La telenovela es un género dramático y visual, de gran popularidad en países de habla hispana y con una audiencia en amplio crecimiento en otros como Estados Unidos. A pesar del enorme mercado televisivo, y del reconocimiento mediático de sus actores, las producciones de telenovela han sido objeto de una crítica condescendiente y paternalista por muchos académicos, quienes las restringen o bien a ser meros instrumentos para adoctrinar a la sociedad a escapar de sus problemas y conformarse con sus circunstancias (...) vitales, o a ser acompañamientos del ocio femenino y diversión de la clase más popular y trabajadora. No obstante, críticos menos reduccionistas como Trejo Silva, Martínez Zarandona, Guerra, Martín Barbero o Tufte han señalado el efecto transformador y educativo de su temática más reciente, centrándose especialmente en el cambio producido en la evolución de los personajes y las situaciones. "Por ella soy Eva" (mejor telenovela de 2013 por los premios TVyNovela de México), ilustra nuevas situaciones de género menos asfixiantes para la mujer y aborda, con clara intención crítica, el machismo existente en la sociedad mexicana. A través del concepto de entretenimiento educativo, esta telenovela augura un futuro revitalizador para un género que para muchos se había estancado como trasunto del folletín decimonónico. (shrink)

In a series of papers, Robin Jeshion has forcefully criticized both Donnellan's and Evans’ claims on the contingent a priori, and she has developed an “acquaintanceless” account of singular thoughts as an alternative view. Jeshion claims that one can fully grasp a singular thought expressed by a sentence including a proper name, even if its reference has been descriptively fixed and one’s access to the referent is “mediated” by that description. But she still wants to reject “semantic instrumentalism”, the view (...) that “there are no substantive conditions of any sort on having singular thought. We can freely generate singular thoughts at will by manipulating the apparatus of direct reference.” Her account of singular thoughts is a psychological one, rejecting any epistemic requirement. Having singular thoughts is for her a matter of deploying “mental files” or “dossiers” that play a significant role in the cognitive life of the individual. This paper elaborates on an alternative descriptivist-friendly view, which has important points of contact with Jeshion’s. It differs, particularly in that it is an epistemic view; it is only a broadly understood acquaintance view, as it will transpire, but this does not make it a mere terminological variation on Jeshion’s acquaintanceless one. To argue for it, the paper discusses some relevant aspects of the semantics of fictional discourse. (shrink)

Inspired by Castañeda, Perry and Lewis argued that, among singular thoughts in general, thoughts about oneself ‘as oneself’ – first-personal thoughts, which Lewis aptly called de se – call for special treatment: we need to abandon one of two traditional assumptions on the contents needed to provide rationalizing explanations, their shareability or their absoluteness. Their arguments have been very influential; one might take them as establishing a new ‘effect’ – new philosophical evidence in need of being accounted for. This is (...) questioned by the skeptical arguments in recent work by Cappelen & Dever and Magidor, along lines that a few discrepant voices had already announced earlier. Skeptics content that the evidence does not really call for revising traditional theories of content. I will discuss their challenges – first and foremost, concerning action explanations – aiming to make the case that the ‘De Se effect’ is no illusion: de se attitudes require us to revise one of the two tenets of traditional views. (shrink)

This paper will concentrate mainly on the analysis of some features present in Putnam's internal realism and in his "natural realism" that he shares with the pragmatist thinkers Peirce and James. Following the middle way which Putnam tries to reach between "reactionary metaphysics" and "irresponsible relativism," the first part of the paper deals with what is the positive insight of traditional realism, i. e., the reality of external things as independent from our mind, as it is emphasized by Putnam. It (...) also analyzes how this idea of the mind-independent character of reality has been very well worked out in Peirce's thought through the category of Secondness. The second part focuses on the right insight of relativism that Putnam wants to maintain: How our notion of reality changes and evolves together with our language, our life and our handling the world. The attention that H. Putnam pays to W. James is, also, especially important in relation to his way of understanding reality. (shrink)

En este artículo se analiza la posición de El eclipse de la fraternidad, ensayo publicado por Antoni Domènech, en el debate acerca del republicanismo cívico. Para ello se atiende en primer lugar a la recepción, en esa obra, de la democracia ateniense y de la institución del salario para cargos públicos, establecido en Atenas desde la revolución de Efialtes en el 461 a. de C. Este es un elemento nuclear en el argumento del libro. Se sigue así la aparición del (...) problema de la fraternidad en la trayectoria intelectual de Domènech. A través de esa recepción de la democracia ateniense, Domènech toma partido en el debate internacional acerca de la tradición republicana y de su origen. La segunda parte del artículo versa sobre este problema. Finalmente se trata de comprender la peculiaridad de El eclipse de la fraternidad en el contexto del republicanismo filosófico español. El método de análisis utilizado se inspira en la sociología de la filosofía, desarrollada entre otros por Pierre Bourdieu, Randall Collins y Martin Kusch. (shrink)

Conservationists have two types of arguments for why we should conserve ecosystems: instrumental and intrinsic value arguments. Instrumental arguments contend that we ought to conserve ecosystems because of the benefits that humans, or other morally relevant individuals, derive from ecosystems. Conservationists are often loath to rely too heavily on the instrumental argument because it could potentially force them to admit that some ecosystems are not at all useful to humans, or that if they are, they are not more useful than (...) alternative configurations of those ecosystems. Consequently, conservationists often resort to an intrinsic value argument, contending that ecosystems are objectively valuable as ends in themselves, rather than merely as means to an end. If ecosystems have intrinsic value, then they have moral standing, which means that we must consider their needs and interests in any decisions we make about them. This paper concerns the significance of this move for... (shrink)

Background: Nurses who practice limitation of therapeutic effort become fully involved in emotionally charged situations, which can affect them significantly on an emotional and professional level. Objectives: To describe the experience of intensive care nurses practicing limitation of therapeutic effort. Method: A qualitative, phenomenological study was performed within the intensive care units of the Madrid Hospitals Health Service. Purposeful and snowball sampling methods were used, and data collection methods included semi-structured and unstructured interviews, researcher field notes, and participants’ personal letters. (...) The Giorgi proposal for data analysis was used on the data. Ethical considerations: This study was approved by the Ethical Research Committee of the relevant hospital and by the Ethics Committee of the Rey Juan Carlos University and was guided by the ethical principles of voluntary enrollment, anonymity, privacy, and confidentiality. Results: In total, 22 nurses participated and 3 themes were identified regarding the nurses’ experiences when faced with limitation of therapeutic effort: (a) experiencing relief, (b) accepting the medical decision, and (c) implementing limitation of therapeutic effort. Conclusion: Nurses felt that, although they were burdened with the responsibility of implementing limitation of therapeutic effort, they were being left out of the final decision-making process regarding the same. (shrink)

This article analyses how samples of pathological anatomies were transformed into collectible objects in 19th-century Mexico, revealing a process that involved multiple locations and the mixture of the practices of physicians, anthropologists, and amateur collectors. Historiography has focused on the Museo de Anatomía Patológica (Museum of Pathological Anatomy), an institution devoted to the training of medical students created in 1853 at the Escuela Nacional de Medicina (National School of Medicine) in Mexico City. Archival evidence shows that medical collections existed far (...) beyond this space; namely, in private collections and museums organized in the provinces by local physicians whose existence was overshadowed by the metropolitan institutions. As this article discusses, anatomical specimens connected these two circles around the question of how to define “Mexican pathologies.” Through an examination of the collections held at the Museum of Pathological Anatomy and the Museo Michoacano in Morelia in western Mexico, this article analyses those debates in a context where this evidence was also used to highlight the differences between Mexicans, Europeans, and people of indigenous ancestry. Whereas this conceptualization embodied the way in which diseases differentially affected the indigenous, mestizo, and Mexican peoples, for doctors in the provinces, “Mexican pathologies” also referred to anatomical signs of abnormalities or primitiveness in the indigenous population. Tracing the professional career of Dr. Nicolás León (1859–1929), a well-known collector and physical anthropologist, the paper describes the geography of the exchanges of anatomical specimens and the complex relationships that emerged among actors in the Mexican provinces and the capital as they sought to identify pathologies associated mainly with the local native population. In addition, it shows that the production and circulation of specimens of pathological anatomy were connected to a wider circle of providers that extended far beyond medical museums and experts in medicine, and who exhibited these Mexican pathologies as part of the—almost always unfinished—forging of the national. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the intuitive idea that God is fair and does not play favorites. This belief appears to be held by many theists. I will call it the Principle of Impartial Benevolence (PIB) and put it as follows: As much as possible, for all persons, God equally promotes the good and equally prevents the bad. I begin with the conviction that there is a prima facie tension between PIB and the disparity of human suffering. My aim in (...) what follows is to clarify this tension and show that it runs deep. More specifically, I will argue that PIB imposes stringent demands—including a patient-centered theodicy—on the sorts of reasons that would justify God in permitting suffering, and, that the historical disparity of suffering indicates that these demands are not met. I conclude that theists should disavow PIB or at least consider it sub judice. (shrink)

A new approach to landscape ecology involves the application of the eco-field hypothesis and the General Theory of Resources. In this study, we describe the putative eco-field of bark beetles as a spatial configuration with a specific meaning-carrier for every organism-resource interaction. Bark beetles are insects with key roles in matter and energy cycles in coniferous forests, which cause significant changes to forestry landscapes when outbreaks occur. Bark beetles are guided towards host trees by the recognition of semiotic signals using (...) a specific eco-field. These signals mainly comprise a group of scents, which are called the odourtope. Their interactions with other organisms occur by sharing relevant information from the eco-field networks in the forest ecosystem. The eco-field networks modulate the expansion of the realized semiotic niche of the bark beetle towards the potential semiotic niche. Moreover, the niche construction process can be initiated by interchanging signals among species living in the same place, where these signals allow the exploitation of the required resources. If different organisms are interdependent on signals in eco-field networks, then this process may result in the establishment of mutualistic relationships. This is an example of how evolutionary processes are initiated by the recognition of signals in a network of eco-fields. (shrink)

Most scholars describe Kant’s idea of dignity as what I term his “vertical” account—that is, our human dignity insofar as we rise above heteronomous natural inclinations and realize human freedom by obeying the moral law. In this paper, I attempt to supplement this traditional view by exploring Kant’s neglected “horizontal” account of dignity—that is, our human dignity insofar as we exist in relationship with others. First, I examine the negative aspect of this horizontal account of dignity, found in Kant’s discussion (...) of public heteronomy perpetuated by unjust social institutions. Second, I explore Kant’s idea of public dignity realized via social interaction: both (1) at the interpersonal level of education and friendship, and (2) at the societal level, in terms of moral education in the public sphere and a communal moral striving towards the highest good. I argue that we cannot realize our full human dignity for Kant outside of the context of concrete social relations with other moral agents. (shrink)

This paper provides a normative/prescriptive account of the act of presupposing, and it argues that some presuppositions are conventionally triggered. After providing an initial intuitive characterization of presuppositions, the paper introduces the influential Stalnakerian account, and shows how the well-known practice of informative presupposition puts heavy strain on it. It then explains how a prescriptive account deals well with that problem, and how it accounts for what is known as the Triggering Problem for presuppositions.

Este artículo explora el problema de la síntesis entre vitalismo y racionalismo, dentro de la filosofía contemporánea. Para ello comparamos las trayectorias intelectuales de Georges Canguilhem (1904-1995) y José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955). Se contrastan sus concepciones de la filosofía como saber “híbrido”, vinculado a la ciencia, así como sus puntos de vista sobre el vitalismo, la antropología, la técnica y el perspectivismo. Para evitar que la comparación sea puramente abstracta y ahistórica, se recurre al método de la sociología de (...) la filosofía. Esto obliga a situar ambas trayectorias en sus respectivos campos filosóficos y unidades generacionales, atendiendo también a su procedencia social y a su carrera profesional. (shrink)

The organism-in-its-environment is recognized as the basic unit of analysis when dealing with living beings. This paper seeks to define the fundamental implications of the concept of the organism-in-its-environment in terms of the biosemiotic concept of human distributed cognition. Human distributed cognition in a biosemiotic context is defined as the ability of a self-referencing organism-in-its-environment to interact with its environment to satisfy its physiological and social needs to survive and sustain itself. The ontogenetic development of the organism-in-its-environment serves as the (...) backdrop to discover the implications of distributed cognition that have general applicability in organisms, but in this paper, are made relevant to human beings. (shrink)

Aquí argumento que algunas propuestas recientes de caracterizar una noción de lo innato teóricamente útil usando conceptos de la biología padecen serios problemas conceptuales. También defiendo una propuesta propia, de inspiración biológica, la cual pretende capturar las formas en que se usa el término 'innato' en algunas disciplinas cognitivas.

La primera recepción española de la obra epistemológica de Gaston Bachelard tuvo lugar en las décadas de 1940 y 1950. José Pemartín y especialmente Carlos París y Roberto Saumells fueron los filósofos españoles más relevantes que leyeron y utilizaron los escritos históricos y epistemológicos de Bachelard. Estos fueron utilizados para respaldar un realismo ontológico más sofisticado pero no incompatible con el realismo escolástico que prevalecía en la filosofía académica española de esa época. En este artículo exploramos el contexto de esta (...) recepción desde una perspectiva sociofilosófica.The first Spanish reception of Gaston Bachelard’s epistemological work took place in the 1940s and 1950s decades. José Pemartín and particularly Carlos París and Roberto Saumells were the most important Spanish philosophers who read and made use of the historical and epistemological writings of Bachelard. These were used in order to support an ontological realism more sophisticated but not incompatible with the scholastic realism prevailing in the Spanish academic philosophy of the time. We explore the context of this reception from a sociophilosophical scope. (shrink)

Lain (antropölogo, filösofo e historiador de la medicina) define como relaciön amistosa una serie de actividades que en esencia son: desear el bien del amigo por el amigo mismo, igualdad entre los amigos, comunalidad y comunicaciön entre los amigos y consideraciön de una relaciön entre personas. De la misma forma establece que una vez producido el encuentro, para que exista la amistad, deben cumplirse una serie de reglas, tales como el respeto, la liberalidad, la franqueza, la imaginaciön y el discernimiento (...) afectivo. Entre las patologias de la amistad se encuentran: la consideraciön del otro como objeto, alteraciones derivadas de la relaciön (estatus o niveles sociales), alteraciones entre los fines, los grados de amistad y de las propiedades de la relaciön amistosa, y que habitualmente se manifiestan como alteraciones en el respeto, la igualdad, la confidencia y la convivencia. Las alteraciones producidas en la relaciön amistosa pueden superarse si existe respeto, igualdad, franqueza, consideraciön de ambos como personas, liberalidad,... Todos los fenömenos que se han presentado en esta comunicaciön tienen como caracteristicas la alteraciön de alguna de estas reglas de mantenimiento de la amistad. (shrink)

El presente artículo muestra cómo los problemas de orden lógico estudiados por Frege y Peirce a finales del siglo XIX devienen en el desarrollo de la filosofía analítica y en la filosofía del lenguaje en el siglo XX. En ese sentido, existe un hilo conductor que articula las propuestas reflexivas de los pragmatistas clásicos con los últimos desarrollos lingüísticos desde la semántica y la pragmalingüística en el marco de las consideraciones sobre los enfoques del lenguaje, entendido este como una red (...) de significados construidos en contextos de enunciación específicos. (shrink)

En este artículo se trataría de explorar la formación, durante el tardofranquismo, de una vanguardia filosófica caracterizada por la ruptura explícita con el ethos universitario. A partir de un análisis prácticamente exhaustivo de la producción filosófica de Eugenio Trías y de Fernando Savater en el periodo señalado se trata de mostrar la ruptura -total en el caso de Savater y parcial en el caso de Eugenio Trías- operada por estos autores con la filosofía académica, incluidas las alternativas “modernistas” de ésta. (...) En el caso de Fernando Savater esto se produce a través de una lectura de Nietzsche filtrada por la importación de contenidos teóricos procedentes de la “sociología sagrada”, de la literatura de Cioran y en menor medida de la Teoría Crítica frankfurtiana. En el caso de Trías, la estrategia consiste básicamente en la reconversión vanguardista del ejercicio docto del comentario de textos canónicos mediante la importación de técnicas y principios inspirados en el estructuralismo. El proceso tendría lugar en un contexto marcado por tranformaciones importantes en el campo político, religioso y editorial. La metodología del trabajo se apoyará en la sociología de los campos de producción intelectual inspirada por Bourdieu, en la sociología de las redes filosóficas y rituales de interacción propiciada por Randall Collins y en el análisis microhistórico de las “constelaciones filosóficas” sugerido por los discípulos de Dieter Henrich. (shrink)

All information results from a process, intrinsic to living beings, of info-autopoiesis or information self-production; a sensory commensurable, self-referential feedback process immanent to Bateson’s ‘difference which makes a difference’. To highlight and illustrate the fundamental nature of the info-autopoietic process, initially, two simulations based on one-parameter feedback are presented. The first, simulates a homeostatic control mechanism (thermostat) which is representative of a mechanistic, cybernetic system with very predictable dynamics, fully dependent on an external referent. The second, simulates a homeorhetic process, (...) inherent to biological systems, illustrating a self-referenced, autonomous system. Further, the active incorporation/interference of viral particles by prokaryotic cells and the activation of CRISPR-Cas can be understood as info-autopoiesis at the most fundamental cellular level, as well as constituting a planetary network of self-referenced information. Moreover, other examples of the info-autopoietic nature of information are presented to show the generality of its applicability. In short, info-autopoiesis is a recursive process that is sufficiently generic to be the only basis for information in nature: from the single cell, to multi-cellular organisms, to consideration of all types of natural and non-natural phenomena, including tools and artificial constructions. (shrink)

Fear generalisation, a process by which conditioned fear spreads to similar but innocuous stimuli, is key in understanding why some individuals feel unsafe in objectively non-threatening situations. Both trait neuroticism and lack of predictability about the likelihood of feared consequences are associated with negative affect in the face of ambiguity and may increase the degree to which fear generalises. Undergraduates with varying degrees of neuroticism were randomised to either high- or low-instructional predictability conditions prior to fear acquisition. A fear generalisation (...) test measured risk ratings and attentional bias on a modified dot-probe paradigm. Among individuals with higher neuroticism, providing instructional predictability did not reduce fear; these individuals reported higher risk and increased attentional bias toward ambiguous stimuli. Overall, for individuals with higher neuroticism, predictability information hurt rather than helped interpretation of ambiguous stimuli, challenging a common conceptualisation of predictability as a factor that reduces fear. (shrink)

A Pure Theory of the Republic constitutes the first positive theory of a republican state. It lays the foundation of a true political science and explains how collective freedom may be institutionally guaranteed. This illuminating book promises to be a landmark in political thought for centuries to come.