En esta nota discutimos una forma generaldel Teorema de Deducción (TD) para sistemas modales de primer orden, la cual permite derivar varias otras formulaciones del mismoque aparecen en la literatura, así como su relación con la Fórmula de Barcan.

En este artículo se dan condiciones necesarias y suficientes para una forma generalizada del metateorema de deducción y se lo aplica a varios sistemas lógicos usándolo como un criterio para determinar la existencia de una implicación interna a tales sistemas.

In this paper we extend the usual notion of model (asa structure) to the more general notion of CauchySequence of Structures in a similar way as rationalsare extending to real numbers by means of Cauchysequences of rationals. We show that the structurespace St is dense in thecomplete space CSt of Cauchysequences of structures and that CSt is compact in the (topo)logicalsense.

In this historical article, Newton da Costa discusses Francisco Miró Quesada’s philosophical ideas about logic. He discusses the topics of reason, logic, and action in Miró Quesada’s work, and in the final section he offers his critical view. In particular, he disagrees with Miró Quesada’s stance on the historicity of reason, for whom “reason is essentially absolute”, whereas for da Costa it “is being constructed in the course of history”. Da Costa concludes by emphasizing the importance of Miró Quesada’s theory (...) of logic and reason, despite it still being incomplete. -/- Historical article by Newton da Costa, annotated and translated by J. C. Cifuentes and L. F. Bartolo Alegre. (shrink)

Paulo Margutti e José Crisóstomo discutem sobre a possiblidade ou a impossibilidade de ultrapassar o representacionismo correspondentista e principalmente o eventual linguocentrismo da filosofia contemporânea, pós-virada linguística, em que parece que da linguagem pode-se passar apenas à linguagem, a cujo círculo mágico estaríamos, desse modo, inevitavelmente presos. Sendo assim, o mundo “aí fora” novamente nos escapa e o relativismo, o agnosticismo e o ceticismo de novo nos espreitam. Em Nietzsche, é a linguagem, sempre metafórica, que se adéqua aos nossos (...) modos prático-perspectivistas, corpóreos e afetivos, de “recortar” o mundo, ou é o contrário? E em Maturana, o que vem primeiro? Para Crisóstomo, para quem no começo está o ato, ultrapassamos tudo isso através de nosso emaranhamento prático com o mundo, por meio da natureza sensível criativa de nossas práticas e pela tradução de crenças em condutas. Enquanto que, para Margutti, nada disso parece deslocar a primazia incontornável da linguagem, como prática ela própria. Sobre isso, Margutti pergunta pelo suposto aproveitamento, por Crisóstomo, no seu ponto de vista prático-poiético criativo, em versão alegadamente não idealista nem dualista, da noção de autoconsciência, central no idealismo alemão. (shrink)

The paper deals with a version of the principle that a belief source can be a knowledge source only if the subject knows that it is reliable. I argue that the principle can be saved from the main objections that motivate its widespread rejection: the claim that it leads to skepticism, the claim that it forces us to accept counterintuitive knowledge ascriptions and the claim that it is incompatible with reliabilist accounts of knowledge. I argue that naturalist epistemologists should reject (...) these claims. I introduce my treatment of the principle by considering the analogous situation posed by the closure principle. (shrink)

Reliabilist accounts of knowledge are widely seen as having the resources for blocking sceptical arguments, since these arguments appear to rely on assumptions about the nature of knowledge that are rendered illegitimate by reliabilist accounts. The goal of this book is to assess the main arguments against the possibility of knowledge, and its conclusions challenge this consensus. The book articulates and defends a theory of knowledge that belongs firmly in the truth-tracking tradition, and argues that although the theory has the (...) resources for blocking the main standard lines of sceptical reasoning, there is a sceptical argument against which the theory offers no defence, as it doesn’t rely on any assumptions that the theory would render illegitimate. The book ends with the suggestion that the problem might have a metaphysical solution—that although the sceptical argument may make no illegitimate epistemological assumptions, it does rest on a questionable account of the nature of cognition. (shrink)

I discuss the account of logical consequence advanced in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. I argue that the role that elementary propositions are meant to play in this account can be used to explain two remarkable features that Wittgenstein ascribes to them: that they are logically independent from one another and that their components refer to simple objects. I end with a proposal as to how to understand Wittgenstein's claim that all propositions can be analysed as truth functions of elementary propositions.

El 17 de abril se cumplen cinco años del fallecimiento de Fray Antonio Royo Marín, OP. A lo largo de estos años hemos recibido numerosas muestras de admiración sobre los escritos publicados en vida por el Padre Royo. Instituciones religiosas, Escuelas de Teología, Grupos de reflexión teológica, catequistas, animadores de grupos cristianos, laicos anónimos, ... siguen consultando y estudiado sus libros, especialmente aquellos que versan sobre moral y espiritualidad. Muchas personas han demandado una biografía del gran predicador. Otras un resumen (...) sistemático sobre sus estudios teológicos, especialmente aquellos que hacen referencia a la espiritualidad cristiana. Ambos contenidos han sido publicados en la Revista como homenaje a quien fuera, en su día, un gran orador en su transmisión de la Palabra de Dios. Ofrecemos el recuerdo vivo de su memoria. Nos ayuda, para ello, la excelente biografía que escribió en Ciencia Tomista el profesor de Historia de lglesia José Barrado Barquilla, OP. Al final de la misma el lector podrá encontrar un elenco de las principales obras del P. Royo.También está a disposición en la red el artículo del Profesor Manuel Ángel Martínez Juan sobre 'La perfecciòn cristiana en el pensamiento de Antonio Royo Marín, OP', publicado igualmente en la Revista. (shrink)

La palabra no es un accesorio de la oración, sino una parte esencial de ella, íntimamente ligada a la dinámica del servicio religioso, ya que ayuda o dificulta la comunicación, sobre todo entre culturas. El autor describe algunos enfoques contemporáneos, formulando observaciones críticas y ofreciendo nuevas perspectivas sobre los pasos que la Iglesia podría dar en un futuro próximo.

José L. Zalabardo defends a pragmatist account of what grounds the meaning of central semantic discourses--ascriptions of truth, of propositional attitudes, and of meanings. He argues that it is the procedures that regulate acceptance and rejection that give the sentences of these discourses their meanings, and explores the application of the pragmatist template to ethical discourse. The pragmatist approach is presented as an alternative to representationalist accounts of the meaning grounds of declarative sentences, according to which a sentence has (...) the meaning it has as a result of links with the bits of the world that it purports to represent. Zalabardo develops a version of the open-question argument to support the claim that the meaning grounds of the discourses he focuses on cannot receive representationalist accounts. It is generally assumed that a declarative sentence cannot perform the function of representing the world unless it has a representationalist meaning ground. Zalabardo rejects this assumption, arguing that sentences with pragmatist meaning grounds can represent the world in exactly the same sense that sentences with representationalist meaning grounds do. This requires that there are states of affairs that the target sentences represent as obtaining, and Zalabardo develops an account of the nature of the states of affairs that can play this role for sentences with pragmatist meaning grounds. Pragmatist Semantics concludes by developing the suggestion that the meaning grounds of all our representational discourses might be ultimately pragmatist. (shrink)

I argue that our procedures for determining whether ascriptions of a predicate represent things as being a certain way are ultimately pragmatic. Pragmatic procedures are not subject to validation by the referential procedure – determining whether there is a property playing the role of its referent. Predicates can represent even if we can't provide an independent identification of its referent. For these predicates, the speakers’ knowledge of how they represent objects as being would have to be construed in terms of (...) the ascription practices they associate with the predicates. The same approach can be applied to semantic predicates, such as ‘is representational’ or ‘refers to’. They can be treated as representational even if we can't provide an independent identification of their referents. The availability of this position undermines accounts of the referents of semantic predicates in naturalistic terms. (shrink)

In this article I defend what I call a ‘particularist approach to arguments by analogy.’ Particularism is opposed to generalism, which is the thesis that arguments by analogy require a universal principle that covers cases compared and guarantees the conclusion. Particularism rejects this claim and holds that arguments by analogy operate on particular cases. I elaborate on two ideas that support this position. On the one hand, I contend that an analogy can be seen as a parallelism of argumentative relationships, (...) drawing on the distinction between similarity and analogy (Gentner 1983) and on the meta-argumentative account of arguments by analogy (Woods and Hudak 1989). On the other hand, I argue that universal principles are not necessary neither for the analysis nor the evaluation of arguments by analogy (Govier 1989) and that, rather than being a requirement, they can be seen as by-products of good analogies. (shrink)

Debates about bodily ownership and psychological ownership have typically proceeded independently of each other. This paper explores the relation between them, with particular reference to how each is illuminated by psychopathology. I propose a general framework for studying ownership that is applicable both to bodily ownership and psychological ownership. The framework proposes studying ownership by starting with explicit judgments of ownership and then exploring the bases for those judgments. Section 3 discusses John Campbell’s account of ψ-ownership in the light of (...) that general framework, emphasizing in particular his fractionation of ψ-ownership into two dissociable components. Section 4 briefly presents an account of φ-ownership that I have developed in more detail elsewhere. Section 5 explores the suggestion, originating with Alexandre Billon, that there needs to be an integrated account of φ-ownership and ψ-ownership because depersonalization disorders typically involve breakdowns of both φ-ownership and ψ-ownership. The argument from depersonalization is not compelling, but Section 6 proposes a different way of reaching the same conclusion. Section 7 shows how reflecting on agency and practical reasoning offers a common thread between the models of φ-ownership and ψ-ownership discussed earlier in the paper. (shrink)

This article develops the relationship between desire and cultural reproduction, from a conceptual point of view. Desire is emphasized as a process that articulates the subject with culture. Each culture presents ritual and ritualized practices that regulate the desires of individuals to constitute them as reproductive subject of a given culture. The methodological approach focuses on the fact that anthropology as a science requires observing social phenomena from a theoretical framework that includes desire as a social category. This work presents (...) a conceptual proposal made in this regard, exemplified with a specific ethnographic case of Hñähñu migrants to Mexico City. (shrink)

I consider the problem of reflective knowledge faced by views that treat sensitivity as a sufficient condition for knowledge, or as a major ingredient of the concept, as in the analysis I advance in Scepticism and Reliable Belief. I present the problem as concerning the correct analysis of SATs — beliefs to the effect that one of my current beliefs is true. I suggest that a plausible analysis of SATs should treat them as neither true nor false when they ascribe (...) truth to a non-existent belief. I argue that the problem is inescapable if we construe SATs as ascribing the property of truth to a belief. Deflationism manages to avoid the problem of reflective knowledge, but it does so by violating alethic priority — the principle that our account of representation must be built on our account of truth. I argue that we can avoid the problem of reflective knowledge while preserving alethic priority with a pragmatist account of truth — according to which truth is explicated in terms of the rules that govern the practice of assessing judgments and related items as true or false. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the only book-length work to have been published during his lifetime, continues to generate interest and scholarly debate. This volume of new essays showcases contemporary ideas on how to interpret the Tractatus and throws new light on some of its most challenging passages.

El autor realiza una lectura de las Enéadas de Plotino partiendo de la noción de procesión, pieza clave para comprender la arquitectura del universo plotiniana ordenado jerárquicamente alrededor del Uno-Bien.Del primer principio proceden todos los seres y en él convergen. Cuatro son fundamentalmente los aspectos tratados: 1) El axiomade la procesión. 2) Los dos momentos de la procesión: el ascendente y el descendente. 3) Las imágenes de la procesión.4) Dentro de estas metáforas, privilegia el centro y el círculo, núcleo en (...) el análisis de la noción de procesión. (shrink)

Social suffering commands increasing public attention in the wake of several historical processes that have changed the ways victims are perceived. In making suffering eloquent by rendering it in conceptual form, philosophy runs the risk of muting suffering, thereby neutralizing its ability to mobilize responses. In the experience of suffering philosophy finds a limit it must recognize as its own. Yet only by fulfilling its duty towards suffering - only by having the abolition of suffering as its ultimate goal - (...) can philosophical thinking withstand a tacit complicity with injustice. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza primero las diferentes interpretaciones del racismo y la xenofobia y sus presupuestos teóricos. Después muestra tanto sus aportaciones como sus insuficiencias, y las pone en relación con los presupuestos teóricos en las que se basan. Finalmente trata de ver en qué medida la teoría del antisemitismo de la Teoría Crítica puede ser actualizada en este contexto de manera enriquecedora.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.1 (2000) 49-77 [Access article in PDF] The Time of the King Gift and Exchange in Zorrilla's Don Juan Tenorio Joan Ramon Resina There is something paradoxical about José Zorrilla's revision of the Don Juan legend, a certain contradiction between the play's structure and the logic of the action. The character of the protagonist, the form and implications of Don Juan's salvation, the strategies and temporality of (...) seduction, even the play's generic status--all come under the law of self-cancellation. And so does the historical time in which the play is set: the time of absolute monarchy. The proportionality between terrestrial and eschatological time, organic to the play's Golden Age precursor, 1 is strangely neutralized in Zorrilla's work through an expanding temporality without equivalent in the afterlife; and the same is true of the king's dramatic role through his removal from the scene, which he regulates nonetheless as deus ex machina of the social edifice.A nineteenth-century reader, Francesc Pi i Margall, remarked that "Zorrilla hace a Don Juan escéptico o creyente según lo van exigiendo las peripecias de su drama, y merced a esa indeterminación del carácter, le pone repetidamente en contradicción consigo mismo" (Zorrilla makes Don Juan a skeptic or a believer depending on the drama's events, and by virtue of this indeterminacy, he brings his character repeatedly into contradiction with himself) [204]. This indeterminacy affects not only the libertine's relation to religion but also the doctrinal coherence of the play, which has been the object of debate [see Mazzeo; Abrams; Wang; Romero]. Others, curiously, detect a contradiction between the play's sound theological conception and the author, who "quizá no sabe apenas nada de teología" (perhaps knows next to nothing about theology) [Alberich 16]. Yet not only Don Juan's piety but also his seductions appear self-annulling. For Luis Fernández Cifuentes, Zorrilla's most original and thus most revealing decision is "presentar el acto de seducción engañosa en el momento mismo en que deja de serlo: la carta con que comienza el drama participa de una tradición que también cancela. En el curso de la obra, es y no es un instrumento de seducción; sin cambiar de palabras, es a la vez falsa y verdadera... " (to present the act of deceitful seduction at the very moment in which it stops being deceitful: the letter with which the play starts participates in a tradition which it also cancels. Throughout the play the letter is and is not a tool of seduction; its words are at once true and false...) [83]. In the same line of structural contradictions must be included the play's temporality, which runs counter to the causal logic of the action. As Gustavo Pérez Firmat points out: "In Juan's verses normal temporal and causal sequence collapses, for future events are always catching up and outstripping the present, as if time were circular and past, present, and future travelled the circle at different speeds" [7]. Even the play's representativeness as a privileged [End Page 49] instance of Spanish romanticism has been flatly denied in light of its inconsistencies with the patterns of that movement [Gies, "José Zorrilla"]. 2 But perhaps the most telling contradiction is the one between the play's undiminished popularity for almost a century and its author's sedulous efforts to undermine its prestige. 3Author's second thoughts? A repentant artist in ascetic revulsion against mundane acclaim? It seems reasonable to assume a link between the play's popularity and the contradictions to which it gives expression. Thus, taking at face value the tired notion that Don Juan presents a fundamentally Spanish profile, 4 I will inquire whether the play's manifest contradictions are culturally efficient. 5 To this end, I will need to consider a possible incongruity between nineteenth-century forms of consciousness and the objective historical conditions. Joaquín Casalduero already pointed out a discrepancy between historical changes and... (shrink)

We consider, from a physical perspective, the case where the interface between an organism and its environment becomes large enough that it acts as a buffer regulating their matter and energy exchanges. We illustrate the physiological and evolutionary role of buffers through the example of lungfish estivation. Then we ponder the relevance of buffers of this kind to the quest for a general definition of concepts like niche construction, the extended phenotype, and related ones, whose meaning is conveyed at present (...) mostly through particular examples. Finally, we comment on the potential significance of buffers to organism—environment codetermination in the sense originally suggested by Lewontin. (shrink)

La estabilidad es una de las características centrales de una constitución, aunque su consecución trascienda los planteamientos puramente constitucionales. Los métodos institucionales que se han utilizado para, en cierta medida, intentar alcanzarla son diversos —y a veces contradictorios— según se adapten más o menos fácilmente a la demanda de cambio constitucional. Entre estos fenómenos, este trabajo formula un nuevo concepto denominado liquidez constitucional cuya utilidad radica en propiciar dimensiones de flexibilidad en constituciones rígidas. La liquidez constitucional se canaliza a través (...) de las denominadas cláusulas de liquidez constitucional que se formulan inductivamente a la luz de la Constitución española de 1978 y que son analizadas estructural y funcionalmente. Finalmente, se comparan con otros conceptos tradicionales relativos al tratamiento de la estabilidad y el cambio constitucional. (shrink)

O objetivo do artigo é apresentar como Simondon concebe o objeto técnico, a mediação e o ensino refletido da técnica. Num primeiro momento será apresentada a defesa dos objetos técnicos frente a acusação de restrição da experiência humana, da cultura. Num segundo, será apresentada a genealogia do objeto técnico, compreendido enquanto mediação entre o homem e a natureza, para então abordar o tema do ensino refletido da técnica.

Unlike most American novels on the Iraq wars, which tend to be either celebratory or redemptive, Iraqi-born Sinan Antoon’s The Corspe Washer bears witness to the traumatic effects of destitu...

The timing of the Japanese Government's acceptance of the United Nations multilateral treaties governing several environmental concerns indicates Japan's priorities: biodiversity, global warming, and depletion of the ozone layer. Banning transboundary movement of hazardous wastes is the least prioritized, as indicated by Japan's failure to accept the Ban Amendment to the Basel Convention. The Japanese Environment Agency's policy statements and budget allocations between 1985 and 2000, as well as other official statements and programs, likewise indicate the same priorities. Moreover, of (...) the three priorities, global warming is the top. (shrink)

In this paper we study collective identity functions that deal with formation of clubs. Usually the choice offered to individuals is to cast a vote in favor of qualification or not, and the final outcome is qualification or non-qualification. In this context we show that independent collective identity functions are naturally characterized by voting rules, and in particular, consent rules can be represented by one single collection of weighted majorities. In addition, we consider the extended model where voters are allowed (...) to abstain and we distinguish between disqualification and a neutral outcome. We show that this environment allows agents to act in different capacities that cannot be distinguished in the original formulation of the problem. (shrink)

Corporate social performance (CSP) has become a widely applied concept, discussed in most large firms’ corporate reports and the academic literature alike. Unfortunately, CSP has largely been employed as a way of demonstrating corporate social responsibility (CSR) in practice, or to justify the business case for CSR in academia by relating some measure of CSP to some measure of financial performance. In this article, we discuss multiple shortcomings to these approaches. We argue that (1) CSR activities need to be managed (...) and measured as projects and aggregated to the business or corporate level using a project portfolio; (2) appropriate measures need to be identified that move away from reporting the firm’s activities toward quantifying actual social outcomes achieved; and (3) given the types of projects prevalent in CSR, statistical evaluation methods common in other fields (ideally, pre-test post-test control group designs, such as used in medicine or propensity score matching for ongoing or past projects) should be employed to properly measure outcomes. We make a first, albeit imperfect, attempt at using such an approach with data collected on behalf of the Patrimonio Hoy project, a well-publicized CSR initiative carried out by Cemex in Mexico. We show that the results from this data reinforce concerns voiced earlier in this article. (shrink)

[Phenomenology of Bodily Perception] Since this is colloquium on phenomenological and experimental approaches to cognition I’d like to set up te problem I want to address in terms of two of the different strands that we find in Merleau-Ponty’s thinking about the phenomenology of the body. One of these strands is profoundly insightful. The other one, however, seems to me to be lacking in plausibility – or rather, to put it less confrontationally and more in keeping with the spirit of (...) the colloquium, the second strand seems to stand in the way of there being a certain type of fruitful interaction between phenomenological and experimental approaches to cognition. (shrink)