tratamientos teóricos neuro-legales contemporáneos. Aquí construimos sobre esta propuesta, (...) ahora enfocándonos en cuestiones de agencia y normatividad, incluyendo tipos de agencia que son relevantes para la epistemología social. La conclusión principal del artículo es que los muy estrictos requisitos cognitivos que se asumen sobre las capacidades explícitas de racionalidad de los agentes cognitivos, presupuestos por la ley, no sólo son incompatibles con los hallazgos en psicología, sino que un análisis sistemático de la agencia moral y epistémica también es necesario para poder entender la normatividad legal. El argumento principal es que tipos de agencia colectiva, moral y epistémica, difieren de la agencia individual, la cual también debe distinguirse como moral y epistémica. Fundamentalmente, la agencia colectiva difiere de la individual no sólo con base en diferencias con respecto a la racionalidad, sino también con base en los criterios de integración informativa. Varias consecuencias de este análisis son evaluadas, incluyendo aspectos concernientes a integración informativa para juicios y decisiones, comunicación fiable para la agencia epistémica, y la integración de consideraciones morales en el razonamiento jurídico. Una revisión comprensiva de la noción de “autonomía” es justificada por esta propuesta, en parte porque los requisitos comunes para la personalidad y autonomía jurídica son muy demandantes e inadecuados en muchos casos, y en parte porque la agencia colectiva debe tomarse en consideración como un tipo fundamental de agencia legal responsable para procesos de integración informativa. Basándonos en la distinción entre formas epistémicas y morales de razonamiento, explicamos cómo los sistemas legales necesitan de altos niveles de integración cognitiva para la responsabilidad legal a nivel colectivo. (shrink)

We extend classical work by Janusz Czelakowski on the closure properties of the class of matrix models of entailment relations—nowadays more commonly called multiple-conclusion logics—to the setting of non-deterministic matrices (Nmatrices), characterizing the Nmatrix models of an arbitrary logic through a generalization of the standard class operators to the non-deterministic setting. We highlight the main differences that appear in this more general setting, in particular: the possibility to obtain Nmatrix quotients using any compatible equivalence relation (not necessarily a congruence); the (...) problem of determining when strict homomorphisms preserve the logic of a given Nmatrix; the fact that the operations of taking images and preimages cannot be swapped, which determines the exact sequence of operators that generates, from any complete semantics, the class of all Nmatrix models of a logic. Many results, on the other hand, generalize smoothly to the non-deterministic setting: we show for instance that a logic is finitely based if and only if both the class of its Nmatrix models and its complement are closed under ultraproducts. We conclude by mentioning possible developments in adapting the Abstract Algebraic Logic approach to logics induced by Nmatrices and the associated equational reasoning over non-deterministic algebras. (shrink)

Karl Marx’s writings about Spain have been published and studied on several occasions. Among the sources listed by Pedro Ribas, William Walton and his work The Revolutions of Spain, from 1808 to the End of 1836 figures among those mentioned most. Rather surprising, given that Walton sympathised with both Spanish Carlism and Portuguese Miguelism. Though he was born and died in England, Walton lived in the Spanish and Portuguese empires, in America and in the French colony of Santo Domingo at (...) various stages in the course of his career. A Catholic in an Anglican country, he translated Puigblanch’s The Inquisition Unmasked. Neither did his political ideas remain unchanged throughout his life. This paper looks at the influence thatWalton had on Marx’s ideas about Spain, particularly as regards the Carlist political movement. Marx read Walton in the British Library and took detailed notes from his book. He used these notes in his articles regarding the events that occurred in the country. We will also reflect on the place that Walton begins to occupy in Peninsular historiography, through the bibliographical information on his changing political viewpoints and his proximity to contemporary events.For this article we started with the study of the biography and the work of William Walton, which led us to discover a possible connection with the thinking of Karl Marx. Our investigations have led us to consider that Walton’s writings on Spain helped to form the opinions expressed by Marx in his press articles. (shrink)

Is it possible to know anything about life we have not yet encountered? We know of only one example of life: our own. Given this, many scientists are inclined to doubt that any principles of Earth’s biology will generalize to other worlds in which life might exist. Let’s call this the “N = 1 problem.” By comparison, we expect the principles of geometry, mechanics, and chemistry would generalize. Interestingly, each of these has predictable consequences when applied to biology. The surface-to-volume (...) property of geometry, for example, limits the size of unassisted cells in a given medium. This effect is real, precise, universal, and predictive. Furthermore, there are basic problems all life must solve if it is to persist, such as resistance to radiation, faithful inheritance, and energy regulation. If these universal problems have a limited set of possible solutions, some common outcomes must consistently emerge. In this chapter, I discuss the N = 1 problem, its implications, and my response (Mariscal 2014). I hold that our current knowledge of biology can justify believing certain generalizations as holding for life anywhere. Life on Earth may be our only example of life, but this is only a reason to be cautious in our approach to life in the universe, not a reason to give up altogether. In my account, a candidate biological generalization is assessed by the assumptions it makes. A claim is accepted only if its justification includes principles of evolution, but no contingent facts of life on Earth. (shrink)

The objective of the present review on the evolution of Green Chemistry, since its emergence until 2016, aimed an integrated vision of its progress along the three phases of its development: emergence, divulgation and consolidation. The methodology involved the analysis of a selection of bibliography on the evolution of GC collected from issues of the ACS symposia series; editorials in specialized GC journals; and commemorative birthday papers/editorials of these journals and of the GC itself. The analysis allowed to identify and (...) discuss the characteristics and conceptions of GC agents about fundamental concepts and procedures, in order to visualize and better understand the state of knowledge and the subject areas that make up the field. The main alterations identified in the evolution of GC were: it acquired a better defined identity, with more participation of academy and increased scope; was progressively framed in sustainability; has been aspiring to a holistic frame and to a change on the nature of the innovation for its implementation, from incremental to transformative. The analysis suggests that for supporting expansion and consolidation of GC the following aspects deserve attention: full validation of chemical greenness by metrics; better characterization of the frontiers of GC research areas/themes; increased integration between academy and industry; and penetration in chemistry curricula. Its basic philosophy being the practice of a chemistry more focused on the environment preservation, GC means a new stage in nature and in the history of Chemistry. (shrink)

Typically, existentialist analyses of “America” have been limited to North America (more specifically, the United States). I argue that developing an adequate framework for existentially analyzing America requires a turn to Mexican existentialism. In Emilio Uranga’s and Jorge Portilla’s writings, we discover new conceptual tools for understanding Americanness as such. These thinkers help us imagine an account of American being that does not restrict itself to the United States by using the concepts of existentialism to describe the crises their neighbors (...) to the north as well as they themselves face. American existence has been historically characterized by a convergence (oftentimes clash) of disparate races, ethnicities, languages, cultures, religions, and identities. As history unfolded, this convergence led to various existential crises across the Americas. Whereas the US American way of life is marred by a blustering, naïve, and purposeless misuse of freedom that disregards the other, the existential crisis the Mexican lives is characterized by “accidentality” and “zozobra.” Despite these important differences, all existentialists, and the Mexican existentialists of the Hyperion Group especially, remind us that there is a common way to overcome the various existential crises plaguing the Americas, and that is to exercise freedom in a purposeful, communally conscious manner. (shrink)

La 4e de couverture indique : "Dès la fin du XVIIIe siècle, la référence à Rousseau devient incontournable pour la pensée juridique, comme si toute réflexion sur le droit, et pas uniquement dans le domaine du droit public, devrait régler ses comptes avec le Genevois. Bien entendu, cette référence changera de signification politique avec le temps et l’évolution des institutions étatiques européennes. Mais l’extension du suffrage universel et la consolidation de la démocratie au XXe siècle sont loin de signer la (...) fin des querelles autour de l’œuvre. Au contraire, la question Rousseau revient dans toute grande théorie du droit public. Et l’histoire de ce cheminement nous livre un ensemble d’indices dont l’intérêt va au-delà du droit. Les différents chapitres de l’ouvrage se proposent d’explorer, à partir de l’étude de quelques grands juristes français et allemands, la portée que la philosophie de Rousseau a pu avoir pour la pensée juridique.". (shrink)

Después de introducir el artículo (§1), repasaré los aspectos más generales y centrales de la literatura sobre la fundamentación (§2); esta tarea me parece valiosa ya que no existen revisiones generales y actualizadas en español sobre el tema. Después, argumentaré que la fundamentación no es una medida de complejidad física, y que, sin un vínculo necesario con la complejidad, quedan pocas razones para pensar que la fundamentación une a los diferentes estratos de la realidad física, que es una de las (...) motivaciones más importantes para introducir relaciones de dependencia (§3). (shrink)

Reseña del libro: Giovanni Reale. Invitación al pensamiento antiguo. San Pablo, Océano Azul, 2017. 134 p.

Cuando un hablante emite una proferencia x, hay ocasiones en las quela audiencia puede entender otra cosa que diverge del significado literalde los signos o símbolos empleados en x; a saber, la audiencia, alescuchar x, entiende y. Sin embargo, esto no se debe a que en algunacircunstancia particular el significado literal de x cambie (éste es atemporale inmutable); pero entonces, cómo o por qué es que en algunasocasiones, por ejemplo en el sarcasmo, la ironía o los albures, la audiencialogra identificar (...) un significado no estandarizado (que puede variarde ocasión en ocasión y que no siempre se infiere el mismo significado“diferente” del literal para una o más proferencias dadas) que se infierea partir no sólo de la expresión empleada, sino también de cómo ésta seemite (tonos de voz, semblantes físicos, guiños, etcétera), bajo qué condiciones(contexto), qué sea lo que “se quiera decir” (intencionalidaddel hablante) y cuál es la respuesta que se espera (expectativa que tieneel hablante de su audiencia).Así, el presente trabajo buscará descibrir precisamente las repuestasa tales interrogantes: cómo y por qué (o con base a qué) podemosentender y al escuchar x sin que nada de la primera esté contenido ni directani indirectamente en el segundo. Para ello abordaré el programa delfilósofo británco Herbert Paul Grice enfocado a la pragmática, en el queexpone la distinción que hay entre el significado literal y el significado delhablante, dándole a este último una singular importancia. (shrink)

Este artículo perteneciente a la sección de Bioética en Práctica de la revista Persona y Bioética 24, fue publicado originalmente en El Mundo, el primero de abril de 2019. La columna puede consultarse en esta URL https://www.elmundo.com/noticia/ Diagnosticospresupuestos-y-mercados/376170. Así mismo, el texto se dejó tal y como aparece en el publicado. El autor autorizó la publicación en esta revista y por ser una publicación para El Mundo, los derechos de autor no están bajo la licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 4.0 Internacional (...) de la Revista. (shrink)