Presupposition, vagueness, and oddness can lead to some sentences failing to have a clear truth value. The homogeneity property of plural predication with definite descriptions may also create truth-value gaps: The books are written in Dutch is true if all relevant books are in Dutch, false if none of them are, and neither true nor false if, say, half of the books are written in Dutch. We study the projection property of homogeneity by deploying methods of general interest to identify (...) truth-value gaps. Method A consists in collecting both truth judgments and, independently, falsity judgments. The second method, employed in experiment series B and C, is based on one-shot ternary judgments: completely true vs. completely false vs. neither. After a calibration of these methods, we use them to demonstrate that homogeneity projects out of negation, the scope of universal sentences and the scope of non-monotonic quantifiers such as exactly two, to some extent. We assess our results in light of different theoretical approaches to homogeneity—approaches based on presuppositions, scalar implicatures, and something like supervaluations, respectively. We identify free parameters in these theories and assess various variants of them based on our results. Our experimental paradigms may be of broader significance insofar as they can be applied to other phenomena which result in the failure of a sentence to have a definite truth value. (shrink)

I address three topics. First, I argue that the issue of corporate moral responsibility is an important one for business ethics.Second, I examine a core argument for the claim that the corporate organization is a separate moral agent and show it is based on anunnoticed but elementary mistake deriving from the fallacy of division. Third, I examine the assumptions collectivists make about whatit means to say that organizations act and that they act intentionally and show that these assumptions are mistaken (...) in their failure to understand the nature of intentional causality and of “as-if” intentionality. In exposing these mistakes I set out my own view in the form oftwo theses, the first of which states that individual members of an organization are always causally responsible for any corporate act,and the second of which states that attributions of intentions to corporations are always either descriptive or prescriptive attributionsof “as if” intentionality. (shrink)

This article summarizes the moderate revisionist position I put forth in Four Views on Free Will and responds to objections to it from Robert Kane, John Martin Fischer, Derk Pereboom, and Michael McKenna. Among the principle topics of the article are (1) motivations for revisionism, what it is, and how it is different from compatibilism and hard incompatibilism, (2) an objection to the distinctiveness of semicompatibilism against conventional forms of compatibilism, and (3) whether moderate revisionism is committed to realism about (...) moral responsibility. (shrink)

Es indudable que el inconsciente colectivo estudiado por Jung y su escuela psicoanalítica, nos ha demostrado fehacientemente que las conductas observadas y aprendidas en la infancia tanto en la familia como en la sociedad, se reproducen de manera muy similar en las generaciones jóvenes.

En este artículo se discuten las más importantes hipótesis modernas que han intentado explicar la interrelation doctrinal que los tratados silogísticos escritos por Boecio tienen entre sí, el De sylhgismo categórico y la Introductio ad syllogismos categóricos. Se revisan las hipótesis que señalan una dependencia fuerte entre ambos tratados y también las que apuntan hacia una dependencia más débil y, luego de criticar estas posiciones, la discusión abre la posibilidad cierta de que los tratados tengan objetos temáticos diferentes y estén (...) relacionados de una manera más extrínseca que lo que se había creído hasta aquí, ya que el segundo de ellos estaría pensado como un complemento al primero. El argumento se basa tanto en la manifiesta falta de utilidad que los términos indefinidos tendrían en las premisas silogísticas como en la casi nula noticia de que, alguna vez en la antigüedad, se desarrolló una silogística con términos indefinidos en las premisas. (shrink)

Commercial genetic testing offered over the internet, known as direct-to-consumer genetic testing (DTC GT), currently is under ethical attack. A common critique aims at the limited validation of the tests as well as the risk of psycho-social stress or adaption of incorrect behavior by users triggered by misleading health information. Here, we examine in detail the specific role of advertising communication of DTC GT companies from a medical ethical perspective. Our argumentative analysis departs from the starting point that DTC GT (...) operates at the intersection of two different contexts: medicine on the one hand and the market on the other. Both fields differ strongly with regard to their standards of communication practices and the underlying normative assumptions regarding autonomy and responsibility. Following a short review of the ethical contexts of medical and commercial communication, we provide case examples for persuasive messages of DTC GT websites and briefly analyze their design with a multi-modal approach to illustrate some of their problematic implications. We observe three main aspects in DTC GT advertising communication: (1) the use of material suggesting medical professional legitimacy as a trust-establishing tool, (2) the suggestion of empowerment as a benefit of using DTC GT services and (3) the narrative of responsibility as a persuasive appeal to a moral self-conception. While strengthening and respecting the autonomy of a patient is the focus in medical communication, specifically genetic counselling, persuasive communication is the normal mode in marketing of consumer goods, presuming an autonomous, rational, independent consumer. This creates tension in the context of DTC GT regarding the expectation and normative assessment of communication strategies. Our analysis can even the ground for a better understanding of ethical problems associated with intersections of medical and commercial communication and point to perspectives of analysis of DTC GT advertising. (shrink)

Unser aller Alltag ist in der Zwischenzeit stark von den Dienstleistungen und Plattformen der Technologiekonzerne durchdrungen. In der politischen Kommunikation sind Twitter, Facebook, Instagram und Konsorten nicht mehr wegzudenken. Die veränderten Bedingungen, unter denen politische Kommunikation stattfindet, haben nicht zu einer Machtnivellierung, sondern vielmehr zu einer verschiebung geführt. Politische Kommunikation ist für uns unentbehrlich, um unsere politischen Meinungen zu bilden, unsere Positionen zu artikulieren und politische Fragen zu diskutieren. Daraus ergeben sich zwei zentrale Fragen für die Politische Bildung: Welche Fähigkeiten (...) benötigen autonome und medienkundige Bürger*innen? Und wie erlernen wir diese Fähigkeiten? Dieser Beitrag skizziert eine mögliche Antwort darauf. (shrink)

“Bajo los adoquines la playa...”Símbolo de Mayo del 68. Se lucha, se vive, siempre hay esperanzas de una sociedad más libre, más lúdica. La historia de tantos jóvenes que prefirieron el abrazo confortable del asfalto, y otros tantos que siguieron soñando con la arena, no claudicando en su rebeldía y en la construcción de una contra-cultura.Daniel Cohn-Bendit, el líder del movimiento 22 de marzo de 1968, que colocó en jaque al gobierno de De Gaulle y desató la explosión juvenil mundial (...) más im.. (shrink)

Bernardo de Monteagudo en su texto: Diálogo entre Atahualpa y Fernando VII en los Campos Eliseos, parte de una crítica a las atrocidades llevadas a cabo por los españoles contra los americanos en la Conquista –atrocidades que sobrepasan las llevadas a cabo por Napoleón contra Fernando VII–, para proponer una integración social y cultural que movilice a los pueblos latinoamericanos a la independencia del colonialismo español. Sin embargo, su propuesta no reivindica al indígena, sino que su imagen es usada por (...) el escritor como símbolo de una Latinoamérica que se limita a los criollos. Es decir, el indígena quedará, luego de las independencias latinoamericanas, en una situación similar a la colonial, sólo que ahora bajo el dominio de los criollos. De igual manera, esto nos puede suceder en nuestra realidad bogotana: pensar que Latinoamérica, y especialmente Colombia, se reduce a los Andes, a las ciudades del interior, excluyendo así al Caribe. (shrink)

We describe the Catholic natural law tradition by examining its origins in the medieval penitentials, the papal decretals, the writings of Thomas Aquinas, and seventeenth century casuistry. Catholic natural law emerges as a flexible ethic that conceives of human nature as rational and as oriented to certain basic goods that ought to be pursued and whose pursuit is made possible by the virtues. We then identify four approaches to natural law that have evolved within the United States during the twentieth (...) century, including the traditionalist, proportionalist, right reason, and historicist approaches. The normative implications of these approaches are discussed in relation to ethical issues in the tobacco industry, ITT under Geneen, the marketing of pharmaceuticals, affirmative action, and bribery. It is argued that Alasdair MacIntyre is correct in claiming that the natural law tradition is superior to the liberal ethics of modern deontology and utilitarianism. (shrink)

Though the geographic dimensions of philosophical history were always, in principle at least, the whole globe, for the last two thousand years the ...

Desde la llegada al poder de Barack Obama, el excepcionalismo americano se ha situado en el centro del debate político en estrecha conexión con el debate en torno al declive internacional de EE.UU. El presente artículo pretende ofrecer un estudio del excepcionalismo tanto desde el punto de vista teórico como desde su impacto más reciente en la política exterior de EE.UU. A tal efecto, procederemos a desentrañar sus principales aspectos conceptuales, analizando las distintas interpretaciones del mismo en el marco de (...) las principales doctrinas de política exterior estadounidense. Sobre esta base teórica, nos detendremos en la influencia de la idea excepcionalista en la práctica de la política exterior de la Administración Obama, denunciada por sus más acerbos críticos como antiexcepcionalista y, por inmediata extensión, como antiamericana. (shrink)

Both legal and moral theorists have offered broadly “communicative” theories of criminal and moral responsibility. According to such accounts, we can understand the nature of responsibility by appealing to the idea that responsibility practices are in some fundamental sense expressive, discursive, or communicative. In this essay, I consider a variety of issues in connections with this family of views, including its relationship to free will, the theory of exemptions, and potential alternatives to the communicative model. Focusing on Michael McKenna’s Conversation (...) and Responsibility, I argue that communicative accounts, and the conversational model in particular, direct our attention to important and under-appreciated elements of our responsibility practices. However, rather than focusing on a model of conversation-as-address, as McKenna does, we do better to regard gossip as the paradigmatic conversational form that captures the main features of moral responsibility. (shrink)

This article describes Catholic natural law tradition by examining its origins in the medieval penitentials, the papal decretals, the writings of Thomas Aquinas, and seventeenth-century casuistry. Catholic natural law emerges as a flexible ethic that conceives of human nature as rational and as oriented to certain basic goods that ought to be pursued and whose pursuit is made possible by the virtues. Four approaches to natural law that have evolved within the United States during the twentieth century are then identified, (...) including the traditionalist, proportionalist, right reason, and historicist approaches. The normative implications of these approaches are discussed in relation to ethical issues in the tobacco industry, ITT under Geneen, the marketing of pharmaceuticals, affirmative action, and bribery. It is argued that Alasdair MacIntyre is correct in claiming that the natural law tradition issuperior to the liberal ethics of modern deontology and utilitarianism. (shrink)