On knowledge and practices: a manifesto -- The web of practices -- Agents and frameworks -- Complementarity in mathematics -- Ancient Greek mathematics: a role for diagrams -- Advanced math: the hypothetical conception -- Arithmetic certainty -- Mathematics developed: the case of the reals -- Objectivity in mathematical knowledge -- The problem of conceptual understanding.

Part II: Suppes and the mature theory. Representation and uniqueness.

This paper analyzes the innovative way of doing critical philosophy that María del Rosario Acosta López proposes in her aesthetics of resistance and grammars of the unheard. The paper examines the contributions of two sets of conversations with Acosta López’s critical philosophy. In the first place, staging a dialogue between Acosta López and Black feminist philosophy, the article offers a defence of reconceptualizing philosophy in the 21st Century through a dialogue with the voices and perspectives of the excluded and silenced—a (...) reconceptualization that reimagines the critical role of philosophy. In the second place, the paper calls attention to the crucial significance of Acosta López’s aesthetics of resistance for contemporary debates in contemporary political epistemology, putting in conversation her grammars of the unheard with my epistemology of resist- ance and María Lugones’s concept of complex communication. This second conversation also underscores a new way of understanding the critical and transformative function of philosophy by centering the voices and perspectives of the excluded and silenced. (shrink)

In this paper we expand previous results obtained in [2] about the study of categorical equivalence between the category IRL 0 of integral residuated lattices with bottom, which generalize MV-algebras and a category whose objects are called c-differential residuated lattices. The equivalence is given by a functor ${{\mathsf{K}^\bullet}}$ , motivated by an old construction due to J. Kalman, which was studied by Cignoli in [3] in the context of Heyting and Nelson algebras. These results are then specialized to the case (...) of MV-algebras and the corresponding category ${MV^{\bullet}}$ of monadic MV-algebras induced by “Kalman’s functor” ${\mathsf{K}^\bullet}$ . Moreover, we extend the construction to ℓ-groups introducing the new category of monadic ℓ-groups together with a functor ${\Gamma ^\sharp}$ , that is “parallel” to the well known functor ${\Gamma}$ between ℓ and MV-algebras. (shrink)

The author challenges the view that birth cannot be a morally relevant fact in the process of development from zygote to child. He reviews specific arguments against giving any moral significance to the fact of birth. Drawing on recent work in developmental psychology, he contends that the lives of neonates can have a level of self-consciousness that confers moral significance but can only be possessed after birth. He shows that the position he has argued for provides a framework within which (...) the move from the moral validity of aborting sentient fetuses to the moral validity of infanticide might be resisted. He concludes that arguments suggesting that birth can be morally significant support the view that the acquisition of moral significance is a gradual and multilayered phenomenon. (shrink)

This paper argues that narrative elements from the science fiction (SF) literary genre are used in the discourse of Nanoscience and Technology (NST) to bridge the gap between what is technically possible today and its inflated promises for the future. The argument is illustrated through a detailed discussion of two NST texts. The paper concludes by arguing that the use of SF narrative techniques poses serious problems to the development of a critical analysis of the ethical and social implications of (...) NST. (shrink)

This paper considers how best an eliminativist might argue for the radical falsity of commonsense psychology. I will be arguing that Paul Churchland’s “official” arguments for eliminative materialism (in, e.g., Churchland 1981) are unsatisfactory, although much of the paper will be developing themes that are clearly present in Churchland’s writings. The eliminativist needs to argue that the representations that feed into action are fundamentally different from those invoked by propositional attitude psychology. The “springs of action” are representations of features that (...) are much more finely grained than those encoded within the vocabulary that we employ to specify the content of propositional attitudes. The eliminativist’s most promising strategy is to argue that, whatever we might think about why we behave the way we do, careful experimental work will show that we are in fact acting in virtue of representations of properties and microfeatures that fall completely outside the ambit of propositional attitude psychology. The paper considers a number of examples of how this eliminativist strategy might be developed, ranging from the implications of the two visual systems hypothesis to research in social psychology into the role that situational factors play in controlling action. (shrink)

In this work three recent proposal of analysis of the concept of ‘religion’ are discussed. There is a strong convergence between these three proposals in several points: all of them maintain that a religion should be the belief of something –a set of propositions, the object of a propositional attitude like a belief–, all of them maintain that the object of the belief should be a theory about the good, and all of them maintain that a religion should have important (...) normative and practical consequences. It is argued here that there are at least two problems with the general conception that results from these analyses. In the first place, attributing to a religion the conditions of identity of an act of belief leads to absurd consequences. In the second place, it seems much better to analyze a religion as a theory about God or some gods. (shrink)

Essays on Spanish-American philosophy, particularly Mexican. Part 2 includes selections from the works of José Vasconcelos, Antonio Caso, Samuel Ramos, Adolfo Menéndez Samara, Oswaldo Robes, Alfonso Reyes, Justino Fernández, Edmundo O'Gorman, J.D. García Bacca, Eduardo Nicol, José Medina Echevarría and Juan Larrea.

Beyond different starting points, stakeholder theory and Catholic Social Thought share many compatible perspectives when analyzing the role of the firm in economic activity, especially regarding the attention of the firm to different social and economic actors. Additionally, ST bears limitations regarding its ethical and anthropological foundation, and also about the legitimation of the different stakeholders’ interests. Therefore, ST lacks clear criteria to solve possible conflicts of interest between stakeholders. This paper analyzes the potentiality of ST, widely accepted in corporate (...) management, to integrate CST principles in order to solve those conflicts. At the same time, the paper studies the possibility of finding in the principles of CST an anthropological and ethical foundation for ST. This foundation could be the source of criteria to discuss the levels of legitimation and prioritization between stakeholders´ interests, especially when those interests collide. (shrink)

The publication of scientific papers has become increasingly problematic in the last decades. Even if we agree that a renewed model is needed for peer-reviewed scientific publication, we think the problem does not essentially lie in professional publishing—with economic incentives—but in the publish-or-perish culture that dominates the lives of researchers and academics.

This paper presents the concept of ‘religious certainty’ I have developed by drawing inspiration from Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘certainty’. After describing the particular traits of religious certainty, this paper addresses two difficulties derived from this concept. On the one hand, it explains why religious certainty functions as such even though all its consequences are far from being absolutely clear; on the other hand, it clarifies why, unlike the rest of certainties, the loss of religious certainty does not result in the (...) collapse of the world-picture made up of all certainties. Subsequently, it analyzes to what extent the teacher can teach religious certainty by acting as a facilitator for its acquisition–if desired—particularly bearing in mind that religious certainty cannot be attained at will. These basic teaching guidelines have several advantages. First, they make it possible to know the nature of religious certainty even better. Second, and most importantly, the fact of having adopted the perspective of a teacher who tries inculcating a religious certainty contributes to detecting and preventing forms of indoctrination that, arguably, might go unnoticed even when attempting to properly present religious certainty—or rather, this way of being religious—in current schools to foster understanding thereof. (shrink)

There is at present no publication specifically dedicated to analyzing the philosophical implications of augmented reality, especially regarding knowledge formation, which constitutes a fundamental trait of knowledge society. That is why this volume includes an analysis of the applications and implications of augmented reality. While applications cover diverse fields like psychopathology and education, implications concern issues as diverse as negative knowledge, group cognition, the internet of things, and ontological issues, among others. In this way, it is intended not only to (...) generate answers, but also, to draw attention to new problems that arise with the diffusion of augmented reality. In order to contemplate these problems from diverse perspectives, the auhors are from a variety of fields - philosophy, computer sciencess, education, psychology, and many more. Accordingly, the volume offers varied and interesting contributions which are of interest to professionals from multiple disciplines. (shrink)

This book investigates modern global civilization, offering an alternative to post-colonial theories and the "multiple modernities" approach (as well as the civilizational theory linked to it). It argues that modernity has become a global civilization that is heterogeneous and intertwined with other civilizations, and also aims at a renewal of critical theory that is not US-centric and Eurocentric, focusing instead on China, South Asia (India) and Latin America (Brazil). Dealing with the themes of centre-periphery relations, complexity (including culture and religion), (...) democracy and emancipatory possibilities, this book is based on general theoretical ideas such as collective subjectivity, the interplay of memory and creativity, and the concept of "modernizing moves," so as to deal with historical contingency. (shrink)

Filosofía, praxis y emancipación -- Ética y alteridad -- Una ética con fundamento -- Por una ética emancipadora -- Ética y justicia -- Ética y pluralismo moral -- Ética y economía.

While in his late works Walter Benjamin seems to employ painting in an accessory way —either as an auratic counterfigure, or as a propitiatory victim of the technical image—, the allusions to the medium that guide his trajectory show its importance in the whole of his aesthetic reflection and even in the development of his theory of language. Especially relevant to understanding the general features of his idea of painting is the unpublished youth essay “On Painting, or Sign and Mark”, (...) as well as other writings of the same period that, although address the matter tangentially, shape it to a greater or lesser degree and determine its general scope. (shrink)

El artículo ana liza ciertas tensiones internas en la filosofía del arte de Danto, derivadas de una tensión originaria, la que se da entre esencialismo eternizante e historicismo. Analiza después la definición del arte que ofrece Danto, interpretando que es una definición poco específica, a falta de una mayor caracterización del símbolo artístico. Concluye con la consideración de la tesis de los indiscernibles perceptivos, y el problema que plantea en relación con una de las dos condiciones esenciales del arte, la (...) de la "encarnación del significado", problema que se mantiene a la hora de pensar la belleza artística. (shrink)

Muitos termos possuem um sentido técnico sem que ele seja evidente para todos, por exemplo, a "governança ambiental", termo que remete no contexto atual a uma participação cidadã nesse tipo de questão, por exemplo, da saúde de um ecossistema específico, tal como uma floresta ou um vale agrícola, a partir de preocupações partilhadas e não a partir de uma problemática de controle organizacional. Após ter tornado preciso o que é a expertise e quais são os principais problemas postos pelo recurso (...) à expertise nos contextos da ação cidadã, proponho que as expertises técnicas podem ser postas no mesmo patamar que outros tipos de expertise, referindo principalmente aos saberes comuns, à prática e à experiência concreta, dita "de campo", o que corresponde a uma ampliação. Sugere-se, então, o modelo de fórum híbrido como quadro teórico possível dessa reformulação da concepção de expertise. Many terms have a technical meaning although it is not evident for everyone, for example, the "environmental governance", term that refers in the present context to citizen participation on this type of question, for example, of the health of a specific ecosystem, such as a forest or an agricultural field, from shared preoccupations and not from a problematic of organizational control. After having made precise what is the expertise and what are the main problems posed by the recourse to the expertise in the contexts of citizen action, I propose that technical expertise can be tantamount to other types of expertise, referring mainly to profane knowledge, to the practice and concrete experience called "of field", which corresponds to an enlargement. Then it is suggested the model of an hybrid forum as a possible theoretical frame of this reformulation of the conception of expertise. (shrink)

RESUMO O problema da era do gelo foi o primeiro e, até algumas décadas atrás, o único debate relevante sobre as mudanças climáticas, emergindo como uma discussão da geologia, que não foi capaz de equacioná-lo. Ficou como um mistério que transitou, no século XIX, pela matemática e astronomia e foi objeto de especulações na geofísica e geoquímica sem que uma solução satisfatória fosse encontrada. A resposta básica para a ocorrência das eras do gelo foi dada por Milankovitch, com sua teoria (...) matemática da insolação, na década de 1940. Todavia somente a consolidação da paleoclimatologia, na década de 1970, ofereceu as evidências necessárias para comprová-la. O refinamento desses estudos paleoclimatológicos acabou revelando, todavia, um fenômeno inesperado, a saber, que as transições de estados de equilíbrio no sistema climático aconteceram muito rapidamente no passado. As mudanças climáticas da era do gelo do pleistoceno ocorreram de maneira abrupta e radical, em uma negação do gradualismo. Em consequência, o atual aquecimento global deve ser visto como um fenômeno muito mais perigoso e imprevisível do que usualmente apresentado. ABSTRACT The ice age problem was the first and, until a few decades ago, the only relevant debate on climate change, emerging as a discussion in geology, which was unable to frame it. It remained a mystery in the nineteenth century, being discussed in mathematics and astronomy, and it was a matter of speculation in geophysics and geochemistry without a satisfactory solution. The basic explanation for the occurrence of ice ages was given by Milankovitch, by means of his mathematical theory of insolation in the 1940s. Nevertheless, only the consolidation of paleoclimatology, in the 1970s, provided the necessary evidence to prove it. The refinement of these studies in paleoclimatology, however, brought to light an unexpected phenomenon: the transition between equilibrium state in the climate system took place very quickly in the past. Climate change in the Pleistocene Ice Age was abrupt and radical, contrary to any gradualism. Therefore, the current global warming should be seen as a much more dangerous and unpredictable phenomenon, in comparison with the way it is usually presented. (shrink)

In this book, I present the results of an investigation which began with an extended stay at Oxford's Balliol College during the first half of 1995. My visit to Oxford was made possible by a grant from the Spanish Ministerio de Educaci6n y Ciencia. My sincere thanks go to Joseph Raz who served as my supervisor in Oxford. For several points of the present study, conversations with Timothy Endicott in Oxford were also of great help. The book is part of (...) a larger project of investigation, directed by Albert Calsami glia, which is a joint effort of a group of legal philosophers from the Universitat Pom peu Fabra and the Universitat de Girona, and which also receives financial support from the Spanish Ministerio de Educaci6n y Ciencia. An earlier version of the manuscript was presented in June 1996 to the selection committee for a tenured professorship in Legal Philosophy at the Universitat de Girona. The members of the committee were Francisco Laporta, Albert Calsamiglia, Gregorio Peces-Barba, Camilo J. Cela Conde, and Francesca Puigpelat. I am grateful to all of them for their comments, which have been extremely useful in preparing the final ver sion of this book. (shrink)

This paper does resemble a philosophical-juridical perspective that reflects on the possibility to reconstruct the constitutional democracy through a Hegelian focus. Its aim is to tackle the current crisis of our liberal democracy, as well as to determine its causes. These causes are not only found in a deficient praxis of its purposes, but fundamentally in an insufficient understanding of the principles of that type of democracy. At the end, this democracy, if we mind to deter its ruin, has to (...) last on the idea of universal will and its determination through the individual rights and liberties. In this context, political liberties obtain a key role, especially the right of political participation and the freedom of expression, whose final purpose lays in the construction of a rational political will. (shrink)

Particularly in his work Representative Government, J. S. Mill tries to shape the government of social order according to the rules that served as a pattern for the constitution of the literary salons and clubs of the 17 th and 18th centuries. On these rules the Enlightened legal-rational model of society was built, whose demands as well as its differences from reality are enormous. However, this model, which remained in existence, although often broken, during the 19 th and 20 th (...) centuries, does not seem able to survive, even as a regulative ideal. The characteristics that now define the society of the masses in which we live make the fundamentals of Mill’s theory totally inadequate for an understanding of that society. (shrink)

The logic TM is the result of adding the mingle axiom, M to Ticket Entailment logic, T. In the present study, it is proved that TM has the variable-sharing property . Ternary relational semantics for TM is provided. Finally, an interesting extension of TM with the vsp is briefly discussed.

A simple, bivalent semantics is defined for Łukasiewicz’s 4-valued modal logic Łm4. It is shown that according to this semantics, the essential presupposition underlying Łm4 is the following: A is a theorem iff A is true conforming to both the reductionist and possibilist theses defined as follows: rt: the value of modal formulas is equivalent to the value of their respective argument iff A is true, etc.); pt: everything is possible. This presupposition highlights and explains all oddities arising in Łm4.

The essay analyzes some issues in the philosophical works of Merleau-Ponty and Esposito, in particular focusing on the relationship between temporality, institution and phenomenology.