ABSTRACT:To have a virtue is to possess a certain kind of trait of character that is appropriate in pursuing the moral good at which the virtue aims. Human beings are assumed to be capable of attaining those traits. Yet, a number of scholars are skeptical about the very existence of such character traits. They claim a sizable amount of empirical evidence in their support. This article is concerned with the existence and explanatory power of character as a way to assess (...) the possibility of achieving moral virtue, with particular attention paid to business context. I aim to unsettle the so-called situationist challenge to virtue ethics. In the course of this article, I shall defend four claims, namely, that virtues are more than just behavioral dispositions, that at least some virtues may not be unitary traits, that psychologists cannot infer virtues from overt behavior, and that the situationist data do not account for the observational equivalence of traits. Since it rests on a misconception of what virtue is, the situationist objection remains unconvincing. (shrink)

In his 1935 treatise on divine sovereignty, the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber introduced the idea of an 'anarchic soul of theocracy.' A decade before, the German jurist Carl Schmitt had coined the term 'political theology' in order to designate the Christian theological foundations of modern sovereignty and legal order. In a specular and opposite gesture, Buber argued that the covenant at Sinai established YHWH as the King of the Israelites and simultaneously promulgated the principle that no human being could become (...) sovereign over this people. In so doing, Buber offered an interpretation of Jewish theocracy that is both republican and anarchic. Republican because, by pivoting on the idea that democracy is a function of a people's fidelity to a prophetic higher law, theocracy displaces the central role of the human sovereign. Anarchic because this divine law is saturated with the messianic aim to put an end to relations of domination between peoples. In this book I show that this republican and anarchic articulation of the discourse of political theology characterises the development of Jewish political theology in the 20th century from Hermann Cohen to Hannah Arendt. (shrink)

Philosophers of mathematics commonly distinguish between explanatory and non-explanatory proofs. An important subclass of mathematical proofs are proofs by induction. Are they explanatory? This paper addresses the question, based on general principles about explanation. First, a recent argument for a negative answer is discussed and rebutted. Second, a case is made for a qualified positive take on the issue.

This article discusses the current debate between populist and republican accounts of democracy. To talk about democracy is inevitably to talk about the idea of a people and its power. From the beginnings of the Western political tradition, ‘the people’ has referred to both a constituted part of society (populus) and to a part excluded from political society (plebs). The article examines the differences between populism and republicanism in light of the different ways in which these two parts relate to (...) each other, and the resulting conceptions of the power of the people. For populism, the people have power when the plebs achieves hegemony within the populus by wresting control of the state from the ‘wealthy’ elites. According to the alternative republican account developed in this article, instead, the people have power when the plebs inscribes within the state the possibility of abolishing relations of rule. The distinction between these two conceptions of popular power is pursued in terms of the opposing attitudes that populism and republicanism have in relation to the rule of law. The article also raises a hypothesis as to the historical reasons for these distinctions between populism and republicanism by examining three historical moments, which are crucial for the development of plebeian politics: the early Roman republic, the Augustinian foundation of a Christian republic and the crisis of guild republicanism in Machiavelli's age. (shrink)

The fundamental problem proponents of truth conditional semantics must face is to specify what role a truth theory is supposed to play within a meaning theory. The most detailed proposal for tackling this problem is the account developed by Ernest Lepore and Kirk Ludwig. However, as I will show in this paper, theories along the lines of Lepore and Ludwig do not suffice to put someone into the position to understand the objectlanguage. The fundamental problem of truth conditional semantics thus (...) remains unsolved. (shrink)

Is Machiavelli an Epicurean in his political and religious thought? Recent scholarship has identified him as the foremost representative of Epicureanism in Renaissance Florence. In particular, his incomplete epic poem, The Ass, is read as an expression of his adherence to Lucretian naturalism. This article offers a new reading of the poem and shows that its teaching reveals that Machiavelli is closer to a Platonic variant of classical naturalism linked with the idea of a natural virtue modelled on the lives (...) of animals which has been lost through human civilization and progress and to which it is necessary to return periodically. The article focuses on the poem’s claim that civil religion is a necessary component for good laws that maintain a free republic and argues that Machiavelli offers a poetic reflection on the role of Numa as the founder of Roman religion on the model of a neo-Pythagorean philosophical religion that was instrumental in the rise of constitutional government. More than Lucretius’s critique of religion, Machiavelli’s poem can be read as an extended reflection on Plutarch’s texts – above all, his Life of Numa. (shrink)

Rawls and Schmitt are often discussed in the literature as if their conceptions of the political had nothing in common, or even referred to entirely different phenomena. In this essay, I show how these conceptions share a common space of reasons, traceable back to the idea of public reason and its development since the Middle Ages. By analysing the idea of public reason in Rawls and in Schmitt, as well as its relation to their theories of political representation, I show (...) in what way Schmitt's concept of the political cannot be divorced from an idea of justice, while, conversely, Rawls ' conception of justice cannot be divorced from a theory of the political. In that way this paper thematizes the internal relation that each theory establishes between justice and power, deliberation and decision, and consensus and disagreement. (shrink)

The central idea defended here is that ethical judgements are the product of the adaptive advantage provided by the conceptual capacity to categorise learned behaviour. In the same way that evolution of learning required the presence of value-laden brain structures that guide behaviour in the organism, we propose that the evolution of social learning and the development of human culture required the emergence of a new value system — the 'conceptual capacity to categorise'. This capacity is defined as the ability (...) to categorise one's own behaviour through a conceptual value code — 'favourable/unfavourable' or 'good/bad'. The conceptual capacity to categorise learned behaviour as good or bad was evolutionary successful because it transformed a system of rudimentary cultural transmission based on imitation into a system of efficient and biased cultural heredity based on teaching. Conceptual categorisation allowed the acquisition, through social learning, of adaptive information about behaviour, originating in/from the value-laden brain systems which control learning, without resorting to individual experience. We also suggest that the conceptual capacity to categorise conditioned the evolution of the human intelligence and that the ethical capacity arose as a by-product of both high intelligence and the ability to make evaluations of learned behaviour. (shrink)

En el Canto V del Infierno, uno de los pasajes más universalmente conocidos de la Divina Comedia, Dante sugiere la fuerza corruptora de la literatura, desencadenante del adulterio de Paolo y Francesca. Este esquema en que lo literario se convierte en motivo de perdición, reaparece en casos tan conocidos como el de Don Quijote y otros menos conocidos como el dickensiano Nicodemus Boffin de Nuestro común amigo. Estos escritores dejan traslucir en sus obras sus inquietudes respecto a una influencia que (...) simultáneamente buscan y temen sobre los lectores. Sus «libros dentro de los libros» pueden ser interpretados como una vacuna con la que el escritor quiere proveer al lector de las herramientas para protegerse de los efectos perversos de una literatura recibida en clave romántica. Proponemos, siguiendo especialmente a Renato Poggioli, John Freccero o René Girard, una interpretación antirromántica que subraya la actualidad de la arquitectura moral de la Divina Comedia y su ascendencia sobre varios clásicos de la literatura moderna posterior. (shrink)

El objetivo del presente texto es definir cuál es el concepto que Antonio Damasio desarrolla sobre el hombre, lo humano y la inteligencia humana. La tesis principal de Antonio Damasio es la hipótesis del sujeto cerebral, una imagen neural y materialista del hombre fundamentada en el cerebro. Para Antonio Damasio, lo humano se entiende en términos de una compleja interacción entre el cuerpo, la mente y el entorno. Para ello, se exponen tres nociones clave que definen esta idea en Antonio (...) Damasio: la reflexión emocional, la ética sentimental y la teoría gradualista de la conciencia. Ello confluirá en la concepción personal de inteligencia en Damasio quien enfatiza la importancia de la homeostasis en la inteligencia humana. Nuestra capacidad para adaptarnos al entorno y tomar decisiones efectivas está intrínsecamente ligada a nuestra capacidad de regular nuestras necesidades biológicas y emocionales. (shrink)

En el presente análisis se realiza un análisis filosófico y político sobre el proceso de dominación en Colombia, haciendo una mirada de las razones que han mantenido la existencia del conflicto social, político, económico y cultural que ha tenido unas expresiones armadas; posteriormente se abordaran, los efectos culturales que generan la dominación en relación a la dignidad humana y la imagen social. Igualmente se hará una mirada a las salidas políticas, económicas y sociales que se le ha dado al fenómeno (...) en Colombia y por último, algunas conclusiones sobre el tema en cuestión, que más que conclusiones son caminos o alternativas para pensar el problema. (shrink)

This article discusses the question of how Arendt’s mature “neo-Roman” republican political theory relates to her early. It argues that her early reflections on the problem of Jewish politics in modernity already adopt one of the main pillars of her later republican political theory, i.e., the substitution of federalism for sovereignty. The article puts forth the hypothesis that Arendt’s republicanism takes up the idea that Romans and Jews, during their republican periods, both held a “civil” conception of religion. Arendt’s conception (...) of civil religion is analyzed in light of her readings of Virgil. The article concludes that Arendt’s mature political thought is neither “non-religious” nor contains a “political theology” but that it does put forward a civil-religious interpretation of natality and plurality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On Franco-Ferraz, Theism and the Theatre of the Mind MiguelA. Badia-Cabrera In "Theatre andReligiousHypothesis,"1 MariaFranco-Ferraz offersan eloquent and reasoned argument in favour ofa fresh and different sort of hermeneutic approach to the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion as a suitable means to disentangle the web of proverbially difficult philosophical questions posed by Hume in that work. In order to arrive at a coherent understanding ofthe Dialogues as a whole and (...) perhaps also to calm the sense of bafflement which the confrontation with this enigmatical text always provokes, many Hume scholars have taken as a point of departure and clue for unravelling it either one or two of Hume's principal philosophical doctrines or a presumedly unitary view of Hume's philosophy in general. Equipped with one or both of these instruments, they proceed to dissect the arguments of the Dialogues with the intention of determining what Hume's position really is. This task also almost invariably ends by assigning the victory in the dialectical struggle and the representation of the author's 'true' opinions to the character (sometimes even more than one) in whom they are more or less able to find the purest expression ofwhat theyhave previously decided is the kernel oressence ofHume's philosophy. Franco-Ferraz has taken a very different route. For her the key point of the Dialogues lies in the fictional setting in which the theological discussion takes place. She goes on to show that the literary form of the Dialogues is intrinsically connected with its philosophical content so as to serve to elucidate the precise nature ofthe conclusion which is established at the end, in Part XII. In other words, the theatrical structure facilitates a more profound and detailed investigation ofthe problems dealing with the existence and nature of God. In fact, Hume offers no final solutions to these problems and thereby none ofthe characters ofthe Dialogues can properly be said to present the victorious point of view or the one counting with the complete authority ofthe author ofthe play: The most important aspect of this text is the interaction between the different characters' points of view, which, by being in confrontation with each other, undergo reciprocal transformations. (Franco-Ferraz, 228) Volume XVI Number 2 131 MIGUEL A. BADÍA-CABRERA With this one cannot but agree. In addition she clinches her case by 'ai-trull·/ and convincingly showing that there is a profound relation between this theatrical form and some substantive philosophical theses which Hume developed in the Treatise, the first Enquiry, and The Natural History ofReligion. In reality, the theatre metaphor clarifies the sense ofthose philosophical doctrines, which in turn throw light on and corroborate her main contention about the conclusion of the Dialogues. For according to her, any definitive solution to the problems ofnatural theology is not presented at the end by any ofthe characters on behalfofa God-like author (Dieu auteur), and furthermore this deus ex machina solution would conflict especially with Hume's conception of the mind as being une pièce sans théâtre, a drama without a stage (Franco-Ferraz, 234). Such is the substance ofher thesis, if I have succeeded in giving a fairrepresentationofit. I thinkthatherinterpretation providesa novel outlook and one fruitful means ofaccess to an adequate understanding of the Dialogues. But I am quite hesitant with some particular and important aspects ofher reading of that text for the 'inconveniences', in Philo's sense ofthe word, which seem to follow from it, and alsohave a few difficulties in assessing the exact import of one or two of her central claims due to the somewhat vague manner in which, I think, these are formulated. First, at the verybeginningofher paper, Franco-Ferraz quotes the followingpassagefromPartIIIoftheDialoguesin which Demeaobjects to Cleanthes' claim, defended by two very ingenious analogies, that an orderly world like a coherent, articulate speech will always be taken as a sign ofintelligent design: When I read a volume, I enter into the mind and intention of the author: I become him, in a manner, for the instant; and have an immediate feeling and conception of those ideas, which revolved in his imagination, while employed in that composition. (D 155-56) I take issue with... (shrink)

The immense distance between God and creatures is a core statement of Gregory of Nyssa’s thought, which makes it distinctive not only in theology, but also in cosmology, anthropology, and spiritual doctrine. For him, the main distinction between beings that articulates all reality is not that of intelligible and sensible, but the one between infinite God and creatures. This paper, dealing with some selected texts regarding the creation of man, points out the main roots of Gregory’s theism: a high comprehension (...) of God’s transcendence and a proper philosophy of time and creation. From here, Gregory’s understanding of the hierarchy of beings as a non-dialectic unity of creation supported by a transcendent participation in God, and his articulation of Eternity and Time within the unique creative action of God, could be seen as a deep Christian comprehension of reality that is still intriguing for contemporary thinkers. (shrink)

My main concern in this article is to arrive at a clear view of the nature, extent, and value of Descartes’ universal doubt, not to determine whether Hume’s critique of Cartesian doubt is compellin...

It has been traditionally considered that Quantum Mechanics has two conceptual kinds of problems, namely, those related with local-realism and the so-called measurement problem. That is, the uniqueness of the result when we make a measurement. With the development of what is called generically Quantum Information Theory, a new form of the Copenhagen interpretation of the formalism has taken shape.(1) In this paper, we will analyse if this information interpretation is able to clarify these old problems. Although this interpretation seems (...) to be the most promising approach we have, we have reached the conclusion that the answer cannot be given in a positive and clear way yet. (shrink)

La tesis principal de este ensayo estipula que el determinismo causal es una propiedad de la naturaleza y el primer principio de la inteligibilidad natural. Se expresa, por ejemplo, en la frase de Lucrecio: “Nada surge de la nada ni va hacia la nada”. Todo lo que existe es efecto de una red de causas y es a su vez causa de otras cosas. Se sigue que la teoría científica orientada hacia la inteligibilidad —diferente de la ciencia positi-vista y pragmática— (...) es la búsqueda de determinismo causal. El desarrollo de esta tesis utiliza como hilo conductor el pensamiento de René Thom. Esto significa que el determinismo causal se examina en su rela-ción con (I) la estabilidad y la inestabilidad, (II) el desafío de la mecánica cuántica, (III) las raíces aporéticas de la ciencia tal como la dualidad determinismo-indeterminismo, y finalmente (IV) en su relación con el método para ponerlo de manifiesto, es decir la reducción de lo posible —estrategia que es, en este dominio, una de las ideas más originales de Thom.The main thesis of this essay is that causal determinism is a property of nature and the main principle of natural intelligibility. It can be expressed in Lucretius’ words: “Nothing comes out of nothing or passes into nothing”. Everything is the effect of a web of causes and is, in its turn, cause of something else. It follows that the essence of an intelligibility-oriented scientific theory —which is different from science in a positivist or pragmatist sense— is the search for causal determinism. The development of this thesis is guided by René Thom’s thought. This means that causal determinism is analysed, first, in its relation to stability and instability; second, in its relation to the prima facie indeterminism of quantum mechanics; third, in its relation to the aporetic roots of science such as the duality determinism —indeterminism, and, finally, in its relation to the method which allows science to follow the causal determinist ideal: the reduction of the possible— a strategy which is, in this field, one of Thom’s most original ideas. (shrink)

For any $n<\omega $ we construct an infinite $(n+1)$ -generated Heyting algebra whose n-generated subalgebras are of cardinality $\leq m_n$ for some positive integer $m_n$. From this we conclude that for every $n<\omega $ there exists a variety of Heyting algebras which contains an infinite $(n+1)$ -generated algebra, but which contains only finite n-generated algebras. For the case $n=2$ this provides a negative answer to a question posed by G. Bezhanishvili and R. Grigolia in [4].

León-Portilla, M. El pensamiento prehispánico.--O'Gorman, E. América.--Gallegos Rocafull, J. M. La filosofía moderna en la Nueva España.--Villoro, L. Las corrientes ideológicas en la época de la Independencia.--Zea, L. El positivismo.--Salmerón, F. Los de filósofos mexicanos del siglo XX.--Villegas, A. El liberalismo mexicano.

Women have played a prominent role in environmental preservation in all societies, including societies facing serious environmental problems. Women in places like Nigeria’s Niger Delta carry out tasks such as farming, fetching of firewood for domestic use, fetching of water, and the like. These activities involve the use of natural resources and thus make women more vulnerable when there are problems such as oil pollution, gas flaring, and other related activities that endanger the environment. In the Niger Delta women have (...) protested against oil related activities that damage their environment. They have also participated in other events to conserve their environment. The paper adopts an ecofeminist perspective in critiquing environmental mismanagement in the Niger Delta. It highlights the fact that women are prominent in campaigning for a sustainable Niger Delta. There is need for writers from academic and social circles writing on the Niger Delta not to ignore the women’s voices. (shrink)

The literature has shown that the theory of mental models is able to describe human inductive processes. That theory has been related to the structure of inductive inferences, such as Gautama’s Syllogism indicates. On the other hand, the theory of mental models has also been linked to modal system K. This paper argues that there can be a connection between Gautama’s Syllogism and system K, not in rigorous logical deductions but in describing how the human mind can work. They can (...) refer to two different moments of inductive reasoning; the rule of necessitation of K can be a key element in the second of those moments. (shrink)

La teoría de los modelos mentales ofrece una explicación de cómo los seres humanos infieren conclusiones. Tal explicación no es coherente con la lógica clásica. Admite inferencias que son incorrectas en dicha lógica. Dos de esas inferencias son consideradas aquí. Una de ellas permite derivar que las cláusulas de un condicional son posibles si ese condicional es verdadero. La otra autoriza a deducir que las cláusulas de una disyunción son posibles si esa disyunción es verdadera. Recurriendo al modo que en (...) Crisipo de Solos entiende las relaciones condicionales, este trabajo propone dos axiomas que describen las estructuras de esas dos inferencias. La idea es que tales axiomas podrían ser incluidos en un hipotético sistema axiomático que intentara reproducir cómo son los procesos inferenciales humanos. (shrink)

El cuidado de personas dependientes ha sido algo propio y radical del ser humano desde sus orígenes y raramente se plantea un escenario donde la persona que ejerce los cuidados fuere sustituida por un ente cibernético dotado de funcionalidades e inteligencia artificial suficiente como para llevar a cabo dicha labor. Este punto de partida nos ofrece la oportunidad para profundizar en la esencia del sentido del cuidado y la relación que subyace entre la persona que cuida y la persona que (...) es cuidada. (shrink)

The dominant academic paradigm and the main inspiration of anticorruption policies is the economic theory of corruption, according to which anticorruption policies should be focused on raising the costs associated with corrupt behavior. In this article, I provide three reasons to explain why anticorruption interventions in organizations inspired by the economic theory of corruption frequently fail. I contribute to the current literature by integrating the literature on constructive deviance, on personality psychology, and on managerial biases in ethical decision-making into the (...) study of corruption and into the design and implementation of anticorruption interventions. Research propositions are advanced. Research and practice implications are discussed. (shrink)