Derecho natural y positivismo jurídico.--Derecho y poder.--Ley y conciencia.--Hans Welzel.--Obras de Hans Welzel.

The paper contains a conceptual analysis of “act of toleration” and the property of “being tolerant”. Being tolerant is understood as a dispositional property of persons manifested in what the author calls the “circumstances of toleration”. The main circumstances distinguished are: a tendency to prohibit a certain behaviour and the competence to determine the deontic status of the behaviour in question. An act of toleration, then, consists in not prohibiting (or cancelling the prohibition of) that behaviour. It is argued that (...) this requires the existence of two different normative systems, the “basic system”, and the “justifying system”. Acts of toleration must be based on reasons coming from the latter. This insight enables one to establish a difference between reasonable and unreasonable toleration, as well as between toleration and related concepts like indifference, acquiescence, etc. The analysis also introduces the distinction between “vertical” and “horizontal” toleration. Acceptance of this last category implies that toleration does not necessarily require hierarchical relationships between those who tolerate and those whose actions are tolerated. (shrink)

The article analyses the distinction between the private and the public sphere from a conceptual and from a normative point of view. On the conceptual level, it is argued that the common dichotomous view is incomplete, giving rise to conceptual confusions which can be overcome by a careful distinction between the intimate and the private sphere. While the boundary between the private and the public is a conventional matter, the sphere of intimacy, including thoughts as well as a certain type (...) of actions, is empirically delimited. On the normative level, a number of arguments for or against the extension or restriction of the private sphere as well as for or against the intervention of the state in its citizens’ spheres of intimacy is discussed from a liberal point of view. (shrink)

Un problema puede ser viejo por persistente, porque todavía no se ha encontrado la respuesta adecuada. Pero también puede ser viejo por recurrente, por reaparecer cuando se eliminan las condiciones que hicieron posible su solución en el pasado. Y un problema es nuevo cuando es el resultado de desafíos inéditos o hasta ahora desconocidos. El Estado de Derecho y Terrorismo es un viejo problema recurrente. El impacto de las investigaciones neurológicas en el concepto de responsabilidad es un viejo problema persistente. (...) La erosión de las estructuras institucionales a nivel internacional es un viejo problema persistente. Un nuevo problema es la relación entre ética, política y derecho desde el punto de vista de una fi losofía analítica. Enfrentarse a estos viejos y nuevos problemas de la fi losofía del derecho desde una perspectiva analítica en el contexto de América Latina es una tarea doblemente difi cultosa. (shrink)

Los tres conceptos mencionados en el título de mi presentación son conceptos referenciales negativos, es decir, constituyen el rechazo o apartamiento de conceptos supuestamente más básicos cuales son -en este caso- los de unidad, semejanza e igualdad. Si se admite esta aproximación conceptual, pienso que también cabe admitir que el valor o disvalor de aquellos dependerá de la concepción que uno tenga de estos últimos. Dado que, a su vez, la semejanza y la unidad pueden, en cierto modo, ser referidas (...) a la igualdad, intentaré aquí precisar el concepto de igualdad (I), recordaré algunas versiones de un pluralismo que considero moral y políticamente inaceptable (II) y, finalmente, propondré distinguir entre aquellas desigualdades que necesariamente habrán de darse en toda sociedad democrática y las discriminaciones socio-culturales propias de regímenes totalitariamente excluyentes (III). [Fragmento]. (shrink)

Recent advances in medical technology, notwithstanding their potential blessings, have engendered a number of new ethical problems. Questions raised by rapidly improving techniques for the transplantation of human organs and body tissues have become especially urgent, The article tries to clarify and evaluate the main arguments advanced for and against different arrangements in this area. The first part concentrates on the problem of acquisition. The ethical status of eight ways of obtaining human body parts is investigated. The cases are derived (...) from combinations of three criteria: whether the donor consents or not; whether or not he/she is alive or dead at the time of extraction; and whether or not donors are compensated. In the second part, the problem of adjudication is treated. Three possible arrangements are examined: market, organ bank, and club. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo se intenta ilustrar con ejemplos de la historia y de la actualidad constitucional de América Latina la paradójica actitud de no pocos juristas y políticos latinoamericanos que simultáneamente profesan una fe inconmovible en el poder de conformación social del ordenamiento jurídico a la vez que aceptan su precaria eficacia. La Constitución se convierte en un mito político y la impunidad en sinónimo de poder. En tales condiciones, parece aventurado establecer una relación causal entre orden constitucional y (...) democracia. Sólo una política jurídica que tome en serio los derechos y deberes constitucionales podrá quizás revertir esta situación. Desgraciadamente la probabilidad de que tal sea el caso a fines del siglo XX es menor que a comienzos de la centuria. (shrink)

The article analyses the distinction between the private and the public sphere from a conceptual and from a normative point of view. On the conceptual level, it is argued that the common dichotomous view is incomplete, giving rise to conceptual confusions which can be overcome by a careful distinction between the intimate and the private sphere. While the boundary between the private and the public is a conventional matter, the sphere of intimacy, including thoughts as well as a certain type (...) of actions, is empirically delimited. On the normative level, a number of arguments for or against the extension or restriction of the private sphere as well as for or against the intervention of the state in its citizens’ spheres of intimacy is discussed from a liberal point of view. (shrink)

Paternalism, understood as coercive intervention with the behavior of a person in order to prevent her from causing harm to herself, is a highly controversial issue, because it implies a departure from the widely recognized principle of harm to others. Some conceptual differences between legal paternalism and other forms of state coercion that also depart from the principle of harm to others will be indicated. This is followed by an analysis of the arguments that are usually brought forth against legal (...) paternalism. And finally, the possibility of determining ethically justifiable types of legal paternalism is explored. (shrink)

Being based on the Ernesto Garzon’s analysis of the authors from the cur- rent of the “nature of the things”, the goal of the present article is to demonstrate that the postulates of this current do not criticize and refute the legal positivism from the epoch but quite on the contrary, they support and even complement it. The similarities between the assumptions uphold by authors from the two currents lead to the conclusion that the theses of the legal positivism (...) and the “nature of the things” streams have never been in firm opposition as previously thought.Resumen:Basado en la exposición de Ernesto Garzón sobre los autores de la llamada “naturaleza de las cosas”, este artículo pretende hacernos ver que las tesis de esta corriente fuera de criticar o de refutar las bases del positivismo jurídico de la época, tal y como pretendían hacer, en realidad, lo soportan y hasta lo complementan. Las similitudes que hay entre las posturas de algunos autores pertenecientes a ambas corrientes, llevan a que el autor niegue que haya existido una disputa “real” entre ambas tesis. (shrink)

In this paper, the author contends that Leader's attempt to ground the value of toleration on a common understanding of democracy faces a number of fundamental obstacles. Such obstacles could only be overcome if both liberals and their opponents were to reach an agreement on the value of democracy and thereby converge in their support of toleration. The author shows that far from providing a common ground that liberals and their opponents can share, the so‐called “shareable understanding” of democracy appeals (...) primarily to liberals. The author also argues that Garzón Valdés's thesis that democracy is the system best suited to the flourishing of toleration faces the same kind of difficulty, namely, that not every group in a liberal constitutional regime can be convinced of the priority of democratic principles over their other fundamental value‐commitments. (shrink)

Esta colección de ensayos o «ejercicios de precisión conceptual» intenta aportar alguna claridad en el tratamiento de cuestiones de relevancia político-moral como el concepto de tolerancia, el significado moral del concepto de dignidad humana, la calamidad moral del Holocausto, la respuesta a la violencia extraordinaria, la fundamentación racional de las normas morales, lo íntimo, lo privado y lo público, hipocresía, simpatía y Estado de derecho o pluralismo, diferencia y desigualdad. Se presentan como «propuestas» que no pretenden ser «verdaderas» sino tan (...) sólo «plausibles», en consonancia con la comprensión que del trabajo intelectual tiene el autor, al que le importa expresar reflexiones que permitan esquivar el dogmatismo y estimular la saludable duda. Pero estas propuestas no penden en el aire, sino que se apoyan en presupuestos kantianos y democrático-liberales. Tienen un carácter cuasi normativo en el sentido de que aspiran a ser compartidas no sólo en el plano de la teoría sino también en los correspondientes cursos de acción. Se trata de una obra, además, escrita desde la convicción de que «conviene no despreciar la ayuda del poeta: las creaciones intelectuales no surgen ni se mantienen aisladas; todas ellas se integran en lo que llamamos cultura. Esto vale también para el caso del derecho». Al abrir así el campo de las cuestiones jurídico-morales a un público más amplio que el especializado, estas Propuestas representan una introducción idónea al mundo del derecho. (shrink)

Leader and Garzón Valdés are correct to link toleration to democracy rather than liberalism. However, it is the democratic character of society and the process of democratic decision‐making that give rise to a genuine practice of tolerance, not an abstract and regulative ideal of democracy, such as they appeal to. Whereas the latter approach collapses into the standard liberal accounts of toleration both rightly find wanting, the former fits with a republican notion of deliberative democracy. This perspective corresponds (...) to the circumstances of toleration and promotes tolerance as a virtue that is intrinsic both to the nature of democratic debate and to the securing of uncoerced agreement amongst people possessing different beliefs and values. As such, it proves more compatible with pluralism, and hence with toleration, than liberalism. (shrink)

Queremos pensar nuestro tiempo y pensamos a nosotros mismos. Queremos hablar y escuchar porque tenemos algo que decirnos. Queremos seguir reflexionando sobre lo que significa una comunidad cultural iberoamericana y, dentro de ella, qué significa pensar en español. Como dice Ernesto Garzón Valdés: "queremos pensar sin descuidar nuestra tradición filosófica y sin olvidar desde donde reflexionamos". A estas alturas del proceso ya sabemos lo que tenemos que evitar: el casticismo que lleva al provincianismo y lo abstractamente universal (...) que esquiva la realidad. Queremos pensar los temas de nuestro tiempo situadamente y para ello nada mejor que dejarse guiar por el lenguaje que compartimos: el español o el portugués. [Fragmento]. (shrink)

Como casi todos los conceptos fi losófi cos, el de «validez normativa» tiene altos grados de ambigüedad y de vaguedad. En este trabajo me encargo de analizar la postura de distintos autores que han tratado de dar respuesta a la pregunta ¿qué significa que una norma sea «válida»? Para ello, tomo como hilo conductor la obra de Ernesto Garzón Valdés. Esto se debe a que los trabajos de Ernesto Garzón dedicados a este tema, le ofrecen (...) al lector un análisis crítico y comprensivo de algunas de las posturas teóricas más relevantes sobre el concepto de validez normativa. Asimismo, trabajar a través de su obra tiene un doble benefi cio: por un lado, no sólo nos permite conocer a fondo la postura teórica de autores que pertenecen a distintas corrientes del pensamiento, como Hans Kelsen, H.L.A. Hart, Francisco Suárez o von Wright por ejemplo, sino que, por el otro, nos permite conocer la postura del mismo Garzón y sus críticas a los diferentes modelos conceptuales. (shrink)

In this article, we shift the usual analytical attention of the GPN framework from lead firms to suppliers in the network and from production to IT services. Our focus is on how Indian IT suppliers embed in the Netherlands along the threefold characterization of societal, territorial and network embeddedness. We argue that Indian IT suppliers attempt to display societal embeddedness when they move to The Netherlands. Our findings reveal that the endeavour by Indian IT suppliers to territorially dis-embed from the (...) Dutch context is reinforced by their peripheral position in the network and their ability to offshore work in a bid to contain costs, in addition to the influence of client domination. Therefore, territorial embeddedness is considered to be secondary to societal embeddedness which is intertwined with client interest while neglecting the interest of other network members. Nonetheless, the inter-firm relationship is complex, given the tension between societal, territorial and network embeddedness. While preferring Indian IT suppliers because of their low pricing, Dutch clients also insist on compliance with the institutional context of the Netherlands especially when it comes to Dutch employees. This results in hybridization which means that Indian IT suppliers find ways to adhere to the institutional framework for Dutch nationals while simultaneously insulating Indian employees from the same. Consequently, a highly unfair segmented internal labour market develops, with Dutch nationals being treated more favourably as compared to Indian nationals. Nonetheless, to address these violations, Indian employees prefer individual strategies of resilience and rework rather than a collectivization response. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor and Ernest Lepore [(1992) Holism: a shopper's guide, Oxford: Blackwell; (1996) in R. McCauley (Ed.) The Churchlands and their critics , Cambridge: Blackwell] have launched a powerful attack against Paul Churchland's connectionist theory of semantics--also known as state space semantics. In one part of their attack, Fodor and Lepore argue that the architectural and functional idiosyncrasies of connectionist networks preclude us from articulating a notion of conceptual similarity applicable to state space semantics. Aarre Laakso and Gary Cottrell [(1998) (...) in M. A. Gernsbacher & S. Derry (Eds) Proceedings of the 20th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Mahway, NJ: Erlbaum; Philosophical Psychology ] 13, 47-76 have recently run a number of simulations on simple feedforward networks and applied a mathematical technique for measuring conceptual similarity in the representational spaces of those networks. Laakso and Cottrell contend that their results decisively refute Fodor and Lepore's criticisms. Paul Churchland [(1998) Journal of Philosophy, 95, 5-32 ] goes further. He uses Laakso and Cottrell's neurosimulations to argue that connectionism does furnish us with all we need to construct a robust theory of semantics and a robust theory of translation. In this paper I shall argue that whereas Laakso and Cottrell's neurocomputational results may provide us with a rebuttal of Fodor and Lepore's argument, Churchland's conclusion is far too optimistic. In particular, I shall try to show that connectionist modelling does not provide any objective criterion for achieving a one-to-one accurate translational mapping across networks. (shrink)

¿Por qué construír al pueblo es la principal tarea de una política radical? -- Una ética del compromiso militante -- ¿Vida nuda o indeterminación social? -- ¿Puede la inmanencia explicar las luchas sociales? Crítica a Imperio.

According to Carruthers ants and bees have minds. This claim is to be understood realistically. We do not interpret the overt behaviour of ants and bees by ascribing to them beliefs and desires in an instrumental manner. They rather possess minds in the relevant cognitive sense. In this paper, I propose to pave the way for a reductio against such a polemic view. In particular, I shall argue that if ants and bees have minds, by the same token, plants do (...) have minds too. In my view, the problem has to do with Carruthers' underlying technical concept of cognitive architecture; a concept which, as I shall argue, can be called into question both on empirical and conceptual grounds. Según Carruthers, las hormigas y las abejas tienen mente. Esta afirmación debe entenderse de modo realista. No es que interpretemos la conducta abierta de hormigas y abejas en términos de creencias y deseos atribuidos instrumentalmente. Se trata más bien de que tienen tales estados mentales en el sentido cognitivo relevante. En este trabajo, me propongo llevar esta polémica concepción a una reductio. En particular, argumentaré que si las hormigas y las abejas tienen mente, por la misma razón las plantas también la tendrían. A mi modo de ver, el problema tiene que ver con el concepto técnico de arquitectura cognitiva de Carruthers ; un concepto que puede ser cuestionado sobre bases empíricas y conceptuales, según argüiré. (shrink)

Most theories about virtue cultivation fall under the general umbrella of the role model approach, according to which virtue is acquired by emulating role models, and where those role models are usually conceived of as superior in some relevant respect to the learners. I argue that although we need role models to cultivate virtue, we also need good and close relationships with people who are not our superiors. The overemphasis on role models is misguided and misleading, and a good antidote (...) draws on the Aristotelian concept of character friendship. Character friendship constitutes a unique form of experience in which we share a substantial way of seeing with a close other; facilitates a unique form of knowledge, the knowledge of a particular person ; develops other emotions important for virtue cultivation besides admiration, such as love, shame, trust, and hope; and is a praxis in which cooperative interactions and discussions function as a bridge between habituation of virtue at home and the public life. Character friendship provides necessary elements for human cultivation of virtue that the sole experience of having a role model does not. (shrink)

In this commentary I explore nonclassical connectionism as a coherent framework for evaluation in the spirit of the Newell Test. Focusing on knowledge integration, development, real-time performance, and flexible behavior, I argue that NCC's “within-theory rank ordering” would place subsymbolic modeling in a better position. Failure to adopt a symbolic level of thought cannot be interpreted as a weakness.

Engaging Polanyi’s embeddedness–disembeddedness framework, this study explored the work experiences of Bhil children employed in Indian Bt cottonseed GPNs. The innovative visual technique of drawings followed by interviews was used. Migrant children, working under debt bondage, underwent greater exploitation and perennial and severe depersonalized bullying, indicative of commodification of labour and disembeddedness. In contrast, children working in their home villages were not under debt bondage and underwent less exploitation and occasional and mild depersonalized bullying, indicative of how civil society organizations, (...) along with the state, attempt to re-embed economic activities in the social context. Polanyi’s double movement was evident. ‘Place’ emerged as the pivotal factor determining children’s experiences. A ‘protective alliance’ of community controls and social power, associated with in-group affiliations and cohesive ties, stemming from a common village and tribal identity, aided children working at home for Bhil farmers. ‘Asymmetric intergroup inequality’ due to pronounced social identity and class differences, coupled with locational constraints and developmental disadvantage, made migrant children vulnerable targets. Social embeddedness influences how child workers are treated because it forces employers to be ethical and not engage in bullying. However, by shifting production to children’s home villages, there is an attempt to obscure the difference between child labour and child work. Thus, the seeds of disembeddedness are sown through the very act of re-embeddeding, potentially hampering future interventions. (shrink)

In this hugely influential book, Laclau and Mouffe examine the workings of hegemony and contemporary social struggles, and their significance for democratic theory. With the emergence of new social and political identities, and the frequent attacks on Left theory for its essentialist underpinnings, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy remains as relevant as ever, positing a much-needed antidote against ‘Third Way’ attempts to overcome the antagonism between Left and Right.

This paper consists of four parts. In section 1, I shall offer a strategy to bypass a counter‐example which Gareth Evans (1975) offers against Quine’s Thesis of the Inscrutability of Reference. In section 2, I shall introduce a criterion recently pro‐duced by Crispin Wright (1997) in terms of ‘psychological simplicity’ which threatens the perverse route offered in section 1. In section 3, I shall argue that a LOT model of human cognition could motivate Wright’s criterion. In section 4, I shall (...) argue that if we instead model human cognition by a recurrent neural network, then Wright’s criterion is unmotivated. Thus I shall produce a Connectionist Defence of the Inscrutability Thesis. (shrink)