The debate concerning the proper way of understanding, and hence solving, the “is-ought problem” produced two mutually exclusive positions. One position claims that it is entirely impossible to deduce an imperative statement from a set of factual statements. The other position holds a contrary view to the effect that one can naturally derive an imperative statement from a set of factual statements under certain conditions. Although these two positions have opposing views concerning the problem, it should be evident that they (...) both accept that the “is-ought problem” is concerned with the deducibility of imperative statements from factual statements. Later I will argue that this should not be our concern when we try to make sense of the way we reason about morality. (shrink)

Joaquín M. Fuster is an eminent cognitive neuroscientist whose research over the last five decades has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the neural structures underlying cognition and behaviour. This book provides his view on the eternal question of whether we have free will. Based on his seminal work on the functions of the prefrontal cortex in decision-making, planning, creativity, working memory, and language, Professor Fuster argues that the liberty or freedom to choose between alternatives is a function of (...) the cerebral cortex, under prefrontal control, in its reciprocal interaction with the environment. Freedom is therefore inseparable from that circular relationship. The Neuroscience of Freedom and Creativity is a fascinating inquiry into the cerebral foundation of our ability to choose between alternative actions and to freely lead creative plans to their goal. (shrink)

Theodore Sider’s puzzle in Hell and Vagueness has generated some interesting responses in the past few years. In this paper, I explore yet another possible solution out of the conundrum. This solution implies three ways of denying a binary conception of the afterlife. I argue that while these solutions might first seem tenable, they might still succumb to a Sideresque revenge puzzle.

Single-unit data from the cortex of monkeys performing working-memory tasks support the main point of the target article. Those data, however, also indicate that the activation of long-term memory is essential to the processing of all cognitive functions. The activation of cortical long-term memory networks is a key neural mechanism in attention (working memory is a form thereof), perception, memory acquisition and retrieval, intelligence, and language.

Current legal theory is concerned with the presence of principles in law partly because they are at the core of Dworkin's criticisms of Hart's rule of recognition. Hart's theory is threatened by the possibility that the identification of some principles follows an extremely relaxed rule of recognition, or even no rule at all. Unfortunately, there is no conclusive test to ascertain what is the case in actual practice. On the other hand, the evaluative arguments which support Dworkin's proposal of principled (...) adjudication are forceful but not conclusive. Moreover, since ultimate controversy over values is plausible, judicial discretion may sometimes be inevitable. (shrink)

Can God change the past? The standard Aquinas line answers this question negatively: God cannot change the past since such an act implies a contradiction; thus is not within the purview of God's omnipotence. While the Aquinas line is well-known, there are other, non-standard solutions to this question. In this paper, I look into such answers. In particular, I explore those answers that employ the resources of gappy and glutty logics. I show how these solutions are motivated and how each (...) offers an alternative conception of what it is for God to be omnipotent. Finally, I consider and reply to potential issues that may be raised against these non-standard answers. (shrink)

In order to fulfil their essential roles as the bearers of truth and the relata of logical relations, propositions must be public and shareable. That requirement has favoured Platonist and other nonmental views of them, despite the well-known problems of Platonism in general. Views that propositions are mental entities have correspondingly fallen out of favour, as they have difficulty in explaining how propositions could have shareable, objective properties. We revive a mentalist view of propositions, inspired by Artificial Intelligence work on (...) perceptual algorithms, which shows how perception causes persistent mental entities with shareable properties that allow them to fulfil the traditional roles of (one core kind of) propositions. The clustering algorithms implemented in perception produce outputs which are (implicit) atomic propositions in different minds. Coordination of them across minds proceeds by game-theoretic processes of communication. The account does not rely on any unexplained notions such as mental content, representation, or correspondence (although those notions are applicable in philosophical analysis of the result). (shrink)

In his Formal Logic, Arthur N. Prior declared that Jan Łukasiewicz's logical notation is ‘unquestionably the best logical symbolism for most purposes’. Whether he had a substantive, and...

Jc Beall’s off-topic interpretation of Weak Kleene logic offers a logic of ‘true-and-topic’ preservation. However, Nissim Francez has recently argued that being ‘off-topic’ is a relational and not an _absolute_ semantic property; as such, it fails to satisfy the conditions of truth-functionality. For Francez, this means that it ‘cannot serve as an interpretation of a truth-value’. In this paper, I propose a two-layered _re_interpretation of Beall’s off-topic semantics. This two-layered framework has two crucial features: a sentential topic-tagging device and a (...) two-layered evaluation tool. I show that this framework results in a logic that preserves Beall’s key insight and addresses Francez’s concerns. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the problem about the role of academic philosophy for the feminist movement. I argue that the professionalization of feminism, especially within the sphere of academic philosophy, is detrimental to the stated goal of the feminist movement, which, as historically understood, is to procure women’s rights and liberties and to reassess the treatment of women by different social institutions. The thought is that if feminism were to reap the rewards of a socio-political change, feminists should stop (...) their fantastic theorizing and start bringing their advocacies to the proper forums. (shrink)

Este trabajo se propone analizar las diferencias entre clases sociales en el uso de mecanismos de acceso al empleo en el Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires según distintos entornos residenciales, haciendo foco en la clase obrera. Se comparará entre la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires y el primer cordón del conurbano bonaerense y el segundo y tercer cordón. Se distinguirá entre mecanismos de acceso al empleo basados en la movilización de lazos sociales, fuertes o débiles, ligados a distintas instituciones y (...) ámbitos de socialización, como la familia, el barrio, la escuela, la universidad, el trabajo, etc., y el acceso al empleo sin el uso de lazos sociales. Se analizaron también las pautas del uso de lazos en la clase obrera desde una perspectiva intrageneracional (ocupaciones anteriores) y el vínculo entre el uso de lazos y el acceso a una ocupación formal o informal. Se utilizó una metodología cuantitativa con datos provenientes de la encuesta del PI-Clases “Reproducción y movilidad social en trayectorias familiares y cursos de vida” (2015-2016), cuya muestra es probabilística y su unidad de análisis son personas de ambos sexos de entre 25 y 65 años del Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires. Los principales hallazgos son las diferencias en el uso de lazos sociales según el entorno residencial y la importancia del uso de los lazos barriales para la clase obrera no calificada. A su vez, el uso de lazos sociales (y principalmente los barriales) está asociado al acceso a trabajos informales. (shrink)

This paper develops a philosophical account of the relata of romantic love, the nature of the objects in a love-relation. This account holds that the lover who loves and the beloved who is loved are particular people who persist through time by having temporal parts. We show how such a perdurantist account could provide models of different kinds of romantic love: from the love of transitory lovers to the love of immortal beings; from the love of lifelong companions to the (...) love of soulmates. Finally, two possible issues raised against this view will also be addressed. (shrink)

The modern philosophy of science has not succeeded in defining conclusively what the scientific method consists in. On the contrary, scientific practice seems to consist in a methodological pluralism, a definition that connects with essential fragments of John Dewey's Logic, the Theory of Inquiry. For Dewey, even the forms of logic emerge from the problems defined in indeterminate situations. A historical example was the introduction of the notion of complementarity in physics, which allowed the interpretation of two confusingly paradoxical experiments (...) in a coherent way. Dewey's thought demonstrates its relevance by helping us to define the pattern of inquiry. Methodological pluralism and the dependence of logic on research problems is not something that will happen, it is something that has happened and does happen in scientific practices. (shrink)

In “God of the Gaps: A Neglected Reply to God’s Stone Problem”, Jc Beall and A. J. Cotnoir offer a gappy solution to the paradox of (unrestricted) omnipotence that is typified by the classic stone problem. Andrew Tedder and Guillermo Badia, however, have recently argued that this solution could not be extended to a more serious Curry-like version of the paradox. In this paper, we show that such a gappy solution does extend to it.

Emotivists like Ayer claim that moral sentences are devoid of cognitive meaning since they only evince attitudinal approval or disapproval of actions. In this paper, I explore two non-classical sem...

Sally Haslanger is Ford Professor of Philosophy and Women's and Gender Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a leading contemporary feminist philosopher. She has worked on analytic metaphysics, epistemology, and ancient philosophy. Her areas of interest are social and political philosophy, feminist theory, and critical race theory. Her 2012 book, Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique, collects papers published over the course of twenty years that link work in contemporary metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of language with social (...) and political issues concerning gender, race, and the family. It was awarded the 2014 Joseph B. Gittler Prize for “outstanding scholarly contribution in the field of the philosophy of one or more of the social sciences.” In this interview, done in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the #BlackLivesMatter movement, we discuss her ideas on social practices, social structure, and structural explanation. We also delve into her debunking project of elucidating the notion of ideology in a way that links it with contemporary work in epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind, and to do justice to the materiality of social practices and social structures. (shrink)

In elementary logic textbooks, Venn diagrams are used to analyze and evaluate the validity of syllogistic arguments. Although the method of Venn diagrams is shown to be a powerful analytical tool in these textbooks, it still has limitations. On the one hand, such method fails to represent singular statements of the form, “a is F.” On other hand, it also fails to represent identity statements of the form, “a is b.” Because of this, it also fails to give an account (...) of the validity of some obviously valid arguments that contain these types of statements as constituents. In this paper, owing to the developments in the literature on Venn diagrams, we offer a way of supplementing the rules of the Venn diagram found in textbooks, and show how this retooled Venn diagram technique could account for the problem cases. (shrink)

In the wake of corporate ethical scandals that have harmed millions of employees and investors, there has been an increase in the number of works written in the last decade, which aim to answer one apparently simple question: what causes unethical behavior, and what can we do, if anything, to prevent similar transgressions in the future? The extensive research around this question is the best proof of its real complexity as the challenge of disentangling the background of ethical behavior has (...) obvious academic and practical interest. This study aims to take a further step toward that goal. Much research has noted the impact of multiple aspects of organizational contexts on individuals’ ethical behavior. However, studies that analyze the impact of organizational learning capability (OLC) on employees’ ethical behavior are few and far between. This was the first aim of this study. The second centered on gaining a deeper understanding of the relationship between OLC and ethical behavior by analyzing the mediating role of employability and organizational commitment. We tested our hypotheses through a structural equation methodology applied to a sample of 641 workers from 166 Spanish consultancy firms and found a positive, direct relationship between OLC and employability, OLC and organizational commitment, employability and organizational commitment, and organizational commitment and ethical behavior. (shrink)

The liar paradox results from a line of reasoning that starts with the liar sentence, ‘This sentence is false’ and ends with a contradictory conclusion, ‘The liar sentence is both true and false’. There have been solutions to the paradox that preserve the standard conception of truth and the classical notion of logical validity. In this paper, I explore nonstandard solutions to it. In particular, I focus on two non-classical solutions to the liar paradox; viz., the gappy and the glutty (...) solutions. According to the gappy solution, the liar sentence is neither true nor false, and the reasoning that leads to the paradoxical conclusion is unsound. On the other hand, according to the glutty solution, the paradoxical conclusion is correct, but any subsequent reasoning from it is invalid. I show some ways of motivating each of these solutions. Next, I show what each implies about the notions of truth and validity, and how each solves the paradox. Finally, I highlight some of the more recent problems that could be pitted against each of these solutions. (shrink)

In ‘What on Earth is Logic?’, Michael Shenefelt and Heidi White offer this observation about the nature of logic: ‘If one tries to justify logic logically, one ends up arguing in a circle’. From this, they conclude that ‘logic is a horizon beyond which none of our earnest self-reflecting arguments can help us see’. While there is much to appreciate in how they developed this idea, there are several worrying points that could still be raised against their view. In this (...) article, we outline such problems.Export citation. (shrink)

This paper discusses two conceptions of the Filipino expression bahala na. The first implies a fatalistic attitude, while the second implies an open-minded attitude toward an uncertain future. We explore how these two conceptions may be used to frame and address the familiar philosophical puzzle about the compatibility of divine omniscience and human free will.

Bayesianism has been dubbed as the most adequate and successful theory of scientific rationality. Its success mainly lies in its ability to combine two mutually exclusive elements involved in the process of theory-selection in science, viz.: the subjective and objective elements. My aim in this paper is to explain and evaluate Bayesianism’s account of scientific rationality by contrasting it with two other accounts.

Artículos Ciudadanía y sociedad civil en las democracias contemporáneas. Citizenship and civil society in contemporary democracies. de La Vega, Marta El poder simbólico de los medios de comunicación.The transformations of the political in the field of the symbolic.González Broquen, Ximena La rutinizacion de la indiferencia ética y el aplanamiento de los valores en la Argentina actual. Ethical indifference routine and smoothing moral in contemporary Argentine. Meabe, Joaquín E. Jürgen Habermas: entre la ética del discurso y la ética de la especie. (...) Jürgen Habermas: between the ethics of discourse and the ethics of the species. Moreno Lax, Alejandro Derechos humanos y proceso justo.Human rights and rightful process. Ramos Pascua, José Antonio El Fedón o la trascendencia del alma.Phaedo or the inmortality of the soul. Robledo Rodriguez, Alejandro La enseñanza del derecho en los países de derecho escrito.Legal education in civil law systems. Rodríguez Ferrara, Mauricio De cómo los latinoamericanos percibimos la pena de muerte. How latin-americans view the death penalti. Rodríguez Ferrara, Mauricio La doctrina platónica del alma en el 'Timeo'.The platonic doctrine of soul in 'Thimaeus'. Suzzarini, Andrés Interdisciplinares Bajo los murmullos: tributo a Juan Rulfo. Under the whispers: a homage to Juan Rulfo. Camacho Crispín, Marco Antonio Recensiones Semblanza del jurista venezolano Tulio Chiossone. Belandria, Margarita Informaciones Índice acumulado. (shrink)

El presente trabajo intenta dilucidar los caracteres centrales de la incorporación del legado de Marx en la obra de León Rozitchner. La hipótesis que articula el escrito define al marxismo como una matriz de inteligibilidad que permite una continuidad y una persistencia en los tópicos centrales de la filosofía del autor argentino. En particular, me centraré en los períodos de juventud y madurez de León Rozitchner, para verificar la forma en que las múltiples transformaciones de su filosofía con el paso (...) del tiempo, mantienen una cohesión posibilitada por su marxismo, entendido como un marco teórico jamás abandonado. Se pondrá de relieve la manera en que algunas apropiaciones juveniles del legado marxista (como, por ejemplo, la noción de “ser social”) son resignificadas a partir de las transformaciones y las distancias que adquiere Rozitchner en su propia lectura de Marx, para finalizar en la elaboración novedosa de un “materialismo ensoñado”. (shrink)

On this paper, we intend to make a psychological description of Creon as presented in Antigone, Sophocles tragedy. First, we will make a general description of the narcissistic personalities, based on the descriptions that the DSM-V and some authors make of this personality disorder. Then we will show that Creon’s case corresponds to this psychological description and intend to study the cause of his behavior. Finally, we will answer possible objections that could be made to the fact that we are (...) applying psychological categories to the Greek tragedy. Based on Kierkegaard’s description of the Greek tragedy, we will show that it cannot be understood on purely moral terms and how psychoanalysis allows us to rescue the tragic character of Creon. (shrink)