"CAMINOS DEL PENSAR DE NUESTRA AMÉRICA se integra con 27 ensayos, cuyos autores escriben en torno a siete materias principales: Eticidad y educación; Circunstancialidad y liberación; Literatura y expresión; Movimientos sociales ¿antiguos y modernos?; Epistemologías actuales en América Latina; Tecnología ecología y ciencia, y cierra con Temas en el tintero en América Latina, todos ellos con un objetivo común: la historia de las ideas. Gracias al trabajo metodológico y guía del doctor Mario Magallón Anaya fue posible conjuntar temas (...) diversos entrelazando ideas; este libro es resultado de sesiones de análisis en las que distintas generaciones convergieron desde sus disciplinas para pensar a nuestro mundo en estas primeras dos décadas del siglo XXI."--Back cover. (shrink)

Scrutinizes how philosophical concepts interrelate with politics, theology, economics, and mysticism, tracing their impact on everyday life and power dynamics. This exploration uncovers the theological and political underpinnings of Western philosophical ideas, revealing how they serve as instruments of dominance and control. Urgent calls are made for the recovery of communal solidarity, ethics, and responsibility in the face of neoliberalism's dehumanizing exclusion. Underscores that true freedom arises within a balanced community, emphasizing the interconnectedness of individual and collective liberty. In the (...) contemporary world, grappling with human suffering necessitates political and social struggle against prevailing power structures. This critical analysis laments the diminishing relevance of the humanities, social sciences, and humanism in an increasingly technocratic global era. (shrink)

Esta bibliograf a compila la extensa obra publicada de Leopoldo Zea: monograf as, cap tulos en libros, art culos period sticos y pr logos e introducciones. Incluye tambi n una bibliograf a sobre Zea.

"CAMINOS DEL PENSAR DE NUESTRA AMÉRICA se integra con 27 ensayos, cuyos autores escriben en torno a siete materias principales: Eticidad y educación; Circunstancialidad y liberación; Literatura y expresión; Movimientos sociales ¿antiguos y modernos?; Epistemologías actuales en América Latina; Tecnología ecología y ciencia, y cierra con Temas en el tintero en América Latina, todos ellos con un objetivo común: la historia de las ideas. Gracias al trabajo metodológico y guía del doctor Mario Magallón Anaya fue posible conjuntar temas (...) diversos entrelazando ideas; este libro es resultado de sesiones de análisis en las que distintas generaciones convergieron desde sus disciplinas para pensar a nuestro mundo en estas primeras dos décadas del siglo XXI."--Back cover. (shrink)

I want to combine two hitherto largely independent research projects, scientific understanding and mechanistic explanations. Understanding is not only achieved by answering why-questions, that is, by providing scientific explanations, but also by answering what-questions, that is, by providing what I call scientific descriptions. Based on this distinction, I develop three forms of understanding: understanding-what, understanding-why, and understanding-how. I argue that understanding-how is a particularly deep form of understanding, because it is based on mechanistic explanations, which answer why something happens in (...) virtue of what it is made of. I apply the three forms of understanding to two case studies: first, to the historical development of thermodynamics and, second, to the differences between the Clausius and the Boltzmann entropy in explaining thermodynamic processes. (shrink)

Predictivists use the no miracle argument to argue that “novel” predictions are decisive evidence for theories, while mere accommodation of “old” data cannot confirm to a significant degree. But deductivists claim that since confirmation is a logical theory-data relationship, predicted data cannot confirm more than merely deduced data, and cite historical cases in which known data confirmed theories quite strongly. On the other hand, the advantage of prediction over accommodation is needed by scientific realists to resist Laudan’s criticisms of the (...) no miracle argument. So, if the deductivists are right, the most powerful argument for realism collapses. There seems to be an inescapable contradiction between these prima facie plausible arguments of predictivists and deductivists; but this puzzle can be solved by understanding what exactly counts as novelty, if novel predictions must support the no miracle argument, i.e., if they must be explainable only by the truth of theories. Taking my cues from the use-novelty tradition, I argue that (1) the predicted data must not be used essentially in building the theory or choosing the auxiliary assumptions. This is possible if the theory and its auxiliary assumptions are plausible independently of the predicted data, and I analyze the consequences of this requirement in terms of best explanation of diverse bodies of data. Moreover, the predicted data must be (2) a priori improbable, and (3) heterogeneous to the essentially used data. My proposed notion of novelty, therefore, is not historical, but functional. Hence, deductivists are right that confirmation is independent of time and of historical contingencies such as if the theorist knew a datum, used it, or intended to accommodate it. Predictivists, however, are right that not all consequences confirm equally, and confirmation is not purely a logical theory-data relation, as it crucially involves background epistemic conditions and the notion of best explanation. Conditions (1)–(3) make the difference between prediction and accommodation, and account for the confirming power of theoretical virtues such as non ad-hocness, non-fudging, non-overfitting, independence and consilience. I thus show that functional novelty (a) avoids the deductivist objections to predictivism, (b) is a gradual notion, in accordance with the common intuition that confirmation comes in degrees, and (c) supports the no miracle argument, so vindicating scientific realism. (shrink)

There are two possible realist defense strategies against the pessimistic meta-induction and Laudan’s meta-modus tollens: the selective strategy, claiming that discarded theories are partially true, and the discontinuity strategy, denying that pessimism about past theories can be extended to current ones. A radical version of discontinuity realism is proposed by Gerald Doppelt: rather than discriminating between true and false components within theories, he holds that superseded theories cannot be shown to be even partially true, while present best theories are demonstrably (...) completely true. I argue that this position, running counter both the cumulativity of science and fallibilism, is untenable; it cannot account for the success of past theories, nor for the failures of current theories, and rather than shutting the door to the pessimistic historical objections it opens it wide. The best strategy, instead, joins the selective idea there was both some truth and some falsity in discarded theories, like in current ones, with the moderate discontinuity idea that the truth rate in present best theories is much greater than in past ones. (shrink)

En la medida en la que Spinoza no nombra explícitamente el mecanismo de la identificación éste suele ser confundido con la imitación de los afectos. Mientras que la imitación de los afectos, definida en la tercera parte de la Ética, es un mecanismo por el que los hombres sientes los afectos de los demás, sin por ello alienarse, la identificación es una forma de alienación voluntaria que consiste en apropiarse de las costumbres ajenas en detrimento de las propias. Este artículo (...) se propone delimitar el mecanismo de la identificación frente a la imitación y definir su funcionamiento. (shrink)

THE TWEET OF THE UNIVERSE. GRAVITATIONAL WAVES BETWEEN THEORY, EFFORTS AND MISTAKES The recent discovery of gravitational waves fills a substantial gap in the theory of general relativity, since these waves were the only phenomenon predicted by Einstein’s theory that had not yet been directly observed. This was mainly due to the fact that the passage of waves is an elusive phenomenon, almost imperceptible, up to the point that even Einstein thought that it was almost impossible to detect it using (...) “traditional” tools. This paper will explore the efforts made over the years to detect the passage of these waves, the mistakes made, and the recent results obtained through the use of the twin optical interferometers LIGO and VIRGO. This extraordinary discovery shows one more time that the history of science is full of trials, errors and sudden steps forward maybe due to the use of new technology. (shrink)

Deployment Realism resists Laudan’s and Lyons’ objections to the “No Miracle Argument” by arguing that a hypothesis is most probably true when it is deployed essentially in a novel prediction. However, Lyons criticized Psillos’ criterion of essentiality, maintaining that Deployment Realism should be committed to all the actually deployed assumptions. But since many actually deployed assumptions proved false, he concludes that the No Miracle Argument and Deployment Realism fail. I reply that the essentiality condition is required by Occam’s razor. In (...) fact, there is a simpler formulation of essentiality which escapes Lyons’ criticisms and rescues the No Miracle Argument and Deployment Realism from their purported historical counterexamples: a hypothesis is essential when it has no proper parts (in Yablo’s sense) sufficient to derive the same prediction. Although essentiality so conceived cannot be detected prospectively, this is just natural, and it is not a problem but an advantage for Deployment Realism. (shrink)