This paper argues that narrative elements from the science fiction (SF) literary genre are used in the discourse of Nanoscience and Technology (NST) to bridge the gap between what is technically possible today and its inflated promises for the future. The argument is illustrated through a detailed discussion of two NST texts. The paper concludes by arguing that the use of SF narrative techniques poses serious problems to the development of a critical analysis of the ethical and social implications of (...) NST. (shrink)

From its very beginning, sociological thought has been concerned with a topic central to our daily lives: social distance. Since inception, the concept of social distance has referred to the relationships of familiarity and strangeness between social groups, which is experienced in the social world in terms of “We” and “They”. This article covers the main tenets of a Schutzian phenomenological approach to the study of social distance and group relationships. Specific focus is placed on the different attitudes and valuations (...) of the in-group towards the out-group considered as a stranger, the invisible excess of meaning that emerges in these types of social relationships and the conceptual construction of the Other that explains the phenomenon of discrimination. (shrink)

El artículo aborda la pregunta por la tarea de la memoria histórica en Colombia desde una perspectiva filosófica, concentrada en los retos epistemológicos y éticos derivados de la elaboración e implementación de iniciativas de memoria en contex- tos de experiencia traumática. Se busca presentar y analizar estos retos desde las consecuencias conceptuales que los contextos traumáticos le plantean a los procesos de elaboración de memoria y a la práctica de escucha de testimonios provenientes de experiencias traumáticas. Se examinan los modos (...) para comprender, desde la filosofía, un aspecto de la tarea de la memoria que puede pasar desapercibido, con el propósito de imaginar e identificar cursos de acción y estrategias de escucha más responsables, inclusivas y plurales. (shrink)

Moral encroachment states that moral factors can make a difference to what we are epistemically justified in believing. I present two motivating cases that resemble a common example in the moral encroachment literature to show that the agent's commitments and beliefs, and not the moral factors of the situation, influence epistemic justification. I call this view Structural Encroachment.

The propositional calculus AoC, “Algebra of Classes”,and the extended propositional calculus EAC, “Extended Algebra ofClasses” are introduced in this paper. They are extensions, by additionalpropositional functions which are not invariant under the biconditional,of the corresponding classical propositional systems. Theirorigin lies in an analysis, motivated by Cantor’s concept of the cardinalnumbers, of A. P. Morse’s impredicative, polysynthetic set theory.

DePrince relates problems such as dissociation, revictimization and difficulties in social cognition. In particular, she states that individuals with dissociation or have been, by their own testimony, revictimized show obvious difficulties to solve selection tasks designed as social contracts or precautory problems. In my view, these facts mean that, if we accept the theories that there are mechanisms in human mind to regulate social exchanges and situations of risk, individuals with dissociation or revitimized may have altered such mechanisms. However, these (...) theories have been critized and we have no evidence that they are valid. Therefore, in this paper, not admitting the existence of these mechanisms, I try to show that DePrince’s outcomes can be interpreted from other perspectives. DePrince establece relaciones entre problemas como la disociación, la revictimización y ciertas dificultades en la cognición social. En concreto, afirma que las personas que padecen de disociación o que han sufrido, según su propio testimonio, episodios de revictimización manifiestan evidentes dificultades para resolver tareas de selección planteadas como contratos sociales o como problemas de precaución. En nuestra opinión, esto significa que, si aceptamos las teorías que defienden que existen mecanismos en la mente humana que regulan los intercambios sociales y las situaciones de riesgo, las personas que han sido diagnosticadas con disociación o que han sido revictimizadas pueden presentar alteraciones de tales mecanismos. No obstante, esas teorías han sido cuestionadas y no contamos con pruebas concluyentes de que sean válidas. Por ello, en este trabajo, no admitiendo la existencia de los mencionados mecanismos, intentamos mostrar que los resultados de DePrince pueden ser interpretados desde otras perspectivas. (shrink)

Visual experiences often feel crisper, sharper or more vivid when one pays attention to the seen object. According to some representationalist theories of perception, these felt effects occur because attentive experiences represent more determinate or precise properties than their inattentive counterparts: a color experience represents vermillion rather than red if the color is perceived with attention rather than without it. Recently, this idea has been expressed in terms of ranges of feature values represented, so that attentive experiences shall represent narrower (...) ranges than inattentive experiences. However, the latter claim seems to run counter to evidence, recently discussed by Block (2015), that neither spatial attention nor attention as deployed in the attentional blink paradigm alters the ranges of properties represented in visual perception. In this chapter, I clarify what these findings in fact tell us about the representational contents of visual perception and argue that they do not refute the representational account of the attentional effects. (shrink)

Abstract1 June 2018 marked a historic moment in Spanish politics, when the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español, PSOE) announced a cabinet with the largest proportion of female ministers in the world. This announcement received extensive coverage in the traditional media. The objective of this research was to measure whether the news had an equivalent impact on Twitter users. To this end, we analyzed the reaction to the appointments based on the popularity of the hashtags #GobiernoSanchez (“Sanchez Government”), (...) #GobiernoFeminista (“Feminist Government”) and #ConsejoMinistras (“Council of Female Ministers”). The most significant findings are that women had even less visibility than they were given in traditional media because of what is not retweeted does not exist, and that the extreme polarization of political life and the media in the public sphere appears to extend to the digital environment of Twitter. (shrink)

This paper argues that our modern concept of biological heredity was first clearly introduced in a theoretical and practical setting by the generation of French physicians that were active between 1810 and 1830. It describes how from a traditional focus on hereditary transmission of disease, influential French medical men like Esquirol, Fodéré, Piorry, Lévy, moved towards considering heredity a central concept for the conception of the human bodily frame, and its set of physical and moral dispositions. The notion of heredity (...) as a natural force, with a wide ranging capabilities of transmitting differentially both fundamental and accidental characters was generalized by that generation of physicians with the help of contemporary naturalists and physiologists. By 1830 the term hérédité was widespread, and it shared the explanatory and semantic qualities of traditional medical concepts like constitution and temperament. An analysis is given of the main developments that led to the conception of biological (including human) bodies as consisting of a layered, hierarchical organization of characters, differentially affected by the laws of conservation (Heredity) and change (Inneity, Variation). The mid-century work of the French physician Prosper Lucas, Traité Philosophique et Physiologique de L'Hérédité Naturelle, is shown to be the culmination of the efforts of several generations of French physicians towards having a feasible, complexly structured notion of how heredity works. (shrink)

This brief article presents the introduction and draft of the fundamental ideas developed at length in the book of the same title, which gives a challenging point of view about science and its history/philosophy/sociology. Science is in decline. After centuries of great achievements, the exhaustion of new forms and fatigue have reached our culture in all of its manifestations including the pure sciences. Our society is saturated with knowledge which does not offer people any sense in their lives. There is (...) a loss of ideals in the search for great truths and a shift towards an anodyne specialized industry. (shrink)

A planta sensível Mimosa Púdica é um tipo particular de planta que possui folhas capazes de responder ao contato em questão de segundos, fazendo com que se retraiam e pareçam murchas. É uma das poucas plantas que iniciam movimentos visualmente perceptíveis ao ser humano. No que diz respeito às pesquisas incipientes sobre sensibilidade e cognição em plantas, a Mimosa parece ser um organismo modelo interessante para analisar essas possibilidades graças às suas respostas rápidas que podem ser observadas diretamente. Desta forma, (...) a Mimosa Púdica poderá ser utilizada como modelo para o estudo do fenómeno da sensibilidade e da cognição, não só a nível eletrofisiológico, mas também a nível comportamental e funcional. Com base nas evidências científicas da biologia e da neurociência dos últimos 15 anos, argumentar-se-á que a planta sensível é um organismo modelo adequado para estudar, não apenas a nível fisiológico-mecânico, a capacidade das plantas em responder a estímulos, mas também também avaliar que tantas habilidades cognitivas, como aprendizagem e memória, são atribuíveis aos organismos vegetais a partir das respostas observáveis ​​no referido modelo. O acima exposto é postulado em relação à ideia de que todos os organismos vegetais iniciam movimentos, mas nem todos são observáveis ​​pelos humanos: a Mimosa seria então um modelo útil para análise, pois apresenta movimentos que podem ser observados pelos pesquisadores e permitiria a avaliação de diferentes capacidades relacionadas aos fenômenos de sensibilidade e cognição. (shrink)

El título del artículo alude a una controversia a propósito de la interpretación heideggeriana de Nietzsche. Dicho título proponemos entenderlo a partir del título de un artículo de José Jara donde en su primera parte está el guion que une y separa a Nietzsche y Heidegger y en la segunda parte, después de los dos puntos se encuentra otro título, aquel que corresponde a un aforismo de Nietzsche que es una alegoría. Consideramos que José Jara, sin decirlo, se propuso convertirse (...) en el guion de la controversia aludida, intentando someter a Nietzsche a una especie de catarsis que lo limpiara o rescatara de la interpretación del maestro de Friburgo. Así Nietzsche redivivo estaría en la actualidad, en la situación de poder exclamar una vez más: “ y volvemos a estar límpidos ”. (shrink)

Resumen Es muy conocida la opinión de Kant en relación con la inmoralidad del suicidio. De ahí que, muchos autores lo consideren como un prohibicionista absoluto. Sin embargo, no hay hasta el momento un análisis puntual sobre la definición metafísica-conceptual del suicidio en la teoría kantiana. En este artículo propongo entender el suicidio en Kant como una muerte física, total, autorreferencial, voluntaria e inmoral. Esta definición contrastará con la privación de la vida, la cual no implica inmoralidad. Al ser voluntarios, (...) tanto la privación de la vida, como el suicidio son actos racionales y entendibles a partir de las máximas de acción. La inmoralidad del suicidio sólo surgirá al considerar la primacía de las razones morales por encima de razones no morales.It is common knowledge theposition of Kant regarding the immorality of suicide. Several authors attribute him an absolutist-forbidden criterion. Nerveless, there is no extended analysis about the metaphysical-conceptual definition of suicide in Kantian theory. In this paper I hold that suicide in Kant can be defined asphysical death, full, self-referential, voluntary, and immoral. This definition conflicts with the definition of deprivation of life which is not immoral. As voluntarily acts, both suicide and deprivation of life are rational acts that can be understood as maxims of action. The immorality property of suicide is due to the primacy of moral over non-moral reasons. (shrink)

A standing question in consciousness science is whether consciousness arises gradually or in a sudden way. This empirical question is connected to a metaphysical one, concerning the kind of property that consciousness is, i.e., graded or categorical. Recently, Lee (2022) suggested that settling this question requires deciding which theory of consciousness is true. Applying an insight from Wiese (2020), this chapter pursues a way of approximating answers by examining properties that are necessary for consciousness, which consciousness must have regardless of (...) which theory turns out true in the end. One such property is attention. This chapter suggests that attention is connected to consciousness in such a way that a graded view of the former brings support for a graded view of the latter. To this effect, evidence is discussed that degrees of attention are reflected in several acknowledged dimensions of consciousness. The upshot of this view is that the transition from unconscious information processing to conscious experience is gradual and is a function of degree of attention. (shrink)

We love people because of who they are, but can the idea of “who they are” be explained through a property that everyone has, such as agency? David Velleman believes this to be the case, and argues that love is an appraisal of a person’s incomparable value, which disarms the lover’s emotional defences. Modelling love on Kantian respect, Velleman claims that love is a response to a person’s rational nature, indirectly perceived though her empirical persona—her observable traits and behaviours, which (...) are imperfect representations of the value of rational nature. An important problem for Velleman’s account is that it seems incompatible with two widely shared assumptions about love: that love is personal (so it cannot be analogous to impersonal respect) and that love is selective (so it cannot be based on a property shared by all individuals). Here, I propose a re-formulation of Velleman’s view that avoids those objections while preserving the idea that love is an evaluation of the loved person’s agency. Specifically, love is an evaluation of a person’s inner narrator, which is also a person’s capacity to act for reasons—to make actions intelligible to herself. The inner narrator is perceived through that person’s observable narrative: her actions and interpretations in interaction, which are a product, and not an imperfect representation, of the inner narrator. In the re-formulated view, love is both personal and selective, but still an agential process that involves both the lover and the loved person’s capacities to make sense of the world. (shrink)

The paper makes a novel case to vindicate social sciences as substantially a priori against the mainstream view that rejects apriorism as unscientific. After a brief review of the state of the art and the open options to defend a science that is a priori, we lay out a methodological dualism according to which human action is not accessible to the methods of empirical science but requires a normative stance to identify its subject matter as the expression of intentional action. (...) Against this background, we then bring the apriorism of Mises, Rothbard, and Hoppe together with the normative turn in philosophy established by the Pittsburgh School of Philosophy, resulting in normative apriorism as a firmly established scientific method that is specific to the social sciences. In brief, the strategy thus is to bring in normativity as a characteristic trait of human action in order to show why a science of human action has to be a priori in order to capture its subject. (shrink)

With a higher prevalence in schizophrenia, delusions of thought insertion (TI) are regarded as one of the most severe symptoms of psychosis. Patients suffering from TI report that external agents are able to place thoughts into their minds or skulls. A version of the doxastic approach characterizes delusions as abnormal beliefs rooted in anomalous experiences. Nonetheless, the exact role of these experiences in determining the content and the way in which delusional beliefs are fixated is still under debate. While _endorsement_ (...) models claim that the abnormal experience comprises the very content of the delusional beliefs, _explanationist_ approaches claim that delusional beliefs emerge as explanations for abnormal experiences with less specific content. This paper combines conceptual analysis with phenomenological data to examine the merits of both endorsement and explanationist approaches to TI. I propose that potential solutions to the dispute could lay in finding a middle ground between the two approaches, and non-exhaustive ways in which hybrid doxastic approaches to TI could be formulated. (shrink)

El presente trabajo expone la conexión entre dos antropologías que huyen de la abstracción y muestran los aspectos más humanos del ser humano: las antropologías de Horkheimer y Kurosawa. El texto presentará la denuncia de la instrumentalización de la época contemporánea y la falta de individuación de los sujetos por parte de ambos autores. Defenderemos la tesis de que tanto Horkheimer como Kurosawa promovieron un tipo de ética alejada de imperativos categóricos o deberes metafísicos, una ética eudemonista basada en la (...) búsqueda de la felicidad individual. Aunaremos la denuncia de la instrumentalización de la época contemporánea con la defensa de un individuo que lucha contra su reificación. Por último, daremos nuestra opinión personal en el apartado Conclusiones. (shrink)

All the aspects related to good and bad paths have been explained in the Quran, which is a guideline for every Muslim. If we talk about philosophical theories related to evil in Buddhism, we will understand a different kind of concept. In Buddhism, it has been said that the purpose of life is the purification of the soul, and evils in life serve as opportunities to make the soul. The first important philosophical development related to the problem of evil is (...) will-free defense. This theory emphasizes the freedom of human beings given by God. Because of this freedom of human beings, they can opt for evil in life. This theory explains that a human being is a combination of matter of virtue and evil as well, so it depends upon human will what he opts for in his life. The other and most important theory related to the philosophy of evil is soul-making theodicy. This philosophical theory explains that God's objective in making the universe is the development of the soul and spiritual values of human beings. These soul-making processes can be made better in the presence of any evil factor. (shrink)

The five modes of suspension of judgment outlined by Sextus Empiricus (HP XV 164-188) coordinate a complex argumentative strategy to prompt the general suspension of judgment. But modes (τρόπος) are general argument forms that can be deployed individually against the dogmatist, who is willing to accept that a certain answer to a question establishes how things really are. In this case, the aim of the modes is not the general suspension of judgment but the continuation of the investigation. I present (...) a deductive version of the mode of undecidable dissension that pinpoints some principles and assumptions the skeptics requires to run their arguments. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo se busca explicitar el papel que la posibilidad del discurso filosófico posee dentro del pensamiento platónico, acentuando la operatividad de la noción de teleología sobre la misma; ello se desenvuelve teniendo como trasfondo las tesis ontológicas parmenídeas y heraclíteas. Desde lo anterior se señala que sólo a través de la comprensión y mostración del cosmos como una totalidad organizada teleológicamente, Platón es capaz de dar cuenta de la participación que los seres humanos podemos tener de lo (...) eidético, fundando así la posibilidad de una ética. (shrink)

The paper proposes and defends the following characterization of response dependent property: a property is response-dependent iff there is a response-dependence biconditional for a concept signifying it which holds in virtue of the nature of the property. Finding out whether a property is such is to a large extent a posteriori matter. Finally, colors are response dependent: they are essentially tied to issuing the relevant experiences, so that having those experiences does give access to their, dispositional, nature. Finally, some important (...) contrary views are critically discussed in the paper. (shrink)

The following paper presents and discuses the epistemological premises of one of the relativistic expressions of the so-called constructivism i.e. the social constructionism. Firstly, we trace constructivism’s theoretical origins and later, we distinguish the main ideas of Kenneth Gergen’s social constructionist proposal. The analysis is done in the following way: (a) we analyse the epistemological premises and the philosophical problems arising from them, and (b) we analyse the problematic impact these premises have in the praxis of social sciences. Finally, we (...) conclude that the exclusion of clear philosophical distinctions inside social constructionism undermines social constructionism’s plausibility. El siguiente artículo presenta y discute los postulados epistemológicos de una de las expresiones relativistas del denominado constructivismo i.e. el construccionismo social. En primer momento, se rastrean los orígenes teóricos del constructivismo y, posteriormente, se distinguen los principales postulados del construccionismo social de Kenneth Gergen. El análisis se realiza del siguiente modo: (a) Se analizan los supuestos epistemológicos y los problemas filosóficos derivados de éstos, y (b) Se analizan las consecuencias que los postulados construccionistas tienen en la praxis que llevan a cabo las ciencias sociales. Finalmente, se concluye que la exclusión de distinciones filosóficas claras por parte del construccionismo social le resta plausibilidad al enfoque. (shrink)

RESUMEN Se propone rastrear la interpretación que Schiller lleva a cabo en las Cartas sobre la educación estética del hombre del análisis kantiano del juicio de gusto puro como asociado con una suspensión de toda determinación que hace posible la experiencia de la belleza. Para Schiller, esto resulta en una temporalidad de lo bello experimentada como suspensión, que se torna adicionalmente en una suspensión de la temporalidad. El artículo muestra cómo este concepto resulta esencial para el concepto de crítica estética (...) en Schiller, que se relaciona con una capacidad de la experiencia estética de desactivar formas de violencia que, según el diagnóstico que Schiller propone en las Cartas, saturan su presente histórico. Con ello, el artículo pretende mostrar la pertinencia de la obra de Schiller para la configuración de este aspecto de la crítica filosófica-histórica. ABSTRACT This article proposes to trace Schiller's interpretation in the Aesthetic Letters of Kant's pure judgement of taste in connection to a suspension of all determination that makes the experience of beauty possible. For Schiller, this analysis conducts to a temporality of the beautiful experienced as suspension, which becomes itself a suspension of temporality as such. This paper shows the importance of this interpretation of temporality for Schiller's conception of aesthetic critique, related to aesthetic experience's capacity to deactivate forms of violence that, according to the diagnosis Schiller proposes in the Letters, saturate his historical present. Thus, this article shows the relevance of Schiller's aesthetics for a philosophical historical conception of critique. (shrink)

A few remarkable examples of alternative cosmological theories are shown, ranging from a compilation of variations on the Standard Model (inhomogeneous universe, Cold Big Bang, varying physical constants or gravity law, zero-active mass, Milne cosmology, cyclical models), through the more distant quasi-steady-state cosmology, plasma cosmology, or universe models as a hypersphere such as the Dynamic Universe, to the most exotic cases including static models with non-cosmological redshifts of galaxies. -/- Most cosmologists do not usually work within the framework of alternative (...) cosmologies very different from the standard one because they feel that these are not at present as competitive as the standard model. It is true that they are not so developed, but that is because cosmologists do not work on them. This vicious circle is to a great extent due to a sociological phenomenon known as the "snowball effect", in which resources are distributed to the most successful theory at a given time; the effect acts as a potential in a field that attracts cosmologists, causing funds, research positions, prestige, telescope time, publication in top journals, citations, conferences, and other resources to be dedicated almost exclusively to standard cosmology. (shrink)

Salar Mohandesi’s Red Internationalism1 is a milestone study about the fortunes of anti-war internationalism as an ideal advocated by left-wing political movements, particularly in the 1960s and 19...

Las referencias de Vico a Descartes y a los cartesianos son constantes a lo largo de su obra. A pesar de su oposición y de su polémica contra la filosofía cartesiana, pensamos que la influencia del cartesianismo en Vico es mayor de la que este autor hubiera podido reconocer. Tratamos de exponer, a grandes rasgos, la postura de Vico y de Descartes con respecto al conocimiento matemático, análisis que nos permite un mejor entendimiento de sus planteamientos filosóficos.Vico's references to Descartes (...) and the cartesians are kept constant along his work. Regardless of their opposition and also Vico's arguments against the philosophy of Descartes we think that the influence of the cartesianism in Vico is greater than what this author would have admitted. We are trying to show, in a broad approach, the position of both Vico and Descartes regarding the mathematical knowledge. This analysis will allow us a better understanding of their philosophical positions. (shrink)

the main relevant philosophical aspect in Suárez’s interpretation of the transcendentals is his doctrine of the notions res and aliquid . therefore, after analyzing the nature and the number of the transcendentals, as well as the relationship between them and the first principles, the article goes into a detailed historical analysis of the notions res and aliquid. With precedents in Avicenna and Duns Scotus, the ens is understood according to Suarez, negatively, as it is not nothing and, in such sense, (...) it is something ( aliquid ) and, positively, as it has got a quidditas and, therefore, it is res. the question of nothing ( nihil ) is thus introduced into modern metaphysics. What’s more, the said interpretation is one of the fundamental conditions of the transformation of metaphysics in modern ontology . thus, in the post- Cartesian context of Schulmetaphysik, and its aliquitas (as non-nihil ) and its quiditative character (as res ) being presumed, the ens will be understood as an intelligible . through that, a Copernican revolution commenced that anticipated Kant himself. (shrink)