Many philosophers hold there are genuine cases of culpable ignorance. This paper argues that there are conditions that can render knowledge epistemically culpable too. First, we contrast culpable ignorance with morally culpable knowledge. Second, we examine the nature of epistemically culpable knowledge using a key example. We then highlight empirical support for the claim that there are real-world conditions that make epistemically culpable knowledge possible. Next, we survey three kinds of epistemic culpability fostered by culpable knowledge. Finally, we address the (...) benefits objection and argue that it fails. (shrink)

One of the main challenges for computational legal research is drawing up innovative heuristics to derive actionable knowledge from legal documents. While a large part of the research has been so far devoted to the extraction of purely legal information, less attention has been paid to seeking out in the texts the clues of more complex entities: legally relevant facts whose detection requires to link and interpret, as a unified whole, legal information and results of empirical analyses. This paper presents (...) an ongoing research that points in this direction, trying to devise new ways to support public prosecutors in assessing the dangerousness of individuals and groups under investigation, an activity that precisely relies on the cross-sectional evaluation of legal and empirical data. A knowledge mining strategy will be outlined that lines up, into a single metaheuristic model, information extraction, network-based inference, machine learning and visual analytics. We will focus, in particular, on the integration of graph-based inference and machine learning methods used both to support classification tasks and to explore new forms of man-machine cooperation. Experiments made involving public prosecutors from the Italian Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate and using data from real investigations have not only shown the potentialities of our approach but also offered an opportunity to reflect on the role we could assign to AI when thinking about the future of legal science and practice. (shrink)

I assess the debate over the Suicide Machine Argument. There are several lessons to be learned from this debate. First, there is a fruitful distinction to be made,between tensed and tenseless versions of presentism, despite the temptation to suppose that presentism is a tensed theory of time. Second, once we’ve made the distinction between different kinds of presentism, it is clear that Licon’s objection protects the tenseless version of presentism from the Suicide Machine Argument; however, the argument is still effective (...) against the tensed version. Finally, I argue that if the presentist wants to remain a card carrying presentist, in the face of the challenge posed by Hales, then she must abandon her commitment to tense. (shrink)

If you’ve got millions of dollars to donate, don’t donate them to academic philosophy. Producing philosophical articles and books faces diminishing returns and diverts money and attention from more important causes. Many philosophy books and articles contradict each other; at best, only some can be correct. Philosophy classes are poor at instilling critical thinking skills. Resources that would be spent on philosophy would be better spent elsewhere.

Este trabajo ha sido seleccionado de entre los participantes en la VI Olimpiada de Filosofía que organiza FICUM en la modalidad de secundaria y bachillerato, para promocionar la filosofía entre los jóvenes.

It is widely held that transparency incentivizes good behavior. Though that may be, sometimes, there are tradeoffs here: transparency incentivizes people to conceal genuine reasons for action and instead manufacture insincere reasons for public consumption. The evidence for this comes from moral psychology and economics: when people are observed, they acquire an incentive to make more deontological and intuitive moral judgments than they would otherwise. In contrast, transparency incentivizes politicians and leaders to make more consequentialist and calculated moral judgments than (...) they would otherwise. Transparency incentivizes people to foster distinct (inauthentic) moral identities—one personal and one public—or to make moral judgments based on reputational reasons that sometimes diverge from the moral facts. In either case, transparency can be morally and politically corrupting. (shrink)

En los últimos años, el filósofo surcoreano radicado en Alemania, Byung-Chul Han, viene marcando nuevos derroteros para la reflexión filosófica usando el potencial teórico que surge de la comprensión de las nuevas realidades sociales, políticas y económicas, que marcan esta época de evolución neoliberal y de desarrollo tecnológico, en el contexto de la cuarta Revolución Industrial. Así, temas como la transformación de la biopolítica en psicopolítica se convierten en un punto muy relevante para el análisis de las sociedades actuales y (...) sus derivas. Con este trasfondo de pensamiento, el presente artículo tiene por objetivo sumergirseen las argumentaciones de Han, explorando el papel crucial que desempeñan las emociones en las sociedades del rendimiento, del cansancio y de la infocracia, acudiendo a la metáfora de la “rueda del hámster” como imagen evocadora de las dinámicas de las sociedades actuales. De esta forma, se presenta una perspectiva innovadora de la complejidad del siglo XXI, al adentrarnos en determinados matices del pensamiento de Han, en conexión con la realidad palpable de las emociones, que actúan como el combustible que impulsa a cada individuo en su propia “rueda existencial”. Esta articulación con las experiencias emocionales contribuyede manera significativa a las discusiones contemporáneas acerca de la naturaleza humana en contextos de innovación tecnológica. (shrink)

A popular tactic for defending abortion rights is appealing to self-ownership: since I own my body, a foetus has the right to occupy it only if I allow it. One cannot be forced to bring a pregnancy to term because that would violate one's self-ownership. The same logic applies to speech: we have freedom of speech because we produce speech using the bodies that we own. To curtail that speech violates our self-ownership, or in a phrase: my body, my speech.

Philosophy plausibly aims at knowledge; it would thus be tempting to hold that much of the value of doing philosophy turns on securing knowledge. Enter the agnostic challenge: suppose that a philosophical agnostic (named 'Betsy‘) wants to discover only fundamental philosophical truths. However, the intractable disagreement among philosophical experts gives her pause. After reflecting on expert disagreement, she decides that doing philosophy, for her truth-seeking error-avoiding purposes, is irrational. In this paper, I argue that the agnostic challenge isn‘t easily overcome. (...) Although there are many reasons to do philosophy, the agnostic challenge implies there is less value to doing philosophy than many philosophers may have believed. (shrink)

El equipo multidisciplinario especializado, con ayudas diagnósticas avanzadas, brinda, en las unidades de cuidados intensivos neonatales, atención a los recién nacidos en estado crítico de salud. No comprender la muerte como un acontecimiento natural dificulta establecer un equilibrio en el tratamiento proporcionado y exige una juiciosa valoración de los beneficios y cargas basados en una ética responsable. La literatura sugiere que se necesita, en relación con los aspectos bioéticos de la práctica clínica, de capacitación, participación y presencia permanente de los (...) profesionales de la salud en la toma de decisiones en conjunto con las madres, de tal forma que se proporcione consuelo a la familia del neonato. (shrink)

We develop a new metaphor account where metaphors become surrogate variables for different but related phenomena. As we will argue, subrogation is the result of the interplay between the things inspired by the metaphor and the empirical dynamics that result from such inspiration. In particular, we focus on adaptive radiation, a major concept of evolutionary biology. Our study suggests that there is no distinct phenomenon, process, or pattern in nature than can be identified as adaptive radiation. What we have instead (...) is a grouping variable that has surrogated different evolutionary phenomena into one expansive label. We believe this analysis of metaphors helps better understand the value of metaphors for science not only as a provider of epistemic and cognitive virtues but most importantly, as a crucial research tool that can both help and divert scientific experimentation. (shrink)

Con el repunte de la literatura nacional durante la República Restaurada, Justo Sierra adoptó la pauta romántica y liberal que propugnaba Altamirano en órganos de difusión como El Renacimiento. Luego, con la llegada de Porfirio Díaz al poder, la literatura de Sierra se orientó al positivismo. En este artículo se estudia cómo se produjo el cambio del Sierra "romántico" al Sierra "positivista".

Intractable disagreement among philosophers is ubiquitous. An implication of such disagreement is that many philosophers hold false philosophical beliefs (i.e. at most only one party to a dispute can be right). Suppose that we distribute philosophers along a spectrum arranged from philosophers with mostly true philosophical beliefs on one end (high‐reliability), to those with mostly false philosophical beliefs on the other (low‐reliability), and everyone else somewhere in‐between (call this is the reliability spectrum). It is hard to see how philosophers could (...) accurately locate themselves on the reliability spectrum; they are prima facie as well positioned as their peers with respect to philosophical matters (call this the placement problem). In this paper, I argue that the reliability spectrum and placement problem lend support to modest meta‐philosophical skepticism: we have a pro tanto (but not an all‐things‐considered) reason to withhold ascent to philosophical claims. (shrink)

There is a solid empirical evidence for moral mediocrity: people aim to be about as morally good, and as morally bad, as those around them. This can be good if most people are saints, and very bad if most people are moral monsters. And here we derive an important insight: we can have a just society without just citizens--that is, citizens who act just only from peer pressure, and not from moral reason--provided most people in that society, for whatever reason, (...) happen to act justly. Even though Kant wouldn't approve, the resulting society would be just. (shrink)

At present, educational discourses on innovative methodologies make up an enthusiastic panorama that is not exempt from criticism. The aim of this paper is to understand the real possibilities of success for new methodological proposals in a case study focused on the Geography and History classes of a teacher–researcher. The results obtained allow us to identify a central category of analysis, “methodological ineffectiveness”, and two subcategories, “methodological supply” and “methodological demand”. This confirms the importance of exploring the impact of new (...) methodologies based on the factors and voices specific to each educational context. (shrink)

El interrogante que se hace, sobre si en Colombia nos estamos viendo abocados a tener dos sistemas de justicia diferentes, o, por el contrario, es sólo un sistema de justicia protectora de los derechos con una nueva interpretación de las disposiciones, dándole su verdadero sentido y alcance conforme con la Constitución Política a partir de 1991, tiene plena actualidad, y es de gran linportancia siempre que abotdemos cualquiera de los temas del derecho, en especial, los correspondientes al derecho laboral y (...) a la seguridad social integral, puesto que estos últimos conllevan implícitamente el respeto por los derechos y la dignidad humana. (shrink)

En los primeros testimonios documentales de las catedrales españolas se constata la participación de grupos de niños en la organización interna y en el culto. De la misma manera, sus actuaciones iban más allá del servicio en las misas, participando igualmente en la liturgia y paraliturgia del coro, donde la música tenía una importancia capital. No obstante, a partir del siglo xv, los cambios introducidos en la música que se interpretaba en estos centros religiosos obligaron a la progresiva profesionalización de (...) estos niños cantores, dando lugar a un grupo de mozos de coro o seises, cuya misión principal fue la de interpretar la primera y segunda voz de la música polifónica. En este trabajo damos a conocer el desarrollo y los protagonistas de este grupo de cantores en la sede accitana en los siglos xvi-xvii, analizando la catedral como un espacio de aprendizaje y promoción; ya que muchos de ellos provenían de estratos sociales marginados. (shrink)

The Alphonso Lingis Reader showcases the philosophical thought and beautiful writing of Alphonso Lingis across his career. Much of his writing is a unique blend of travelogue, cultural anthropology, and philosophy.

"... thought-provoking and meditative, Lingis’s work is above all touching, and offers a refreshingly idiosyncratic antidote to the idle talk that so often passes for philosophical writing." —Radical Philosophy "... striking for the ...