Recent evidence of intergenerational epigenetic programming of disease risk broadens the scope of public health preventive interventions to future generations, i.e. non existing people. Due to the transmission of epigenetic predispositions, lifestyles such as smoking or unhealthy diet might affect the health of populations across several generations. While public policy for the health of future generations can be justified through impersonal considerations, such as maximizing aggregate well-being, in this article we explore whether there are rights-based obligations supervening on intergenerational epigenetic (...) programming despite the non-identity argument, which challenges this rationale in case of policies that affect the number and identity of future people. We propose that rights based obligations grounded in the interests of non-existing people might fall upon existing people when generations overlap. In particular, if environmental exposure in F0 will affect the health of F2 through epigenetic programming, then F1 might face increased costs to address F2's condition in the future: this might generate obligations upon F0 from various distributive principles, such as the principle of equal opportunity for well being. (shrink)

Elias Baumgarten taught philosophy at the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1972 to 2018. He was born in Brooklyn, grew up in California, and went to schools in Boston and Chicago. He was one of the first recipients of the campus’s “Distinguished Teaching Award.” He taught a wide variety of courses including Medical Ethics, Ethics of War and Peace, Ethics of Nationalism, and Darwinism and Philosophy. Most of his publications are in ethics, including “Zionism, Nationalism, and Morality” and “Curiosity as a (...) Moral Virtue.” Dr. Baumgarten also served for over 30 years on hospital ethics committees at the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor. A child of immigrants, Prof. Baumgarten was passionate, both as teacher and citizen, in celebrating multicultural diversity both on our campus and in our country. He sees travel as a form of education and traveled to over 70 countries. (shrink)

Relationships between degree/area of academic formation and religious and Darwinian views are controversial. This study aimed to compare the religious beliefs and acceptance of Darwinian evolution between two contrasting South American scientific communities (Chile and Colombia), accounting for different degrees and areas of academic formation. In 2018, 115 last year bachelor students (surveyed as freshmen in 2014 for a previous study) from Chile, and 283 first/last year bachelor students, graduate students, and professors from Colombia, all belonging to biology, chemistry, or (...) physics, were surveyed. Chilean students/faculty were significantly more agnostic/atheist, more accepting of Darwinian evolution, and less creationist than their Colombian counterparts. Academic degree and area differently affected these views in both countries, as only in Chile there was a clear tendency among biologists and physicists with higher degrees to hold less religious and creationist views. Marked differences between the history, socioeconomic contexts, and especially in high school and university curricula of both countries might explain these results. (shrink)

Our knowledge about colonial philosophical manuscripts preserved in the «Fondo Antiguo» and «Fondo Varios» at the National Historical Archive is limited almost exclusively to its listing and location. In some cases, there is a very brief description of the contents, identification of their philosophical tendency and some information about their authors. In order to expand our knowledge about them, we have tried here, on the one hand, to provide a more detailed description of the contents of the works, and, on (...) the other hand, to systematise the information provided by different catalogues. For this work, the contents of the original manuscripts and the corresponding microfiche have been revised and described. Thus, we have been able to correct some errors concerning location and content. We therefore hope to contribute, even minimally, to the construction of the history of philosophy in Chile. (shrink)

En este trabajo se realiza una propuesta de comunicación transdisciplinar entre las ciencias cognitivas y la educación, tal y como se perfilan en el siglo XXI. En un primer lugar se contextualizan estos procesos de comunicación en el continuum histórico que transita desde los inicios del siglo pasado, con la configuración de la psicología educativa dentro del constructo de las ciencias educativas; pasando por la constitución de las ciencias cognitivas, a mediados del siglo XX que propició la emergencia de la (...) síntesis disciplinar entre las ciencias del cerebro y de la mente, para posibilitar un encuadre arraigado en el presente, y en las propuestas de consiliencia entre neurociencia cognitiva y educación. Desde este presente histórico, se efectúa una propuesta de diálogo entre las distintas epistemes (educativas y cognitivas), en relación con el fenómeno de la educación bilingüe, y en concreto en el contexto intercultural ecuatoriano. La integración de los distintos niveles de análisis que configuran un fenómeno complejo, como lo es todo fenómeno educativo, refleja cómo los intentos transdisciplinares orientados a reconocer la complejidad ontológica de un mismo objeto de estudio, requiere del diálogo entre las distintas epistemologías y metodologías implicadas. La apertura del campo educativo a las dimensiones mentales y cerebrales en su expresión cognitiva, requiere en este s. XXI procesos de apertura recíproca respecto de la influencia que el eje cultura-educación ejerce en el modelamiento de los procesos de cognición y aprendizaje. (shrink)

Cause and effect relationships play a central role in how we perceive and make sense of the world around us, how we act upon it, and ultimately, how we understand ourselves. Almost two decades ago, computer scientist Judea Pearl made a breakthrough in understanding causality by discovering and systematically studying the “Ladder of Causation” [Pearl and Mackenzie 2018], a framework that highlights the distinct roles of seeing, doing, and imagining. In honor of this landmark discovery, we name this the Pearl (...) Causal Hierarchy (PCH). In this chapter, we develop a novel and comprehensive treatment of the PCH through two complementary lenses, one logical-probabilistic and another inferential-graphical. Following Pearl’s own presentation of the hierarchy, we begin by showing how the PCH organically emerges from a well-specified collection of causal mechanisms (a structural causal model, or SCM). We then turn to the logical lens. Our first result, the Causal Hierarchy Theorem (CHT), demonstrates that the three layers of the hierarchy almost always separate in a measure theoretic sense. Roughly speaking, the CHT says that data at one layer virtually always underdetermines information at higher layers. Since in most practical settings the scientist does not have access to the precise form of the underlying causal mechanisms – only to data generated by them with respect to some of PCH’s layers – this motivates us to study inferences within the PCH through the graphical lens. Specifically, we explore a set of methods known as causal inference that enable inferences bridging PCH’s layers given a partial specification of the SCM. For instance, one may want to infer what would happen had an intervention been performed in the environment (second-layer statement) when only passive observations (first-layer data) are available. We introduce a family of graphical models that allows the scientist to represent such a partial specification of the SCM in a cognitively meaningful and parsimonious way. Finally, we investigate an inferential system known as docalculus, showing how it can be sufficient, and in many cases necessary, to allow inferences across PCH’s layers. We believe that connecting with the essential dimensions of human experience as delineated by the PCH is a critical step towards creating the next generation of AI systems that will be safe, robust, human-compatible, and aligned with the social good. (shrink)

A unified answer is offered to two distinct fundamental questions: whether a nonclassical solution to the semantic paradoxes should be extended to other apparently similar paradoxes and whether a nonclassical logic should be expressed in a nonclassical metalanguage. The paper starts by reviewing a budget of paradoxes involving the logical properties of validity, inconsistency, and compatibility. The author’s favored substructural approach to naive truth is then presented and it is explained how that approach can be extended in a very natural (...) way so as to solve a certain paradox of validity. However, three individually decisive reasons are later provided for thinking that no approach adopting a classical metalanguage can adequately account for all the features involved in the paradoxes of logical properties. Consequently, the paper undertakes the task to do better, and, building on the system already developed, introduces a theory in a nonclassical metalanguage that expresses an adequate logic of naive truth and of some naive logical properties. (shrink)

La presente investigación surge como parte del análisis para la creación de políticas de ecoeficiencia en las empresas y tiene como finalidad el conocer las buenas prácticas ambientales aplicadas por las empresas del sector servicios en la ciudad de Girardot. Se presenta como un estudio descriptivo-analítico con enfoque cualitativo, utilizando como instrumento la ficha de observación aplicada a una muestra de 30 empresas del sector de servicios. Dentro de los resultados obtenidos se encuentra la calificación de acuerdo con un puntaje (...) entre 0.0 y 1.0 y el análisis del resultado total con ponderación de 0% a 100% a 11 criterios evaluados. (shrink)

We examine whether a taxpayer’s decision to choose a taxpayer-favorable characterization of income is associated with contextual and individual dimensions of that decision. Using a 2 × 2 factorial experimental design, we manipulate the prevailing social norm on whether there is a general belief that a specific form of income should be characterized as a capital gain or as ordinary income, and the group affiliation on whether the individual is making a tax characterization decision as a sole proprietor or as (...) a member of a group practice. Moreover, we measure participants’ fairness perception of characterizing the income as capital gains versus ordinary. We study the decisions of 180 graduate business and accounting students from two US business schools to explore these dimensions using a tax-ambiguous income situation. Results indicate that both contextual and individual dimensions impact taxpayer decisions. Specifically, the social norm and fairness perception of characterizing income as capital gains affects the likelihood of choosing such a characterization. Being a sole proprietor or a member of a group practice does not have any significant main effect. However, relative to all other conditions, taxpayers are most likely to characterize income as capital gains when both the social norms are for capital gains characterization and when the taxpayer is a member of a group practice. Results remain largely robust to a variety of alternative explanations. We conclude the paper with a discussion of our findings and their implications for tax policy, enforcement, and research. (shrink)

This paper aims at providing an epistemic defense of democracy based on John Dewey’s idea that democracies do not only find problems and provide solutions to them but they also articulate problems....

El positivismo jurídico como teoría sobre la existencia del derecho: un comentario sobre Judging Positivism de Margaret Martin Este comentario examina de forma crítica la concepción de positivismo jurídico que informa el desafío planteado por Margaret Martin contra la substancia y el método de esta tradición intelectual. La afirmación central de este artículo es que su caracterización de la teoría substantiva del positivismo jurídico deja de lado una dimensión más fundamental, y explicativamente previa, relacionada a la teoría positivista de la (...) existencia de los sistemas y normas jurídicas. También sostengo que su caracterización de la metodología descriptiva del positivismo como un proyecto no normativo es demasiado exigente y no puede capturar la relaciones entre derecho y moral reconocidas por los positivistas contemporáneos ni la distinción entre preguntas internas y externas. Estas clarificaciones proporcionan recursos para comenzar a responder algunas de las objeciones de Martín contra el proyecto de Raz. (shrink)

Reseña / Ressenya / Review Herreras, Enrique 2021, Lo que la posverdad esconde. Medios de comunicación y crisis de la democracia, epílogo de Pepe Reig, Barcelona: MRA Ediciones. ISBN 978-84-96504-41-7, 278 páginas.

In this unique book, leading legal scholars and philosophers provide a breadth of perspectives and inspire stimulating debate around the transformations of jurisprudence in a globalized world. Traditionally the central debates surrounding jurisprudence and legal theory are concerned with the elucidation of the particularities of state-law. This innovative book considers that this orthodox picture may no longer be tenable, given the increasing standardization of technologies, systems and information worldwide.Split across four thematic parts, this timely book provides a broad overview of (...) the topic, followed by in depth analyses investigating the modifications to jurisprudence's methodological approaches driven by globalization, the concepts and theoretical tools required to account for putative new forms of legal phenomena, and normative issues relating to the legitimacy and democratic character of these legal orders. Chapters cover legal encounters with alterity in a post-monist mode, normative legal pluralism, relating law and power in a historical global context, cosmopolitan legitimacy and human rights and dignity in a corporate world.Jurisprudence in a Globalized World will be a key resource for students and scholars working in global transnational law, public international law and legal theory and philosophy. (shrink)

Popper’s suggestion of taking methodological norms as conventions is examined from the point of view of game theory. The game of research is interpreted as a game of persuasion, in the sense that every scientists tries to advance claims, and that her winning the game consists in her colleagues accepting some of those claims as the conclusions of some arguments. Methodological norms are seen as elements in a contract established amongst researchers, that says what inferential moves are legitimate or compulsory (...) in that game. Norms are classified in three groups: rules of internal inference , entry norms , and exit norms . It is argued that the value of a set of norms depends on how efficient they are in leading a scientific community to accept claims ranking high in a consensuated scale of epistemic value, and in giving each member of the community a reasonable expectation of winning some games. (shrink)

El siguiente artículo revisa brevemente diferentes aspectos de los Comentarios Acerca del alma, dictados por el franciscano chileno fray Juan de Fuica, en mayo de 1689, en el Colegio San Diego de Alcalá de Santiago de Chile. Presentamos, primero, una nota biográfica del fraile con información relativa a su trayectoria académica y administrativa dentro de la orden franciscana. Luego, analizamos en cinco categorías los aspectos fundamentales de este curso inédito: características generales, características del lenguaje, estructura, método de enseñanza y contenidos (...) ad mentem Scoti. Creemos que con la edición de este testimonio exclusivo de la enseñanza filosófica de la época, visibilizamos el patrimonio filosófico colonial del país y, en consecuencia, llenamos una gran laguna en la historia de la filosofía chilena. This article briefly reviews the different aspects of the Commentaries On the Soul, dictated in 1689 by Chilean Franciscan Friar Juan de Fuica at San Diego de Alcalá College, Santiago de Chile. First, we present a biographical note on the Friar with information concerning his academic and administrative career within the Franciscan order. Second, we analyze in five categories the fundamental aspects of this unreleased manuscript: general features, language features, structure, teaching method and ad mentem Scoti contents. We believe that with the edition of this exclusive testimony of philosophical teachings at that time, we give visibility to the colonial philosophical heritage of the country and, thereby, fill a gap in the history of Chilean philosophy. (shrink)

The decision whether to have a realist or an anti-realist attitude towards scientific hypotheses is interpreted in this paper as a choice that scientists themselves have to face in their work as scientists, rather than as a ‘philosophical’ problem. Scientists’ choices between realism and instrumentalism (or other types of anti-realism) are interpreted in this paper with the help of two different conceptual tools: a deflationary semantics grounded in the inferentialist approach to linguistic practices developed by some authors (e.g., Sellars, Brandom), (...) and an epistemic utility function that tries to represent the cognitive preferences of scientists. The first tool is applied to two different questions traditionally related to the problem of scientific realism: the non-miracle argument, and the continuity of reference. The second one is applied to the problem of unconceived alternatives, and to the distinction between realist and instrumentalist attitudes towards scientific hypotheses. (shrink)

La Lógica: La Teoría de la Investigación es un texto relativamente desconocido de John Dewey en el mundo hispanohablante, a pesar de que se trata de un texto fundamental en la obra del autor. Hasta ahora sólo disponíamos de la traducción realizada por Eugenio Imaz y publicada por el Fondo de Cultura Económica en 1950, la cual era difícilmente accesible y adolecía de algunas limitaciones que hacían necesaria la aparición de una nueva traducción. Por ello, presentamos con gran satisfacción las...

La transmisión de la filosofía al continente americano puede rastrearse materialmente por medio del examen de las redes comerciales que procuraron la numerosa llegada de libros que alimentaron a las primeras bibliotecas coloniales. En ellas se resguardaron variadas obras filosóficas y humanísticas que fueron fundamentales en la promoción y el desarrollo de la cultura escrita y la educación. Al revisar algunos aspectos centrales del comercio, el control librario y la colección de obras afines en las primeras bibliotecas privadas y religiosas, (...) se pretende reconstruir, al menos en sus rasgos característicos, el devenir de la filosofía en el Nuevo Mundo. The transmission of philosophy to the Americas can be traced through the examination of the commercial networks that provided the first colonial libraries with books. These vast collections contained various philosophical and humanistic works that were a key factor in the promotion and the development of written culture and education. Reviewing some aspects on trading, book inventory and the collection of related works in the first private and religious libraries, the main goal is to reconstruct, at least in its characteristic features, the development of philosophy in the New World. (shrink)

This paper aims at providing an epistemic defense of democracy based on John Dewey’s idea that democracies do not only find problems and provide solutions to them but they also articulate problems. According to this view, when citizens inquire about collective issues, they also partially shape them. This view contrasts with the standard account of democracy’s epistemic defense, according to which democracy’s is good at tracking and finding solutions that are independent of political will-formation and decision-making. It is also less (...) vulnerable to the criticisms that have been raised against the standard account. To show this, the paper develops a theory of expressive domination and argues that problem-articulation works best when it is inclusive and domination-free. It also shows that democratic conflict represents a fundamental element for problem-articulation. (shrink)

Jarvie’s Popper’s social view of science from Logik der Forschung to The Open Society and Its Enemies is used to discuss whether the “proto-constitution” of science that, according to Jarvie, Popper formulated is a sound justification of a falsificationist methodology, and whether the view of society and of social science grounding Popper’s views could be substituted for some more updated insights from contemporary social science. In particular, I defend that a game-theoretic view to the choice of norms, one that takes (...) into account the large variety of real goals and real agents having some role in the scientific process, would be a more appropriate approach to understand the “constitution of science.”. (shrink)

Elias wrote in both English and German, and in all his work runs to 14 books and around 90 other essays, along with poems and numerous interviews. The 18 volumes of the collected works contain many writings not previously published in English, and a small number never published before. All of the texts have thoroughly checked and revised, by editors who have a deep knowledge of Elia's thinking; they have inserted many clarifications, cross-references and explanatory notes.

Resumen: El artículo estudia los Elementos de Filosofía (EdF), dictados por Andrés Bello a Juan Alemparte en Santiago de Chile hacia los años 1840-1843 y conservados actualmente en una copia manuscrita. Se muestra que los EdF corresponden a un esbozo preliminar de las materias abordadas por Bello tanto en las entregas del periódico El Crepúsculo como en su obra póstuma Filosofía del Entendimiento. Por ello, se plantea que estas lecciones manuscritas constituyen un testimonio exclusivo de las clases particulares del maestro (...) venezolano en Santiago del siglo XIX y exhiben, además, un estadio de maduración temprano de ideas que llegarán a ser gravitantes en su obra magna. Se espera que este material represente un insumo para futuras pesquisas en torno a las percepciones en general, y desde la perspectiva del pensador caraqueño en particular. Abstract: The article examines the Elements of Philosophy, taught by Andrés Bello to Juan Alemparte in Santiago de Chile around 1840-1843 and currently preserved in a manuscript copy. It is shown that the Elements of Philosophy correspond to a preliminary outline of the matters addressed by Bello both in the newspaper El Crepúsculo and in his posthumous work Philosophy of the Understanding. For this reason, it is proposed that these manuscript notes constitute an exclusive testimony of the private lessons of the Venezuelan Master in Santiago of the 19th century and exhibit a stage of early maturation of ideas that will become gravitational in his magnum opus. It is expected that this material represents an input for future research on perceptions in general, and from the perspective of the thinker from Caracas in particular. (shrink)

In the past few decades, much political-philosophical reflection has been dedicated to the realm of "the political." Many of the key figures in contemporary political theory—Jacques Rancière, Alain Badiou, Reinhart Koselleck, Giorgio Agamben, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj i ek, among others—have dedicated themselves to explaining power relations, but in many cases they take the concept of the political for granted, as if it were a given, an eternal essence. In An Archaeology of the Political, Elías José Palti argues that the (...) dimension of reality known as the political is not a natural, transhistorical entity. Instead, he claims that the horizon of the political arose in the context of a series of changes that affirmed the power of absolute monarchies in seventeenth-century Europe and was successively reconfigured from this period up to the present. Palti traces this series of redefinitions accompanying alterations in regimes of power, thus describing a genealogy of the concept of the political. Perhaps most important, An Archaeology of the Political brings to theoretical discussions a sound historical perspective, illuminating the complex influences of both theology and secularization on our understanding of the political in the contemporary world. (shrink)

We critically evaluate the treatment of the notion of measurement in the Consistent Histories approach to quantum mechanics. We find such a treatment unsatisfactory because it relies, often implicitly, on elements external to those provided by the formalism. In particular, we note that, in order for the formalism to be informative when dealing with measurement scenarios, one needs to assume that the appropriate choice of framework is such that apparatuses are always in states of well defined pointer positions after measurements. (...) The problem is that there is nothing in the formalism to justify this assumption. We conclude that the Consistent Histories approach, contrary to what is claimed by its proponents, fails to provide a truly satisfactory resolution for the measurement problem in quantum theory. (shrink)

Desde la tradición de los estudios de gubernamentalidad y sus resonancias en las sociologías políticas y de la educación, en este artículo se recuperan los debates vigentes en torno a las nociones de gubernamentalidad, gobierno y biopolítica desarrolladas en la vasta obra de Michel Foucault y sus continuadoras/es para enlazarlas con las discusiones sobre el objeto de estudio y el campo teórico de la política educativa, enfatizando el potencial analítico que ofrece su grilla de inteligibilidad para los fenómenos educativos propios (...) de las sociedades posdisciplinares. En esa dirección, este trabajo esboza una serie de propuestas epistemológicas, teóricas y metodológicas producidas a partir de una investigación empírica recientemente finalizada (Aguirre, 2022), de corte descriptivo y de carácter cualitativo. En vistas a estos propósitos, se producen diálogos interdisciplinares a la vez que se tensionan y discuten algunos supuestos clásicos y tradicionales de la política educativa, para incitar una renovación analítica que posibilite el estudio de las relaciones sociales de autogobierno y gobierno de las/os otras/os en tanto articulaciones históricas entre el saber, el poder y la subjetividad. Finalmente, se exponen algunos indicios y propuestas para el abordaje sociológico de los fenómenos educativos contemporáneos, que convocan y promueven la necesidad de producir ciertos desplazamientos epistemológicos en el campo teórico de la política educativa, así como invitan a la reconfiguración de sus objetos de estudio en el marco de la adscripción a un enfoque posestructuralista. (shrink)

In 1817, in the preface to his Rein analytischer Beweis, Bernard Bolzano revealed that he had decided to postpone the publication of any subsequent instalment of his Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik because of the few and ‘superficial’ reviews of its first instalment, published in 1810. Bolzano’s transcriptions of the only two known reviews of this book are conserved at the Literární archiv Památníku národního písemnictví / Muzea literatury, in Prague, together with another manuscript on his Beyträge, the (...) provenance of which was unknown to Bolzano’s scholars until recently. In this paper it is shown that this latter manuscript is a draft of an announcement that was published at the time and that was indeed written at least to some extent by Bolzano himself. This hitherto unknown announcement of Bolzano’s Beyträge not only solves the mystery surrounding that manuscript, but also helps to date the publication of this book more precisely and provides an unusual insight into what we must take Bolzano himself to have considered most noteworthy about his work, namely his study on logic. The paper includes a transcription of the manuscript and an English translation of the announcement. (shrink)

In response to a recent rebuttal of Okon and Sudarsky presented in Griffiths, we defend the claim that the Consistent Histories formulation of quantum mechanics does not solve the measurement problem. In order to do so, we argue that satisfactory solutions to the problem must not only not contain anthropomorphic terms at the fundamental level, but also that applications of the formalism to concrete situations should not require any input not contained in the description of the situation at hand at (...) the fundamental level. Our assertion is that the Consistent Histories formalism does not meet the second criterion. We also argue that the so-called second measurement problem, i.e., the inability to explain how an experimental result is related to a property possessed by the measured system before the measurement took place, is only a pseudo-problem. As a result, we reject the claim, defended in Griffiths, that the capacity of the Consistent Histories formalism to solve it should count as an advantage over other interpretations. (shrink)

El artículo revisa los contenidos generales del Tratado Acerca de los elementos de Manuel Antonio Talavera, que es parte de los capítulos que estudian la Física especial en su obra Instituciones de Física. En ésta, se combinan las doctrinas de filosofía natural según las enseñanzas de los filósofos modernos, los nuevos datos empíricos generados a partir de los experimentos científicos y la autoridad de las Escrituras. Se intenta mostrar cómo en la enseñanza de la disciplina durante la última época colonial (...) convivieron conocimientos propios de la modernidad matizados con elementos característicos de la escolástica. Presentamos una breve nota biográfica del autor y revisamos desde una perspectiva general los principales aspectos del tratado. La intención es visibilizar el quehacer educativo de Talavera y rescatar parte del legado filosófico latinoamericano. (shrink)