Según Chantal Mouffe, las concepciones deliberativas de la democracia desconocen el fenómeno político; esto se pone manifiesto en la pretensión de alcanzar un consenso racional que niega el conflicto, elemento insoslayable de la política. Otro error que les atribuye es privilegiar la razón sobre los componentes pasionales al considerar la motivación de las acciones. Como alternativa propone la democracia radical centrada en las ideas de "hegemonía", en la oposición nosotros-ellos y en la importancia de las pasiones en la política. Este (...) artículo sostiene, primero, que la democracia deliberativa puede afrontar con éxito cada una de estas críticas; segundo, a partir de realizar una reconstrucción de los elementos normativos que contiene el pluralismo agonista, argumenta que fracasa en su intención de ofrecerse como una alternativa al estatus-quo de la democracia liberal ya que disuelve la validez en la facticidad. According to Chantal Mouffe, deliberative conceptions of democracy reject the political phenomenon. This is evident when a rational consensus to deny the conflict -politically unavoidable- is supported. Another error she also underlines is to privilege rational more than emotional elements in order to consider actions motivation. As an alternative she proposes radical democracy centered on the one hand at the idea of "hegemony", according to the opposition us-them and in the other at the passions involved in politics. The author maintains that deliberative democracy can face successfully each one of those critics. After reconstructing the normative elements that radical democracy contains, the argument proves that it fails in the pretention to be an alternative to liberal democracy status-quo since it dissolves validity in facticity. (shrink)

Los trabajos que aquí se comentan fueron confeccionados en diferentes períodos, algunos bastante alejados entre sí. Volver a leerlos para responder a las observaciones que integran este dossier me permitió revisar mi producción y examinarla a la luz de la distancia. Confirmé que siempre me han preocupado los mismos temas: las condiciones de la justicia y las causas de las injusticias, la calidad de la democracia y el compromiso ciudadano. Dividí el artículo en tres secciones, procurando reunir mis respuestas en (...) cierta unidad temática: Democracia deliberativa y razón pública (I), Felicidad, virtud y razón práctica (II) y Algo de neuroética (III). Las observaciones y críticas que realizaron los colegas me posibilitó mejorar algunos argumentos y aclarar ciertos puntos oscuros; confío en haberlo logrado. (shrink)

Jonathan Haidt has exhibited in several publications a strong influence by Hume as his inspiration to build up his Intuitionist Social Model especially in reference to the emotional and intuitive roots of morals. So, this article aims to go deeper into that influence to analyze, review and compare their concepts and hypotheses in order to establish common features in both Philosophers´ programs. By demonstrating some similarities between both authors -both critical to rationalism, and compelled to investigate the roots of morals (...) in Psychology-, their proposals will be compared and analyzed; and taking these critics into account the intuitionist assumptions that both Philosophers assume or could assume will be revised. In order to focus on the motivation of moral statements as a priority in Haidt research, the core of this article is dedicated to that issue. I will also explore Hume’s difficulty to conciliate his Emotivism with the rightness of moral statements that he considered necessary. Finally, my conclusions are that both positions sustain normative consequences ruled by an Ethics of Virtue. (shrink)

Nota crítica sobre el libro de María Luisa Femenías (2022). Los disidentes : filósofos feministas excluidos de la memoria, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires : Galerna, 446 páginas.

El objetivo de este trabajo es evaluar si, en nuestras sociedades plurales, individualistas y asentadas en el lenguaje normativo de los derechos y los principios, existe un lugar valioso y posible para una reactualización de la tradición de las virtudes. Nuestra opinión es positiva, pero de una manera condicionada. Tal reactualización debe dar una respuesta a dos críticas bien fundadas que se han realizado a reactualizaciones previas: su riesgo de obturar la capacidad transformadora de las costumbres y tradiciones y su (...) dependencia original respecto de un ethos jerárquico. Aquí mostraremos que la creación y mantenimiento de una sociedad democrática, que haga de la igualdad relacional un valor fundamental, requiere de un conjunto de virtudes cívicas básicas y que ellas pueden justificarse reforzando el potencial crítico de las virtudes respecto de su contexto de formación. (shrink)

Graciela Vidiella ha dedicado parte de su producción académica a indagar sobre la idea de una democracia deliberativa. En el marco de dicha indagación, Vidiella sostuvo que existe una incompatibilidad entre la idea de razón publica defendida por John Rawls y la concepción deliberativa de la democracia. Dicha critica deliberacionista contra la propuesta rawlsiana puede desagregarse en tres tesis: tesis del autogobierno procedimental, tesis sobre el uso crítico de la razón y tesis sobre el trato desigualitario. El (...) presente artículo argumenta en contra de dichas tesis y en defensa de la compatibilidad de la idea de razón publica rawlsiana y la democracia deliberativa. (shrink)

Uno de los problemas omnipresentes en la teoría política es el de qué tipo de relación debe existir entre el régimen democrático en tanto sistema de toma de decisiones colectivas y las vidas de sus ciudadanos, en tanto seres dotados de fines, metas y deseos. Ya sea desde las concepciones que estipulan que las decisiones mayoritarias pueden poner en riesgo ciertos ideales de buena vida o desde aquellas que creen que el tipo de justificación de las decisiones políticas no puede (...) dar cuenta de los procesos hermenéuticos individuales de búsqueda de significado a la propia existencia hasta aquellas concepciones que consideran que las condiciones para la búsqueda de la buena vida no pueden quedar libradas al desigual poder social o las que consideran que el bienestar individual debe quedar restringido a su compatibilidad con una autocomprensión colectiva de una buena sociedad, la cuestión reaparece incluso cuando se pretende hacerla a un lado. Los textos que componen este Dossier ofrecen diferentes aristas de estos problemas, los cuales vienen siendo tratados extensa y prolíficamente en la obra de Graciela Vidiella. En este sentido, el Dossier también representa un homenaje a su trabajo, algo que se ve reflejado no sólo en los temas tratados sino en que ellos se producen como una continuidad formal de largas conversaciones y discusiones informales que Vidiella mantuvo a lo largo de su carrera con sus amigos y amigas, discípulos y discípulas y estudiantes en general. (shrink)

En este trabajo me propongo realizar un homenaje a la obra filosófica de Graciela Vidiella. Con este objetivo en mente, me concentro en su trabajo “Imaginación literaria y virtudes ciudadanas”. En esta investigación, Vidiella sostiene -con cierta cautela- que la lectura de textos literarios puede hacernos mejores personas. El aporte moral crucial de la literatura sería desarrollar en sus lectores un sentido de la justicia, la tolerancia, la solidaridad y el pensamiento crítico En relación al pensamiento crítico, (...) defiendo la idea según la cual Vidiella vincula su razonamiento con el liberalismo de tipo rawlsiano. A continuación, propongo un modo alternativo de entender el pensamiento crítico de la mano de aportaciones de un teórico de izquierdas como Herbert Marcuse que estaba preocupado por dotar a la humanidad, a través precisamente del arte, de un sentido crítico respecto de una cultura hegemónica. (shrink)

Siguiendo a Martha Nussbaum, Graciela Vidiella argumenta que las humanidades están llamadas a cumplir un rol importante en la promoción de la ciudadanía virtuosa que es tan crucial para la salud de nuestras democracias. Este trabajo pretende aportar al proyecto de promover una ciudadanía virtuosa reuniendo tres reflexiones sobre el tipo de educación humanística del que cabe (y el tipo del que no cabe) esperar un aporte significativo en ese sentido. Argumentaré, en primer lugar, que una educación humanística (...) que esté a la altura de tal propósito, no puede ser concebida ni practicada como un bien Veblen. Sostendré, en segundo lugar, que una formación humanística que busque promover las virtudes cívicas necesita apoyarse en una concepción integrada del conocimiento que lo entienda como parte de la sabiduría y reconozca la centralidad del conocimiento vivo frente al conocimiento inerte. Por último, señalaré la importancia de diseñar las tareas formativas y los instrumentos de evaluación con vistas a entrenar a los estudiantes en las habilidades requeridas para el pensamiento crítico y propondré una herramienta idónea a tal efecto. De estas tres maneras, intento aportar algunas precisiones sobre el tipo de educación humanística del que cabe (y el tipo del que no cabe) esperar contribuciones significativas de cara a fomentar el desarrollo de una ciudadanía virtuosa. (shrink)

El objetivo del presente trabajo es evaluar la presunta incompatibilidad entre la idea de razón pública defendida por John Rawls y la concepción deliberativa de la democracia, tal como fue denunciada por Graciela Vidiella. La crítica deliberacionista de Vidiella contra la propuesta rawlsiana puede desagregarse en dos tesis: tesis del autogobierno procedimental y tesis sobre el uso crítico de la razón. Argumentaré en contra de dichas tesis y en defensa de la compatibilidad de la idea de razón (...) pública rawlsiana y la democracia deliberativa. (shrink)

Resumen de tesis de Doctorado en Filosofía: La virtud cívica republicana en las sociedades contemporáneas de Marcelo Fernández Pavlovich.Directora: Dra. Graciela Vidiella. Fecha de defensa: 13 de setiembre de 2023.

La democracia deliberativa surgió como una concepción de la legitimidad democrática que, contrariamente a la democracia agregativa, fuera sensible a las numerosas desigualdades que afectan los intercambios intersubjetivos entre ciudadanos y ofreciera alguna justificación para limitar que el poder social desigual se traslade al campo político. En un importante texto, “Democracia e Igualdad Política”, Graciela Vidiella especifica algunas condiciones de justicia social que deben cumplirse para que esta concepción honre su promesa. En este texto, intento mostrar - a (...) través del problema de la tentación epistócrata y el problema del espacio deliberativo - que, si bien esas condiciones igualitarias tienen relevancia, el problema central del igualitarismo en la democracia deliberativa radica en la configuración de los espacios donde se produzcan los intercambios comunicativos. (shrink)

The goal of the 2010 Ontology Summit was to address the current shortage of persons with ontology expertise by developing a strategy for the education of ontologists. To achieve this goal we studied how ontologists are currently trained, the requirements identified by organizations that hire ontologists, and developments that might impact the training of ontologists in the future. We developed recommendations for the body of knowledge that should be taught and the skills that should be developed by future ontologists; these (...) recommendations are intended as guidelines for institutions and organizations that may consider establishing a program for training ontologists. Further, we recommend a number of specific actions for the community to pursue. (shrink)

This study investigated students’ perceptions following a prepared, common presentation regarding academic integrity provided by their residence dons. This peer instruction study utilized both quantitative and qualitative analyses of survey data within a pre-test post-test design. Overall, students reported gains in knowledge, as well as confidence in their knowledge of academic integrity. Notably, students reported increases in their personal value for academic integrity after participating in the presentations. Overall, the quality and content of the presentations were judged positively, and participants’ (...) ratings of the presentation were predictive of increases in personal value of academic integrity, as well as self-reported knowledge and confidence gains. Qualitative analyses supported that the key ideas in the presentation served as the focal material for discussion, but also introduced specific topics that students wanted to explore in greater depth. (shrink)

Reading and writing are fundamental skills students need to be successful in college, making literacy development an issue of education equity. The literacy skills can be content-specific, indicating faculty members across disciplines need to support student development of appropriate literacy skills. The extent to which faculty members support student literacy development is likely associated with their literacy-focused education equity mindset. The goal of our research was to document the mindset of faculty members across multiple disciplines. We gathered a combination of (...) quantitative and qualitative data from 345 college faculty members using a survey. We found variations in the mindset strength between disciplines, by the number of students taught, gender, and age. Overall the faculty members held a moderate literacy-focused education equity mindset. The findings have implications for student inclusion, retention, and completion. (shrink)

The current study aimed to investigate the extent to which familial history of reading and math difficulties have an impact on children’s academic outcomes within a 3-year longitudinal study, which evaluated their core reading and math skills after first and second grades, as well as performance on complex academic tasks after second and third grades. At baseline, parents were asked to complete the Adult Reading History Questionnaire and its adaption, Adult Math History Questionnaire, to index familial history of reading and (...) math difficulties, respectively. Preliminary findings established the psychometric properties of the AMHQ, suggesting that it is a reliable and valid scale. Correlation analyses indicated that the ARHQ was negatively associated with children’s reading skills, whereas the AMHQ was negatively related to math outcomes. Path results revealed that the ARHQ predicted children’s performance on complex reading tasks indirectly via their core reading skills, and the AMHQ was linked to complex math outcomes indirectly via core math abilities. The ARHQ was also found to be negatively correlated with measures of children’s math performance, with path findings suggesting that these relations were indirectly explained by differences in their core reading skills. These results suggest that assessing familial risk for academic difficulties may be crucial to understanding comorbid etiological and developmental associations between reading and math differences. (shrink)

Young children typically demonstrate a transfer deficit, learning less from video than live presentations. Semantically meaningful context has been demonstrated to enhance learning in young children. We examined the effect of a semantically meaningful context on toddlers’ imitation performance. Two- and 2.5-year-olds participated in a puzzle imitation task to examine learning from either a live or televised model. The model demonstrated how to assemble a three-piece puzzle to make a fish or a boat, with the puzzle demonstration occurring against a (...) semantically meaningful background context (ocean) or a yellow background (no context). Participants in the video condition performed significantly worse than participants in the live condition, demonstrating the typical transfer deficit effect. While the context helped improve overall levels of imitation, especially for the boat puzzle, only individual differences in the ability to self-generate a stimulus label were associated with a reduction in the transfer deficit. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Objective: To identify perceived barriers to capacity building for local research ethics oversight in El Salvador, and to set an agenda for international collaborative capacity building. Methods: Focus groups were formed in El Salvador which included 17 local clinical investigators and members of newly formed research ethics committees. Information about the proposed research was presented to participants during an international bioethics colloquium sponsored and organized by the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in collaboration with the National Ethics Committee of (...) El Salvador and the University of El Salvador. Interviews with the focus group participants were qualitatively analyzed. Results: Participants expressed the need to tailor the informed consent process and documentation to the local culture; for example, allowing family members to participate in decision‐making, and employing shorter consent forms. Participants indicated that economic barriers often impede efforts in local capacity building. Participants valued international collaboration for mutual capacity building in research ethics oversight. Conclusions: Research ethics committees in El Salvador possess a basic knowledge of locally relevant ethical principles, though they need more training to optimize the application of bioethical principles and models to their particular contexts. Challenges increase the value of collaborative exchanges with ethics committee members in the United States. Further research on facilitating communication between host country and sponsor country ethics committees can maximize local research ethics expertise, and thus raise the standard of protecting human participants involved in international research. (shrink)

The growing proportion of elderly people in society, together with recent advances in robotics, makes the use of robots in elder care increasingly likely. We outline developments in the areas of robot applications for assisting the elderly and their carers, for monitoring their health and safety, and for providing them with companionship. Despite the possible benefits, we raise and discuss six main ethical concerns associated with: (1) the potential reduction in the amount of human contact; (2) an increase in the (...) feelings of objectification and loss of control; (3) a loss of privacy; (4) a loss of personal liberty; (5) deception and infantilisation; (6) the circumstances in which elderly people should be allowed to control robots. We conclude by balancing the care benefits against the ethical costs. If introduced with foresight and careful guidelines, robots and robotic technology could improve the lives of the elderly, reducing their dependence, and creating more opportunities for social interaction. (shrink)

Our aim in this paper is to take quite seriously Heinz Post’s claim that the non-individuality and the indiscernibility of quantum objects should be introduced right at the start, and not made a posteriori by introducing symmetry conditions. Using a different mathematical framework, namely, quasi-set theory, we avoid working within a label-tensor-product-vector-space-formalism, to use Redhead and Teller’s words, and get a more intuitive way of dealing with the formalism of quantum mechanics, although the underlying logic should be modified. We build (...) a vector space with inner product, the Q-space, using the non-classical part of quasi-set theory, to deal with indistinguishable elements. Vectors in Q-space refer only to occupation numbers and permutation operators act as the identity operator on them, reflecting in the formalism the fact of unobservability of permutations. Thus, this paper can be regarded as a tentative to follow and enlarge Heinsenberg’s suggestion that new phenomena require the formation of a new “closed” (that is, axiomatic) theory, coping also with the physical theory’s underlying logic and mathematics. (shrink)

In this paper we present the syntax and semantics of a temporal action language named Alan, which was designed to model interactive multimedia presentations where the Markov property does not always hold. In general, Alan allows the specification of systems where the future state of the world depends not only on the current state, but also on the past states of the world. To the best of our knowledge, Alan is the first action language which incorporates causality with temporal formulas. (...) In the process of defining the effect of actions we define the closure with respect to a path rather than to a state, and show that the non-Markovian model is an extension of the traditional Markovian model. Finally, we establish relationship between theories of Alan and logic programs. (shrink)

The concept of individuality in quantum mechanics shows radical differences from the concept of individuality in classical physics, as E. Schrödinger pointed out in the early steps of the theory. Regarding this fact, some authors suggested that quantum mechanics does not possess its own language, and therefore, quantum indistinguishability is not incorporated in the theory from the beginning. Nevertheless, it is possible to represent the idea of quantum indistinguishability with a first-order language using quasiset theory (Q). In this work, we (...) show that Q cannot capture one of the most important features of quantum non-individuality, which is the fact that there are quantum systems for which particle number is not well defined. An axiomatic variant of Q, in which quasicardinal is not a primitive concept (for a kind of quasisets called finite quasisets), is also given. This result encourages the searching of theories in which the quasicardinal, being a secondary concept, stands undefined for some quasisets, besides showing explicitly that in a set theory about collections of truly indistinguishable entities, the quasicardinal needs not necessarily be a primitive concept. (shrink)

El Psicoanálisis freudiano, ya se lo considere como un método para la investigación del inconsciente, una psicoterapia o una teoría psicológica, se sustenta en una concepción metafísica y antropológica. Dichos fundamentos filosóficos no fueron asumidos por S. Freud, lo cual no implica, sin embargo, que no estén en la base de esta cosmovisión que revolucionó la cultura del siglo XX. Se analizan sucesivamente: A. La relación personal de S. Freud con la filosofía. Asume un carácter paradójico y conflictivo, ya que (...) a veces ella aparece como su máxima aspiración y, en otras ocasiones, se considera a sí mismo constitucionalmente incapaz de comprenderla. B. Su actitud hacia los filósofos, francamente ambigua, en tanto entabla con ellos una polémica constante y, al mismo tiempo, admira la filosofía de Platón, Nietzsche y Schopenhauer, entre otros. C. La fundamentación psicoanalítica de la filosofía como institución cultural. Al igual que la religión, la moral y el derecho, es producto de la sublimación que sustituye el objeto y el fin del instinto, y logra su satisfacción en una función no sexual y más elevada desde el punto de vista social o ético. La metapsicología será el intento científico de reinterpretar la metafísica que es producto de las fuerzas inconscientes. D. Explicitación de algunas de las ideas filosóficas subyacentes en el Psicoanálisis, limitadas a sus conexiones con A. Schopenhauer. El Psicoanálisis se apoya en una concepción materialista y positivista de lo real y sostiene una antropología pandeterminista en la que afloran las ideas del filósofo de Danzig. A él debe la noción de represión, la valoración de los impulsos sexuales, la idea de inconsciente, el peso del instinto de muerte, el fatalismo y la convicción de que la esencia de las relaciones humanas es el conflicto. A pesar de su cosmovisión reduccionista, Freud sigue siendo cimiento y referencia obligada de todo planteo psicológico, psicopatológico o psicoterapéutico. (shrink)

One’s understanding of compassionate care and one’s response to suffering depend on one’s bioethical framework. This paper contrasts the principlist bioethical model with the personalist bioethical model. These emphasize different principles, definitions, and understandings of concepts such as autonomy, compassion, suffering, harm, and help. The principlist model regards euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide as acts of autonomy and compassion that eradicate suffering. This perspective fails to keep in mind that autonomous patients do not always act for their own good. Conversely, the (...) personalist perspective emphasizes the integral good of the person, not just his or her autonomous choice, which is important but not unlimited. Since support for euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide often is motivated by a fear of suffering, being a burden, or depending on others, addressing the underlying factors that drive people to contemplate a hastened death is a more genuinely compassionate response than merely respecting people’s autonomous choice for a hastened death. (shrink)

As the cognitive revolution was slow to come to the study of animal behavior, the vast majority of what we know about primate cognition has been discovered in the last 30 years. Building on the recognition that the physical and social worlds of humans and their living primate relatives pose many of the same evolutionary challenges, programs of research have established that the most basic cognitive skills and mental representations that humans use to navigate those worlds are already possessed by (...) other primates. There may be differences between humans and other primates, however, in more complex cognitive skills, such as reasoning about relations, causality, time, and other minds. Of special importance, the human primate seems to possess a species-unique set of adaptations for “cultural intelligence,” which are broad reaching in their effects on human cognition. (shrink)

In this paper, we aim to show that the framework of embedded, distributed, or extended cognition offers new perspectives on social cognition by applying it to one specific domain: the psychology of memory. In making our case, first we specify some key social dimensions of cognitive distribution and some basic distinctions between memory cases, and then describe stronger and weaker versions of distributed remembering in the general distributed cognition framework. Next, we examine studies of social influences on memory in cognitive (...) psychology, and identify the valuable concepts and methods to be extended and embedded in our framework; we focus in particular on three related paradigms: transactive memory, collaborative recall, and social contagion. Finally, we sketch our own early studies of individual and group memory developed within our framework of distributed cognition, on social contagion of autobiographical memories, collaborative flashbulb memories, and memories of high school at a high school reunion. We see two reciprocal benefits of this conceptual and empirical framework to social memory phenomena: that ideas about distributed cognition can be honed against and tested with the help of sophisticated methods in the social cognitive psychology of memory; and conversely, that a range of social memory phenomena that are as yet poorly understood can be approached afresh with theoretically motivated extensions of existing empirical paradigms. (shrink)

This paper addresses both ‘student engagement’ in contemporary universities, and student ‘disengagement’ – where the latter is often seen as a failure of performance, or absence of will. In a bold move, the paper asks whether students should be engaged in their university education, and whether there is value in forms of disengagement. It finds an original way in which student disengagement can be understood by drawing on the writings of Stanley Cavell – on the philosophical appeal to what we (...) say, our search for criteria, and on ideas of acknowledgement and avoidance in his work on Shakespearian tragedy. It shows what is at stake in our attunement with, and dissent from, criteria, and how such dissent can be educative. The paper considers the film ‘Stella Dallas’, in which Stella’s aversion to, her disengagement from, her culture’s criteria, is not a passive withdrawal, but rather the finding of voice, her education as a grownup. The paper concludes that disengagement, understood as aversion, dissent and refusal of voice, is not to be seen always as a lack of action or of care, but as the opposite: the active voicing of what we will, or will not, consent to in our education. (shrink)

In what way do the corporatist and authoritarian legacies that modelled some Latin American labor institutions influence the opportunities for and restrictions on organizing workers in a new context? To what extent did institutional designs, together with other economic and political factors, influence the characteristics that currently distinguish the union organizations in the countries of the region? Taking into consideration the existence of a broader debate about the consequences of globalization and political democratization for unions, the contribution of historical institutionalism (...) and previous research, in this Article I compare the institutional and organizational dynamics of unions in four countries with authoritarian legacies and corporatist traditions. The Article argues that in spite of these shared traditions, the differences in the institutional designs — which have scarcely been considered in the specialized literature — have historically imposed distinctive features on the associational power of workers and unions. These features not only persist to the present day, but also translate into dissimilar trajectories of the labor movement and opportunities for organizing workers in the last decade. (shrink)