This essay reviews the model of power from Maturana, Canetti, Foucault, and Zizek, in order to think the relationship between the State, freedom and decent society.

This essay was written on the basis of a lecture given by its author in 1999, entitled “The status of human subject in the vestiges of Modernity”. Modernity, with capital letters, was the first ideological object reviewed.

La mayor complejidad para acercar la ética y la gestión pública es el desconocimiento epistemológico de la naturaleza no científica de los constructos que intentan hacer una reflexión seria de los quehaceres que les ocupan. En el trabajo se indagan las posibles ideologizaciones que se alojan tanto en una y otra disciplina, para proponer, a guisa de apuesta, que si se asume la inmersión de ambas en el discurso capitalista se las flexiona a favor del primero. Sólo la subversión del (...) espíritu crítico haría posible remontar los individualismos, previo reconocimiento de la esencia cultural de lo humano, para, desde allí, encontrar las vinculaciones más legítimas posibles, lo que se ejemplifica con los ingenios filosóficos de Margalit y Freud. (shrink)

The confusion generated in the communicational field by the assumption of a signal theory (Shannon) that searches for effectiveness in the transmission of a message from a transmitter to a receiver, which is generalized as a theory of information or of communication, has proposed an orientatio..

L'oeuvre Teologías deicidas, de Horacio Bojorge, a le mérite de faire un bilan critique de la pensée de J.L. Segundo appuyée sur une documentation aussi large que choisie. En ce qui concerne l'Informe critique de ses écrits plus importants, sa méthode et son contenu, elle rend largement actuelle la littérature critique relative au théologien uruguayen. Mais, en Teorema, où on cherche argumenta probantia d'un prétendu rationalisme de J.L. Segundo, il devient difficile de la suivre car elle offre en plusieurs points (...) importants une idée insuffisante de la systématique et de la théologie fondamentale. L'Auteur est un exégète compétent, mais son information dépend de quelques prémisses insuffisamment fondées. Ses réflexions au sujet de la pensée de J.L. Segundo peuvent aider à voir plus clairement certains aspects encore confus du débat, et pour cela il peut être utile de le suivre sur plus d'un point. Mais, son insinuation, ou sa suspicion, au titre d'un jugement de fond au sujet de Segundo, sont excessives. Ses erreurs peuvent être de nature logique, philosophique et théologique, mais cela ne l'autorise pas à la considération de sa pensée comme hérétique formaliter. En plus, sa critique s'appuie sur des conclusions difficilement démontrables, par exemple que l'Apologétique, ou théologie fondamentale, ne soit pas théologie ou que J.L. Segundo durcisse autour d'un paradigme de subordination de la foi à la raison critique. Il semble plus probable. (shrink)

Juan Pérez de Menacho, teólogo y filósofo limeño de la Compañía de Jesús, inaugura la tradición escolástica en el Virreinato del Perú. La figura de Pérez de Menacho, catedrático de Prima en San Marcos, ha adoptado ribetes legendarios, especialmente luego de la posible pérdida de sus manuscritos en el incendio de la Biblioteca Nacional del Perú en 1943: valorado como una de las mentes más prodigiosas de su tiempo pero a la vez largamente ignorado o, incluso, mistificado. En este (...) ensayo bio-bibliográfico, fragmento de una investigación mayor, se analizarán las escasas pero contrapuestas lecturas de su obra, se investigará el destino de sus manuscritos – que, como se verá, no se encuentran perdidos en su totalidad – y, a partir de sus casi desconocidos datos biográficos ofrecidos por un biógrafo barroco, se reconstruirá la vida y trayectoria de Pérez de Menacho, presentándolo como una figura paradigmática del ejercicio escolástico indiano. (shrink)

Al recorrer estas páginas, apenas logro reconocer al joven profesor de Lógica y ayudante de Felix Schwartzmann en la cátedra de Filosofía de las ciencias, que conocí como estudiante en el antiguo Instituto Pedagógico; y no solo porque en este Diario “se trata de algo menos filosófico o, como se dice también, más terrenal”, sino porque aquí aparece un Juan Rivano con el mismo acerado rigor intelectual de entonces, pero más intuitivo, más de carne y hueso, y con un (...) humor que refresca la lectura de estas quinientas y tantas páginas. Desde la primera frase, este relato se inunda con esa variante de la “ciencia jovial”, que no le conocíamos al profesor. “Los primeros atisbos serios de mi no-existencia comenzaron con esa cajera del supermercado de nuestro barrio en Lund. Una muchacha alta, refinada, de rubia cabellera, de estrecho busto, derecha en su asiento, entera en su tarea”, que él frecuentó a diario y con la que “no recuerda haber intercambiado una frase en todos estos años”. (shrink)

Der Band nimmt gewisse, mit dem Begriff Theurgie assoziierte Wandlungen innerhalb des spätantiken Neuplatonismus in den Blick. Theurgie wird vor allem als Suche nach immanenten Medien zur Verkörperung göttlicher Kräfte verstanden. Entgegen dem häufig kolportierten Bild vom weltflüchtigen Platonismus zielt die von Iamblichos und seinen Nachfolgern verfochtene Philosophie, so die Grundthese, auf Integration der körperlich-materiellen Wirklichkeitsebenen ab und das Endziel der Philosophie wird stärker unter dem Gesichtspunkt einer positiven Teilhabe am demiurgisch-kosmogonischen Werk begriffen. Diese Aufwertung von Körperlichkeit wird anhand verschiedener (...) Aspekte – z. B. dem Symbolbegriff, der „göttlichen Materie", aber auch des feinstofflichen Ochema-Pneuma-Konzepts – in ihrer Relevanz für das spirituelle Gesamtprofil der theurgischen Neuplatoniker erstmals umfassender untersucht. Abgerundet wird die Studie durch einen Vergleich mit ähnlichen Tendenzen im nicht-dualistischen Śivaismus von Kaschmir. (shrink)

Healthcare professionals often face ethical conflicts and challenges related to decision-making that have necessitated consideration of the use of conscientious objection (CO). No current guidelines exist within Spain’s healthcare system regarding acceptable rationales for CO, the appropriate application of CO, or practical means to support healthcare professionals who wish to become conscientious objectors. As such, a procedural framework is needed that not only assures the appropriate use of CO by healthcare professionals but also demonstrates its ethical validity, legislative compliance through (...) protection of moral freedoms and patients’ rights to receive health care. Our proposal consists of prerequisites of eligibility for CO (individual reference, specific clinical context, ethical justification, assurance of non-discrimination, professional consistency, attitude of mutual respect, assurance of patient rights and safety) and a procedural process (notification and preparation, documentation and confidentiality, evaluation of prerequisites, non-abandonment, transparency, allowance for unforeseen objection, compensatory responsibilities, access to guidance and/or consultative advice, and organizational guarantee of professional substitution). We illustrate the real-world utility of the proposed framework through a case discussion in which our guidelines are applied. (shrink)

Relying on aesthetic testimony seems problematic. For instance, it seems problematic for me to simply believe or assert that The Velvet Underground's debut album The Velvet Underground and Nico (1964) is amazing solely because you have told me so, even though I know you to be an honest and competent music critic. But why? After all, there do not seem to be similar reservations regarding testimony from many other domains. In this paper, I will argue that relying on aesthetic testimony (...) seems problematic because we are attached to an ideal of aesthetic authenticity and feel that living up to this ideal is anathema to simply relying on aesthetic testimony. (shrink)

Este artículo discute el problema de la permanencia y del cambio. Empieza considerando al esencialismo frente al anti-esencialismo contemporáneo, en un segundo momento, la noción de existencia y, en seguida, las de identidad y cambio. Finalmente, se apela a la naturaleza de la predicación para mostrar que, contra el esencialista, la concepción del cambio de su contrincante sí logra resolver el problema de la unidad semántica de la proposición.

Recently, Jennifer Saul (“Racial Figleaves, the Shifting Boundaries of the Permissible, and the Rise of Donald Trump”, 2017; “Racist and Sexist Figleaves”, 2021) has explored the use of what she calls “figleaves” in the discourse on race and gender. Following Saul, a figleaf is an utterance that, for some portion of the audience, blocks the conclusion that some other utterance, R, or the person who uttered R is racist or sexist. Such racial and gender figleaves are pernicious, says Saul, because, (...) among other things, they can shift the boundaries of what is deemed acceptable to think or say. This paper expands on Saul’s picture in a threefold way: It is first argued that appeals to statistics can function as figleaves. It is then argued that—as far as figleaves go—there is reason to believe that statistics-as-figleaves are especially pernicious. Finally, the paper explores some strategies for counterspeech. (shrink)

The shooting bias hypothesis aims to explain the disproportionate number of minorities killed by police. We present the evidence mounting in support of the existence of shooting bias and then focus on two dissenting studies. We examine these studies in light of Biddle and Leuschner’s “inductive risk account of epistemically detrimental dissent” and conclude that, although they meet this account only partially, the studies are in fact epistemically and socially detrimental as they contribute to racism in society and to a (...) social atmosphere that is hostile to science as scholars working on issues of racism come under attack. We emphasize this final point via recourse to Kitcher’s “Millian argument against the freedom of research.”. (shrink)

We study the SIS and SIRI epidemic models discussing different approaches to compute the thresholds that determine the appearance of an epidemic disease. The stochastic SIS model is a well known mathematical model, studied in several contexts. Here, we present recursively derivations of the dynamic equations for all the moments and we derive the stationary states of the state variables using the moment closure method. We observe that the steady states give a good approximation of the quasi-stationary states of the (...) SIS model. We present the relation between the SIS stochastic model and the contact process introducing creation and annihilation operators. For the spatial stochastic epidemic reinfection model SIRI, where susceptibles S can become infected I, then recover and remain only partial immune against reinfection R, we present the phase transition lines using the mean field and the pair approximation for the moments. We use a scaling argument that allow us to determine analytically an explicit formula for the phase transition lines in pair approximation. (shrink)

For quite some time, cognitive science has offered philosophy an opportunity to address central problems with an arsenal of relevant theories and empirical data. However, even among those naturalistically inclined, it has been hard to find a universally accepted way to do so. In this article, we offer a case study of how cognitive-science input can elucidate an epistemological issue that has caused extensive debate. We explore Jason Stanley’s idea of the practical grasp of a propositional truth and present naturalistic (...) arguments against his reductive approach to knowledge. We argue that a plausible interpretation of cognitive-science input concerning knowledge—even if one accepts that knowledge how is partly propositional—must involve an element of knowing how to act correctly upon the proposition; and this element of knowing how to act correctly cannot itself be propositional. (shrink)

The article examines the process of niche standardization in medical research as an example of democratizing strategies implemented in industry-funded science. I argue that niche standardization can lead to undesirable epistemic and ethical consequences, if the various goals of research are not properly aligned. I examine two examples: the case of Sarafem, approved for the treatment of premenstrual dysphoric disorder in women, and the case of BiDil, approved for exclusive use in African Americans for the treatment of congestive heart failure. (...) I conclude by cautioning against the unqualified support of democratizing strategies in industry-funded research. (shrink)

The Workshop of Being brings into conversation Jonathan Edwards and William James on the pragmatic value of religious experience. The author shows how Edwards and James employ psychological dynamics and theological and philosophical investigations to interpret religious feeling and its value for the transformation of an unfinished universe in need of repair. The Workshop of Being offers a meditative analysis of the work of America’s two greatest thinkers on the nature of religious experience.

The growing body of research on interdisciplinarity has encouraged a more in depth analysis of the relations that hold among academic disciplines. In particular, the incursion of one scientific discipline into another discipline’s traditional domain, also known as scientific imperialism, has been a matter of increasing debate. Following this trend, Scientific Imperialism aims to bring together philosophers of science and historians of science interested in the topic of scientific imperialism and, in particular, interested in the conceptual clarification, empirical identification, and (...) normative assessment of the idea of scientific imperialism. Thus, this innovative volume has two main goals. Indeed, the authors first seek to understand interdisciplinary relations emerging from the incursion of one scientific discipline into one or more other disciplines, such as in cases in which the conventions and procedures of one discipline or field are imposed on other fields; or more weakly when a scientific discipline seeks to explain phenomena that are traditionally considered proper of another discipline’s domain. Secondly, the authors explore ways of distinguishing imperialistic from non-imperialistic interactions between disciplines and research fields. (shrink)

Many philosophers, following Williamson (The Philosophical Review 105(4): 489–523, 1996), Williamson (Knowledge and its Limits, Oxford, Oxford Univer- sity Press, 2000), subscribe to the constitutive rule account of assertion (CRAA). They hold that the activity of asserting is constituted by a single constitutive rule of assertion. However, in recent work, Maitra (in: Brown & Cappelen (ed). Assertion: new philosophical essays, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011), Johnson (Acta Analytica 33(1): 51–67, 2018), and Kelp and Simion (Synthese 197(1): 125–137, 2020a), Kelp and (...) Simion (in: Goldberg (ed) The Oxford Handbook of Assertion, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020b) aim to show that, for all the most popular versions of the constitutive rule of assertion proposed in the literature, asserting is not an activity constituted by a single constitutive rule and that therefore CRAA is very likely false. To reach this conclusion, they all present a version of what can be dubbed the engagement condition objection. That is, they each propose a necessary condition on engaging in rule-constituted activities. Then they argue that, for all the most popular versions of the constitutive rule of assertion proposed in the literature, one can make assertions without satisfying this condition. In response, I present a counterexample that shows that the proposed engagement conditions lead to coun- terintuitive results, and I propose an alternative that better captures our intuitions. Then I argue that this alternative engagement condition is compatible with all the most popular versions of the constitutive rule of assertion. (shrink)