Purpose As part of an international study of knowledge of and attitudes to Snowden’s revelations about the activities of the National Security Agency/Government Communications Headquarters, this paper aims to deal with Mexico, taking its socio-cultural and political environment surrounding privacy and state surveillance into account. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire was answered by 160 Mexican University students. The quantitative responses to the survey were statistically analysed as well as qualitative considerations of free text answers. Findings Snowden’s revelations have had a limited influence (...) over Mexican youngsters’ attitudes toward privacy and state surveillance, although there is a great awareness by Mexican young people of individual rights issues. Practical implications The study results imply a need to build a collective awareness of the importance of the right to privacy and its responsibilities, the available technological options for individuals to exert their own privacy and security and the democratic means to agree and enforce appropriate legal restrictions on state surveillance. Social implications The results of this study based indicate an urgent necessity for providing Mexican youngsters with opportunities to learn more about privacy, liberty, individual autonomy and national security. Originality/value This study is the first attempt to investigate the social impact of Snowden’s revelations on Mexican students’ attitudes toward privacy and state surveillance as part of cross-cultural analyses between eight countries. (shrink)

This piece is one of among a handful that seek in the first instance to reveal the origin of African philosophy as an academic discipline, the source of its unity and distinctiveness. The discipline of African philosophy originates in tragedy, out of pain, confusion and rage stemming from colonial destruction; destruction that is responsible for what Fanon calls the ‘negro neurosis' caused by what Biko would describe as the unbearable fusion of colonised and coloniser. I argue that the birth of (...) African philosophy as an academic discipline is largely responsible for its character and, crucially, for its distinctive creative possibilities. South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 27 2008: pp. 285-295. (shrink)

This piece is one of among a handful that seek in the first instance to reveal the origin of African philosophy as an academic discipline, the source of its unity and distinctiveness. The discipline of African philosophy originates in tragedy, out of pain, confusion and rage stemming from colonial destruction; destruction that is responsible for what Fanon calls the ‘negro neurosis’ caused by what Biko would describe as the unbearable fusion of colonised and coloniser. I argue that the birth of (...) African philosophy as an academic discipline is largely responsible for its character and, crucially, for its distinctive creative possibilities. (shrink)

In this paper I assess the adequacy of no-conspiracy conditions employed in the usual derivations of the Bell inequality in the context of EPR correlations. First, I look at the EPR correlations from a purely phenomenological point of view and claim that common cause explanations of these cannot be ruled out. I argue that an appropriate common cause explanation requires that no-conspiracy conditions are reinterpreted as mere common cause-measurement independence conditions. In the right circumstances then, violations of measurement independence need (...) not entail any kind of conspiracy (nor backwards in time causation). To the contrary, if measurement operations in the EPR context are taken to be causally relevant in a specific way to the experiment outcomes, their explicit causal role provides the grounds for a common cause explanation of the corresponding correlations. (shrink)

In a recent paper in this Journal San Pedro I formulated a conjecture relating Measurement Independence and Parameter Independence, in the context of common cause explanations of EPR correlations. My conjecture suggested that a violation of Measurement Independence would entail a violation of Parameter Independence as well. Leszek Wroński has shown that conjecture to be false. In this note, I review Wroński’s arguments and agree with him on the fate of the conjecture. I argue that what is interesting about (...) the conjecture, however, is not whether it is true or false in itself, but the reasons for the actual verdict, and their implications regarding locality. (shrink)

In this paper I assess the adequacy of no-conspiracy conditions employed in the usual derivations of the Bell inequality in the context of EPR correlations. First, I look at the EPR correlations from a purely phenomenological point of view and claim that common cause explanations of these cannot be ruled out. I argue that an appropriate common cause explanation requires that no-conspiracy conditions are re-interpreted as mere common cause-measurement independence conditions. In the right circumstances then, violations of measurement independence need (...) not entail any kind of conspiracy (nor backwards in time causation). To the contrary, if measurement operations in the EPR context are taken to be causally relevant in a specific way to the experiment outcomes, their explicit causal role provides the grounds for a common cause explanation of the corresponding correlations. (shrink)

Scott Sehon argues that the conception of determinism employed in the Consequence Argument is implausible because it rules out the logical possibility of the laws of nature being violated. Sehon says, for instance, that determinism is incompatible with the logical possibility of an interventionist God. His objection to the Consequence Argument boils down to a way of reading the box in what is implied by van Inwagen's conception of determinism. Sehon reads the box as logical necessity, and this clearly precludes (...) the logical possibility of the laws of nature being violated. However, I argue that determinism as employed in the argument is not implausible. First, I try to show that it is legitimate to read the box of □ as either metaphysical or logical necessity depending on the account of laws that one assumes. If one accepts a fully Humean account of laws, then the box should be read as logical necessity. Nevertheless, I argue that this is not a problem for the Humean. On the other hand, if one reads the box as metaphysical necessity, which is mainly motivated by the dispositional account of laws and might be motivated by Armstrong's account, then determinism is compatible with the logical possibility of the laws being violated. (shrink)

Much has been said about the logical difference between rules and principles, yet few authors have focused on the distinct logical connectives linking the normative conditions of both norms. I intend to demonstrate that principles, unlike rules, are norms whose antecedents are linguistically formulated in a generic fashion, and thus logically described as inclusive disjunctions. This core feature incorporates the relevance criteria of normative antecedents into the world of principles and also explains their aptitude to conflict with opposing norms, namely (...) that their consequents are fulfilled to varying extents more frequently than those of rules. I conclude that the property of genericity should be predicated to the norm antecedent of principles, more precisely to the hypothetical action. This is of paramount importance to explain, in terms of logical implication and exclusion, the expansibility of competing principles, in contrast with the exclusive character of conflicting rules. (shrink)

v. 1. Estética, fenomenología y hermenéutica -- v. 2. Filosofía de la ciencia, filosofía del lenguaje y filosofía de la psiquiatría -- v. 3. Ética y filosofía política, filosofía de la religión e historia de la filosofía.

Abstract. In the increasingly notorious philosophy of new materialism, a serious attempt to redefine subjectivity in terms of its non-dualistic nature can be ascertained. The criticism on dualisms draws directly on a wider critique focusing the anthropocentric and correlationist models that shaped modernity and modern thought. In this paper, I consider new materialism’s non-dualism as a starting point from which a subsequent decline of subjectivity can be purported. This decline does not involve immediately, or at all, devaluation but, instead, it (...) is interpreted as an instance of neutralization. The neutralized subject is an underlying phenomenon of the ontology and the epistemology that relates closer to new materialist philosophy. New materialism’s conceptual framework draws widely on Deleuze and Latour’s thought. On what subjectivity is concerned, the concepts of “becoming” and of the “virtual” are crucial in more recent theorizations aligned with new materialism, where a commitment to overcome the barriers imposed by a central and substantial subjectivity is present (for example in Rosi Braidotti’s or Karen Barad’s writings). At the same time, the theory of assemblages and the claim for the existence and obser-vation of the agencies of (inanimate) matter provide a further element, along with a further set of concepts that, as I claim, reinforce the becoming-neutral of the subject. In this case, the works of Manuel de Landa or Jane Bennett are seminal. Finally, when this neutralization is taken as part of a realistic post-humanist conception, the possibility of a new cultural model and a new set of values arises. The edification of a new cultural model, although not entirely intentional or socially widespread, is made possible when the neutralization of subjectivity accompanies a withdrawal of a misleading representation of its centrality and substantiality without denying the properties of its particular embodiment. (shrink)

In this article, I try to determine the innovatory moment of Descartes´ Metaphysics, that is, the conceptual work that became the turning point in the most significant philosophical polemics in the subsequent period after the construction of Cartesian system. This turning point is the way Descartes thinks the concept of divine power, rather than the discovery of the cogito or its implications in re-shaping knowledge. Starting from this, Descartes will forge the concepts of transcendence and rationality, so essential in his (...) works and all along the second half of XVIIth century. (shrink)

Conditionals give rise to stand-offs that have become well known from Gibbard’s initial Sly Pete example. The stand-offs can be seen as evidence for the context-sensitivity of conditionals and arguably do not involve disagreement. I claim that the latter feature lends credibility to an indexical treatment of indicatives.

In this piece I will focus on what I think is a central aspect of Albert Camus’s thinking, embodied in the distinction he makes in The Rebel between rebel and revolutionary. His is a philosophy of rebellion and he thinks that revolutions are a distorted expression of our need to rebel against that which we cannot accept. His views should serve as a counterpoint to those who think that an all-or-nothing approach to social change is desirable. And the issue here (...) is not that embodied crudely in the reactionary /radical dichotomy. Rather, it is a defence of the need to rebel within limits, not so much to preserve the old against the threat of the new but, instead, to preserve basic human decency from the dark side of outrage, without dismissing what is crucial about outrage and emancipatory struggles. (shrink)

In this paper I criticize political realism in International Relations for not being realistic enough, for being unrealistically pessimistic and ultimately incoherent. For them the international arena will always be a place where a battle of wills, informed by the logic of power, is fought. I grant that it may be true that the international political domain is a place where such battles are fought, but this alleged infelicitous situation does not in and of itself entail the normative pessimism informing (...) their assessments of the international domain, and it does not entail the recommendations offered by political realists, particularly relating to balance of power concerns. Their lack of realism stems from total or partial blindness to the proper and coherent ideals that ought to be informing their analyses of the international domain. Such blindness does not allow them properly to grasp what actually is the case. As we can only properly understand what an eye is by knowing the ideal that defines eyes — proper vision — so too we can only properly identify the movements of the international political arena in relation to ideals that ultimately define this arena, ideals that stem from a proper understanding of the human person. Following an Aristotelian teleological technique of analysis, I show that ideals are a constitutive part of the international domain and I recommend an alternative to political realism, namely, realistic idealism (or, if you prefer, idealistic realism). (shrink)

In this paper I criticize political realism in International Relations for not being realistic enough, for being unrealistically pessimistic and ultimately incoherent. For them the international arena will always be a place where a battle of wills, informed by the logic of power, is fought. I grant that it may be true that the international political domain is a place where such battles are fought, but this alleged infelicitous situation does not in and of itself entail the normative pessimism informing (...) their assessments of the international domain, and it does not entail the recommendations offered by political realists, particularly relating to balance of power concerns. Their lack of realism stems from total or partial blindness to the proper and coherent ideals that ought to be informing their analyses of the international domain. Such blindness does not allow them properly to grasp what actually is the case. As we can only properly understand what an eye is by knowing the ideal that defines eyes — proper vision — so too we can only properly identify the movements of the international political arena in relation to ideals that ultimately define this arena, ideals that stem from a proper understanding of the human person. Following an Aristotelian teleological technique of analysis, I show that ideals are a constitutive part of the international domain and I recommend an alternative to political realism, namely, realistic idealism. (shrink)

En este artículo, examino algunas características importantes de las teorías de conciencia y autoconciencia de Brentano y Rosenthal. En particular, analizo la distinción entre estados mentales y estados conscientes, y la cuestión relacionada con de determinar si todos los estados mentales pueden convertirse en estados conscientes. Interpreto la teoría de Brentano como una teoría de la mente de un nivel que está de acuerdo con la fusión cartesiana entre los estados mentales y la conciencia. Argumento que los problemas que surgen (...) de la posición de Brentano son, hasta cierto punto, superados por una teoría de orden superior, de modo que la posición de Rosenthal es más precisa. Sin embargo, estoy en desacuerdo con ambos en la interpretación de la consciencia de un estado mental como autoconciencia. Desarrollo los fundamentos de una teoría basada en la primacía del organismo y su mundo vital, y de la experiencia consciente como la forma superior de la vida mental, que tiene, sin embargo, sus raíces en la compleja red de estados mentales que son no estados conscientes.In this paper, I examine some important features of Brentano’s and Rosenthal’s theories of consciousness and self-consciousness. In particular, I discuss the distinction between mental states and conscious states, and the related question of determining whether all mental states can become conscious states. I interpret Brentano’s theory as a one-level theory of mind which is in keeping with the Cartesian conflation between mental states and conscious-ness. I argue that the problems arising from Brentano’s position are to a certain extent surpassed by a higher-order theory, so that Rosenthal’s position is more accurate. Nevertheless, I disagree with both in the construal of the consciousness of a mental state as self-consciousness. I develop then the fundamentals for a theory based on the primacy of the organism and its vital world, and of conscious experience as the higher form of mental life, which has, however, its roots in the complex net of mental states which are not conscious states. (shrink)

Davidson develops an argument that establishes the most basic set-up for rationality. The minimal set-up is a triangle formed by two subjects and an object. Each of the two subjects occupies one of the three angles and the third angle is occupied by a subject matter – that about which the two subjects are in communication with one another. I extend Davidson's argument somewhat and show how an entire pluralistic community is required for individuals to develop most fully as rational (...) creatures. I do this by showing how the basic conditions for rationality set out by Davidson would start to crumble in conditions such as those set out in Orwell's Nine teen Eighty-Four. The ideal, as opposed to the minimal, set-up for rationality is not a triangle, but a pluralistic network of subjects. And indeed, the ideal conditions for rationality are to a large extent just that because they allow for the full implementation of Davidson's minimal set-up. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.23(1) 2004: 54–68. (shrink)

Happiness: Personhood, Community, Purpose (Happiness from now on) is, among other things, a book about the holistic interrelationship that exists between the concepts of happiness, rationality and ethics. The conception of happiness at issue is, in broad outline, Aristotle's, which is to say that it is about the meaning of life. He referred to this conception as eudaimonia. Perhaps the fundamental guiding question that has motivated me to write Happiness in the first place is ‘Why even bother about being ethical?' (...) After a long period of nihilistic scepticism regarding the possibility of properly addressing this question, I came to see in Aristotle a possible solution, and I ran with it. I am still running. The relevant sense of rationality at issue allows us to claim that we are rational creatures as opposed to the sense that is most directly related to our characterisation of persons as creatures capable of conscious rational thinking. I argue that happiness is a rational ideal, understood as a manner of operating. And this manner of operating cannot properly be understood in isolation from an understanding of the ethic from which human goodness flows. Moreover, I argue that individual happiness cannot be separated from what I characterise as collective eudaimonia and what this in effect means is that the theory of happiness that I advance entails a particular conception of the political domain. The conception at issue, as we shall see, is, in key respects, very un-Aristotelian. That said, it is in an other sense very Aristotelian indeed insofar as I argue that being ethical is constitutive of happiness and, presumably and in some sense, we all want to live happy lives. Being ethical, moreover, involves working to create and perpetuate the social conditions for human flourishing. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.23(4) 2004: 336-342. (shrink)

It is the epistemic as well as the ethical responsibility of academics to aim to approach their research and teaching with a proper understanding of the ultimate ethical purpose or telos of their defining activities and products,which is the practical aim of promoting human flourishing. Minimally, academics should aim at understanding, and a key component of understanding is to understand the ideal ethical purpose of what is being researched and taught. For instance, sadistic Nazi medical researchers and teachers—Mengeles of sorts—in (...) addition to having reprehensible commitments,would be significantly ignorant about their own intellectual concerns by virtue of their abject commitments. I will show that insights drawn from extreme cases such as this one apply across disciplines and in less extreme cases. (shrink)

Reading the work of Max Stirner usually it is found conditioned by the critique of Marx and Engels. His texts are however rich in theoretical subtleties and nuances. One of the guidelines developed by Stirner and not sufficiently discussed by the authors of La ideología alemana is its conceptualization around love as a key to understand the political association of Men. As part of a conceptual constellation in which notions such as interest or property play a fundamental role, love appears (...) in El Único y su propiedad as a key passion from which different types of relationships between them are explained. Stirner attempts to answer why men alienate their individuality in their own creations from an approach to the sensitive materiality of the desire of men distancing from each other. In this paper I propose to take up this dimension of analysis of Max Stirner in order to highlight the importance of a political reading of his work beyond Marx’s and Engel’s critique. (shrink)

We address a previous finding in the business ethics literature in which accounting professionals in higher rank levels, i.e., “manager” or “partner” of auditing firms, appear to have lower moral reasoning ability than their junior counterparts. Prior investigations have relied upon a similar methodology for estimating ethical beliefs, namely testing “moral reasoning ability” using either the Moral Judgment Interview or Defining Issues Test. In the present study, we use a multiple vignettes approach to test for the existence of the inverse (...) rank-ethical beliefs effect. With only 2 of the 30 vignettes resulting in both managers and partners being more accepting of the ethically charged behaviors, the results presented here using this alternative methodology are generally not supportive of the inverse rank-ethical beliefs phenomenon. We also use a multivariate analysis in order to control for demographic characteristics. Our results suggest that the most robust predictor of ethical attitudes among accounting practitioners is age, not rank within a firm. (shrink)

In a recent paper in this Journal Iñaki San Pedro put forward a conjecture regarding the relationship between no-conspiracy and parameter independence in EPR scenarios; namely, that violation of the former implies violation of the latter. He also offered an argument supporting the conjecture. In this short note I present a method of constructing counterexamples to the conjecture and point to a mistake in the argument.

Este artigo tematiza o apóstolo Pedro como personagem no evangelho de Mateus. O objetivo é identificar as nuances e transformações do personagem Pedro no evangelho. Para tanto, tomo como ponto de partida a pertença do evangelho ao gênero literário biografia greco-romana, que apresenta Jesus Cristo como protagonista. Os demais personagens são desenvolvidos em relação com ele. O mesmo se dá com o apóstolo Pedro. O texto se desenvolve a partir da teoria narrativa, de modo particular a caracterização (...) de personagens. Identifico, a partir de Erich Auerbach e Robert Alter, as características de personagens bíblicos, tecendo comparações com teorias do personagem no romance moderno. A análise de textos do evangelho de Mateus que retratam o personagem Pedro leva à conclusão que suas principais características são a complexidade e a inversão. Elas produzem uma visão geral da involução do personagem na narrativa do evangelho de Mateus. Palavras-chave: Pedro. Evangelho de Mateus. Teoria narrativa. Complexidade. Inversão.This article focuses on the apostle Peter as a character in the Gospel of Matthew. It aims at identifying the nuances and changes of the character Peter in the Gospel. For this purpose, I take as a starting point that the gospel belongs to the literary genre of ancient Greco-Roman Biography, which presents Jesus Christ as the protagonist. The other characters are developed in relationship with him. The same is true with the Apostle Peter. The article unfolds from narrative theory, in particular the categorization of characters. I categorize, based on Erich Auerbach and Robert Alter, the features of biblical characters, developing comparisons with theories of the character in the modern novel. The analysis of the main texts from the Gospel of Matthew that portray the character Peter leads to the conclusion that its main features are complexity and inversion. They produce an overview of the involution of the character in the narrative of the Gospel of Matthew. Key words: Peter. Gospel of Matthew. Narrative theory. Complexity. Inversion. (shrink)

On propose une biographie de Petrus Alfonsi de Huesca. On reproduit notre déduction mathématique de l'icone Trinitaire d'un parchemin de Chartres, du Xlll siècle, depuis la figure précabalistique de Petrus Alfonsi, qu'il a introduit dans son oeuvre Dialogue contre les juifs en l'année 1110. On presente aussi trois matérialisations de I'enlacement alterné de trois anneaux deux à deux non enlacés.A Biography of Pedro Alfonso es proposed from the information today known. There is repruduced our mathematical deduction of the icon (...) Trinitario of a parchment of Chartres of the XIIIth century from a figure precabalistica introduced in 1110 by Pedro of Huesca and it is presented three other materializations of the "alternated link of three any two nost linked". (shrink)

Uno de los elementos de modernidad que sobresalen en el procedimiento exegético desarrollado por Maimónides es el de la decodificación de los conceptos figurativos y simbólicos que se encuentran en el texto bíblico. La labor que ejerció el cordobés en este sentido sitúa a los textos ante nuevas posibilidades hermenéuticas que ofrecen novedosas lecturas a partir de su interpretación.

In this article, I study, from the point of view of the analytic philosophy of mind, the compatibility of students’ ideas studies with radical constructivism. I demonstrate that RC is based on a psychology of narrow mental states; that is, the idea that the mental content of an individual can be fully characterised without any reference external to her or him. I show that this fact imposes some severe restrictions to SIS to be incorporated into RC. In particular, I argue (...) that only qualitative studies can comply with the requirement of narrowness. Nevertheless, I propose that quantitative works can be employed as sources of types in order to study token actual students. I use this type-token dichotomy to put forward an outline of a theory of the relation between school contents and mental contents. In this view, token mental contents regarding a given topic can be defined, and probed, only by resorting to typical school contents. (shrink)