La langue de bois dans la politique péruvienne des vingt dernières années est marquée par le choc des élections de 1990, qui a révélé le grand désenchantement de la population vis-à-vis des politiciens et du discours politique en tant que tel. Les politiciens sont donc obligés d’être très économes de leurs paroles, sous peine de lasser et réveiller la méfiance. Ils doivent se rabattre sur des formules, des slogans, et des mots, dont le choix obéit souvent au seul souci de (...) se démarquer d’autres acteurs politiques censés être tombés en disgrâce auprès de la population. Autrement dit, les politiciens cherchent beaucoup moins à faire des propositions et des promesses, qu’à éviter d’être du mauvais côté dans la perception, d’ailleurs très changeante, de la population. C’est le triomphe du marketing au détriment du discours politique traditionnel. Il s’ensuit un art de la langue de bois plus exigeant.Political doublespeak in Peru turned a corner during the 1990 elections, which revealed the population’s utter disillusionment with politicians and the political discourse of the time. To avoid arousing suspicion or getting on people’s nerves, politicians now have to be very economical with words, resorting to clichés, slogans and words often chosen purely to differentiate them from other politicians who have supposedly fallen from grace with the population. As a result, rather than making proposals and promises, politicians are merely trying to avoid getting on the wrong side of the population’s – highly volatile – perceptions. The result is a triumph of marketing over traditional political discourse, and an ever more demanding art of doublespeak. (shrink)

Este trabajo trata de la importancia que tienen los estudiantes de medicina para responder a las demandas de atención médica en México; alude al proceso histórico que determina esta situación y la construcción de la categoría “médicos en formación”; refiere las condiciones laborales, educativas y de salud de los estudiantes de medicina en las unidades médicas, y su impacto sobre la calidad de la atención médica. Desde la perspectiva ética y de los derechos humanos se plantea que los programas de (...) educación médica, y en particular la categoría de “médicos en formación”, pueden, paradójicamente, violentar tanto el derecho a la educación como el derecho a la atención médica, y dañar tanto la salud de los estudiantes como la de la población por ellos atendida. Se concluye que debe desarrollarse un nuevo respaldo ético docente asistencial para educación médica en las unidades de atención médica. (shrink)

Durante el siglo IV a. C. los intelectuales griegos discutieron sobre los alcances y características de la labor filosófica, en un intento por delimitar esta práctica distinguiéndola de otras. En este artículo me centraré en el retrato del sofista como contracara del filósofo. Analizaré específicamente la respuesta platónica al ataque que Isócrates dirige contra todos los discípulos de Sócrates en Contra los sofistas y Encomio de Helena. Defenderé que la estrategia de Platón para eludir dicha crítica consistió en construir en (...) el Eutidemo y la quinta definición del Sofista un personaje que reúne los rasgos más censurados por Isócrates: el sofista erístico. Argumentaré que esta figura no remite a los sofistas del siglo V a. C., sino que tras ella se encuentran ocultos los representantes del grupo megárico, a quienes Platón habría colocado como los principales merecedores de la embestida isocrática. During the fourth century BC, Greek thinkers discussed about the limits and characteristics of philosophy in order to distinguish it from other practices. In this paper, I will focus on the portrait of sophists as diametrically opposed to philosophers. Specifically, I will discuss the platonic answer to the charge that Isocrates directed against all Socrates’ disciples in the treatises Against the Sophists and Encomium of Helen. I will defend that Plato’s strategy to avoid his critics was to develop, in the Euthydemus and the fifth definition of the Sophist, a character that combines the most significant attributes censured by Isocrates: the eristic sophist. I will argue that this figure does not refer to the Sophists of the fifth century BC., but to the Megaric group. They would have been those who, according to Plato, really deserved the Isocratic attack. (shrink)

The moral enhancement of human beings is a constant theme in the history of humanity. Today, faced with the threats of a new, globalised world, concern over this matter is more pressing. For this reason, the use of biotechnology to make human beings more moral has been considered. However, this approach is dangerous and very controversial. The purpose of this article is to argue that the use of another new technology, AI, would be preferable to achieve this goal. Whilst several (...) proposals have been made on how to use AI for moral enhancement, we present an alternative that we argue to be superior to other proposals that have been developed. (shrink)

We investigate the timing of pre-answer inbreaths in order to shed light on the time course of response planning and execution in conversational turn-taking. Using acoustic and inductive plethysmography recordings of seven dyadic conversations in Dutch, we show that pre-answer inbreaths in conversation typically begin briefly after the end of questions. We also show that the presence of a pre-answer inbreath usually co-occurs with substantially delayed answers, with a modal latency of 576 vs. 100 ms for answers not preceded by (...) an inbreath. Based on previously reported minimal latencies for internal intercostal activation and the production of speech sounds, we propose that vocal responses, either in the form of a pre-utterance inbreath or of speech proper when an inbreath is not produced, are typically launched in reaction to information present in the last portion of the interlocutor's turn. We also show that short responses are usually made on residual breath, while longer responses are more often preceded by an inbreath. This relation of inbreaths to answer length suggests that by the time an inbreath is launched, typically during the last few hundred milliseconds of the question, the length of the answer is often prepared to some extent. Together, our findings are consistent with a two-stage model of response planning in conversational turn-taking: early planning of content often carried out in overlap with the incoming turn, and late launching of articulation based on the identification of turn-final cues. (shrink)

Can Artificial Intelligence be more effective than human instruction for the moral enhancement of people? The author argues that it only would be if the use of this technology were aimed at increasing the individual's capacity to reflectively decide for themselves, rather than at directly influencing behaviour. To support this, it is shown how a disregard for personal autonomy, in particular, invalidates the main proposals for applying new technologies, both biomedical and AI-based, to moral enhancement. As an alternative to these (...) proposals, this article proposes a virtual assistant that, through dialogue, neutrality and virtual reality technologies, can teach users to make better moral decisions on their own. The author concludes that, as long as certain precautions are taken in its design, such an assistant could do this better than a human instructor adopting the same educational methodology. (shrink)

This book describes the philosophical principles underlying the political project often called “classical liberalism”. By this expression is meant the project for society proposed, during the second half of the eighteenth century, by David Hume and Adam Smith in Great Britain, Turgot and Condorcet in France, Thomas Jefferson in the United States and Kant and Humboldt in Germany. The differences between the principles of “classical liberalism” and those of the extreme doctrines of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek (often confused with (...) 'classical liberalism') are clearly explained. This book has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Vietnamese, Rumanian and Turkish. A more complete second edition "Les fondements philosophiques du libéralisme", published in2002, exists and is downloadable from the authors page at Philpeople. (shrink)

El sustantivo πραπίς / πραπίδες presenta diversos usos en los poemas homéricos, de acuerdo con diferentes campos semánticos que van desde lo anatómico a lo cognoscitivo. Desde la Antigüedad se intentó clarificar el sentido básico del término, equiparándolo con los distintos campos semánticos que comprende el sustantivo φρήν / φρένες. El término no aparece nunca en singular en los poemas homéricos sino siempre en plural.. Este trabajo pretende clarificar, en general, la significación del término y, en particular, el sentido que (...) adquiere cuando es empleado en singular, apelando tanto al recurso de reconstrucción de una hipotética raíz indoeuropea como a conceptos de la teoría cognitiva-prototípica como los de conceptualización, metonimización, metaforización y modelización. The word πραπίς / πραπίδες has diverse uses in the Homeric poems according to different semantic fields going from the anatomical to the cognitive. Since antiquity it has been tried to explain the proper sense of the term comparing it with the diverse semantic fields that present the word φρήν / φρένες. The term does never appear in its singular form in the Homeric poems but always in its plural form. The purpose of this work is to explain the meaning of the term in general, and in particular, the sense of the term in singular number, appealing both to device of a hypothetical reconstruction of Indo-European root as notions of the cognitive-prototype theory such as conceptualization, metonymization, metaphorization and modeling. (shrink)

El objetivo de este trabajo es teorizar el andamiaje integrado por las categorías de modos de apropiación de lo real, formas de la conciencia y contemplación estética, construida con referentes kantianos, hegelianos y marxistas. Con base en un esquema de investigación, los escritos más representativos fueron revisados y fichados en una base de datos; el fichero fue codificado y redactado el texto final. Se encontró que la conciencia individual se constituye con referentes de diferentes modos de apropiación de lo real (...) adquiriendo una forma determinada: empírica, mágico-religiosa, artística o teórica. A cada modo de apropiación corresponde una forma de conciencia y un determinado tipo de experiencia plena pero, la presencia de referentes de distintos modos de apropiación, permite que el mismo sujeto establezca experiencias de distinto tipo. (shrink)

Erick J. Ramirez, Miles Elliott and Per‑Erik Milam (2021) have recently claimed that using Virtual Reality (VR) as an educational nudge to promote empathy is unethical. These authors argue that the influence exerted on the participant through virtual simulation is based on the deception of making them believe that they are someone else when this is impossible. This makes the use of VR for empathy enhancement a manipulative strategy in itself. In this article, we show that Ramirez et al.’s ethical (...) rejection of empathy enhancement through VR is based on confusion. First, we show that this misunderstanding stems from the conception of empathy-enhancing simulations solely as failed attempts at “being someone else,” along with ignoring the crucial difference between the psychological perspective-taking processes of imagine-other and imagine-self. Then, having overcome that misconception, we argue that the ethical misgivings about the use of VR to promote empathy should disappear and that these projects have greater potential for behavioural change than purely sympathy-focused interventions. (shrink)

Stephen Jay Gould’s monumental The Structure of Evolutionary Theory ‘‘attempts to expand and alter the premises of Darwinism, in order to build an enlarged and distinctive evolutionary theory . . . while remaining within the tradition, and under the logic, of Darwinian argument.’’ The three branches or ‘‘fundamental principles of Darwinian logic’’ are, according to Gould: agency (natural selection acting on individual organisms), efficacy (producing new species adapted to their environments), and scope (accumulation of changes that through geological time yield (...) the living world’s panoply of diversity and morphological complexity). Gould’s efforts to contribute something important to each of these three fundamental components of Darwinian Theory are far from successful. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is analyzing to which extent the multiverse hypothesis provides a real explanation of the peculiarities of the laws and constants in our universe. First we argue in favor of the thesis that all multiverses except Tegmark’s “mathematical multiverse” are too small to explain the fine tuning, so that they merely shift the problem up one level. But the “mathematical multiverse" is surely too large. To prove this assessment, we have performed a number of experiments with (...) cellular automata of complex behavior, which can be considered as universes in the mathematical multiverse. The analogy between what happens in some automata (in particular Conway’s “Game of Life") and the real world is very strong. But if the results of our experiments can be extrapolated to our universe, we should expect to inhabit—in the context of the multiverse—a world in which at least some of the laws and constants of nature should show a certain time dependence. Actually, the probability of our existence in a world such as ours would be mathematically equal to zero. In consequence, the results presented in this paper can be considered as an inkling that the hypothesis of the multiverse, whatever its type, does not offer an adequate explanation for the peculiarities of the physical laws in our world. (shrink)

Resumen: En este artículo argumentamos que, el hecho de que hubo ciudadanos prominentes de diferentes ciudades griegas que adhirieron al epicureísmo, se sintieron epicúreos y fueron reconocidos como tales, muestra que slogans como “vive oculto” y “no participes en política”, que sugieren un completo apoliticismo por parte de Epicuro y los epicúreos, tergiversan el verdadero sentido del mantenerse alejado de la política contingente. Nuestro texto muestra la interacción entre Epicuro y los epicúreos y las ciudades griegas, a través del análisis (...) de documentos relacionados con distintas ciudades antiguas. Si lo que argumentamos es razonable, la idea habitual de que el epicureísmo recomienda la apoliticidad, debe ser desechada.: In this paper, we argue that the fact that there were prominent citizens of different Greek cities who adhered to Epicureanism, felt themselves Epicurean, and were recognized as such, shows that slogans such as “live unnoticed” and “do not participate in politics” misrepresent the true meaning of the Epicurean staying away from contingent politics. Our article shows the interaction between Epicurus and the Epicureans and the Greek cities through the analysis of documents related to different ancient cities. If what we argue is sound, the usual idea that Epicureanism recommends apoliticism must be discarded. (shrink)

Annotation A central piece of Suarez's (1584-1617) metaphysics, which is considered important because it was not a commentary on Aristotle, and was used in universities and by both his fellow Jesuits and Protestant scholars and theologians for centuries. He deals with the formal principles of the nature of material substances, that is, their substantial form, which is central to his interpretation of Aristotelian realism. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

The theory of punctuated equilibrium has been proposed as a challenge to the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory. Two important issues are raised. The first is scientific: whether morphological change as observed in the paleontological record is essentially always associated with speciation events. This paper argues that there is at present no empirical support for this claim: the alleged evidence is based on a definitional fallacy. The second issue is epistemological: whether macroevolution is an autonomous field of study, independent from (...) microevolutionary knowledge. It is herein argued that macroevolution and microevolution are not decoupled in two senses: identity at the level of events and compatibility of theories. But macroevolution is autonomous in the epistemologically important sense: macroevolutionary theories are not reducible to microevolutionary principles. It is finally pointed out that the discipline of macroevolution is notoriously lacking in theoretical constructs of great import and generality. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Intelligent Design Darwin's Scientific Revolution Natural Selection Chance and Necessity: Mutation and Natural Selection “Only a Theory” Evolution Is a Fact Irreducibly Complex? The Disguised Friend References and Recommended Readings.

En este artículo se expone una reflexión desde la propuesta teórica de Charles Taylor sobre la construcción de la identidad individual como una narración social frente a la crítica de Amartya Sen, quien propone la identidad como resultado solo de la elección personal. Se argumenta que las criticas que Amartya Sen hace a los argumentos de Taylor son infundadas, ya que la perspectiva de Charles Taylor se centra más en el carácter fundamentalmente constructivo, narrativo y dialógico de la identidad que (...) en la pérdida de la libertad y la mera aceptación acrítica de la identidad asumida. Se concluye que la identidad como narración social desde la perspectiva teoría de Taylor sí da cabida a la capacidad de elegir de los individuos y a la consideración de las identidades múltiples y múltiples lealtades identitarias, pero se hace notar la importacia del contexto social y del grupo por encima de la elección personal en el momento en que una persona contruye su identidad, ya que les da valor a los bienes externos como la comunidad cultural y lingüística a la que la pertenece y que hacen posible la inteligibilidad y la narracción de lo que somos y de quiénes somos. This paper presents Charles Taylor's theoretical proposal of construction of identity confronted to the criticism of Amartya Sen who conceives identity as a result of personal choice. It is argued that the critiques that Amartya Sen makes to the arguments of Taylor are groundless given that the perspective of Charles Taylor focuses more on the fundamentally constructive nature of identity than on the loss of freedom and the mere uncritical acceptance of the assumed identity. Taylor's theory does has space for the ability to choose and the consideration of multiple identities but it draws attention to the importance of social and group context when a person builds his identity and it assigns a higher value to the external goods that define the way people live in contemporary societies, such as the cultural and linguistic community, than to personal choice. (shrink)

Œuvre de maturité de François Suarez (1548-1617), Des lois et du Dieu législateur a été publié en latin en 1612. Parmi les dix livres que comprend cet ouvrage, nous avons choisi de présenter pour la première fois les deux premiers en langue française. À partir de l'héritage retravaillé de la philosophie politique antique et médiévale, Suarez élabore une théorie originale de la loi et de la communauté en renouvelant leur rapport à l'éthique et à la jurisprudence. Dans une période marquée (...) notamment par la controverse de Valladolid (1550) et la Contre-Réforme, l'auteur redéfinit le contenu et la finalité des concepts fondamentaux de la théorie politique (l'état de nature, le droit naturel, le droit subjectif, la loi naturelle, le pacte social, la souveraineté, l'État et le droit des gens) en les articulant à une compréhension historique de l'homme conçu comme être libre, raisonnable et fini. Suarez instaure ainsi les conditions d'un basculement du théologico-politique dans la modernité dont les effets se feront sentir, entre autres, chez Grotius et l'École du droit naturel. Les conséquences de ce mouvement seront perceptibles jusqu'au XVIIIe siècle avec Wolf. Des lois et du Dieu législateur permet précisément d'apprécier à sa juste mesure la place privilégiée qu'il convient de redonner à la théorie suarézienne de la loi dans l'histoire de la pensée politique. (shrink)

Les Disputationes Metaphysicae de Suarez, publiées en 1597, constituent le moment culminant de la pensée scolastique au siècle d’or espagnol. Mais elles traduisent également l’avènement d’un point de rupture dans le déploiement de l’histoire de la métaphysique. La notion de Disputatio s’inscrit, d’une part, dans le prolongement de la terminologie conceptuelle médiévale. D’autre part, que la Disputatio se dise métaphysique, laisse présupposer que sa finalité ne saurait se limiter au domaine logico-théologique. Il convient, certes, d’articuler les principes métaphysiques aux vérités (...) théologiques, mais également, d’effectuer par un geste inaugural, l’espace d’une autonomisation de la philosophie première par rapport à la théologie divine et surnaturelle.Avec l’œuvre de Suarez, la métaphysique est confrontée à la possibilité de la systématicité de son déploiement. (shrink)

In der Fünften metaphysischen Disputation behandelt Suárez die Definition der Individualität, das metaphysische Individuationsprinzip und das physische Individuationsprinzip der Substanzen und Akzidentien. Die Darlegung berücksichtigt einen großen Teil der damals maßgeblichen Literatur und gibt zugleich einen Eindruck von der Schulphysik des späten 16. Jahrhunderts.

In der Fünften metaphysischen Disputation behandelt Suárez (1548-1617) die Definition der Individualität, das metaphysische Individuationsprinzip (Individualdifferenz) und das physische Individuationsprinzip der Substanzen und Akzidentien. Die Darlegung berücksichtigt einen großen Teil der damals maßgeblichen Literatur und gibt zugleich einen Eindruck von der Schulphysik des späten 16. Jahrhunderts.

t. 1. Texto inédito de los doce primeros capítulos. Facsímil de la segunda versión suareciana (Lyon 1621).