This article is the first one to offer an investigation, from a biological perspective, of “natural philia” or “kin-based” philia in Aristotle’s practical philosophy. After some preliminary considerations about its place in Aristotle’s ethical treatises, the discussion focuses on Aristotle’s biology. Here we learn that natural philia, couched in terms of a biological praxis rather than a trait of character, is widespread in the animal kingdom, although in different ways and to varying degrees. To account for such differences, Aristotle establishes (...) a Scala Philiae in two different biological texts—Historia Animalium and Generation of Animals—where natural bonds in animals are classified in view of their strength and duration. Each level of Aristotle’s Scala is examined. Finally, the argument returns to Aristotle’s ethical and political texts, drawing greater attention to the biological mechanisms that underlie natural philia in human beings. I conclude that natural philia provides one fundamental biological building-block of Aristotle’s ethics and politics. (shrink)

The idea that natural selection acts on many levels—and not only at the level of organisms or individual genes—is increasingly accepted among biologists. However, it is not easy to reconcile this idea with the strictly “individualistic” conception of the evolutionary process that has always characterized Darwinian thought. Moreover, the individuality of some forms of life is a vague concept and therefore controversial. This is the case of Candidatus Magnetoglobus multicellularis, whose discovery immediately inspired the following question: Does the concept of (...) individuality have degrees? Alternatively, how far is this structure of prokaryotic cells from deserving to be called an organism? In this article, we propose a new conceptual scheme based on an idea of individuality that is not limited to organisms and that makes sense in terms of Darwinian evolution. In this conceptual scheme, selection at levels above that of the individual organism is interpreted as the evolutionary emergence of higher-level individuality. This proposal may serve as a basis on which to construct a promising hierarchical evolutionary theory. (shrink)

One of the most significant natural phenomena in the evolution of living beings occurs when a certain number of like individuals construct a new collective individuality. The ideal conditions for this arise when the probability of collective survival is greater than that of individual survival in interaction with environmental uncertainty. In this article, we propose a mechanism whereby a local fluctuation between individuals may have a global impact in creating an innovation that can prove favorable or detrimental to collective survival. (...) This latter case is a situation in which the likelihood of a critical number of influential individuals of a coincident truth falls much more rapidly than a coincident untruth as the number of individual adherents to such unanimities rises. We term this phenomenon the collective misunderstanding syndrome, and it may explain rare collective behaviors such as the so-called ant mills. (shrink)

This article provides a comprehensive review of the rather intricate relationship between contemporary environmental ethics, understood as a philosophical branch, and ancient philosophy. While its primary focus is on Western philosophy, it also includes some brief yet crucial considerations about the influence of Eastern traditions of thought on environmental ethics. Aside from the introduction in the first section, the discussion is organised into three main sections. In the Reception: Ancient philosophy in environmental ethics section, I review the initial reception of (...) ancient philosophy in contemporary environmental ethics. Next, in the Reaction: Environmental ethics in ancient philosophy scholarship section, I examine how the scholarship in AP responded to this early reception. I conclude, in the final section, with some constructive suggestions for future research. (shrink)

La fenomenología marioniana ha recibido diversas críticas respecto de su lectura de la _Gegebenheit_ husserliana y heideggeriana. Este artículo se propone dar cuenta de la importancia fenomenológica de la concepción marioniana de la donación.

In the 10 years after the launch of the United Nations Global Compact (GC), there have been very few empirical assessments of the initiative in the academic literature. In this study, drawing from institutional theory and the resource-based view of the firm, we examine motivations of business participants to adopt the GC principles in the Spanish context. Using survey data from Spain – the country reporting the highest volume of business participants in the GC – we find that external institutional (...) forces as well as internal organisational resources shape motivations for adopting GC principles. In particular, we find that early and late adopters are motivated similarly by the perceived opportunity of achieving image gains, while late adopters are motivated more by economic gains than early adopters. We further find that regardless of the extent of internal intangible resources possessed, firms are similarly motivated by economic gains. The results also show that companies with more intangible resources are motivated more by image gains than those with fewer resources. Our findings indicate that contrary to its earlier days, economic gains have emerged as an important motivator for the adopters of the GC principles with image gains still being an important motivator. (shrink)

This article examines Aristotle's views concerning the possibility of friendship between human beings and nonhuman animals. The suggestion that he denies this possibility is rejected. I reassess the textual evidence adduced by scholars in support of this reading, while adding new material for discussion. Central to the traditional reading is the assumption that animals, in Aristotle's view, cannot be friends in virtue of their cognitive limitations. I argue that Aristotle's account of animal cognition is perfectly consistent with the possibility of (...) friendship between human beings and nonhuman animals. (shrink)

To find the neural substrates of consciousness, researchers compare subjects’ neural activity when they are aware of stimuli against neural activity when they are not aware. Ideally, to guarantee that the neural substrates of consciousness—and nothing but the neural substrates of consciousness—are isolated, the only difference between these two contrast conditions should be conscious awareness. Nevertheless, in practice, it is quite challenging to eliminate confounds and irrelevant differences between conscious and unconscious conditions. In particular, there is an often-neglected confound that (...) is crucial to eliminate from neuroimaging studies: task performance. Unless subjects’ task performance is matched (and hence perceptual signal processing is matched), researchers risk finding the neural correlates of perception, rather than conscious perception. Here, we discuss the theoretical motivations for the performance matching framework and review empirical demonstrations of, and theoretical inferences derived from, obtaining differences in consciousness while controlling for task performance. We summarize signal detection theoretic modeling frameworks that explain how it is that we can derive performance-matched differences in consciousness without the effect being trivially driven by differences in criterion setting, and also provide principles for designing experimental paradigms that yield performance-matched differences in awareness. Finally, we address potential technical and theoretical issues that stem from matching performance across conditions of awareness, and we introduce the notion of “triangulation” for designing comprehensive experimental sets that can better reveal the neural substrates of consciousness. (shrink)

De uma revista científica espera-se que cumpra a função de divulgar resultados de pesquisas, difundir trabalhos e novas ideias e, agora mais do que antes, franquear espaço para o frutífero intercâmbio entre instituições, sob o lema da internacionalização dos saberes. Honrando seu compromisso de periódico acadêmico de filosofia, o presente número de Aoristo - International Journal of Phenomenology, Hermeneutics and Metaphysics, atende às três mencionadas missões, fazendo ênfase na última.

A systematic and comprehensive treatment of pertinent issues, the book defends two main theses.

El presente artículo pretende dar cuenta del análisis crítico que desarrolla Luce Irigaray de las teorías freudianas acerca de la diferencia sexual, mostrando que la representación del concepto de feminidad que construye Freud no es más que la imagen invertida de la, también creada, identidad masculina. Durante esta labor deconstructiva, observamos cómo Irigaray otorga a la mujer la prerrogativa histórica de ser la que logre el pensamiento de la diferencia sexual, y así, la liberación de la humanidad de la lógica (...) excluyente de lo mismo. (shrink)

Crítica de la pasión pura fue escrito en su gran mayoría en Mozambique en 1997 y publicado por primera vez al año siguiente, en Uruguay. Está compuesto de 358 “compactos”, cada uno de los cuales pretende ser una unidad en sí misma. No obstante, este conjunto de ensayos gira entorno a pocos temas básicos: la formación de la ética y la moral a partir de los miedos y las angustias persistentes en la historia —la renuncia—; las formas de comprender y (...) representar el mundo, la vida y la muerte, la historia y el presente, la evolución humanística y las reacciones autistas de los poderes tradicionales. Según el diario La República de Montevideo, “en esta nueva entrega Majfud confirma su indudable vocación por filosofar en tiempos de indiferencias y vacuidad, desafiando al lector a meditar en torno a su destino y sus seguramente más estre-mecedoras incertidumbres”. (shrink)

Se intenta en este trabajo identificar y describir de algún modo, en caso de que exista, la contracultura digital de nuestro tiempo. Con tal propósito en mente, en primer lugar, el autor esboza sus presuposiciones con respecto la cultura, la tecnología digital, la cultura digital y la contracultura, bajo las ópticas que imponen la naturaleza de este artículo.

Es una tesis admitida y común la que sostiene que Descartes introdujo la forma moderna del método y del quehacer filosófico, caracterizados ambos por su desconexión del terreno de la espiritualidad, del cuidado de sí, de la ascesis y de toda una forma de vida. Se considera que Foucault compartía esa tesis, lo que en su momento criticaría Pierre Hadot. En el presente trabajo tratamos de mostrar que la forma en que Descartes elaboró su método y su propuesta no se (...) ajusta a aquella tesis recibida. En él se mantiene la relación antigua entre filosofía y espiritualidad, método y paideía. Una vez mostrado esto, apuntamos finalmente cómo en él, sin embargo, se abrió la vía para que se diera la ruptura que él no practicó. (shrink)

Este artículo cuestiona filosóficamente, a partir de las tesis de Günther Anders, el uso masivo de las redes sociales y la forma en que configuran la subjetividad y la intersubjetividad, particularmente en cuanto a los efectos cognitivos sobre la verdad, las creencias y la objetividad. El uso intensivo y compulsivo de las redes sociales ha permitido una comunicación casi instantánea y una sociedad presta a la observación y vigilancia de todos los aspectos de la vida cotidiana y de la política; (...) pero, al mismo tiempo, ha impulsado una sociedad de la intrusión, el voyerismo, el juicio moral lapidario y el linchamiento público de personajes famosos o de cualquier persona acosada por sus conductas, aunque estas pudieran no ser verdaderas. Manuel Castells observaba en La era de la información (2000), que en nuestra época se ha trastocado el tiempo, se han fundido y confundido lo real y lo virtual, lo público y lo privado, generando nuevos problemas éticos, jurídicos y políticos. Tenemos ahora una subjetividad hipersensibilizada, saturada de información, de verdades y falsedades indistinguibles que complican la comunicación y el sentido compartido de la realidad, así como las responsabilidades y las acciones sociales efectivas para contribuir al bien público. (shrink)

Latin America - its people, its politics, its economy - has burst upon the world scene with powerful images that have captured the curiosity of many English-speaking North Americans. The strategic importance of this vast region to the stability of the Wes.

El intento marcusiano de llevar a cabo una síntesis entre fenomenología y materialismo histórico tendría como hilo conductor la noción de historicidad.. Desde la construcción heideggeriana de la misma, Marcuse pretende conciliar la fenomenología y el materialismo histórico en una filosofía "concreta" fundada en la historicidad radical de la existencia. En ese proceso Marcuse interpretará la filosofía de la vida de Dilthey como complementación del planteamiento ontológico heideggeriano, en la dirección de una concepción material y concreta de la historicidad.

Digital technologies raised the expectation of improving democracy by generating spaces and instruments to increase citizen participation. However, some of its uses have led to denigrate democratic deliberation. With an analytical method on theoretical references and the results of empirical research, the democratic challenges of digital technologies are reviewed to show their political and ethical nature. The results show reasons to abandon optimistic techno-determinism. The findings suggest, on the one hand, that digital technology can solve the obstacles of sophisticated public (...) policy information and the complexity of the huge number of participants. But, on the other hand, digital processes should not be homogenized, nor pigeonholed into models of electronic democracy; endogenous defects should be inhibited with self-correcting designs. The task of digital technologies in the future is to develop artificial intelligence to implement the largest possible number of citizen participation mechanisms, expand their demographic reach to close gaps, complement mediation procedures and promote inclusive deliberation. The corollary shows that the future of electronic democracy lies in techno-political pedagogy. (shrink)

The present work aims to develop, very briefly, some reflections on eugenics, as a method of social selectivity, and its relationship with liberalism in current societies. To this end, at first I presented the presence of eugenics sinc Antiquity, its intimate relationship with genetics, as well as the process of instrumentalization of science, externalized in the criticism of some epistemologists. In the second moment we seek to present the investigation regarding the ethical problems arising from research directed to biogenetics from (...) the perspective of the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, for whom such research may, in the very near future, begin to be regulated by a market logic, bringing with it This has profound consequences for the normative self-undestanding of the individual, whose life project becomes guided by the subjective preferences of third parties. (shrink)

Con ocasión de la publicación de la exhortación Evangelii Gaudium, y a los 50 años de la promulgación del decreto Unitatis redintegratio, textos ambos que proponen el principio de “jerarquía de verdades”, el autor analiza la historia de este principio y la intención de los padres conciliares al incorporarlo al decreto conciliar sobre el ecumenismo. En un segundo momento, ofrece elementos relativos a la interpretación teológica y magisterial de la “jerarquía de verdades” en el ámbito de la Iglesia católica. Luego, (...) teniendo en cuenta que el principio se indicaba para los diálogos teológicos interconfesionales, el autor presenta algunos datos relativos a su acogida por parte de teólogos protestantes, el recurso al mismo en los diálogos teológicos oficiales, y la única explicación ecuménica presente en el documento de estudio publicado por el Grupo Mixto de Trabajo entre el Consejo Mundial de Iglesias y la Iglesia católica. Como modo de verificación de la aplicabilidad de la “jerarquía de verdades”, se recogen algunos elementos relativos a la puesta en práctica del mismo por el Groupe des Dombes en su documento sobre la teología mariana. Finalmente, y a modo de conclusión, regresando a la propuesta de Evangelii Gaudium, el autor avanza algunas reflexiones ante la posible aplicación de la “jerarquía de verdades” en el ámbito de la enseñanza moral de la Iglesia. (shrink)