How did cultural factors participate in the event of October in Chile? How were these factors related to each other? What implications did they have for collective action and social life? The purpose of the article is to carry out a cultural reading of the October event. To do this, a dialogue is proposed between cultural sociology and cultural studies, applied to the October protest movement, resorting to interpretive research tools. The appropriation of Plaza Italia, in Santiago, by the protesters, (...) is used in an illustrative way to highlight the cultural elements and their interactions. Among the findings, the production of meaning based on motifs and frames stands out, the production of its own symbolism and iconography and the deployment of performances that allow defining the Plaza itself as an artifact of protest. Then certain scopes of the above for civil society are discussed. It concludes with a projection of the work and a brief reflection on the relationship between social sciences and humanities to deploy an interpretive strategy of empirical research. (shrink)

La tesis defendida en el trabajo es que la promesa-deseo llamado “democracia”, entendida como la confluencia necesaria y beneficiosa entre participación ciudadana con un modelo de gestión política (hoy concertacionista), es una de las principales “deudas” de los Gobiernos de la Concertación. Deuda, porque en el diseño político del retorno a la democracia se marginó a las fuerzas sociales del “ejercicio del poder” -aunque en la lucha por su consecución las fuerzas sociales jugaron un rol fundamental- lo que ha culminado (...) en un déficit de participación ciudadana y de ciudadanía participativa en los 20 años de gobiernos concertacionistas. Sin embargo hoy, por la acción de las fuerzas sociales y potencialmente por el discurso del último Gobierno, se han generado una serie de condiciones para discutir y encauzar el modelo sociopolítico hacia la inclusión y participación de la ciudadanía, entendida en un doble sentido: de fortalecimiento de la sociedad civil contra la fragmentación del tejido social (reconstrucción del demos) y el desarrollo de mecanismos de participación ciudadana en la gestión de lo público, contra la desvalorización de la democracia y la política (reconstrucción de la polis). (shrink)

¿Qué pasa cuando un concepto tan ambiguo como “Desarrollo” es trabajado por un libre pensador global (de acuerdo a Alberto Acosta) como J. María Tortosa? ¿Qué pasa cuando un texto enfoca de manera directa las paradojas, confusiones y debilidades de un concepto tan usado en ciencias sociales y por lo mismo tan impreciso? Se gana en precisión y claridad analítica, pero a la vez en apertura y creatividad interpretativa. El concepto pierde su carácter de concepto paraguas, para mostrar limitacion..

El número 28 de Revista Polis se abre a la discusión en torno a la “disputa por la construcción democrática” en América Latina, sus sentidos, límites, potencialidades y alternativas, desde la perspectiva de subjetividades colectivas, de los movimientos sociales y la acción colectiva. En el marco de los procesos de configuración, estabilización y profundización del orden democrático en América Latina, nos preguntamos: ¿De qué manera participan los actores sociales y las subjetividades colectiv..

Rastrear los diferentes sentidos de lo público en la historia de la humanidad, es entrar en un terreno marcado por la polémica. Sus raíces y huellas son posibles de encontrar en la polis griega como en la res pública romana. Su fisonomía moderna está marcada, sin duda, por el pensamiento de Inmanuel Kant, quien de alguna manera delimitará el debate, que continuará en las reflexiones seminales de Jurgen Habermas sobre la esfera pública o en la crítica de Hannah Arendt a (...) la distinción entre .. (shrink)

ResumenEl siguiente trabajo propone problematizar los supuestos construccionistas que subyacen a la teorización e investigación sociológica de los problemas públicos. Para ello, revisamos los componentes onto-epistémicos del construccionismo y su relación con los principales autores en este campo de investigación con el objetivo de tensionarlos a partir de las propuestas pragmatistas en el mismo ámbito. Nuestra propuesta es que la investigación en los problemas públicos se fortalece al cruzar ambas aproximaciones. Para demostrar el punto, nuestro argumento se plantea de la (...) siguiente manera. Luego de la introducción en la que fijamos el problema, presentamos los fundamentos construccionistas a partir del trabajo de Gusfield y sus derivados. Posteriormente, formulamos las propuestas pragmatistas francesas, siguiendo a Cefaï. A continuación, cerramos con una discusión en torno a la relación con los alcances empíricos, analíticos y políticos en el estudio de los problemas públicos.Palabras clave: construccionismo; pragmatismo; problemas sociales; públicos; reclamos públicos. (shrink)

El trabajo propone discutir el concepto de sociedad civil, para replantearlo desde una posición que privilegia el momento normativo de construcción teórica, desde una función epistemológica más que teórica, en sus articulaciones con la ciudadanía activa y con estrategias de gobernanza local que privilegian la pertenencia de la ciudadanía a una comunidad política determinada. En el marco de la globalización hoy los procesos de desarrollo local requieren complejizar las relaciones de actores que participan de estos procesos, más allá de la (...) relación Estado-Mercado. Para ello trabajamos un concepto normativo de sociedad civil y sus relaciones con la ciudadanía activa, que luego problematizamos con la inclusión de estrategias de participación ciudadana en la preocupación por la gobernanza local. Finalizamos con algunas notas sobre el rol de la investigación participativa en la relación anteriormente propuesta, todo enmarcado en un horizonte donde es posible otra democracia. (shrink)

Ernesto Laclau es un reconocido teórico político precursor del postmarxismo. Si bien reside en Inglaterra hace varios lustros, su vinculación con Argentina y América Latina sigue siendo muy importante. Su libro Hegemony and Socialist Strategy de 1985 (aparecido en español en 1987 con el título Hegemonía y Estrategia Socialista) co-escrito con Chantal Mouffe tuvo un gran impacto en el pensamiento de la intelectualidad de izquierda identificada con un proyecto de radicalización de los ideales ..

La racionalidad técnica y el pensamiento experto aparecen hoy como el principal instrumento para legitimar la toma de decisiones en el campo de la política. El proceso de racionalización de todas las esferas de la vida que anunciara hace poco más de un siglo Max Weber, encuentra la política contemporánea, un territorio fértil para su reproducción. Las democracias latinoamericanas no están exentas de esta dinámica de reducción de lo político a lo técnico, que traduce los conflictos inherentes ..

Does self-control require willpower? The question cuts to the heart of a debate about whether self-control is identical with some psychological process internal to the agents or not. Noticeably absent from these debates is systematic evidence about the folk-psychological category of self-control. Here, we present the results of two behavioral studies (N = 296) that indicate the structure of everyday use of the concept. In Study 1, participants rated the degree to which different strategies to respond to motivational conflict exemplify (...) self-control. Participants distinguished between intra-psychic and externally-scaffolded strategies and judged that the former exemplified self-control more than the latter. In Study 2, participants provided various solutions to manage motivational conflict and rated their proposals on effectiveness. Participants produced substantially more intra-psychic strategies, rated them as more effective, and advised them at a higher rate than externally-scaffolded strategies. Taken together, these results suggest that while people recognize a plurality of strategies as genuine instances of self-control, purely internal exercises of self-control are considered more prototypical than their externally-scaffolded counterparts. This implies a hierarchical structure for the folk psychological category of self-control. The concept encompasses a variety of regulatory strategies and organizes these strategies along a hierarchical continuum, with purely intra-psychic strategies at the center and scaffolded strategies in the periphery. (shrink)

From our everyday commuting to the gold medalist’s world-class performance, skillful actions are characterized by fine-grained, online agentive control. What is the proper explanation of such control? There are two traditional candidates: intellectualism explains skillful agentive control by reference to the agent’s propositional mental states; anti-intellectualism holds that propositional mental states or reflective processes are unnecessary since skillful action is fully accounted for by automatic coping processes. I examine the evidence for three psychological phenomena recently held to support anti-intellectualism and (...) argue that it supports neither traditional candidate, but an intermediate attention-control account, according to which the top-down, intention-directed control of attention is a necessary component of skillful action. Only this account recognizes both the role of automatic control in skilled action and the need for higher-order cognition to thread automatic processes together into a unified, skillful performance. This applies to bodily skillful action in general, from the world-class performance of experts to mundane, habitual action. The attention-control account stresses that, for intentions to play their role as top-down modulators of attention, agents must sustain the intention’s activation; hence, the need for reflecting throughout performance. (shrink)

Researchers often claim that self-control is a skill. It is also often stated that self-control exertions are intentional actions. However, no account has yet been proposed of the skillful agency that makes self-control exertion possible, so our understanding of self-control remains incomplete. Here I propose the skill model of self-control, which accounts for skillful agency by tackling the guidance problem: how can agents transform their abstract and coarse-grained intentions into the highly context-sensitive, fine-grained control processes required to select, revise and (...) correct strategies during self-control exertion? The skill model borrows conceptual tools from ‘hierarchical models’ recently developed in the context of motor skills, and asserts that self-control crucially involves the ability to manage the implementation and monitoring of regulatory strategies as the self-control exercise unfolds. Skilled agents are able do this by means of flexible practical reasoning: a fast, context-sensitive type of deliberation that incorporates non-propositional representations into the formation and revision of the mixed-format intentions that structure self-control exertion. The literatures on implementation intentions and motivation framing offer corroborating evidence for the theory. As a surprising result, the skill of self-control that allows agents to overcome the contrary motivations they experience is self-effacing: instead of continuously honing this skill, expert agents replace it with a different one, which minimizes or prevents contrary motivations from arising in the first place. Thus, the more expert you are at self-control, the less likely you are to use it. (shrink)

Effort and the feeling of effort play important roles in many theoretical discussions, from perception to self-control and free will, from the nature of ownership to the nature of desert and achievement. A crucial, overlooked distinction within the philosophical and scientific literatures is the distinction between theories that seek to explain effort and theories that seek to explain the feeling of effort. Lacking a clear distinction between these two phenomena makes the literature hard to navigate. To advance in the unification (...) and development of this area, this article provides an overview of the main theories of the nature of effort and the nature of the feeling of effort, and then discusses how efforts and their feelings are related. Two key takeaways emerge. First, there is widespread agreement that efforts are goal-directed actions. Second, one of the main philosophical issues to be decided is whether feelings of effort should be defined by reference to efforts (effort-first approach), or whether efforts are defined by reference to the feeling of effort (feeling-first approach). (shrink)

This paper proposes a conceptual model that fosters interdisciplinary thinking and critical thinking by connecting the three main philosophical traditions that impact modern thinking – British empiricism, Continental Europe subjective idealism, and realism – with their epistemological foundations and in combination with modern social disciplines: ethics, social responsibility, and political economy. Through a statistical analysis this paper shows which of the three epistemologies produces better social outcomes.

Self-control, the capacity to resist temptations and pursue longer-term goals over immediate gratifications, is crucial in determining the overall shape of our lives, and thereby in our ability to shape our identities. As it turns out, this capacity is intimately linked with our ability to control the direction of our attention. This raises the worry that perhaps social media are making us more easily distracted people, and therefore less able to exercise self-control. Is this so? And is it necessarily a (...) bad thing? This paper analyzes the nature of attention, its vices and virtues, and what currently available evidence has to say about the effects of social media on attention and self-control. The pattern that seems to be emerging is that, although there is an association between higher use of social media and lower attentional control, we do not yet know whether it is social media use that makes people more distracted, or whether those who use social media the most do so because they are more easily distracted. Either way, the rise of the ‘Web 2.0’ does raise questions about whether the virtues of attention will change in the future, and whether this will bring with it a transformation in the way we shape our selves. (shrink)

Concerns about threats to human autonomy feature prominently in the field of AI ethics. One aspect of this concern relates to the use of AI systems for problematically manipulative influence. In response to this, the European Union’s draft AI Act (AIA) includes a prohibition on AI systems deploying subliminal techniques that alter people’s behavior in ways that are reasonably likely to cause harm (Article 5(1)(a)). Critics have argued that the term ‘subliminal techniques’ is too narrow to capture the target cases (...) of AI-based manipulation. We propose a definition of ‘subliminal techniques’ that (a) is grounded on a plausible interpretation of the legal text; (b) addresses all or most of the underlying ethical concerns motivating the prohibition; (c) is defensible from a scientific and philosophical perspective; and (d) does not over-reach in ways that impose excessive administrative and regulatory burdens. The definition is meant to provide guidance for design teams seeking to pursue responsible and ethically aligned AI innovation. (shrink)

In “Willpower with and without effort”, G. Ainslie advances our understanding of selfcontrol by theoretically unifying multiple forms of willpower. But one crucial question remains unanswered: How do agents pick the right forms of willpower in each situation? I argue that willpower requires tactical skill, which detects willpower-demanding contexts, selects context-appropriate tactics, and monitors their implementation. Research on tactical skill will significantly advance our understanding of willpower.

Habitual action would still be a tremendously pervasive feature of our agency. And yet, references to habitual action have been marginal at best in contemporary philosophy of action. This neglect is due, at least, to the combination of two ideas. The first is a widespread view of habit as entirely automatic, inflexible, and irresponsive to reasons. The second is philosophy of action’s tendency (dominant at least since Anscombe and Davidson) to focus on explaining action by reference to reasons. Arguably, if (...) habitual behavior is reasons-irresponsive, and if action is explained by reference to reasons, the study of habit would have very little to teach about action. Recently, however, there has been a surge in philosophical interest on habit and habitual action. Novel approaches are challenging the two ideas mentioned above, arguing that (1) habitual behavior is not entirely automatic or inflexible, but instead has a particular kind of flexibility and intentionality; and that (2) acting out of habit can count as a form of acting for reasons, even in the absence of the traditional rationalizing mental states: belief, desire, and intention. -/- The essays contained in this issue move discussions forward in exciting new directions. In what follows we present each paper and situate it within its broader theoretical context, so that this introduction may serve also as an introduction to the topic of habitual action. A crucial lesson that emerges from these essays is a need to move past disputes between philosophical schools or traditions. Rather than combatting between different philosophical factions, an ecumenical approach capable of skillfully bringing together elements from different traditions seems better able to tackle problems that remain unsolved. These problems include (but are not limited to): developing an account of responsibility for habitual action; explaining our ability to perform joint habitual actions; and clarifying the link between habit and self-control. (shrink)

Self-control is deemed crucial for reasons-responsive agency and a key contributor to long-term wellbeing. But recent studies suggest that effortfully resisting one’s temptations does not contribute to long-term goal attainment, and can even be harmful. So how does self-control improve our lives? Finding an answer requires revising the role that overcoming temptation plays in self-control. This paper distinguishes two forms of self-control problems: temptation (the presence of a strong wayward motivation) and apathy (the lack of commitment-advancing motivation). This distinction makes (...) it possible to separate negative self-control (aimed at overcoming temptation) from positive self-control (aimed at overcoming lack of motivation). The paper argues that temptation should not play a central role in our conception of self-control, since overcoming temptation is neither necessary nor sufficient for successful self-control. (shrink)

The literature on mathematical explanation contains numerous examples of explanatory, and not so explanatory proofs. In this paper we report results of an empirical study aimed at investigating mathematicians’ notion of explanatoriness, and its relationship to accounts of mathematical explanation. Using a Comparative Judgement approach, we asked 38 mathematicians to assess the explanatory value of several proofs of the same proposition. We found an extremely high level of agreement among mathematicians, and some inconsistencies between their assessments and claims in the (...) literature regarding the explanatoriness of certain types of proofs. (shrink)

For agents like us, the feeling of effort is a very useful thing. It helps us sense how hard an action is, control its level of intensity, and decide whether to continue or stop performing it. While there has been progress in understanding the feeling of mental effort and the feeling of bodily effort, this has not translated into a unified account of the general feeling of effort. To advance in this direction, I defend the single-feeling view, which states that (...) the feeling of effort is one and the same for both mental and bodily actions. This feeling represents the subjective costs, both mental and physical, of performing a given action. Cost-based approaches have recently become influential for the feeling of mental effort. Here I focus on arguing that our sense of bodily effort does not simply represent physiological processes, but rather represents the subjective costs of a bodily action. Through this paper I discuss the role of the feeling of effort (and affective states more broadly) in action guidance and the sense of agency. I also define efforts themselves in terms of the feeling of effort. (shrink)

Los trabajos enfocados en estudiar los procesos de digitalización de las noticias ya no constituyen un tema incipiente en el campo de la comunicación. Pasaron más de 15 años de la aparición de los primeros formatos online de los periódicos y ya es posible encontrar diversos tipos de abordajes académicos que dan cuenta de preocupaciones teóricas y metodológicas sobre los modos de abordar los procesos de digitalización de las noticias. En el siguiente trabajo presentaremos una síntesis de los principales aportes (...) realizados en Iberoamérica y Estados Unidos con el objeto agrupar 3 matrices que en general han guiado a los intereses de estos trabajos: a) relevar las primeras experiencias de digitalización de periódicos ya reconocidos, b) analizar las nuevas características que asume la práctica periodística y los componentes discursivos de los nuevos formatos periodísticos y c) reconocer la emergencia de nuevos actores que comienzan a disputar el campo periodístico. (shrink)

This paper introduces the theory QST of quasets as a formal basis for the Nmatrices. The main aim is to construct a system of Nmatrices by substituting standard sets by quasets. Since QST is a conservative extension of ZFA (the Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with Atoms), it is possible to obtain generalized Nmatrices (Q-Nmatrices). Since the original formulation of QST is not completely adequate for the developments we advance here, some possible amendments to the theory are also considered. One of the (...) most interesting traits of such an extension is the existence of complementary quasets which admit elements with undetermined membership. Such elements can be interpreted as quantum systems in superposed states. We also present a relationship of QST with the theory of Rough Sets RST, which grants the existence of models for SQT formed by rough sets. Some consequences of the given formalism for the relation of logical consequence are also analysed. (shrink)

RESUMEN Con frecuencia el amor y la racionalidad se ven como capacidades que fácilmente entran en conflicto, cuando no se consideran por principio opuestas. En este artículo desarrollo algunos puntos esbozados por Harry Frankfurt con el fin de proponer que la relación entre amor y racionalidad no es de simple oposición. Tras ofrecer una caracterización del amor como disposición híbrida de seguimiento múltiple, defenderé que el amor es racional en el siguiente sentido: el amor no es justificable, pero a pesar (...) de ello es una fuente de razones básicas y a veces irresistibles que en buena medida informan el campo de nuestra racionalidad. Esto no significa que el amor sea una base irracional o arracional, o que sea completamente blindado a la razón, sino que en circunstancias específicas tiene sentido someter el amor a escrutinio racional. ABSTRACT Love and rationality are often considered as capacities which easily come into conflict, or are even opposed to one another. In the paper I elaborate some points suggested by Harry Frankfurt in order to propose that the relation between love and rationality is not one of opposition. After offering a characterization of love as a hybrid multi-track disposition, I will argue that love is rational in the following sense: although love is not justifiable, it is nevertheless a source of basic and sometimes irresistible reasons which to a large extent shape the field of our rationality. This does not mean that love is an irrational or arrational foundation, or that it is impervious to reason; it only means that in certain circumstances it makes sense to subject love to rational scrutiny. (shrink)

Sophists and rhetoricians like Gorgias are often accused of disregarding truth and rationality: their speeches seem to aim only at effective persuasion, and be constrained by nothing but persuasiveness itself. In his extant texts Gorgias claims that language does not represent external objects or communicate internal states, but merely generates behavioural responses in people. It has been argued that this perspective erodes the possibility of rationally assessing speeches by making persuasiveness the only norm, and persuasive power the only virtue, of (...) speech. Against this view, I show how Gorgias’ texts support a robust normativity of language that goes well beyond persuasion while remaining non-representational. Gorgias’ claims that a speech can be persuasive and false, or true and unpersuasive, reveal pragmatic, epistemic, and agonistic constraints on the validity of speech that are neither representational nor reducible to sheer persuasiveness. (shrink)

Scholarship on Aristotle’s theory of action has recently veered toward an intellectualist position, according to which reason is in charge of setting the goals of action. This position has recently been criticized by an anti-intellectualism revival, according to which character, and not reason, sets the goals of action. I argue that neither view can sufficiently account for the complexities of Aristotle’s theory, and suggest a middle way that combines the strengths of both while avoiding their pitfalls. The key problem for (...) intellectualism is that Aristotle explicitly states reason cannot set the goals of action. The key problem for anti-intellectualism is that he also holds that the soul’s rational part must guide and prescribe over the non-rational part. I propose indirect intellectualism, a promising middle path. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that every form of knowledge, even scientific knowledge, is linked with the personal existence that effectuates it. We offer a map of the different schools of Interdisciplinarity attending to an anthropological criterion. To this end, a map of the various schools of interdisciplinarity is offered according to an anthropological criterion, where the persistence of a partial and reductive approach to human knowledge in various modalities is generally detected. The consequence of this way (...) of understanding knowledge is firstly the fragmentation of reality, but also of social life and above all of human existence itself. Thus, the need for a theory of interdiscipline is discovered, that not only transcends the epistemological approach, but also that of action and its ontological dimension. We propose that this expansion is achieved through a radical interdiscipline anchored in personal existence. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss the notions of adequacy and truth functionality in quantum logic from the point of view of a non-deterministic semantics. We give a characterization of the degree of non-functionality which is compatible with the propositional structure of quantum theory, showing that having truth-functional connectives, together with some assumptions regarding the relation of logical consequence, commits us to the adequacy of the interpretation sets of these connectives. An advantage of our proof is that it is independent of (...) the number of truth values involved, generalizing previous works. We also show the failure of the adequacy of every Nmatrix that is a model of the non-distributive lattice of quantum propositions. En este trabajo discutimos las nociones de adecuación y veritativo-funcionalidad en la lógica cuántica, desde el punto de vista de una semántica no determinista. Damos una caracterización del grado de no-funcionalidad compatible con la estructura proposicional de la teoría cuántica, mostrando que tener conectivos veritativo-funcionales, junto con algunos presupuestos relativos a la relación de consecuencia lógica, nos compromete con la adecuación de los conjuntos de interpretación de estos conectivos. Un punto ventajoso de nuestra prueba es que se independiza de la cantidad de valores de verdad involucrados, generalizando trabajos previos. Probamos también que falla la adecuación de cualquier Nmatriz que sirva como modelo para el retículo no distributivo de proposiciones cuánticas. (shrink)

This article seeks to raise the problems of the notion of difference according to Heidegger and Deleuze, for, to our knowledge, they are two of the mayor contemporary thinkers who have influenced our time by addressing this issue. What is “new” about the ways Heidegger and Deleuze think the notion of difference? What convergences appear between their proposals? What disagreements occur between their philosophies? The article is an attempt to provide critical answers to these questions.

The aim of this text is to explore and discuss the way in which both the commercial films and the auteur cinema made by Luis Buñuel in Mexico, introduce us to the production of new cinematic representations of poverty. In order to do this, the films El gran calavera, Los olvidados, El Bruto and Nazarín will be analyzed. It is argued that these films suggest different ways in which poverty is inscribed that put the hegemonic representation imposed by the golden (...) age of Mexican cinema under tension. Moreover, the ideal of desire is recognized as a common mechanism in the actions of its protagonists. (shrink)

Trata-se de uma análise das afinidades da filosofia de Schopenhauer (1788-1860) no pensamento de Emil Cioran (1911-1995). Autor influente na Romênia desde o século XIX, Schopenhauer é considerado uma das principais referências de Cioran. As fichas de leituras, cartas, expressões e os temas abordados por Cioran constituem uma gama de argumentos para aproximação do filósofo romeno ao filósofo do pessimismo.

El artículo analiza la producción de vacunas en el Instituto Bacteriológico del Departamento Nacional de Higiene de Argentina entre 1913 y 1921. Durante estos años, bajo la dirección del bacteriólogo austríaco Rudolf Kraus, la producción de vacunas fue una apuesta central de las actividades del IB. Para ello, presentamos una reconstrucción de los diferentes aspectos sociales y cognitivos involucrados en estos desarrollos, tales como la selección de los productos, de las técnicas utilizadas, del alcance que tuvieron en su distribución y (...) aplicación efectiva, de las expectativas en torno a su aplicación y de las relaciones y antecedentes a nivel internacional de cada caso, entre otras cuestiones. Proponemos, como eje del análisis, que es posible identificar tres tipos de racionalidades que guiaron el desarrollo de las vacunas, ligadas a las retribuciones o diferentes usos que estas podían redituar en los distintos campos o espacios sociales: una médica-sanitaria, una comercial y una científico-técnica, resultado de las diferentes expectativas y demandas que atravesaron al IB. En términos metodológicos, el trabajo se basa en el análisis de diversas fuentes documentales, tales como trabajos científicos y memorias institucionales del IB y del DNH, trabajos de divulgación profesional o educación universitaria de la época, y bibliografía secundaria de la historia de la ciencia y la medicina. (shrink)

Social systems are always exposed to critical processes in which their organization, or part of it, is questioned by the society that demands solutions through different critical saliences. The traditional approach to such social crises has mainly focused on their anticipation and management, implying that the focus is on trying to deal with crises once they occur, rather than delving in their essential characteristics that seemingly depend on the adaptive nature of the system and the increase in its internal complexity. (...) To address this issue, we propose a dual approach that utilizes both qualitative and quantitative methods in order to delve into the relationship between the complexity of the social system, its adaptation, and critical episodes. Our analysis shows how an explosive economic growth affects a social system, increasing its complexity. This complexity produces different demands from the system itself. These demands manifest signatures of complexity such as a heterogeneous and rich social structure, which emerges during moments when the society acts strongly. (shrink)

El escrito a continuación muestra un problema de la investigación científico-jurídica respecto de los métodos, metodologías y epistemologías. Para esto, me propongo analizar las epistemologías feministas, en contraste con la epistemología jurídica hegemónica. En un primer momento, describo el desarrollo de las epistemologías y metodologías de la modernidad, específicamente el positivismo tradicional, y el cambio al positivismo lógico. En un segundo momento, señalo la denuncia que los estudios de género han realizado a las epistemologías hegemónicas. Después, refiero las contrapropuestas epistemológicas (...) y metodológicas que el feminismo hace a partir de 1970 aproximadamente. En un cuarto momento, indico el estado conceptual del positivismo jurídico; y finiquito con problematizar el positivismo jurídico desde las contrapropuestas epistémicas y metodológicas del feminismo. (shrink)

A 68-year-old patient who suffered from gastric cancer diagnosed 8 months earlier presented with multiple peritoneal and hepatic metastasis, despite several rounds of chemo- and radiotherapy. After admission to hospital, his general condition quickly became severely compromised. He was nearly emaciated, despite being on partial parenteral feeding. Four years earlier, due to a cardiac arrhythmia that was refractory to medication, the patient had a cardiac pacemaker implanted, regulated to go off at frequencies of below 70 beats per minute. Given the (...) patient's terminal situation, the team started developing some doubts about the pacemaker's effects during his dying process. The patient had mentioned his intention to donate his pacemaker after his death, but had not asked for its deactivation. The specialists were not sure about the effect of the pacemaker in unnecessarily prolonging the patient's final hour. Nevertheless, they opposed deactivation, which they considered ethically uncertain. The family, who had been initially for the deactivation, decided against it. The patient's condition was progressively deteriorating, as he was falling into a state of sopor and, later, into a coma. (shrink)

Which is the best icon of philosophical activity? The Spanish philosopher Garcia Morente analyses three sculptures: Le penseur by Rodin, Il pensieroso by Michelangelo and a sculpture known as El Doncel de Siguenza, in the cathedral of this Castilian town. Morente asserts that the latest reflects better than anyone else the nature of philosophy. In this paper the Morente’s view is rejected and another two ways of representing the philosophical activity are suggested: two ancient paintings that represent more properly the (...) philosophical labour, understood as an unending Socratic dialogue. (shrink)

In previous works, an ontology of properties for quantum mechanics has been proposed, according to which quantum systems are bundles of properties with no principle of individuality. The aim of the present article is to show that, since quasi-set theory is particularly suited for dealing with aggregates of items that do not belong to the traditional category of individual, it supplies an adequate meta-language to speak of the proposed ontology of properties and its structure.

El objetivo del presente trabajo es doble. En primer lugar, pretendo defender un concepto simpliciter de tolerancia según el cual la autonomía personal o la necesidad de fortalecer una cultura son las únicas razones que debe ponderar el agente-Estado para tolerar. En segundo lugar, pretendo responder afirmativamente a la pregunta de si puede el liberalismo perfeccionista y multicultural de Joseph Raz sostener desde la teoría moral y política un derecho intercultural. Para cumplir estos objetivos, me concentraré en los usos morales (...) del término tolerar para luego siguiendo a Michael Sandel, analizar los casos de tolerancia crítica y no crítica. Posteriormente, desarrollaré el liberalismo de Raz con el fin de mostrar los problemas teóricos que genera el fundamento de los derechos colectivos. Concluiré afirmando la existencia de derechos colectivos como recurso institucional para permitir el desarrollo de grupos culturales minoritarios dentro del actual desarrollo del Estado- nación. (shrink)