¿Cómo se rinde homenaje a un filósofo que a lo largo de su vida conjugó la academia y la filosofía con el rol de intelectual público? En el caso de Giannini, la respuesta es clara: estimulando la circulación de sus ideas, que junto a su vasta obra filosófica lograron configurar un discurso complejo y agudo acerca del Chile del último siglo. Y es precisamente parte de esa riqueza la que intentamos capturar en este libro que inaugura la colección Maestros (...) y maestras de la Chile, destinada a difundir el legado intelectual de quienes, como Humberto Giannini, no solo formaron a generaciones de jóvenes sino que a la vez aportaron a su disciplina y a la densificación de los discursos, asumiendo con propiedad que ‘lo público’ es inherente al quehacer de la Universidad de Chile. (shrink)

Existe una opinión, que ha pasado a ser un lugar común. Y fue Platón el que la echó a rodar, irónicamente, primero a raíz de un percance que le ocurriera a Tales de Mileto; luego, con más reverencia, a raíz de los hábitos de su maestro Sócrates. Lo que Platón narra de Tales es que por estar contemplando el firmamento no vio lo que estaba delante de su nariz, y cayó en un pozo, con gran hilaridad de la servidumbre que (...) lo miraba. Y quién no recuerda al Sócrates que nos describe Platón: bajo la lluvia o la nieve, sin percatarse de ellas, sumido por largas horas en sus pensamientos, aparte, como tomando distancia para reencontrarse de un modo más productivo con los otros. (shrink)

La comunicación está referida a la categoría de la acción, pero no dirigida inmediatamente al mundo, sino a promover algún tipo de respuesta en otro sujeto. Y es este campo limitado -dominio de la interacción humana- el objeto propio de la ética. Communication refers to the category of action, but it is not directed to the world immediately. Instead, it is oriented to elicit a certain type of answer from somebody else. This constrained field -domain of the human interaction- is (...) the particular subject of Ethics. (shrink)

Nuestro texto no trata el tema lógico-lingüístico de las proposiciones, sino el tema ético de la comunicación humana. Comunicar es vincularse a otro ser humano mediante alguna referencia al mundo. A la ética importa describir y clasificar las diversas especies que se crean a través de la acción comunicativa y sus posibles transgresiones. Tema importante para comprender por qué toda acción humana -pero, en especial, la acción comunicativa-es éticamente evaluable, es el estudio que aquí se hace del concepto aristotélico-tomista de (...) ‘circunstancia'. Our text is not about the logical-linguistic issue proposais, but rather about the ethical issue of human communication. To communicative is to link to another human being using some reference to the world. Ethics is concerned with describing and classifying every single kind of links that are created by communicative action and its possible transgressions. An important issue to understand why every single human action -but specially, communicative action- is subject of ethical evaluation, is the study we do here about the Thomist-Aristothelic concept for ‘circumstance'. (shrink)

Can rational communication proceed when interlocutors are uncertain which contents utterances contribute to discourse? An influential negative answer to this question is embodied in the Stalnakerian principle of uniformity, which requires speakers to produce only utterances that express the same content in every possibility treated as live for the purposes of the conversation. The principle of uniformity enjoys considerable intuitive plausibility and, moreover, seems to follow from platitudes about assertion; nevertheless, it has recently proven controversial. In what follows, I defend (...) the principle by developing two arguments for it based on premises reflecting the central aims and assumptions of possibility-carving frameworks for modeling inquiry—that is, frameworks which describe the evolution of individuals’ attitudinal states in terms of set-theoretic operations defined over a domain of objects representing possibilities. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that even the most radical metaphysics of powers (such as that adopted by Mumford & Anjum, Cartwright, or Groff) are compatible with eternalism. I first offer a taxonomy of powers ontologies, and attempt to characterise the difference between moderate and radical powers ontologies – the latter are characterised by an emphasis on production and dynamicity. I consider an argument by C. Friebe to the effect that the productive character of powers is inconsistent with Eternalism and (...) find it wanting. I then elucidate the notion of dynamicity that radical powers theorists employ by making apparent their link with an ontology of irreducible processes. Finally, I respond to an argument by Donatella Donati to the effect that eternalism entails a reductive account of change which is inconsistent with process ontologies, and show that the the two are compatible. I conclude that we have no reason to think that radical powers metaphysics (and, a fortiori, every powers ontology) are not compatible with eternalism. (shrink)

Establishing Dispositionalism as a viable theory of modality requires the successful fulfilment of two tasks: (i) showing that all modal truths can be derived from truths about actual powers, and (ii) offering a suitable metaphysics of powers. These two tasks are intertwined: difficulties in one can affect the chances of success in the other. In this paper, I generalise an objection to Dispositionalism by Jessica Leech and argue that the theory in its present form is ill-suited to account for de (...) re truths about merely possible entities. I argue that such difficulty is rooted in a problem in the metaphysics of powers. In particular, I contend that the well-known tension between two key principle of powers ontology, namely Directedness (all powers are “for” their manifestation) and Independence (some powers might fail to bring about their manifestation) has received an unsatisfactory solution so far, and that it is this unsatisfactory solution concerning the status of “unmanifested manifestations” that makes it hard for Dispositionalism to account for mere possibilia. I develop a novel account of the status of unmanifested manifestations and an overall metaphysics of powers which allows to better respond to Leech's objection and handle mere possibilia. The central idea of the proposal is that unmanifested manifestations are akin to mere logical existents, and are best characterised as non-essentially non-located entities. (shrink)

Recent work on the semantics and pragmatics of slurs has explored a variety of ways of explaining their potential to derogate, with the most popular family of approaches appealing to either: (i), the doxastic or evaluative attitudes or commitments expressed by — or (ii), the propositions concerning such attitudes or commitments semantically or pragmatically communicated by — the speakers who use them. I begin by arguing that no such speaker-oriented approach can be correct. I then propose an alternative treatment of (...) slurs, according to which they are semantically associated with both descriptive and directive content. On the view I defend, when speakers use slurs, they simultaneously propose to add an at-issue proposition to the conversational common ground and issue a not-at-issue directive to their interlocutors to adopt a derogatory perspective toward members of the targeted group. This proposal both avoids the problems faced by other accounts and opens up a novel way of thinking about the phenomenon of appropriation. (shrink)

Existing work on gaslighting ties it constitutively to facts about the intentions or prejudices of the gaslighter and/or his victim’s prior experience of epistemic injustice. I argue that the concept of gaslighting is more broadly applicable than has been appreciated: what is distinctive about gaslighting, on my account, is simply that a gaslighter confronts his victim with a certain kind of choice between rejecting his testimony and doubting her own basic epistemic competence in some domain. I thus hold that gaslighting (...) is a purely epistemic phenomenon—not requiring any particular set of intentions or prejudices on the part of the gaslighter—and also that it can occur even in the absence of any prior experience of epistemic injustice. Appreciating the dilemmatic character of gaslighting allows us to understand its connection with a characteristic sort of epistemic harm, makes it easier to apply the concept of gaslighting in practice, and raises the possibility that we might discover its structure and the associated harm in surprising places. (shrink)