En esta primera parte de la entrevista, Mignolo ubica las coordenadas intelectuales en las que surge su primera obra (1995) junto con la necesidad del desarrollo del concepto de semiosis colonial, y la recepción de sus tesis en aquel momento. Describe también las posibilidades (o imposibilidades) de diálogo de la perspectiva decolonial con otras como la posmoderna y la poscolonial, refiriéndose a las diferentes inscripciones teóricas debidas, fundamentalmente, a diferencias geopolíticas. Por ello, plantea una alternativa pluri-versal al universalismo moderno occidental, (...) que intenta hacer pasar su provincialismo, cristiano primero, luego liberal y ahora neoliberal, por la verdad misma (eurocentrismo o atlanticismo). Finalmente, sitúa su “conformación cosmo-cultural” en relación con la reconstitución de conceptos que la civilización occidental fue destituyendo en su proceso de constitución del vocabulario y las subjetividades moderno-coloniales. Grupo de estudio Las nociones de transmodernidad y pluriversidad en la Filosofía de la Liberación y el giro decolonial. (shrink)

Concepts of decision, choice, decision-maker, and decision-making are common practical tools in both social science and natural science, on which scientific knowledge, policy implications, and moral recommendations are based. In this article I address three questions. First, I look into how present-day social scientists and natural scientists use decision/choice concepts. What are they used for? Second, scientists may differ in the application of decision/choice to X, and they may explicitly disagree about the applicability of decision/choice to X. Where exactly do (...) these disagreements lie? Third, I ask how scientists should use decision/choice concepts. What are they correctly and incorrectly used for? I argue that scientists must responsibly attend to a methodological demand: you have to have a principled, non-ad hoc, well-argued-for way of telling where decision/choice applicability ends. Thus, I aim to minimize the risk of conceptual stretching and foster responsible conceptual practices in a large body of scientific work. (shrink)

Durkheim's underdeveloped notion of fatalism is the keystone for a bridge between two conceptual categories central to Marxian and Durkheimian theory: alienation and anomie. Durkheim does not necessarily disagree with Marx that excessive regulation can be socially damaging but chooses to highlight the effects of under- regulation. A Durkheimian critique of overregulation becomes possible if we turn away from anomie and toward Durkheim's idea of fatalism-a concept that I will argue here is unexpectedly consistent with Marx's notion of alienation. We (...) can infer that Durkheim presents us with a notion of an "optimal" human condition that exists between anomie and fatalism. The structure of modern societies, it will be argued, is characterized not just by excessive control leading to alienation or by a lack of integrative restraint leading to anomie but also by active efforts to optimally regulate social life. (shrink)

Sociologists often ask why particular groups of people have the moral views that they do. I argue that sociology’s empirical research on morality relies, implicitly or explicitly, on unsophisticated and even obsolete ethical theories, and thus is based on inadequate conceptions of the ontology, epistemology, and semantics of morality. In this article I address the two main problems in the sociology of morality: (1) the problem of moral truth, and (2) the problem of value freedom. I identify two ideal–typical approaches. (...) While the Weberian paradigm rejects the concept of moral truth, the Durkheimian paradigm accepts it. By contrast, I argue that sociology should be metaphysically agnostic, yet in practice it should proceed as though there were no moral truths. The Weberians claim that the sociology of morality can and should be value free; the Durkheimians claim that it cannot and it should not. My argument is that, while it is true that factual statements presuppose value judgments, it does not follow that sociologists are moral philosophers in disguise. Finally, I contend that in order for sociology to improve its understanding of morality, better conceptual, epistemological, and methodological foundations are needed. (shrink)

It is still a widespread assumption that metaphysics and ontology deal with roughly the same questions. They are supposed to be concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and to give an account of the meaning of 'existence' or 'being' in line with the broadest possible metaphysical assumptions. Against this, Markus Gabriel proposes a radical form of ontological pluralism that divorces ontology from metaphysics, understood as the most fundamental theory of absolutely everything. He argues that the concept of existence (...) is incompatible with the existence of the world and therefore proposes his innovative no-world-view. In the context of recent debates surrounding new realism and speculative realism, Gabriel also develops the outlines of a realist epistemological pluralism. His idea here is that there are different forms of knowledge that correspond to the plurality of fields of sense that must be acknowledged in order to avoid the trap of metaphysics. (shrink)

O presente texto tem por objetivo compreender a pintura de Wassily Kandinsky a partir da metafísica do belo de Arthur Schopenhauer, especialmente a partir da relação entre pintura e música estabelecida pelo pintor.

El artículo presenta algunos resultados del estudio de la participación de Karol Wojtyła, obispo auxiliar y, sucesivamente, arzobispo de Cracovia, en el Concilio Vaticano II, así como de la recepción del mismo durante su ministerio pastoral en la archidiócesis polaca y al servicio de la Iglesia universal antes de su elección como sucesor de Pedro. Es posible hablar del “estilo conciliar” de Wojtyła: lo que la Iglesia ha enseñado sobre la gloria de Dios en el Vaticano II y sobre el (...) modo en el que dicha gloria debe acontecer en la vida de los fieles de nuestro tiempo encuentra en Wojtyła una concreta e iluminadora expresión histórica. (shrink)

En este artículo analizo algunos aspectos claves del desarrollo y la evolución de las musicalizaciones de textos poéticos en Chile y profundizo en su relación con el canon literario. El análisis lo realizo tomando como referencia tres producciones de relevancia en el escenario músico-poético chileno: la musicalización del poema Alturas de Macchu Picchu de Pablo Neruda por Los Jaivas (1981), el disco Desiertos de amor (2011) de Raúl Zurita junto al grupo González y Los Asistentes, y la musicalización de poemas (...) de Elicura Chihuailaf por el grupo Kalfu en su disco Trawvn = ReUnión (2017). En términos generales, el estudio propone que las musicalizaciones de poesía constituyen un aporte a los estudios literarios, ya que permiten ampliar las perspectivas de análisis más allá de lo textual, lo que ropicia un entendimiento más profundo de las particularidades de la producción poética. (shrink)

I make a contribution to the sociology of epistemologies by examining the neuroscience literature on love from 2000 to 2016. I find that researchers make consequential assumptions concerning the production or generation of love, its temporality, its individual character, and appropriate control conditions. Next, I consider how to account for these assumptions’ being common in the literature. More generally, I’m interested in the ways in which epistemic communities construe, conceive of, and publicly represent and work with their objects of inquiry—and (...) what’s thereby assumed about them and about the world. I argue that these implicit or explicit assumptions are a distinct type of explanandum, whose distinctiveness sociology hasn’t adequately appreciated and taken advantage of. I think it should and I hope it will. (shrink)

Moral repair is an important way for firms to heal moral relationships with stakeholders following a transgression. The concept is rooted in recognition theory, which is often used to develop normative perspectives and prescriptions, but the same theory has also propelled a view of moral repair as premised on negotiation between offender and victim(s), which involves the complex social construction of the transgression and the appropriate amends. The tension between normative principles and socioconstructivist implementation begs the question how offending firms (...) should approach moral repair. Addressing this question, we develop a two-level conceptualization of moral repair, distinguishing between procedural and substantive levels of practice, which accommodate normativity and socioconstructivism, respectively. In so doing, we enrich the literature by 1) promoting conceptual clarity, 2) refining understanding of the moral repair process, and 3) suggesting the use of a unified, configurational approach to studying (nonlinear) relations between amends and moral outcomes. (shrink)

I would like to discuss the claim that the resources of plural reference and plural quantification are sufficient for the purpose of paraphrasing all ordinary statements apparently concerned with composite material objects into plural statements concerned exclusively with simples.

Insincerity is the intentional conflict between a state of mind and a synchronic linguistic act. Three cases have to be distinguished: lying, as the opposition of belief and assertion (the act is untruthful); dishonesty, as the opposition of will and declaration of will (act empty); and simulation, as the opposition of emotion and exclamation (act ungenuine). One of the problems arising is: Are there insincere commands, and if not, why?Disloyalty, on the other hand, is a diachronic inconsequence, the breach of (...) a linguistic action (act unredeemed) which was binding for the future (such as, e.g. a promise). There is a cross-connection to dishonesty, which can be seen as the will to be disloyal. (shrink)

v. 1. Reflection & mystery -- v. 2. Faith & reality.

When viewed as the most comprehensive theory of collections, set theory leaves no room for classes. But the vocabulary of classes, it is argued, provides us with compact and, sometimes, irreplaceable formulations of largecardinal hypotheses that are prominent in much very important and very interesting work in set theory. Fortunately, George Boolos has persuasively argued that plural quantification over the universe of all sets need not commit us to classes. This paper suggests that we retain the vocabulary of classes, but (...) explain that what appears to be singular reference to classes is, in fact, covert plural reference to sets. (shrink)

The ethical behaviour and social responsibility of private companies, and in particular large corporations, is an important area of enquiry in contemporary social, economic and political thinking. In the past, a company's behaviour would be considered responsible as long as it stayed within the law of the society in which it operated or existed. Although this may be necessary, it is no longer sufficient. In this paper, we examine an energy company's response to an ethical incident in New Zealand which (...) prompted different responses across the country about the role of business in society. Thus, we argue that when a corporation is accused of unethical behaviour, executives of the company are usually compelled to offer responses to defend their actions and corporate image. Further, we use communicative response model, social issue life cycle theory, and organisational learning, to analyse the incident and how the company responded. Using social issues life cycle theory and organisational learning theory, we demonstrate that sustained pressure can potentially trigger a change of strategy that may serve to improve the ethical posture of a corporation and thereby improve the corporate image long term. We conclude that, although corporations may understand the significance of social issues to the performance and success of their business, this same understanding does not always translate into meaningful social action. (shrink)

This study examines the ethical position and behaviour of multinational mining companies regarding hazardous employment and health and safety of employees in the South African mining industry. Mining companies have long had a reputation for being unethical on health and safety issues. Too often there are occurrences of fatal accidents, which bring the ethical behaviour of multinational mining companies into question. The litmus test for the mining companies is to devise benchmark standards that will reduce accidents tremendously at their place (...) of operations. This study addresses this issue by examining measures and regulations set up to check the occurrences of mining accidents in South Africa. It follows that the remedy needs to be fundamental and thoroughgoing. (shrink)

An exposition in five parts of the character of existentialist philosophy, including an analysis of the theories of Jean-Paul Sartre. Author Gabriel Marcel, a famous French dramatist, philosopher, and author of Le Dard, was a leading exponent of Christian existentialism.

Several philosophers have argued recently that semantic properties do play a causal role. 1 It is our view that none of these arguments are satisfactory. Our aim is to reveal some of the deficiencies of these arguments, and to reassess the question in our own way. In section 1, we shall explain in more detail what is involved in the pretheoretical idea of a causally efficacious property and so provide a fuller sense of the issue. In section 2 we shall (...) discuss Fodor's and Kim's arguments that the semantic properties of mental events are causally efficacious. Their tactic is to articulate sufficient conditions for the causal efficacy of a property, and then apply these conditions to the psychological properties under consideration. We shall show that both formulations are inadequate. However, each account can remedy some of the defects of the other. We shall argue that by putting the two together, and modifying this combined account in certain ways, we can arrive at something that might just pass as a general sufficient condition for causal efficacy. We believe that the question of causal efficacy of content is best approached as a question in the philosophy of science. If one wants to know whether a given species of property is efficacious, the most productive strategy is to find a science that investigates the properties and examine the role they are assigned. In keeping with this attitude we shall restrict our discussion to the notion of content deployed within cognitive science. In section 3 we examine the role of content in cognitive science and discuss whether this role suits content to the conditions on efficacy articulated in section two. Our conclusion will be conditional and hedged: on certain views of cognitive science, content will meet the sufficient condition for efficacy. If other views are correct, the question remains open. (shrink)

This article examines the ethical characteristics of MNEs employee relations in developing countries. Specifically, it addresses various ethical issues relating to labour relations and trade unions in extractive industries in Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia. Data collected in these countries indicate that criticisms aginst MNEs relating to labour issues and labour practices in developing countries are not lessening. The discussion is lent focus and direction through the analysis of critical incidents from the perspectives of various stakeholders: government, oil and mining (...) companies, and leaders of trade unions. Tensions over pay, expatriate employments as against the locals, negotiation rights and employees well-being are evident. The argument advanced is that the MNEs operating in the extractive industries of Africa will have to improve their relations with local employees in order to bridge the legitimacy gaps that exist. An improved mutual understanding between the MNEs and trade unions is required for both actors to have a smooth working relationship. (shrink)

Revisitando os fragmentos de Schlegel e Novalis em Blüthenstaub (2016), o artigo busca apreender o processo de ontologização que a argumentação kantiana relativa ao juízo estético sofre, quando assimilado por Schlegel e Novalis. Para isso, lemos a “Analítica do belo”, da Kritik der Urteilskraft (1974b), de modo a depreender como a estrutura ética do juízo estético, em Kant sugerida apenas pela cláusula do como-se, ganha em Novalis e Schlegel uma interpretação ontológica. Assim, desenvolvemos a figura do Juízo Infinito, conceito com (...) que buscamos circunscrever o triplo movimento pelo qual Schlegel e Novalis fundamentam ontologicamente a estrutura ética do juízo estético. (shrink)

El Estado de Hegel es el Estado de Derecho. Sin embargo en su Filosofía del Derecho se encuentran fundamentos decisivos para una teoría del Estado Social. Siguiendo el hilo de las Líneas fundamentales de la Filosofía del Derecho, se empieza por ver el derecho al bienestar, tal como se formula en la Moralidad (1). En la familia aparece el derecho de los hijos "de ser alimentados y educados" (2). El Derecho al bienestar se concreta en la sociedad civil (3), se (...) hace posible en el sistema de las necesidades (3.1.) y efectivo en la policía y la corporación (3.2 y 3.3), que ejercen funciones de suplencia de la familia. El mayor problema es la pobreza, tanto la que surge por contingencias subjetivas y sociales como por el funcionamiento mismo de la sociedad civil: la plebe. A este problema la sociedad es incapaz de darle una solución. (shrink)

This volume presents two works by Gabriel Marcel.

Although recent trends in politics and media make it appear that conspiracy theories are on the rise, in fact they have always been present, probably because they are sustained by natural dispositions of the human brain. This is also the case with medical conspiracy theories. This article reviews some of the most notorious health-related conspiracy theories. It then approaches the reasons why people believe these theories, using concepts from cognitive science. On the basis of that knowledge, the article makes normative (...) proposals for public health officials and health workers as a whole, to deal with conspiracy theories, in order to preserve some of the fundamental principles of medical ethics. (shrink)