Are intelligent machines really intelligent? Is the underlying philosoph- ical concept of intelligence satisfactory for describing how the present systems work? Is understanding a necessary and sufficient condition for intelligence? If a machine could understand, should we attribute subjectivity to it? This paper addresses the problem of deciding whether the so-called ”intelligent machines” are capable of understanding, instead of merely processing signs. It deals with the relationship between syntax and semantics. The main thesis concerns the inevitability of semantics for any (...) discussion about the possibility of building conscious machines, condensed into the following two tenets: ”If a machine is capable of understanding (in the strong sense), then it must be capable of combining rules and intuitions”; “If semantics cannot be reduced to syntax, then a machine cannot understand.” Our conclusion states that it is not necessary to attribute understanding to a machine in order to explain its exhibited “intelligent” behavior; a merely syntactic and mechanistic approach to intelligence as a task-solving tool suffices to justify the range of operations that it can display in the current state of technological development. (shrink)

Este trabajo constituye una primera aproximación a la teoría del origen en común tal como aparece en On the Origin of Species, de Charles Darwin. Luego de exponer las diferencias entre esta teoría y la teoría de la selección natural y la teoría de la evolución, se presentan algunos debates en torno a la determinación de homologías, el vocabulario de la teoría y su ley fundamental. Finalmente, se discute la TOC-teoricidad de los términos involucrados y los candidatos a especializaciones de (...) TOC. (shrink)

Kant justifica el postulado de la inmortalidad del alma en la Crítica de la razón práctica en tanto que muestra que sin la creencia en la inmortalidad del alma la ley moral perdería su validez. Puesto que si estamos determinados por la ley moral, tenemos la intención moral de promover el bien supremo, la creencia en la posibilidad del bien supremo es una implicación de esta intención, si no aceptamos la posibilidad de un progreso infinito no podemos aceptar la posibilidad (...) del bien supremo y la aceptación de un progreso infinito presupone la aceptación de la inmortalidad del alma. (shrink)

El jesuita morisco P. Ignacio de las Casas colaboró en la traducción de algunos de los libros plúmbeos encontrados en Granada a fines del siglo XVI. Inicialmente se manifestó partidario de su autenticidad, pero pronto se convenció de que eran una falsificación. Desarrolló entonces una activa lucha para conseguir que la Iglesia evitara su divulgación. En el artículo se pasa revista a su intervención como traductor y a los argumentos que utilizó para criticar la doctrina de los libros plúmbeos. El (...) P. Las Casas, además de señalar la presencia de elementos islámicos, ve en ellos claras muestras de antiguas herejías antitrinitarias. Aunque no los considera obra de moriscos, señala el atractivo que el mesianismo y milenarismo contenidos en la doctrina de los libros plúmbeos tenía para los moriscos. (shrink)

An introduction by Veronica Rodriques-Blanco to A Symposium on the Nature of Legal and Political Authority.

In this paper I propose to conceive of forgiveness as a process of eliminating punitive reactive attitudes, which makes up part of the offended person’s willingness to reestablish a certain type of reciprocal relationship with the offender. Distinguishing among types of reciprocity allows us to realize that forgiveness is a more varied phenomenon than is usually assumed in the philosophical literature, as well as to understand why the dispute concerning the gratuitousnessconditionality of forgiveness is meaningless.

Se examinan los supuestos del liberalismo económico (en sus versiones más puras y extremas), a través de los cuales este divinizó el mercado y lo convirtió en una instanciatotalizadora exenta de toda crítica. El neoliberalismo ha hecho del mercado un locus donde el ser y el deber ser se reconcilian en perfecta unidad. De esta manera, el mercado deviene en el único y verdadero sujeto del razonar: solo él piensa y todos sus movimientos son contenidos de lo racional. Al comparar (...) la obra de Friedrich von Hayek con la de Hegel y Leibniz, se ve que estos autores comparten una misma estructura de pensamiento que, en última instancia, nos remite al ámbito de la teodicea. (shrink)

The social and cultural changes of the last century have transformed death from an everyday fact to something hidden from view. Shifting between the practical and the theoretical, the professional and the intimate, the real and the fictitious, this collection of essays explores the continued power of death over our lives. It examines the idea and experience of death from an interdisciplinary perspective, including studies of changing burial customs throughout Europe; an account of a"dying party" in the Netherlands; examinations of (...) the fascination with violent death in crime fiction and the phenomenon of serial killer art; analyses of death and bereavement in poetry, fiction, and autobiography; and a look at audience reactions to depictions of death on screen. By studying and considering how death is thought about in the contemporary era, we might restore the natural place it has in our lives. (shrink)

RESUMENEn este artículo se ponen de manifiesto algunos aspectos de la ética pontiana. El núcleo gira en torno al sujeto como ente relacional. Este aparece inmerso en una praxis intersubjetiva que impregna el obrar humano en conexion incesante con el mundo, físico, cultural y socialPALABRAS CLAVEMERLEAU-PONTY-ETICA-FENOMENOLOGIAABSTRACTThe paper focuses on Merleau-Ponty's ethics. it deals with the subject as a relational being. According to Merleau Ponty, the subject appears immersed within the intersubjective praxis of human action in the world, physical, cultural and (...) socia.KEYWORDSMERLEAU-PONTY-ETHICS-PHENOMENOLOGY. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo esbozaremos una reflexión crítica en torno a una cuestión que fue determinante en el devenir trágico de Europa durante las primeras décadas del siglo xx. Nos referimos al nefasto papel que cumplieron determinadas filosofías, vitalistas y neorrománticas, en la gestación de los terribles acontecimientos históricos que todos conocemos. Analizaremos cómo se consolidó, en ciertos universos intelectuales, todo un conjunto de ideas que tenían que ver con la idealización de una vida peligrosa y combativa, con la mistificación (...) del guerrero, con la romantización de la violencia e incluso con la poetización de la guerra. (shrink)

El artículo presenta, reconstruye y contextualiza la discusión filosófica a la cual Michel Henry somete el planteamiento de Martin Heidegger acerca de la disposición afectiva (Befindlichkeit). Henry toma como hilo conductor el concepto de cooriginariedad (Gleichursprünglichkeit) entre las estructuras existenciales. Sostendremos que la lectura de Henry no solo afecta a una herramienta metodológica central de Ser y tiempo; también nos aproxima, con una economía filosófica nada desdeñable, al núcleo argumentativo de la obra principal de Heidegger, núcleo que se entreteje a (...) partir de las estrechas relaciones que guardan ontología, fenomenología y analítica existencial. Sin embargo, el planteamiento de Henry ha sido encasillado dentro del «giro teológico» de la fenomenología. Con lo cual será necesario mostrar que la crítica a Heidegger puede sostenerse con independencia de la deriva teológica de la filosofía henriniana. (shrink)

Con la publicación de Principios de Geología, Lyell se propuso mejorar la reputación de la Geología mediante una tregua con la religión y mediante la presentación del uniformitarianismo (término acuñado por Whewell, uno de sus críticos más respetados) como estrategia heurística. Luego de una breve e..

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hispanic Utopian Studies and Activism as a PromptJulia Ramírez-Blanco (bio)In the last few years I have come to the Utopian Studies Societýs yearly conference as part of a smaller group, one that has its own parallel history in the left corner of the South of Europe and is networked mostly with Latin America. I am referring to the interdisciplinary research group Histopia, which has its base in Madrid́s (...) Autónoma University, is comprised of twenty-seven researchers from different institutions, and is coordinated by historian Juan Pro. As the name Histopia suggests, it was founded by historians. From the beginning there have been people from other fields, such as political science, architecture, cultural studies, and art history. The aim was always understanding utopianism beyond the study of texts, and centering research in everything that utopianism produces, such as social movements, political programs, and urban programs. In this sense, a premise was to understand utopias not as a footnote in history or a series of eccentric events, but as a guiding force that drives a [End Page 510] history. This placing of utopianism in history was clearly announced in the grouṕs website:Histopia seeks to go beyond the philological approach that predominates in Utopian Studies and to historicize the study of contemporary utopias and dystopias, showing how they respond to the contexts in which they arise, since they reflect the problems and frustrations of a society as well as the aspirations for change it contains, and the conditions of possibility that a particular cultural and emotional framework offers for developing them.1Together with this focus on history, which departs from the more text-centered traditions of an important part of utopian studies, the other main particularity of Histopia is its decentralizing of utopian studies towards the Spanish-speaking world. And to this end, the group also founded the Transatlantic Network for the Study of Utopias, which was created in 2015 to put in communication over 250 researchers, most of them from Latin America, but also from other places such as Australia or Japan.2The Spanish statés research funding programs have provided the bureaucratic framework and the material resources for the research group since 2015. Together with seminars, conferences, or workshops, the resulting publications have been linked with utopian literature, with dystopia, and with a focus on viewing history through the lens of utopia. One of the most recent endeavors has been a radically collective one, articulating a Dictionary of Utopian Places written by a multitude of authors.3 Histopia has also initiated several projects with schools, for the most part ongoing, and there have been many attempts to disseminate its work through radio and video projects. And since its founding, Histopia has tried reaching out beyond the Academy—an effort that is finally gaining success. In 2021 the international conference Intentional Communities: Concrete Utopias in History was extremely fruitful: we saw involved participation both in various interventions, and through activities such as streaming. Participants included people and organizations from social movements and from intentional communities.I want to argue here that the very formation of Histopia was a logical development from certain political triggers—and in particular, the so-called 15M Movement, a series of anti-austerity protests and direct-democracy initiatives that ignited antigovernment activism throughout Spain from 2011 on, culminating in the occupation of urban spaces (“encampments”) and in very large political assemblies. It is not just that the forces of activism were [End Page 511] reignited after 2011, and that its inheritors came together with the Histopia research group; the very existence of Histopia, I am arguing, can be read as a consequence of the 15M encampment and its aftermath.Prefigurative PracticesIn May 2011, following the example of the Arab world, Madrid’s Puerta del Sol was populated by a crowd armed with posters, slogans, and self-made banners. On the inhospitable ground of the square, anonymous persons erected an encampment so complex that it functioned as a miniature city, with spaces for preparing food, for nursery care, for rest, for legal consultation, for anti-racist and/or feminist activity. All work was voluntary, and materials were... (shrink)

This essay reviews the documents of the pontifical magisterium of the Church from the encyclical Mater et magistra (1961) to the exhortation Evangelii gaudium (2013), in order to show the Church’s historical commitment to the defense of the environment. It then argues that Laudato si’ elevates the theological status of the environmental crisis to that of a new social issue, much as Leo XIII did for the industrial crisis with his encyclical letter Rerum novarum (1891).

Judges and lawyers believe that international law, customary law, and legal systems such as the Third Reich or apartheid law in South Africa are law. But how do we explain the fact that there is one concept of law when there are different conceptions of law with a variety of different features? Finnis, inspired by the Aristotelian notion of central case, adumbrates the idea that the concept of law might be unified by a primary concept which is the concept of (...) “law as practical reason”; that is, law conceived from an ethical perspective. He advances two arguments to defend his methodology: the conceptual and the functional. Contra Finnis, the paper shows that neither the conceptual nor the functional argument can successfully support the view that “law as practical reason” is the central case of the concept of law. The study clarifies the Aristotelian notion of central case and illustrates the mistaken application of this notion to the concept of law. However, we also argue that Finnis's insight–the idea that all the different conceptions of law might be unified for the purposes of theoretical research–is fundamental and appealing. This paper aims to reconstruct Finnis's insight through the model of core resemblance. The result is that the different conceptions of law can be unified by resemblance to the concept of “law as practical reason,” though there is no identity among the different conceptions of law. (shrink)

Finnegans Wake es la última obra escrita por el escritor irlandés James Joyce. En ella, la creciente complejidad narrativa que lo caracterizó alcanza niveles extremos, rozando lo ininteligible. El autor no sólo mezcla diferentes idiomas, también inventa nuevos términos que germinan y se significan, en gran medida, desde su dimensión sonora. Personajes, y acontecimientos reales y ficticios se mezclan, formando una amalgama donde variantes de arquetipos mitológicos transcurren una glocalidad cíclica perpetua. La protagonista femenina, Anna Livia Plurabelle (ALP), es un (...) personaje mutante que deviene diferentes elementos naturales a lo largo del texto. El murmullo del río se confunde con el suyo propio, en un pulso narrativo que sobrescribe la orilla en la historia. De fondo siempre se oyen voces y, aunque no son claras, sugieren. Esta obra literaria no se lee, se escucha; no se entiende, se deduce. La presente investigación se sitúa en el contexto actual de auge en la aplicación de la Inteligencia Artificial (IA) al procesado de textos. Somete a prueba la transcripción realizada a partir de la locución de algunos pasajes de Finnegans Wake, evaluando el grado de acierto y los posibles sesgos o desviaciones de los resultados. (shrink)

The paper addresses the conceptual parallelism between the Egyptian idea of Maat and the Greek notion of kósmos, as present in the works of two egregious presocratic authors: Heraclitus and Empedocles. It does so within a historiographical framework that does not limit the development of philosophical thought to Greece, but rather recognizes fundamental elements of abstract and systematic reflection in olderscultures. Although in the ancient Egyptian mind Maat is filled with profound religious connotations, this work underlines its importance as manifestation (...) of a deeper philosophical structure, defined by the representation of the world as an ordered and harmonious ensemble, immersed in a constant struggle against chaos and negativity. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo queremos mostrar que la crítica de Marx al modo de producción capitalista no sucumbió al economicismo, puesto que no solo denunció la explotación económica, explicando los aspectos puramente cuantitativos de la extracción de plusvalía. No fue la suya una crítica meramente econométrica. Marx y Engels, al igual que otros teóricos socialistas y no socialistas, comprendieron y denunciaron la degradación espiritual e incluso la desintegración antropológica padecida por millones de seres humanos, en una sociedad sometida al capital. (...) Marx llegó a considerar que el capitalismo también era responsable del ocaso de las artes. (shrink)

Típicamente, frente a la pregunta “¿para qué la filosofía de la ciencia?”, los filósofos de la ciencia responden objetando la legitimidad de la inquietud. Aunque no estoy particularmente en contra de esa estrategia, ofrezco aquí una alternativa: aceptar la pregunta y responderla de un modo directo. Para ello, abundaré sobre el protagonismo que tuvo la filosofía de la ciencia para enfrentar uno de los avances del creacionismo en las escuelas públicas en Estados Unidos durante la década de 1980. La mera (...) existencia de esta discusión, con este tinte, en dicho contexto político-institucional, basta para contestar con claridad las preguntas aludidas. (shrink)

Madness, Language, Literature (2019) brings together a series of unpublished works on literature that belong to Michel Foucault’s first stage of production. This article focuses on those works that express a concept of madness as social partition or outside, and also on those that elucidate the concept of the ‘extralinguistic’ of literature. The combined reading of these texts sheds light on a concept of the extralinguistic outside of literature that enables Foucault to overcome a concept of ontological outside and, therefore, (...) using literature, think on this discourse’s historical possibilities of resistance. As a result of this new reading, I analyse some fundamental aspects of this early Foucault. First, his development of a politics of literary form in the 1960s. Second, I propose that Foucault’s studies on literature in the 1960s were a kind of laboratory in which he was already raising some questions concerning his political history of truth. And, lastly, I examine the capacity of literature to make visible a part of reality that remains hidden (the excluded), the processes by which literature creates (language’s mechanism of self-representation), the possible forms of subjectivation that the fiction of every episteme allows (what Foucault calls verisimilitude), and the formulation of novel forms of being (that he later developed as aesthetics of existence). (shrink)

The presence of patients’ families during cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a controversial topic, due to its repercussions for clinical practice. While family members’ presence may help them to overcome their grief, it could be detrimental, as it may case posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and there is the possibility that family members may interfere with the procedure. For these reasons, families’ presence during CPR has rejected by some healthcare providers.To research concerns about families’ presence among providers dealing with CPR in the (...) Fundación Hospital Alcorcón (Madrid), I performed this study. Of the 190 providers surveyed, 115 submitted a complete questionnaire. The most frequently reported concerns were interference (78.3 percent of respondents), and PTSD (69.6 percent of respondents). Fewer pediatric providers were concerned about PTSD than other providers (41.2% percent versus 74.5 percent, p = 0.01). Providers were reluctant to offer families the option of being present unless they had requested it, and would only permit it under certain conditions. Having a staff member to support the family was of great value to most respondents. The author believes families have a negative right to be present during CPR and so should be invited to stay. (shrink)

Luigi Pareyson is an italian existencialist philosopher, the unknown master of Umberto Eco and Gianni Vattimo. This not very well known philosopher has a consistent anthropology, which carries out its consecuences in his aesthetics and hermeneutics. Consecuently, he also considers philosophy as a permanent dialogue between each person with truth and other persons. This is the future of philosophy, he says.