Este ensayo es consecuencia de las reflexiones que desde hace años realizamos en el Instituto de Paz y Conflictos de la Universidad de Granada y que nos ha obligado a hacer una deconstrucción crítica de algunos aspectos del pensamiento pacifista. Bien es cierto que la supervivencia de la especie ha sido posible porque la respuesta a la conflictividad ha sido, mayoritariamente, la búsqueda de equilibrios dinámicos y de armonía. Pero, a pesar de todo, perviven muchas grietas, rupturas, dadas por la (...) propia contingencia y fragilidad humanas. Estamos ante unos entes humanos fragmentados, violentados, lo que hace más difícil la búsqueda de la armonía o la paz. Estas dificultades son razones de peso para trabajar en el camino de una «desfragmentación» ontológica que sea útil para liberar nuestras fuerzas emancipadoras y creativas. Construir la visión integrada y unitaria de la Ciencia de los Seres Humanos es una tarea conjunta que interesa sobremanera a la Investigación para la Paz.This essay is a consequence of the reflections we have been conducting for several years at the Instituto de Paz y Conflictos of the University of Granada. These reflections have obliged us to undertake a critical deconstruction of a few aspects of pacifist thought. Although the survival of the species has been possible because the response to conflicts has been, principally, the search for dynamic equilibrium and harmony; on the other hand there remain many fissures, ruptures brought about by the own human contingency and fragility. We find ourselves before a fragmented and distorted human being, which makes the search for harmony or peace even more difficult. These difficulties are convincing reasons for working towards an ontological “defragmentation” which is useful to liberate our emancipating and creative forces. To build the integrated and united view of Human Sciences is a collective task which is of great interest for Peace Research. (shrink)

I. WINCHESTER and K. BLACKWELL (eds.), Antinomies and paradoxes. Studies in Russell's early philosophy. Hamilton, Ontario: McMaster University Library Press, 1989. 248 pp. No price stated.

En un sistema educativo español siempre en crisis, con reformas sucesivas encadenándose a todos los niveles, la enseñanza de la Matemática -quizá de manera más llamativa que la de otras materias- mantiene constante su relevancia especial: es intrínsecamente problemática. Finalizado el 2000, pomposamente denominado «Año Mundial de las Matemáticas», la situación no sólo no se ha aclarado sino que el problema alcanza incluso al hasta ahora intocable nivel universitario. Admitidas sin discusión en el mundo de la pedagogía matemática las estrechas (...) relaciones que existen -y deben existir- entre los procesos de aprehensión de los conceptos y métodos de la disciplina, y los asociados a la evolución que ha tenido nuestra Ciencia en la Historia, la génesis de los conocimientos y la transmisión de los mismos, en este trabajo se presenta un modelo historiográfico que podría contribuir a fijar algunos puntos del siempre vivo debate. (shrink)

The main thesis of this paper is that some of the most important ideas and symbolic devices that made Russell's theory of descriptions possible were already present in writings by Frege and especially Peano that Russell knew well. The paper contains a detailed comparison between the relevant parts of Russell's theory--including manuscripts recently published--and some of Frege and Peano's insights, as well as a discussion of numerous possible objections that could be posed to the main claim. Even if Russell was (...) not actually influenced by those insights, the parallelism is close enough to be worth analyzing, especially in the case of Peano, whose writings are not very well known. (shrink)

Animal welfare involves societal and human values, ethical concerns and moral considerations since it incorporates the belief of what is right or what is wrong in animal treatment and care. This paper aims to ascertain whether the different dimensions of individual attitudes toward animal welfare in food choices may be characterized by general human values, as identified by Schwartz. For this purpose, an EU-wide survey was carried out, covering almost 2500 nationally representative individuals from five European countries. Compared with the (...) previous literature this study shows a twofold novelty: it develops a general framework to link individual enduring beliefs and attitudes toward animal welfare attributes in food choices; the framework is analyzed within a broad-based cross-country study. Our empirical results prove that human values related to self-transcendence are strongly associated to overall animal welfare attitudes and especially to those explicitly related to food choices, while values related to the spheres of self-enhancement and conservatism are significantly associated to less sensitive attitudes to animal welfare. Moreover, our results appear to indicate that a determinant of animal welfarism in food choices is potentially associated to individual concerns regarding food safety issues. (shrink)

In this article I try to show the philosophical continuity of Russell's ideas from his paradox of classes to Principia mathematica. With this purpose, I display the main results (descriptions, substitutions and types) as moments of the same development, whose principal goal was (as in his The principles) to look for a set of primitive ideas and propositions giving an account of all mathematics in logical terms, but now avoiding paradoxes. The sole way to reconstruct this central period in Russell (...) is to resort to unpublished manuscripts, which show the publications of these years to be the extremities of one same iceberg. Thus the logical problems (doubts about propositions, matrices and functions) are parallel to the ontological (the searching for genuine logical subjects) and methodological ones (the status of eliminative reduction). Paradoxes were the cause that the kind of (constructive) definition already applied by Russell, as an inheritance of Moorean analysis, obtained a new trait: ontological elimination, which, beginning with a ?no classes theory? and the theory of descriptions, led to a new theory of judgment (already present in manuscripts from 1906), ?incomplete symbols, and logical constructions. (shrink)

Traces the development of British philosopher Russell's (1872-1970) ideas on mathematics from the 1890s to the publication of his Principles of mathematics in 1903. Draws from Russell's unpublished manuscripts, correspondence, and published works to point out the influence of Hegel, Cantor, Whitehead, Peano, and others. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

The current human rights framework can shield people from many of the risks associated with neurotechnological applications. However, it has been argued that we need either to articulate new rights or reconceptualise existing ones in order to prevent some of these risks. In this paper, we would like to address the recent discussion about whether current reconceptualisations of the right to mental integrity identify an ethical dimension that is not covered by existing moral and/or legal rights. The main challenge of (...) these proposals is that they make mental integrity indistinguishable from autonomy. They define mental integrity in terms of the control we can have over our mental states, which seems to be part of the authenticity condition for autonomous action. Based on a fairly comprehensive notion of mental health (ie, a notion that is not limited to the mere absence of illness), we propose an alternative view according to which mental integrity can be characterised both as a positive right to (medical and non-medical) interventions that restore and sustain mental and neural function, and promote its development and a negative right protecting people from interventions that threaten or undermine these functions or their development. We will argue that this notion is dissociated from cognitive control and therefore can be adequately distinguished from autonomy. (shrink)

The ultimate source of explanation in biology is the principle of natural selection. Natural selection means differential reproduction of genes and gene combinations. It is a mechanistic process which accounts for the existence in living organisms of end-directed structures and processes. It is argued that teleological explanations in biology are not only acceptable but indeed indispensable. There are at least three categories of biological phenomena where teleological explanations are appropriate.

Este artículo describe el reto que el protagonismo laical supone en los campos, inseparables y mutuamente referidos, de la misión, la comunión y la formación. La “teología del laicado”, en el orden teórico, y el apostolado seglar, en el práctico, se contemplan en el horizonte de una “eclesiología total”. La realidad de un “Pueblo de Dios en salida” solo será concretamente posible a través de la corresponsabilidad y la complementariedad de fieles y pastores.

We present some recent technical results of us on the incompleteness of classical analysis and then discuss our work on the Arnol'd decision problems for the stability of fixed points of dynamical systems.

When a risk is exchanged, the exact value for the minimum price (positive or negative) that the purchaser (investor, or insurer) is willing to pay is given by the certainty equivalent wealth level, which in turn depends on his specific utility function. When this utility function is unknown, then only a sufficient condition on the price can ever be found. This paper provides methods for calculating such a sufficient condition, when only limited information on the utility function is known.

We first state a few previously obtained results that lead to general undecidability and incompleteness theorems in axiomatized theories that range from the theory of finite sets to classical elementary analysis. Out of those results we prove several incompleteness theorems for axiomatic versions of the theory of noncooperative games with Nash equilibria; in particular, we show the existence of finite games whose equilibria cannot be proven to be computable.

We expose the main ideas, concepts and results about Jakowski's discussive logic, and apply that logic to the concept of pragmatic truth and to the Dalla Chiara-di Francia view of the foundations of physics.

We present some recent technical results of us on the incompleteness of classical analysis and then discuss our work on the Arnol'd decision problems for the stability of fixed points of dynamical systems.

We expose the main ideas, concepts and results about Jaśkowski's discussive logic, and apply that logic to the concept of pragmatic truth and to the Dalla Chiara-di Francia view of the foundations of physics.

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo profundizar en la Ética de E. Lévinas y aproximarla al Trabajo Social, intentando concretar al máximo lo que significa ir más allá que de Jonia a Jena , es decir, el significado de ir más allá de la razón teórica o del principialismo ético en el Trabajo Social.

The coronavirus disease pandemic fundamentally disrupted humans’ social life and behavior. Public health measures may have inadvertently impacted how people care for each other. This study investigated prosocial behavior, its association well-being, and predictors of prosocial behavior during the first COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and sought to understand whether region-specific differences exist. Participants from eight regions clustering multiple countries around the world responded to a cross-sectional online-survey investigating the psychological consequences of the first upsurge of lockdowns in spring 2020. Prosocial behavior (...) was reported to occur frequently. Multiple regression analyses showed that prosocial behavior was associated with better well-being consistently across regions. With regard to predictors of prosocial behavior, high levels of perceived social support were most strongly associated with prosocial behavior, followed by high levels of perceived stress, positive affect and psychological flexibility. Sociodemographic and psychosocial predictors of prosocial behavior were similar across regions. (shrink)

This paper sets forth a familiar theme, that science essentially consists of two interdependent episodes, one imaginative, the other critical. Hypotheses and other imaginative conjectures are the initial stage of scientific inquiry because they provide the incentive to seek the truth and a clue as to where to find it. But scientific conjectures must be subject to critical examination and empirical testing. There is a dialogue between the two episodes; observations made to test a hypothesis are the inspiration for new (...) conjectures. Inductive generalizations may also inspire hypotheses, but cannot validate them. A hypothesis is empirically tested by ascertaining whether or not predictions about the world of experience deduced from the hypothesis agree with what is actually observed. This has been appropriately considered the 'criterion of demarcation' that distinguishes science from other knowledge. But scientific hypotheses must satisfy other tests as well, e.g., whether they have explanatory value and further understanding. I briefly explore such issues as verifiability and falsifiability, empirical content and truthfulness, contingency and certainty, fact and theory, error and fraud. Science like any human activity is subject to error and to the foibles and other failings of human beings. But severe attempts of empirical falsification and other trials yield knowledge that stands the test of time and provides a foothold for further knowledge. Moreover, scientists have developed social mechanisms, such as peer review and publication, to evaluate their work. Because the research of scientists depends on the validity of previous knowledge, it is of great consequence that they discern valid from invalid knowledge and thus scientists are inclined to transcend ideology, nationality, friendship, monetary interest and other prejudices when the mettle of scientific knowledge is at stake. I use historical examples to illustrate some relevant aspects of scientific practice: its success (Mendel), misrepresentation (Darwin), ideological abuse (Lysenko), arrogant violation of the requirement of testing (Koch), theory replacement (Priestly and Lavoisier, Newton and Einstein), and the indispensability of context (Oswald Avery and Alfred Wegener). (shrink)

If Unamuno had been able to choose how to be remembered, he would have wanted him to be a poet. This book wants to do justice to that happy possibility. But above all because Unamuno was a poet in the highest sense: he was while writing the same essay as a novel, or theater, letter or verse, and he was also a poet when he passionately lived all the facets of his intense existence. His intellectual work was poetic and his (...) personal relationships, as well as his political activity, also responded to that peculiar Unamunian aesthetic in which the vital horizon is inescapably confused with the tasks of thought." --Translated from back cover. (shrink)

In Sartrean philosophy, the body is a central element in explaining the nature of intentionality, that is, the nature of how our consciousness apprehends reality. His corporeal phenomenology aims to refute the followers of the Cartesian tradition of the mind. At the same time, in the contemporary philosophy of mind and cognition, supporters of the enactivist tradition seek to elucidate the body's central role in the constitution of cognition. Likewise, their opponents are the adherents of cognitivism, who see the locus (...) of cognition in the brain as an informational processing device for symbolic (representational) content. In this article, we intend to develop a close relationship between the Sartrean conception of intentionality and that offered by sensorimotor enactivism. Both defend the centrality of the body in so-called "cognitive" or "mental" processes; both defend a kind of externalism about mental content; and both criticize the internalist and representationalist paradigm focused on internal processes only located in the brain. These similarities allow us to trace a relationship of continuity between Sartrean phenomenology and the embodied traditions of the mind. (shrink)

Cualquier estudio focalizado en la ontología propuesta por Leibniz debería prestar atención a conceptos claves, tales como esencias o posibilidades, existencia o actualización, contingencia, necesidad y libertad, entre otros. Al aproximarse a estas nociones, Leibniz reconoció abierta y explícitamente que los temas por los cuales él se interesaba habían sido tratados por Francisco Suárez, René Descartes y Baruch Spinoza. No obstante, se detecta una falta de coincidencia entre las posiciones adoptadas por estos pensadores y las tesis defendidas por Leibniz. (...) Tal diferencia resalta cuando dicho filósofo se propuso explicar, de un modo claro, distinto y conciso, la predisposición de las esencias para existir. Este deseo metafísico trasciende cualquier modalidad de reduccionismo lógico, y si se materializara, el resultado sería una actualización que Leibniz tiene a bien presentar, sin embargo, como contingente y limitada en la mayoría de los casos. (shrink)