Palabras en memoria de Eduardo Bello pronunciadas en la sesión inaugural del V Congreso Internacional de la Sociedad Académica de Filosofía, celebrado del 2 al 4 de febrero de 2011 en La Laguna (Tenerife).

¿Qué cabida tienen, o pueden tener, las éticas y las políticas de la alteridad en el horizonte filosófico actual? En el contexto de la filosofía española reciente, la obra de Gabriel Bello Reguera (Dehesas, León, 1943) ha afrontado el reto ético-político que plantea el tomarse en serio la alteridad. Ha desarrollado su carrera académica en la Universidad de La Laguna como catedrático de Filosofía Moral y en su trayectoria cabría señalar tres giros fundamentales, si bien relacionados entre sí. (...) El primero podemos derivarlo del impacto de la lectura de la obra del neopragmatista Richard Rorty, que incidió en su crítica al fundamentalismo autoritario de la tradición filosófica despertó su interés por la narratividad, ligada a la conversación, como herramienta edificante de la ética. El segundo es debido a la influencia del pensamiento de Emmanuel Lévinas, a partir del cual problematiza las relaciones entre las categorías éticas de identidad, diferencia y alteridad. El tercero, y más reciente, le llevará al terreno del análisis de las migraciones internacionales en su contexto postcolonial como acuciante asunto necesitado, precisamente, de un nuevo marco filosófico, ético y político. En este libro colectivo, a través de la obra de Gabriel Bello, afrontamos con rigor la contextualización de las éticas y las políticas de la alteridad, proseguimos la discusión en torno a estas a la vez que elaboramos, conjuntamente, un balance crítico de una línea de investigación, de sus posibilidades y límites. Con todo ello, además, seguimos la tradición de prestar reconocimiento y gratitud a nuestros maestros y a nuestras maestras. En este caso, reconocemos la trayectoria docente e investigadora del Profesor Gabriel Bello Reguera y su dedicación rigurosa y concienzuda a la vida universitaria. Su obra, que, recorre cuatro décadas, es testimonio de cómo la filosofía en el contexto del Estado español, tras abandonar el erial instigado por el franquismo, participa de los debates transnacionales actuales en los que las éticas y las políticas de la alteridad, especialmente, plantean desafíos insoslayables. Hemos, pues, recreado el ritual académico del Homenaje, algo tan central en la filosofía alemana como la Festschrift, con el deseo de dotarlo del sentido más relevante que, a nuestro juicio, puede tener: el del debate intelectual crítico. (shrink)

In this essay, we focus on Max Weber’s concept of rationalization to understand and make sense of the rise of bureaucratic, corporate governance and online learning in higher education. We reveal the distinct disconnect between human interaction and online platforms and how such disconnection is antithetical to higher learning. We also show how Weber’s analysis helps us recognize the uniquely crass commercialism embedded in the very rationalization that makes online learning in universities thinkable and actionable. Our use of online learning (...) is only one illustration of Weber’s concept of rationalization, but it provides an important understanding of the nefarious effects rationalization has on human interaction. The nexus of marketization, technology, and higher education represents, on our view, a juggernaut against faculty autonomy, academic freedom, and humane learning and should be directly challenged. One difficulty this challenge faces is the degree to which online learning has become ubiquitous and taken-for-granted. It has, as Weber clarifies, been rationalized. (shrink)

The central theme of this important book is that we are paying the price of an arrogance that refuses to recognize mystery. The author invites the reader to enter into the argument that he holds with himself on a great number of problems. Written in the early 1950s, Marcel's discussion of these topics are remarkably contemporary, e.g.: * Our crisis is a metaphysical, not merely social, one. * What a man is depends partly on what he thinks he is, and (...) a materialistic philosophy turns men into things. * Can a man be free except in a free country? * Stoicism is no longer a workable philosophy because today pressure can be put on the mind as well as on the body. * Technical progress is not evil in itself, but a technique is a means that, regarded as an end, can become either an idol or an excuse for self-idolatry. State control of scientific research, leading to a concentration on new means of destruction, is a calamity. * Fanaticism is an opinion that refuses to argue, and so the fanatic is an enemy of truth. * The kind of unification that science is bringing about today is really an ironing out of differences, but the only valuable kind of unity is one that implies a respect for differences. * We must beware of thinking in terms of great numbers and so blinding ourselves to the reality of individual suffering. Our philosophical approach to being is made possible only by our practical approach to our neighbor. * We must encourage the spirit of fraternity and distrust the kind of egalitarianism that is based on envy and resentment. * No man however humble should feel that he cannot spread the light among his friends. No easy solution is offered, but the author conveys his own faith that ultimately love and intelligence will triumph. (shrink)

Humans, animals, and the environment face a universal crisis: antimicrobial resistance. Addressing AR and its multi-disciplinary causes across many sectors including in human and veterinary medicine remains underdeveloped. One barrier to AR efforts is an inconsistent process to incorporate the plenitude of stakeholders about what AR is and how to stifle its development and spread—especially stakeholders from the animal agriculture sector, one of the largest purchasers of antimicrobial drugs. In 2019, The Wellcome Trust released Reframing Resistance: How to communicate about (...) antimicrobial resistance effectively, which proposed the need to establish a consistent and harmonized messaging effort that describes the AR crisis and its global implications for health and wellbeing across all stakeholders. Yet, Reframing Resistance does not specifically engage the animal agriculture community. This study investigates the gap between two principles recommended by Reframing Resistance and animal agriculture stakeholders. For this analysis, the research group conducted 31 semi-structured interviews with a diverse group of United States animal agriculture stakeholders. Participants reported attitudes, beliefs, and practices about a variety of issues, including how they defined AR and what entities the AR crisis impacts most. Exploration of Reframing Resistance’s Principle 2, “explain the fundamentals succinctly” and Principle 3, “emphasis that this is universal issue; it can affect anyone, including you” reveals disagreement in both the fundamentals of AR and consensus of “who” the AR crisis impacts. Principle 2 may do better to acknowledge that animal agriculture stakeholders espouse a complex array of perspectives that cannot be summed up in a single perspective or principle. As a primary tool to combat AR, behavior change must be accomplished first through outreach to stakeholder groups and understanding their perspectives. (shrink)

This edition of Marcel's inspiring Homo Viator has been updated to includle fifty-seven pages of new material available for the first time in English, making this the first English-language edition to conform to the standard French edition. Here, Christianity's foremost existentialist of the twentieth century gives us a prodigious personal insight on `man on the way' that will reinforce and commend our own pilgrimages in hope. "Homo Viator - "Homo Viator - or as Marcel calls him, `itinerate man' - is (...) an outstanding example of the philosophy concerned, not with technical problems, but with the urgent problems of man. Marcel talks to our condition, emphasizing our urgent need of hope, thus discovering beyond the lack of stability the values on which we may depend. "A subtle mind, a dramatist as well as a philosopher, close to the texture of human experience, he goes far beyond current platitudes to show that our Western tradition contains living truths that are as essential to our contemporary life as they were to our ancestors when they discovered them." - Eliseo Vivas "The theme of Marcel's Homo Viator is close to the center of all preoccupations: man in his pilgrim condition. With great virtuosity in the use of his own philosophical method, he probes into interpersonal relations and the threat to ethical values. Marcel excels here in his concrete analyses of the attitude of hope, the family community in its temporal and supratemporal aspects, and the forgotten virtue of personal fidelity." - James Collins. (shrink)

In NIP theories, generically stable Keisler measures can be characterized in several ways. We analyze these various forms of “generic stability” in arbitrary theories. Among other things, we show that the standard definition of generic stability for types coincides with the notion of a frequency interpretation measure. We also give combinatorial examples of types in NSOP theories that are finitely approximated but not generically stable, as well as ϕ-types in simple theories that are definable and finitely satisfiable in a small (...) model, but not finitely approximated. Our proofs demonstrate interesting connections to classical results from Ramsey theory for finite graphs and hypergraphs. (shrink)

The Kohlberg Gilligan Controversy has received intermittent but inconclusive attention for many years, perhaps reflecting the difficulty of bridging the two positions. This article explores the published evidence for Gilligan's claims of gender difference, gender identity difference, and role of caring in people's ethics. It seems that the evidence for pronounced gender differences in ethical attitudes within business is weak, even if gender identity is used instead of physical gender. The main propositions of Care Theory and recent advances in its (...) thinking are discussed. Special focus emerges on the notion of Attachment which seems to be the Care Theory ingredient both most able to survive critical scrutiny and most promising for bridging the divide between the Kohlberg and Gilligan paradigms. The Social Bonding Model and other possible bridge building conceptual structures are introduced. Finally, Max Weber's division between ethics of conviction and ethics of responsibility provides an overarching perspective both of the gap still to be bridged and the need to keep trying to bridge it. (shrink)

For n≥3, define Tn to be the theory of the generic Kn-free graph, where Kn is the complete graph on n vertices. We prove a graph-theoretic characterization of dividing in Tn and use it to show that forking and dividing are the same for complete types. We then give an example of a forking and nondividing formula. Altogether, Tn provides a counterexample to a question of Chernikov and Kaplan.

While much has been written on phronesis, there is a dearth of empirical work on the how the concept can be developed and implemented in practice, particularly in an educational setting. To address this problem, characteristics of phronesis were identified through a review of current literature and an examination of related themes from a special issue of the Philosophy of Management Journal on the philosophy of innovation. The implementation of the concept was investigated using an illustrative study of ongoing work (...) aimed at embedding phronesis in an innovation educational module. The study will contribute to the nascent debate by providing evidence of embedding Aristotle’s phronesis in the curriculum of future managers, in this case Engineering and Business students, working in cross-functional teams. A schema is proposed, based on concepts distilled from the literature and the illustrative study, to examine whether an educational project cultivates phronesis among the students. (shrink)

En el presente artículo se analiza la visión de Leocata sobre el cogito cartesiano. Se destaca su lectura del sum desde el acto de ser del creacionismo de Santo Tomás y su mayor evidencia para el intelecto humano, al mismo tiempo que una nueva versión de la “idea de ser infinito” que lleva a una nueva reconsideración del argumento ontológico de Descartes. Se concluye con un llamado al debate sobre esta relectura.

We define a formula φ in a first-order language L , to be an equation in a category of L -structures K if for any H in K , and set p = {φ;i ϵI, a i ϵ H} there is a finite set I 0 ⊂ I such that for any f : H → F in K , ▪. We say that an elementary first-order theory T which has the amalgamation property over substructures is equational if every quantifier-free (...) formula is equivalent in T to a boolean combination of equations in Mod, the category of models of T with embeddings for morphisms. Thus, we develop a theory of independence with respect to equations in general categories of structures, which is similar to the one introduced in stability but which, in our context, has an algebraic character. (shrink)

We argue that not all cases of before-effect involve causation and ask how to demarcate cases of before-effect in which the events that follow exert causal influence over the before-effect from cases in which they do not.

Le 'Journal métaphysique', qui, primitivement, n'était pas destiné à la publication, est constitué par un ensemble de notes philosophiques rédigées au jour le jour. L'évidente différence de style entre les deux parties tient au fait que sous la pression de la guerre la pensée de l'auteur s'est tournée de plus en plus résolument vers le concret, vers l'existentiel, qui a trouvé dans le Journal métaphysique une des premières expressions qu'il ait revêtues en France. Il ne faut d'ailleurs pas parler de (...) l'existentialisme, mais une thématique de l'existence considérée dans sa spécificité tend à s'y constituer par une réflexion qui se concentre de plus en plus sur le corps propre (par opposition au corps-objet ou instrument), sur la sensation traitée non plus comme message mais comme façon d'être au monde, sur la mémoire, sur la volonté, etc. Des phénomènes métaphysiques tels que la télépathie, la lecture de pensées, etc. sont considérés avec une attention particulière et l'auteur va jusqu'à se demander s'il ne conviendrait pas d'inverser la relation communément pré-supposée entre le psychologique et le métapsychique et si la clef des phénomènes dits normaux ne devrait pas être cherchée dans le supra-normal. (shrink)

Demonstrating that in George Berkeley's last major work, Siris, Berkeley had converted to a belief in the usefulness of the concept and existence of minute particles, Moked here posits that Berkeley developed a highly original brand of corpuscularian physics.

In this paper I investigate affinities between Nietzsche’s early philosophy and some aspects of Kant’s moral theory. In so doing, I develop further my reading of Nietzschean wholeness as an ideal that consists in the achievement of cultural—not psychic—integration by pursuing the ennoblement of humanity in oneself and in all. This cultural achievement is equivalent to the procreation of the genius or the perfection of nature. For Nietzsche, the process by means of which we come to realize the genius in (...) ourselves is one in which our true content comes to necessarily govern or guide the shaping of our outer form (or our outward activities). Since this true content turns out to be our autonomy or free agency, I argue that this Nietzschean idea of necessitation parallels in important ways Kant’s notion of normative necessity. In particular, I claim that for Nietzsche the agent’s form becomes necessitated by his content as a result of the agent’s recognition of the duties that befall those who aspire to belong to a genuine culture and his resolve to guide his actions in accordance to them. These duties spring from the idea of humanity, from the image we have of ourselves as endowed with the capacity to be the helmsmen of our lives or to be more than mere animals or automata. The person who takes up this ideal of humanity turns his life into a living unity of content and form by organizing it around an aspect of his being that belongs necessarily, hence more truthfully, to him. He also participates in a collective project (that of the ennoblement of the human being) that can lend a certain coherence and imperishability to his individual life and through which he becomes necessarily connected to everyone else for all eternity. (shrink)

Interest shown on the environmental impact of operations of multinational enterprises in developing countries has grown significantly recently, and has fuelled a heated public policy debate. In particular, there has been interest in the environmental degradation of host communities and nations resulting from the operations of multinational oil companies in developing countries. This article examines the issue of environmental costs and responsibilities resulting from oil exploitation and production in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The case study is based, in (...) part, upon series of interviews with key stakeholders in the Nigerian oil industry. The article further examines the implications of the current practice and policies of multinational oil companies with respect to environmental impact of oil exploitation. The study’s findings illustrates that it is becoming increasingly apparent to oil companies that pollution prevention pays while pollution does not and under pressure from stakeholder groups, oil companies now routinely incorporate environmental impact assessments into their corporate strategy. (shrink)