Los avatares de Antoniana Margarita y el Endecálogo de Francisco de Sosa.

Las palabras del título de este pequeño escrito, como homenaje a Julián Marías, corresponden a dos de las obras que Harold Raley escribió sobre él. El concepto de ¿visión responsable¿ se debe al mismo Marías, que en el prólogo de su obra Nuevos ensayos de filosofía dice: ¿... la filosofía podría definirse con tres palabras: la visión responsable¿, es decir, la que define la realidad sea cualquiera que sea y tal como se presente. El subtítulo, ¿una filosofía desde dentro¿, responde (...) al esfuerzo que debe hacer el individuo de no renunciar a la filosofía si quiere conocer la realidad; de lo contrario se verá expuesto a la sofistería, a la indiferencia y, sobre todo, al desprecio de la misma realidad con la que habita. (shrink)

El 20 de mayo del 2005 falleció Paul Ricoeur en su residencia de Châtenay-Malabry (Paris) a los 92 años. P. Ricoeur fue el filósofo de la acción, comprometido, opuesto a los totalitarismos y reduccionismos, abierto al diálogo con las tendencias contemporáneas más dispares y profundamente cristiano. Fue un "espíritu libre y un pensador exigente con la modernidad".

Cultura escrita, alfabetização e escolarização assinalam uma longa Modernidade de mais de quatro séculos na História do Mundo Ocidental. A cultura escrita congrega informação, conhecimento, pensamento, acção. A aculturação escrita constituiu condição e factor de conhecimento, cidadania e humanitude. Desde finais da Idade Média com a difusão do papel e a mecanização da tipografia, o mundo da leitura alterou-se, em reflexo da maior divulgação do livro impresso. Na transição do Antigo Regime a leitura e a escrita eram práticas usuais na (...) esfera do Estado e da administração pública e tornavam-se condição de cidadania. No decurso de Oitocentos a progressiva universalização da alfabetização escolar e a constituição da esfera pública beneficiaram de novos avanços técnicos no mundo editorial, na vulgarização do livro, na disseminação de periódicos, na criação de bibliotecas. No decurso do século XX, a cultura de massas através do livro do áudio e do cinema trouxe a omnipresença da leitura. Os índices de leitura cresceram até final do século, mas desde as décadas de oitenta que o digital e os novos modos de ler só em parte vêm suprindo a desvalorização das formas tradicionais de cultura e leitura. Traçarei uma panorâmica destes quatro séculos de aculturação e sociabilidade pela leitura e pela escrita. (shrink)

The use of technologies like artificial intelligence can drive productivity growth, efficiency and innovation. The goal of this study is to develop an anomaly detection method for locating flaws on the surface of sandwich panels using YOLOv5. The proposed algorithm extracts information locally from an image through a prediction system that creates bounding boxes and determines whether the sandwich panel surface contains flaws. It attempts to reject or accept a product based on quality levels specified in the standard. To evaluate (...) the proposed method, a comparison was made with a sandwich panel damage detection method based on a convolutional neural network and methods based on thresholding. The findings show that the proposed method, which is based on an object detector, is more accurate than the alternatives. The characteristics of the model, which can reject or accept a product according to the standard and limit allowable manufacturing flaws to obtain a quality product, also enable this system to improve industrial standards for producing sandwich panels while increasing speed. (shrink)

Why does social injustice exist? What role, if any, do implicit biases play in the perpetuation of social inequalities? Individualistic approaches to these questions explain social injustice as the result of individuals’ preferences, beliefs, and choices. For example, they explain racial injustice as the result of individuals acting on racial stereotypes and prejudices. In contrast, structural approaches explain social injustice in terms of beyond-the-individual features, including laws, institutions, city layouts, and social norms. Often these two approaches are seen as competitors. (...) Framing them as competitors suggests that only one approach can win and that the loser offers worse explanations of injustice. In this essay, we explore each approach and compare them. Using implicit bias as an example, we argue that the relationship between individualistic and structural approaches is more complicated than it may first seem. Moreover, we contend that each approach has its place in analyses of injustice and raise the possibility that they can work together—synergistically—to produce deeper explanations of social injustice. If so, the approaches may be complementary, rather than competing. (shrink)

In this note, my aim is to point out a phenomenon that has not received much attention; a phenomenon that, in my opinion, should not be overlooked in the professional practice of philosophy, especially within feminist efforts for social justice. I am referring to the way in which being a non-native speaker of English interacts with the practice of philosophy.1 There is evidence that non-native speakers are often perceived in prejudiced ways. Such prejudiced perception causes harm and, more importantly, constitutes (...) wrongdoing. As in other cases of prejudiced perception and biased behavior, it would be pretentious and misguided to expect philosophers and the philosophy profession to be free from this vice. There are good reasons to think that this prejudiced perception is bad not only for the persons who are perceived in such a way, but also for the profession, for it might make us miss important things that could improve philosophy in general. I claim we should be more sensitive to this phenomenon, both out of concern for justice, and for the sake of doing better philosophy. (shrink)

abstract The possibility that organ sales by living adults might be made legal is morally distressing to many of us. However, powerful arguments have been provided recently supporting legalisation (I consider two of those arguments: the Consequentialist Argument and the Autonomy Argument). Is our instinctive reaction against a market of organs irrational then? The aim of this paper is not to prove that legalization would be immoral, all things considered, but rather to show, first, that there are some kinds of (...) arguments, offered in favour of legalisation, that are, in an important sense, illegitimate, and second, that even if legalisation might not be wrong all things considered, there are good reasons for our negative moral intuitions. Moreover, identifying these reasons will help highlight some features of moral decisions in non‐ideal situations, which in turn might be relevant to some other moral or policy choices. (shrink)

Tesis doctoral presentada en el departament de Lògica Història i Filosofia de la Ciencia de la Universitat de Barcelona per optar al títol de Doctor en Filosofia.

In contrast to individualistic explanations of social injustice that appeal to implicit attitudes, structural explanations are unintuitive: they appeal to entities that lack clear ontological status, and the explanatory mechanism is similarly unclear. This makes structural explanations unappealing. The present work proposes a structural explanation of one type of injustice that happens in conversations, discursive injustice. This proposal meets two goals. First, it satisfactorily accounts for the specific features of this particular kind of injustice; and second, it articulates a structural (...) explanation that overcomes their unattractiveness. The main idea is that discursive injustice is not the result of biased interlocutors, but of problematic discursive norms. (shrink)

O fator religioso foi uma componente fundamental da educação tradicional. Nas sociedades tradicionais, a mulher assumiu a delicada função de preservar as memórias e as práticas tradicionais de educação das gerações jovens. Assim, a vigilância do comportamento religioso da mulher foi muito rigorosa. As congregações religiosas, designadamente a Congregação das Ursulinas, assumiram a partir do Concilio de Trento a principal função de ensinar e educar as mulheres. Com efeito, quando se instalaram em Portugal no século XVIII, as Ursulinas tinham já (...) uma longa experiência noutros países europeus. Esta Congregação foi criada em França, no contexto histórico da Reforma Católica. A sua principal estratégia para educar e converter as populações ao Cristianismo foi ensinar as mulheres a ler e escrever. A alfabetização feminina foi uma via para combater a Reforma Protestante e para consolidar um texto religioso no interior da sociedade, uma vez que as mulheres eram o suporte principal da tradição oral religiosa. A Congregação das Ursulinas desenvolveu um importante método para ensinar as mulheres a ler e escrever. Na sua Constituição, a alfabetização e as demais dimensões educacionais eram fundamentais. Este texto é um contributo para a história da educação tradicional das mulheres em Portugal, através do estudo da ação das Ursulinas. (shrink)

A representação da educação envolve uma noção sistémica e os intelectuais podem funcionar como sistema. Eles configuram e demarcam o campo educacional. O intelectual constitui um conceito que pode ser trabalhado enquanto categoria epistémica com educabilidade e historicidade. Os Intelectuais cedo percepcionam o que está ‘de novo’ em crise e o que deverá permanecer. Entre estes emergem os Escolares; combinando as dimensões de intelectualidade e educabilidade, são intelectuais envolvidos institucionalmente e que estabelecem o cruzamento entre educação e sociedade, são instituintes. (...) Reconhecidos como mestres, são, em regra, autores de textos doutrinários e livros escolares; têm especial relevância na constituição do cânone escolar, literário, científico, artístico. Nada do que é humano lhes é indiferente; sabem fazer uso do poder simbólico e material que o institucional e o normativo lhes conferem. Será sobre os Escolares que procurarei desenvolver o meu texto. Tomarei como referência fundamental os intelectuais portugueses e a história da educação em Portugal. Palavras-chave: História da educação. Cânone. Intelectuais. Educabilidade. Escolares. (shrink)

What different relativist claims about a given domain are to be distinguished? Which of them is best placed to account for intuitive facts about disagreement in that domain? In a recent paper in this journal, ‘Indexical Relativism versus Genuine Relativism’ (2004), Max Kölbel distinguishes two forms of relativism, andargues that one of them, indexical relativism, faces problems in accounting for disagreement. In the first part of this discussion I present my own taxonomy of relativist positions in a given domain, which (...) is based on David Lewis’s 1980 essay, and I compare it with Kölbel’s and other recent suggestions. In the second part, I argue that the presuppositional defence of indexical relativism against related objections that I have elaborated elsewhere is also effective against Kölbel’s recent charges. (shrink)

Hinge epistemology is a family of views that offers a novel approach to avoiding skeptical conclusions about the possibility of a posteriori justification of our empirical beliefs. They claim that at the basis of our empirical beliefs lie certain commitments whose rational status is not determined by our evidence. These are called hinge commitments. Prominent hinge epistemologists have claimed that hinge commitments are either rational or arational but yet not beliefs. I argue that such views are subject to decisive objections. (...) I then offer what I consider to be the best version of hinge epistemology. On this view, hinge commitments are best understood as arational beliefs that contingently inform our worldview. I call this view the Arational Beliefs View. (shrink)

We examine the expressive power of probabilistic context free grammars (PCFGs), with a special focus on the use of probabilities as a mechanism for reducing ambiguity by filtering out unwanted parses. Probabilities in PCFGs induce an ordering relation among the set of trees that yield a given input sentence. PCFG parsers return the trees bearing the maximum probability for a given sentence, discarding all other possible trees. This mechanism is naturally viewed as a way of defining a new class of (...) tree languages. We formalize the tree language thus defined, study its expressive power, and show that the latter is beyond context freeness. While the increased expressive power offered by PCFGs helps to reduce ambiguity, we show that, in general, it cannot be decided whether a PCFG removes all ambiguities. (shrink)

We examine the expressive power of probabilistic context free grammars (PCFGs), with a special focus on the use of probabilities as a mechanism for reducing ambiguity by filtering out unwanted parses. Probabilities in PCFGs induce an ordering relation among the set of trees that yield a given input sentence. PCFG parsers return the trees bearing the maximum probability for a given sentence, discarding all other possible trees. This mechanism is naturally viewed as a way of defining a new class of (...) tree languages. We formalize the tree language thus defined, study its expressive power, and show that the latter is beyond context freeness. While the increased expressive power offered by PCFGs helps to reduce ambiguity, we show that, in general, it cannot be decided whether a PCFG removes all ambiguities. (shrink)

The CRISPR-Cas9 system is a genetic editing technology that, in addition to expanding the possibilities for scientific research, promotes reflections associated with human dignity, biological control, therapy, and genetic improvement. Bioethical discussions on the challenges and repercussions of the CRISPR-Cas9 system are reviewed. As a result, bioethical questions tend to problematize the application to non-human organisms, primary research, and the human somatic and germline. In brief, it is necessary to increase the levels of safety and effectiveness so that the benefits (...) outweigh the risks, while reducing bioethical concerns and increasing the credibility of the technique. (shrink)

The growing fiscal pressure created for the Monarchy during the Seventeenth Century crashed with the opposition of the privileged groups. The clergy was not prepared to give up an immunity that was considering secular. For this reason, they only consented to pay after obtained the papal permit; in this way safeguarded their jurisdiction. However, the ecclesiastics will enploy many ways to escape of the public taxes. T11e defraudation was one of them. A document of 1668 shows what type of defraudations (...) employed the Murcia's clergymen to be remitted of the payments. (shrink)

Altruism and solidarity are concepts that are closely related to organ donation for transplantation. On the one hand, they are typically used for encouraging people to donate. On the other hand, they also underpin the regulations in force in each country to different extents. They are often used indistinctly and equivocally, despite the different ethical implications of each concept. This paper aims to clarify to what extent we can speak of altruism and solidarity in the predominant models of organ donation. (...) It also raises the ethical question of whether these categories are adequate as a basis for such models, bearing in mind that organs are a scarce resource and that a shortage of them may mean that fewer lives are saved or improved. (shrink)