The twenty-first century presents a major challenge for civil engineering. The magnitude and future importance of some of the problems perceived by society are directly related to the field of the civil engineer, implying an inescapable burden of responsibility for a group whose technical soundness, rational approach and efficiency is highly valued and respected by the citizen. However, the substantial changes in society and in the way it perceives the problems that it considers important call for a thorough review of (...) our structures, both professional and educational; so that our profession, with its undeniable historical prestige, may modernize certain approaches and attitudes in order to continue to be a reliable instrument in the service of society, giving priority from an ethical standpoint to its actions in pursuit of the public good . It possesses important tools to facilitate this work (new technologies, the development of communications, the transmission of scientific thought.···); but there is nevertheless a need for deep reflection on the very essence of civil engineering: what we want it to be in the future, and the ability and willingness to take the lead at a time when society needs disinterested messages, technically supported, reasonably presented and dispassionately transmitted. (shrink)

Neste artigo, pretendo expor o texto de um capítulo do livro Scholasticism and Politics, do filósofo francês Jacques Maritain (1882-1973). Este livro está em inglês e nunca foi traduzido ao português. O capítulo visado se chama “Christianity and earthly civilizations” - “Cristianismo e civilizações terrenas”. Ele é dividido em quatro seções: 1) A Igreja e o mundo, 2) Civilizações de origem pré-medieval, 3) Civilização Ocidental, e 4) Tentativas de novas civilizações. Farei a tradução ou uma paráfrase do texto, indicando seus (...) principais pontos e as conexões implícitas com outros textos de Maritain. Assim, facilitarei a leitura e a compreensão do sentido imediato do texto por leitores de língua portuguesa, o que é pré-requisito para uma avaliação crítica dele. A filosofia de Maritain é chamada por ele mesmo de filosofia cristã, isto é, uma filosofia que amplia seu escopo para considerar conceitos que são mais próprios da teologia cristã, principalmente no campo da filosofia moral e política. No século XX, Maritain teve muitos adeptos e admiradores brasileiros. (shrink)

O objetivo deste artigo é analisar a crítica de Waldron a Rawls, feita no livro “Law and Disagreement”. Queremos saber se nessa crítica está implícita a ideia de que Rawls faz uma má idealização. Para fazer isso, teremos, em primeiro lugar, que esclarecer o que é uma “teoria ideal” e o que são boas ou más idealizações. Falaremos sobre essas distinções na primeira seção do artigo. Waldron ataca a alegada incapacidade da teoria de Rawls de tratar seriamente os desacordos sobre (...) princípios políticos. A exposição dessa crítica e a análise de seu desenrolar vai ocupar as parcelas mais significativas do artigo, e será feita nas seções seguintes. Ao fim da análise, defenderemos que, apesar de a crítica de Waldron ser forte, ela não implica que há más idealizações de Rawls. (shrink)

O presente artigo tem por objetivo investir em uma abordagem critica e reflexiva acerca da parcela de contribuição deixada por alguns filósofos contemporâneos, sobre a valorização do aproveitamento e uso racional dos alimentos de forma integral, evitando o desperdício. Trata-se de uma reflexão descritiva estruturada em quatro seções. Desde décadas passadas já existiam alertas sobre o uso racional dos recursos naturais e o desperdício de alimentos, e o Brasil por ser grande produtor de frutas tropicais a nível mundial, aproveitar cascas, (...) sementes e talos de frutas, para produção de alimentos alternativos e seguros, é uma boa alternativa para minimizar os impactos ambientais e a fome. Palavras-chave: Morin; Latouche; Filosofia; Geografia da fome; Resíduos de frutas. (shrink)

In 1890, the famous Jena Glass Works of Carl Zeiss released the Anastigmat photographic lens to great fanfare. The nearly faultless realism it generated seemed to conclude a chapter in optical technology that had progressed in a predetermined manner since photography’s origins. But why exactly had Zeiss developed its expensive mechanism, and what drove photographers to buy it? This article proposes that the consistent focus and varied depth of field that the Anastigmat provided were not in and of themselves the (...) desired goals of the new corrected lens, but that they were instead visible signals of a pictorial model that makers and consumers had been circling since the public introduction of photography in 1839. The goal was a strict verisimilitude that remained stubbornly external to the medium, an illusionistic standard that had largely been mediated by painting and was now apparently possible in photography as well. But this history of pictorial perfection and the Anagstimat was not inevitable. Other lenses developed around the same time answered to dramatically different technological and aesthetic imperatives. They tell an alternative story of photography’s identity that is less tethered to mimetic fidelity and the idealized human vision with which photography was increasingly associated. (shrink)

RESUMEN Se analiza si la versión de la justicia como equidad, presentada en El liberalismo político, es genuinamente una concepción política. Se examina el problema de la razonabilidad de las doctrinas comprehensivas, y se indaga luego si el argumento en dos etapas afecta la integridad estructural del liberalismo político. Se concluye que J. Rawls fracasa en su intento de justificar un liberalismo independiente de una doctrina comprehensiva de carácter liberal. ABSTRACT The article analyzes whether the conception of justice as fairness, (...) set forth by Rawls in Political Liberalism, is a genuine political conception. It first examines the issue of reasonableness of comprehensive doctrines and then goes on to inquire whether the two-step argument affects the structural integrity of political liberalism. The paper concludes that J. Rawls fails in his attempt to justify liberalism independently of a comprehensive liberal doctrine. (shrink)

Reseña del libro Como el papel secante con la tinta. La teología inversa en Walter Benjamin y Theodor W. Adorno (2022), de Stefanie Graf.

The existence of causal explanations in science has been an issue of interest in Western philosophy from its very beginnings. That is the reason this work, following an idea of Mario Bunge, makes a historical review of this matter. The modern treatment of this subject takes place since the postulation by Popper and Hempel of the D-N model of scientific explanation, whose viability is scrutinized here from different points of view in the current philosophy of science. The main object of (...) this paper is to present two arguments against the possibility of causal explanations in theoretical physics. The first one concerns the existence, in certain cases, of inter-theoretical incompatibilities, and the second refers to the need to resort, in other cases, to concatenations of laws of different theories and disciplines. The final conclusion will be the defence of a form of theoretical explanation, which follows the Popper-Hempel model, but devoid of any ontological and metaphysical connotations. (shrink)

Very few—if any—will doubt Hobbes's aversion to the state of nature and sympathy for civil society. On the other hand, it is not quite news that it would be inaccurate to claim that Hobbes rejected the state of nature entirely. Indeed, he embraced or at the very least tolerated the state of nature at the international level in order to escape from the individual state of nature. Hobbes's recommended exchange of an individual state of nature for an international one does (...) seem to have a smack of contradiction, arguably first noted by Rousseau. There is yet another charge of contradiction lurking around Hobbes's account of the state of nature. Hobbes's political thought would still reflect an ambivalent attitude towards a third instantiation of the state of nature, i.e. civil war. This is one of the main reasons why the political allegiance of Thomas Hobbes has been an issue ever since the publication of De Cive at the very least. This paper deals with Hobbes's differential treatment of the original and the international states of nature and discusses the source of Hobbes's somewhat ambivalent attitude towards civil war. It is here argued that Hobbes can fairly hold his ground vis-à-vis Rousseau's criticism, in spite of the normative resemblance between the international state of nature and the initial state of nature, and that Hobbes ambivalent attitude of attraction and repulsion towards civil war is actually due not so much to opportunism on his part as to the normative autonomy he has granted to the state of nature. (shrink)

In the last chapter of In the beginning was the deed: realism and moralism in political argument, Williams raised the question of truthfulness in politics and warned that the media, particularly, television, and the market of communication in general, work in ways contrary to truthfulness -understood as the combination of the virtues of sincerity and accuracy. In this paper we would like to carry on Williams’ line of thinking in connection with the impact of the new social media platforms on (...) politics. Where Williams focused on television, we will consider the impact of the internet public sphere. After reviewing how the digital social media encourages motivated reasoning in general, we propose to focus on two main phenomena derived from it: the rise of conspiracy theories and the moralization of politics. Conspiracy theories epitomize the risk of self-deception Williams was concerned to signal. On the other hand, the process of moralization of politics triggers sectarianism and hate for the “others”, the outgroup. Both phenomena are not exclusive of the internet sphere, but both are boosted by it, and entail a lack of interest in truth and truthfulness, and in this way they threaten the value of truth for democracy. (shrink)

In this essay, I deal with the problem of the attribution of psychological predicates to non-human animals. The first section illustrates three research topics where it has become scientifically legitimate to explain the conduct of non-human animals by means of the attribution of psychological predicates. The second section discusses several philosophical objections to the legitimacy of such attributions provided by central thinkers from the last decades. I try to show that these objections —which are related among other questions to the (...) holism of the mental, the indeterminacy of the attributions, and the strangeness of animal concepts— can be alleviated. In the third section, I propose to adopt a literalist view of the attributions in the sense articulated by Figdor. At the same time, I argue that one must draw limits to the conceptual change forwarded by her literalist view, taking into account holistic considerations and the fact that the psychological concepts must retain their core notes. (shrink)

Este trabajo se ocupa de una interpolación textual transmitida por sólo dos manuscritos altomedievales en el capítulo que Isidoro de Sevilla dedica al libro de Job en sus Prooemia: Città del Vaticano, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana Vat. Barberini 505 y Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek Cod. Augiensis Perg. 229. A partir de la transcripción del texto de ambos manuscritos y de la identificación su fuente (un pasaje de los Moralia in Iob de Gregorio Magno), ofrece una reflexión acerca de la semejanza entre los (...) procedimientos exegéticos de Gregorio e Isidoro como elemento que pudo motivar la redacción interpolada del capítulo. (shrink)

The Militant Intellect reconceptualizes critical theory as a field tasked with cultivating the analytical skills of the general intellect to work towards the intersectional and structural death of the colonist and the materialization of that feminist decolonial communist queer marronage world that constitutes its horizon.

El presente trabajo realiza una reconstrucción de la filosofía práctica de Julio De Zan poniendo de relieve su filiación kantiana y deteniéndose en cuatro momentos teóricos. En primer lugar, se presenta la noción de una “gramática del ethos”, mediante la cual De Zan presenta –siguiendo a Kant– los aspectos formales de su perspectiva. En segundo lugar, se discute el modo en que De Zan toma en cuenta las críticas a Kant desde la filosofía hegeliana, y el modo en que propone (...) superar esas críticas. En tercer lugar, se examina a la ética discursiva como una actualización válida –según este autor– del pensamiento kantiano. Finalmente, se aborda la idea de comunidad ética como un antecedente kantiano de la sociedad civil. (shrink)

No poco se habrá meditado acerca del poema “Todtnauberg” de Paul Celan (1967), publicado en Lichtzwang (1970). Poco o casi nada, en cambio, acerca de su “respuesta poética” (si cabe la expresión) por parte de Martin Heidegger: “Vorwort” (1971). En lo que sigue nos limitamos a puntear algunas de las circunstancias tal vez más marcantes de esta suerte de “correspondencia” heideggeriana y eventual “familiar” (y tal vez inmortal) micro-bolero. Palabras clave: Todtnauberg - Paul Celan - Vorwort - Martin Heidegger - (...) grotesco. (shrink)

Rips et al. claim that the principles underlying the structure of natural numbers cannot be inferred from interactions with the physical world. However, in their target article they failed to consider an important source of interaction: finger counting. Here, we show that finger counting satisfies all the conditions required for allowing the concept of numbers to emerge from sensorimotor experience through a bottom-up process.

Hegel has not been considered a philosopher of trauma. But the fact is that trauma is one of the themes most elaborated by Hegel in his Anthropology under the notion of mania (_Wahnsinn_). Mania was considered as a series of pathological behaviours because of fixed ideas or elements that triggered it. This causes a bad associative habit, whose hold is involuntary and unconscious. This is sedimented in the human being in memory and recollection. Hegel will state that memory and recollection (...) are necessary for representation, which means that if these are associated by habituation with traumatic experiences, then the person generates pathologized representations. This Hegelian theory of mania is later compared with the DSM-5 to corroborate that Hegel's theory of mania is what we now call trauma. (shrink)

Since in this study political obligation is conceived of as a moral requirement to comply with the dictates of political authority, the notion of morality and/or moral obligation should be fairly attributable to Aristotle. The claim is here defended that although his ethical theory does not hinge precisely on the concept of moral duty, there is no question that it does contain the idea. Finally, having seen that something akin to the notion of political obligation appears in Aristotle’s politics and (...) having assumed that moral ‘duty’ and ‘obligation’ are fairly interchangeable terms, at the end of the chapter we shall dwell on some of their differences when brought to bear on the issue of political allegiance in Aristotle. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the search for explainable models and interpretable decisions in AI must be reformulated in terms of the broader project of offering a pragmatic and naturalistic account of understanding in AI. Intuitively, the purpose of providing an explanation of a model or a decision is to make it understandable to its stakeholders. But without a previous grasp of what it means to say that an agent understands a model or a decision, the explanatory strategies will (...) lack a well-defined goal. Aside from providing a clearer objective for XAI, focusing on understanding also allows us to relax the factivity condition on explanation, which is impossible to fulfill in many machine learning models, and to focus instead on the pragmatic conditions that determine the best fit between a model and the methods and devices deployed to understand it. After an examination of the different types of understanding discussed in the philosophical and psychological literature, I conclude that interpretative or approximation models not only provide the best way to achieve the objectual understanding of a machine learning model, but are also a necessary condition to achieve post hoc interpretability. This conclusion is partly based on the shortcomings of the purely functionalist approach to post hoc interpretability that seems to be predominant in most recent literature. (shrink)

There are several approaches to the way in which standards of proof in law should be understood. In the central article in this issue, Rodrigo Coloma suggests that they should be conceived either as thresholds either as prototypes. He also offers a taxonomy of the different uses of standards of proof, which transcends their function as error distributors. In their comments on the paper, Raymundo Gama and Claudio Agüero clarify and challenge this way of understanding standards of proof. Some of (...) their criticisms are right on target, but many others are directed more at Coloma’s theoretical presuppositions than at his substantial contributions. In this paper I offer a wider context to evaluate their disagreements. (shrink)

I defend the view that circular definitions can be useful and illuminating by focusing on the fitting-attitudes analysis of value. This definition states that an item has value if and only if it is a fitting target of attitudes. Good items are the fitting targets of positive attitudes, and bad items are the fitting targets of negative ones. I shall argue that a circular version of this definition, defended by Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen (2006), is preferable to its non-circular counterpart and (...) upholds reasonable standards of acceptability. The standards I will be discussing come from Humberstone (1997), who claims that definitions cannot be informative as long as they are inferentially circular. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the notion of ‘artifact’ and related notions in the dominant version of extended cognition theory grounded on extended functionalism. Although the term is ubiquitous in the literature, it is far from clear what ECT means by it. How are artifacts conceptualized in ECT? Is ‘artifact’ a meaningful and useful category for ECT? If the answer to the previous question is negative, should we worry? Is it important for ECT to have a coherent theory of artifacts? (...) And what are the demands and constraints that ECT imposes on this theory? I distinguish between two aspects of ECT, one narrow, aligned with extended functionalism ; and one broad or pluralistic, in which EF is combined with other theoretical resources in the context of diverse research programs. I begin by determining the problems in conceptualizing artifacts from EF. Then I address the question of why a concept of artifact may be relevant to ECT. Next, I examine the efforts of Richard Heersmink to combine ECT with dominant theories of artifacts in the philosophy of technology. I argue that both approaches fail to yield a meaningful notion of artifact, let alone one of ‘cognitive’ artifact. Finally, I argue that narrow ECT places rather strong constraints on a theory of artifacts, since it locates the specificity of ‘artifact’ in material aspects of realization that are, by definition, outside its theoretical purview. I examine, then discard, the possibility that a materialist and objectivist theory of artifacts may be of help. And finally I briefly explore some ways in which a broad, pluralistic ECT may address some of these shortcomings. (shrink)

Este artículo tiene por objetivo retomar la teoría de Byung Chul Han sobre la sociedad del logro (Leistungsgesellschaft), tomando específicamente lo expuesto por él sobre el dogma de la transparencia que surge en la lógica neoliberal-digital contemporánea, para ser completado con la teoría freudiana de lo Unerkante -no reconocible-. Para esto el trabajo se divide en tres momentos: el primero tiene por objetivo exponer lo que se entiende por dogma de la transparencia y cómo se relaciona con el Homo œconomicus; (...) seguidamente, se presenta el concepto de lo Unerkante de Freud para plantear una nueva topología de lo no-reconocible en el plano subjetivo, proponiendo el concepto del ombligo de la subjetividad; y, finalmente, se expone cómo ese ombligo empalma con la teoría de Han frente a la transparencia, de modo que se puedan generar nuevas interpretaciones de lo que sería una salida a la sociedad del logro. (shrink)

L’enjeu de cet article est de défendre l’internalisme de Bernard Williams à propos de la raison pratique, en adoptant un point de vue différent de ce qui se fait habituellement dans la littérature. Les expériences de pensée impliquant des « excentriques idéalement cohérents » sont généralement présentées dans ce débat comme un argument majeur contre l’internalisme. Je conteste ce point et montre que nos intuitions concernant de telles figures impliquent en réalité une compréhension internaliste de la notion de raisons d’agir. (...) À cette fin, je suggère d’étendre la conception de Williams par une conception internaliste orientée sur le locuteur relativement à la signification des ascriptions de raisons externes. (shrink)

We prove a version of a small index property theorem for strong amalgamation classes. Our result builds on an earlier theorem by Lascar and Shelah. We then study versions of the small index property for various non-elementary classes. In particular, we obtain the small index property for quasiminimal pregeometry structures.

This paper tries to simplify the situation in modern epistemology, where the scientific method seems to be accomplished by different scientific methodologies. this is partially done by asserting that the popperian critical methodology can be seen as a special case of bayesianism. to this effect, it is firstly argued, that popper's corroboration degree measures the probabilistic support that evidence lends to universal hypotheses. then it is affirmed, that popper and miller have not established the impossibility of inductive probability. and it (...) is finally claimed, that bayesian probabilistic support encompasses popper's corroboration concept. (shrink)