The purpose of this paper is to explore the connection between expressivism and disagreement. More in particular, the aim is to defend that one of the desiderata that can be derived from the study of disagreement, the explanation of ‘crossed disagreements’, can only be accommodated within a semantic theory that respects, at the meta-semantic level, certain expressivistic restrictions. We will compare contemporary dynamic expressivism with three different varieties of contextualist strategies to accommodate the specificities of evaluative language –indexical contextualism – (...) truth-conditional pragmatics –, pragmatic strategies using implicatures, and presuppositional accounts. Our conclusion will be that certain assumptions of expressivism are necessary in order to provide a semantic account of evaluative uses of language that can allow us to detect and prevent crossed disagreements. (shrink)

Theoretical tools aimed at making explicit the injustices suffered by certain socially disadvantaged groups might end up serving purposes which were not foreseen when the tools were first introduced. Nothing is inherently wrong with a shift in the scope of a theoretical tool: the popularization of a concept opens up the possibility of its use for several strategic purposes. The thesis that we defend in this paper is that some public figures cultivate a public persona for whom the conditions of (...) the notion of testimonial injustice might be taken to apply, and this situation is exploited to their advantage, as a means to advance their political agendas. More specifically, they take advantage of this to generate situations of crossed disagreements, which in turn foster polarization. (shrink)

Las herramientas teóricas destinadas a señalar las injusticias que sufren ciertos grupos socialmente oprimidos pueden acabar siendo utilizadas con propósitos completamente opuestos a los iniciales. Modificar el alcance de una herramienta teórica no es necesariamente problemático: la popularización de un concepto abre las puertas a que se utilice estratégicamente para diferentes fines. La tesis que defendemos en este artículo es que algunos personajes públicos cultivan una imagen particular de sí mismos que parece satisfacer los requisitos de la noción de injusticia (...) testimonial y utilizan esta situación como medio para obtener beneficio político de ella. Más concretamente, estos personajes públicos se benefician de esta condición para generar situaciones de desacuerdos cruzados, que están estrechamente relacionados con el aumento de la polarización. (shrink)

Scientific disagreements sometimes persist even if scientists fully share results of their research. In this paper we develop an agent-based model to study the impact of diverging diagnostic values scientists may assign to the evidence, given their different background assumptions, on the emergence of polarization in the scientific community. Scientists are represented as Bayesian updaters for whom the diagnosticity of evidence is given by the Bayes factor. Our results suggest that an initial disagreement on the diagnostic value of evidence can, (...) but does not necessarily, lead to polarization, depending on the sample size of the performed studies and the confidence interval within which scientists share their opinions. In particular, the more data scientists share,the more likely it is that the community will end up polarized. (shrink)

DOMÍNGUEZ, Javier. Cultura del juicio y experiencia del arte. Ensayos. Medellín: Editorial Universidad de Antioquia, 2003, 248 p.

Javier Osorio Mancilla Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Granada, España Historically, plants have received a secondary role in … Read More →.

Javier Osorio Mancilla Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Granada, España Históricamente, las plantas han recibido un papel secundario … Read More →.

This volume features essays that detail the distinctive ways authors and researchers in Spanish speaking countries express their thoughts on contemporary philosophy of technology. Written in English but fully capturing a Spanish perspective, the essays bring the views and ideas of pioneer authors and many new ones to an international readership. Coverage explores key topics in the philosophy of technology, the ontological and epistemological aspects of technology, development and innovation, and new technological frontiers like nanotechnology and cloud computing. In addition, (...) the book features case studies on philosophical queries. Readers will discover such voices as Miguel Ángel Quintanilla and Javier Echeverría, who are main references in the current landscape of philosophy of technology both in Spain and Spanish speaking countries; José Luis Luján, who is a leading Spanish author in research about technological risk; and Emilio Muñoz, former head of the Spanish National Research Council and an authority on Spanish science policy. The volume also covers thinkers in American Spanish speaking countries, such as León Olivé, an influential researcher in ethical issues; Judith Sutz, who has a very recognized work on social issues concerning innovation; Carlos Osorio, who focuses his work on technological determinism and the social appropriation of technology; and Diego Lawler, an important researcher in the ontological aspects of technology. (shrink)

This volume features essays that detail the distinctive ways authors and researchers in Spanish speaking countries express their thoughts on contemporary philosophy of technology. Written in English but fully capturing a Spanish perspective, the essays bring the views and ideas of pioneer authors and many new ones to an international readership. Coverage explores key topics in the philosophy of technology, the ontological and epistemological aspects of technology, development and innovation, and new technological frontiers like nanotechnology and cloud computing. In addition, (...) the book features case studies on philosophical queries. Readers will discover such voices as Miguel Ángel Quintanilla and Javier Echeverría, who are main references in the current landscape of philosophy of technology both in Spain and Spanish speaking countries; José Luis Luján, who is a leading Spanish author in research about technological risk; and Emilio Muñoz, former head of the Spanish National Research Council and an authority on Spanish science policy. The volume also covers thinkers in American Spanish speaking countries, such as Jorge Linares, an influential researcher in ethical issues; Judith Sutz, who has a very recognized work on social issues concerning innovation; Carlos Osorio, who focuses his work on technological determinism and the social appropriation of technology; and Diego Lawler, an important researcher in the ontological aspects of technology. (shrink)

This paper argues for a dilemma: you can accept liberalism or immigration restrictions, but not both. More specifically, the standard arguments for restricting freedom of movement apply equally to textbook liberal freedoms, such as freedom of speech, religion, occupation and reproductive choice. We begin with a sketch of liberalism’s core principles and an argument for why freedom of movement is plausibly on a par with other liberal freedoms. Next we argue that, if a state’s right to self-determination grounds a prima (...) facie right to restrict immigration, then it also grounds a prima facie right to restrict freedom of speech, religion, sexual choice and more. We then suggest that the social costs associated with freedom of immigration are also costs associated with occupational choice, speech and reproduction. Thus, a state’s interest in reducing these costs gives it prima facie justification to restrict not only immigration but also other core liberal freedoms. Moreover, we rebut the objection that, even if the standard arguments for a prima facie right to restrict immigration also support a prima facie right to restrict liberal freedoms generally, there are differences that render immigration restrictions – but not restrictions on speech, religion, etc. – justified all things considered. In closing, we suggest that the theoretical price of supporting immigration restrictions – viz., compromising a commitment to liberal principles – is too steep to pay. (shrink)

The fact that the permeability between family and work scopes produces work-family conflict (WFC) is well established. As such, this research aims to check whether the unequal involvement in household chores between men and women is associated with increased WFC in women and men, interpreting the results also from the knowledge that arise from gender studies. A correlational study was carried out by means a questionnaire applied to 515 subjects (63% men) of two independent samples of Spanish men and women (...) without emotional relationship, who lived with their heterosexual partner. As expected, results firstly show unequal involvement in household chores by women and men as it is higher in women that in men, and the perception of partner involvement is lower in women that in men. Secondly, those unequal involvements relate differently to men and women on different ways of work-family interaction. They do not increase WFC in women comparing to men, although there are tangentially significant differences in work conflict (WC) and statistically significant in family conflict (FC). However, perception of partner involvement on household chores increases WFC both in men and in women but not WC nor FC. Nevertheless, increase on marital conflict (MC) by domestic tasks neither affect in a significant way WFC in women nor in men, but increase WC in both women and men and FC only in women. Results also confirm that subject involvement on household chores is not a significant predictor of WFC in women nor in men, and that MC by domestic tasks is a statistically significant predictor in women of WFC and FC, but not in men. Thus, results show that traditional gender roles still affect the way men and women manage the work and family interaction, although the increased WFC due to involvement in housework is not exclusive to women, but also occurs in men. Personal and institutional recommendations are made on the basis of these results to cope with these conflicts. (shrink)

El presente estudio trata de ser una aproximación histórica al posmodernismo en una de sus vertientes: el constructivismo, la teoría que defiende que el mundo es construcción social sin correlato objetivo alguno. A través del examen de la genealogía de este perfil, el artículo se propone mostrar que el constructivismo es deudor de diversas tradiciones de pensamiento irracionalista, subjetivista e idealista, y que por ello constituye una doctrina anti y pseudocientífica.

In this paper I will defend the incapacity of the informational frameworks in thermal physics, mainly those that historically and conceptually derive from the work of Brillouin (1962) and Jaynes (1957a), to robustly explain the approach of certain gaseous systems to their state of thermal equilibrium from the dynamics of their molecular components. I will further argue that, since their various interpretative, conceptual and technical-formal resources (e.g. epistemic interpretations of probabilities and entropy measures, identification of thermal entropy as Shannon information, (...) and so on) are shown to be somehow incoherent, inconsistent or inaccurate, these informational proposals need to 'epistemically parasitize' the manifold of theoretical resources of Boltzmann's and Gibbs' statistical mechanics, respectively, in order to properly account for the equilibration process of an ideal gas from its microscopic properties. Finally, our conclusion leads us to adopt a sort of constructive skepticism regarding the explanatory value of the main informationalist trends in statistical thermophysics. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that the two main approaches to statistical mechanics, that of Boltzmann and Gibbs, constitute two substantially different theoretical apparatuses. Particularly, I defend that this theoretical split must be philosophically understood as a separation of epistemic functions within this physical domain: while Boltzmannians are able to generate powerful explanations of thermal phenomena from molecular dynamics, Gibbsians can statistically predict observable values in a highly effective way. Therefore, statistical mechanics is a counterexample to Hempel's (1958) symmetry (...) thesis, where the predictive capacity of a theory is directly correlated with its explanatory potential and vice versa. (shrink)

In recent years, democratic theorists have inquired into the aesthetic dimension of contemporary politics. Influenced by Hannah Arendt and Jacques Rancière, these scholars claim that there is an analogy between democratic politics and aesthetic experiences, since both involve the confrontation of an indeterminacy that cannot be overcome by means of rational argumentation. Contributing to this perspective, but challenging some of Rancière’s insights, this article shows the importance of Jean-François Lyotard’s writings on aesthetics for understanding what I call ‘democratic aesthetics’. This (...) aesthetics, I argue, consists in works of art that bring representation to its limits, thus arousing an experience of the unpresentable. Influenced by Immanuel Kant’s analysis of the sublime, Lyotard claims that avant-garde art, by disrupting the rules of representational art, put representation as such into question. This experience of the unpresentable contributes to cultivating a readiness to listening to voices that are not yet heard, because they lack a discourse by which to express themselves. Given that politics in postmodernity, following Lyotard, consists in shifting the dividing line between the sayable and the unsayable, avant-garde art is conductive to a postmodern politics – which, I argue, is analogous to democratic politics. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze the physical content of the main information concepts in the history of physics of the last seven decades. I argue that this physical character should be evaluated not by appealing to analytical-linguistic confusion (Timpson 2013) or to the usefulness of its applicability (Lombardi et al. 2016), but properly from its capacity to allow us to acquire significant knowledge about the physical world. After systematically employing this epistemic criterion of physical significance I will conclude by rejecting (...) the main strategies of ontological inflation and physical content of the main information concepts in the classical thermal physics literature. (shrink)

Resumen El presente artículo adopta como trasfondo los desarrollos teóricos sobre el lenguaje de Wittgenstein y Austin y aborda en términos comparativos la manera en que las propuestas de Habermas y Bourdieu reelaboran los hallazgos teóricos de esa perspectiva pragmática original. En particular, me interesa analizar el modo en que el carácter institucional que se atribuye al lenguaje se retoma en la teoría de la acción comunicativa de Habermas y la pragmática sociológica de Bourdieu con el propósito de mostrar y (...) confrontar dos modos posibles, distintos e irreductibles entre sí, de apropiarse de la fuerza heurística que yace en el giro pragmático inaugurado por Wittgenstein y Austin a mediados del siglo XX.By using as a background Wittgenstein’s and Austin’s reflections about language, the aim of this paper is to compare the way Habermas and Bourdieu rebuild that original pragmatic perspective. I am specifically interested in analyzing how the institutional character of language is retrieved by Habermas’s communicative action theory and Bourdieu’s sociological pragmatic, in order to show and to confront two different and irreducible ways of appropriating the heuristic power of the pragmatic turn started by Wittgenstein and Austin in the middle of the twentieth century. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that the Epicurean genealogy of justice and laws presuppose an analysis of the just as a modality of the useful, an approach that denies the conventional character of justice. This genealogical pattern differentiates the origin of justice from that of the law and refers to friendship as a relevant explanatory factor of the origin of justice. We maintain that the interpretations that underline the incoherence of this reference to friendship, in the framework of a hedonistic (...) theory, presuppose a non-Epicurean sharp distinction between altruism and selfishness. (shrink)

Against the idea that market economy is something greedy and immoral, we will set out the idea that market economy based on firms has a very positive moral content: the possibility of excellence of human action. Firms based on people acting together, sharing the culture of the organization, toward virtue-based ethics, create and distribute most of the economy’s wealth, innovate, trade and raise living standards. We will present a criterion which states that social coordination improves if the process of creation (...) of individual possibilities of action, which is carried out in the social institutions—in our case, the firm—is extended. There is a retention of possibilities that is formed in the institutions and transmitted culturally. In that moment entrepreneurship emerges, the creative tension that expands, maintains, or diminishes the possibilities of action. Hence, the firm is the institution that carries out a very important practice: fostering new possibilities of individual action. In this paper, we will adopt the point of the view of the acting person. The reality we observe is personal action within its cultural and institutional dimensions. A theory of personal action in societal institutions bridges the way from virtue-based ethics toward ethics of institutions. (shrink)

Desde su juventud, Hitler experimentó el anhelo interno de convertirse en un renombrado artista, tanto en su Austria natal como en la Alemania a la que sentía pertenecer. Si bien la Escuela de Bellas Artes de Viena frustró, por dos veces, su sueño en el terreno de las artes plásticas, la política le brindó la oportunidad de hacerlo realidad; y, una vez convertido en Führer de todos los alemanes, se concibió a sí mismo como el gran artista que debía regenerar (...) y dar forma a una nueva Alemania. A través de este ensayo, trataré de presentar los principales trazos de la estética con que el nacionalsocialismo recubrió al iii Reich. Una estética que fue más allá del plano artístico, configurando toda una sociedad, un modelo político y una forma de pensamiento, a partir de su pretensión de dominio, su afán de eternidad y su deseo de hacer de la comunidad alemana una auténtica obra de arte. (shrink)

Intelligent Transportation Systems are expected to automate how parking slots are booked by trucks. The intrinsic dynamic nature of this problem, the need of explanations and the inclusion of private data justify an agent-based solution. Agents solving this problem act with a Believe Desire Intentions reasoning, and are implemented with JASON. Privacy of trucks becomes protected sharing a list of parkings ordered by preference. Furthermore, the process of assigning parking slots takes into account legal requirements on breaks and driving time (...) limits. Finally, the agent simulations use the distances, the number of trucks and parkings corresponding to the proportions of the current European Union data. The performance of the proposed solution is tested in these simulations with three different distances against an alternative with complete knowledge. The difference in efficiency, the number of illegal breaks and the traveled distances are measured in them. Comparing the results, we can conclude that the nonprivate alternative is slightly better in performance while both alternatives do not produce illegal breaks. In this way the simulations show that the proposed privacy protection does not impose a relevant handicap in efficiency. (shrink)

Traditional expressivists want to preserve a contrast between the representational use of declarative sentences in descriptive domains and the non-representational use of declarative sentences in other areas of discourse. However, expressivists have good reasons to endorse minimalism about representational notions, and minimalism seems to threaten the existence of such a bifurcation. Thus, there are pressures for expressivists to become global anti-representationalists. In this paper I discuss how to reconstruct in non-representationalist terms the sort of bifurcation traditional expressivists were after. My (...) proposal is that the relevant bifurcation can be articulated by appeal to the contrast between relativistic and non-relativistic assertoric practices. I argue that this contrast, which can be specified without appeal to representational notions, captures the core intuitions behind the expressivist bifurcation. (shrink)

El fenómeno artístico ha puesto de manifiesto la complejidad de su realidad, haciendo manifiesta la reflexión y construcción de la Modernidad. El arte moderno, con el consiguiente doble giro que abrieron las vanguardias históricas del arte, ha supuesto la expansión de las teorías y las formas estéticas con la misma pluralidad con que las nuevas ciencias sociales abrieron la indagación positivista que ocupó la transición al siglo XX. La crítica de la vanguardia al clasicismo, en su radical autonomía, pone de (...) manifiesto la realidad latente de la implicación de una subjetividad de mundo que muestra la naturaleza de la obra en la inmediatez del valor de su lenguaje, y de una estética que se erige como crítica de la representación ajena a la originaria subjetividad inaugural de mundo. Clasicismo, pensamiento estético y contestación crítica de la Modernidad descorren el cortinaje de un diálogo por el que el arte, en su memoria poética, despliega la puesta en acción de la imaginación y el deseo en la construcción de Mundo y en la comprensión de lo dado. En este despliegue, donde los contextos culturales son esenciales, se inscribe un particular cruce de la estética y la ética que, en la natural apuesta común de apertura del valor, no puede ignorar la práctica de toda educación estética contemporánea. (shrink)

In this paper I will evaluate whether some knowledge states that are interpretatively derived from statistical mechanical probabilities could be somehow relevant in actual practices, as famously rejected by Albert (2000). On one side, I follow Frigg (2010a) in rejecting the causal relevance of knowledge states as a mere byproduct of misinterpreting this theoretical field. On the other side, I will argue against Uffink (2011) that probability-represented epistemic states cannot be explanatorily relevant, because (i) probabilities cannot faithfully represent significant epistemic (...) states, and (ii) those states cannot satisfactorily account for why an agent should theoretically believe or expect something. (shrink)

During the last decade, Network Science has become one of the most active fields in applied physics and mathematics, since it allows the analysis of a diversity of social, biological and technological systems [24]. From the diversity of applications of Network Science, in this Opinion paper we are concerned about its potential to analyse one of the most extended group sports, Football (soccer in U.S. terminology) [29], since it allows addressing different aspects of the team organization and performance not captured (...) by classical analyses based on the performance of individual players. The reason behind relies on the complex nature of the game, which, paraphrasing the foundational paradigm of complexity sciences “can not be analysed by looking at its components (i.e., players) individually but, on the contrary, considering the system as a whole” or, in the classical words of after-match interviews “it’s not just me, it’s the team”. The recent ability of obtaining datasets of all events occurring during a match, including the position of the players and the interactions between them has opened the door to new kind of studies where it is possible to analyse and quantify the behaviour of a team as a whole, together with the role of a single player [17]. Under this framework, the organization of a team can be considered as the result of the interaction between its players, creating a network based on passes. In this way, we can create passing networks, which are directed (i.e.,... (shrink)

The Nacional Socialist totalitarian project unleashed an unprecedented savagery in Europe, giving raise to the largest war to have taken place in our history and to a never before seen systematic genocide. In opposition to those who consider this way of savagery as something purely irrational, the truth is that Nazism’s savagery was product of a “rational” project which would have its roots in the period of the Enlightenment. The cruel and inhuman murder of millions of people was the result (...) of a perfectly planned, systematic, and rational act, supported in a bureaucracy which made easier the creation of a series of psychological barriers by perpetrators and whose traces were intended to be erased from history. From this point of view, National Socialism showed that Reason by itself does not save the world from savagery. (shrink)

The human rights system continues to evolve including new groups that are discriminated or oppressed in the world. Spain, as a Western country seemingly respectful of human rights must meet the challenge of maintaining that respect after the recent adoption of the recently approved United Nations Convention on the rights of people with disabilities (functional diversity), and modify its social policies, current laws, as well as prevent new laws that discriminate on the grounds of functional diversity, such as the recent (...) proposed law of sexual and reproductive health and abortion. (shrink)