It has been argued that neural data are an especially sensitive kind of personal information that could be used to undermine the control we should have over access to our mental states, and therefore need a stronger legal protection than other kinds of personal data. The Morningside Group, a global consortium of interdisciplinary experts advocating for the ethical use of neurotechnology, suggests achieving this by treating legally ND as a body organ. Although the proposal is currently shaping ND-related policies, it (...) is not clear what its conceptual and legal basis is. Treating legally something as something else requires some kind of analogical reasoning, which is not provided by the authors of the proposal. In this paper, I will try to fill this gap by addressing ontological issues related to neurocognitive processes. The substantial differences between ND and body organs or organic tissue cast doubt on the idea that the former should be covered by bodily integrity. Crucially, ND are not constituted by organic material. Nevertheless, I argue that the ND of a subject s are analogous to neurocognitive properties of her brain. I claim that s’ ND are a ‘medium independent’ property that can be characterized as natural semantic personal information about her brain and that s’ brain not only instantiates this property but also has an exclusive ontological relationship with it: This information constitutes a domain that is unique to her neurocognitive architecture. (shrink)

The following paper offers a study on how contestation over the meaning of language forged the political ideology present in the second of the Epistulae ad Caesarem. ‘Ideology’ being a notoriously malleable concept, Michael Freeden’s theoretical approach is used to focus what it means, how it is manifested in the sources, and how it can be located and analysed. The political thought of the Late Republic is studied by examining the vocabulary contained in one of the disputed letters that Sallust (...) addressed to Julius Caesar. Taking libertas as a case study of an ‘essentially contested concept’, the relation between language, meaning and ideology is dissected, outlining the morphological configuration that underlies the second Epistula. It is argued that the resulting array of political arguments is one iteration of what has been called popularis ideology. (shrink)

Based on new textual resources, the article reconstructs and analyses St. Augustine’s interpretation of time made by Heidegger. Two moments are to be distinguished: Whereas the first one is basically critical and epitomizes the Augustinian analysis as an analysis of “vulgar time”, the second one reconsiders this judgement. This result is more accurate but also more condescendential with Heidegger’s own approach on time. However, it distorts some Augustinian concepts, which are reviewed in detail.

La pena natural es una situación paradójica que se puede presentar cuando el autor de un delito, al cometerlo o a causa de éste, ha sufrido un daño igual o mayor al que padecería si el juez de la causa le aplicara la pena estatal prevista para tal conducta. Se da con frecuencia al juzgar ciertos accidentes viales, cuando el acusado ya carga el peso de ser quien, por imprudencia, mató a su pareja o familiar cercano, por ejemplo. Pero ¿en (...) qué situaciones y cómo cabe recurrir a la pena natural? En esta investigación, Manuel Serrano explora las diversas aristas y posturas en pugna que atraviesan este tema, donde se cruzan cuestiones como la idea de la “culpa compensada”, la prohibición de aplicar castigo doble por un mismo hecho (non bis in idem) y la clemencia judicial. El autor desmonta la estructura conceptual de la pena natural, estudia jurisprudencia argentina y recorre producciones teóricas de juristas que se han preocupado por este asunto complejo, profundo y poco abordado del derecho penal. (shrink)

The objective of this study has been to establish the level of significance that Gustavo Gutierrez and Juan Luis Segundo attribute to politics in their contributions to liberation theology and to extract the relevant consequences for political theory. ;A systematic analysis of the theory of history in the works of these two authors indicates a higher level of integration between Christianity and politics that is usual in Christian political thought. Liberation is equated with salvation and political liberation is seen as (...) one of its components. This brings politics to a position of privilege. When at the service of justice it occupies, for our authors, a high rank among Christian concerns and when devoted to oppression it requires diligent response from every Christian. ;This understanding of politics is valuable in that it accentuates the political aspect of the Christian theory of history, an element frequently underestimated. Certain tensions remain, however, in the theory as a result of this emphasis: between the moral improvement expected from the involvement in political activities conducive to justice and the moral ambiguity of political structures emerging from such activity; and between the use of the concept of class struggle and notions of conversion and reconciliation. Finally, there is the danger of reducing the critical ability of Christians regarding a particular political project by identifying it with the concept of eschatology. (shrink)

This essay is part of a dossier on Cristina Lafont's book Democracy without Shortcuts.

This paper aims at providing an epistemic defense of democracy based on John Dewey’s idea that democracies do not only find problems and provide solutions to them but they also articulate problems. According to this view, when citizens inquire about collective issues, they also partially shape them. This view contrasts with the standard account of democracy’s epistemic defense, according to which democracy’s is good at tracking and finding solutions that are independent of political will-formation and decision-making. It is also less (...) vulnerable to the criticisms that have been raised against the standard account. To show this, the paper develops a theory of expressive domination and argues that problem-articulation works best when it is inclusive and domination-free. It also shows that democratic conflict represents a fundamental element for problem-articulation. (shrink)

Mudanza (2010) es el primer libro de Verónica Gerber (1981), un libro donde la autora narra la migración que cinco artistas realizaron desde la literatura al arte. En este libro podemos encontrar una suerte de programa de los modos en que la autora ha pensado los traslados entre escritura y visualidad a lo largo de todo su trabajo. En Mudanza, los textos abren una zona de intervalo, de indeterminación, una suerte de tierra de nadie en el corazón de la palabra (...) y de la imagen, como si los escritores devenidos artistas sacrificaran los resultados de esa mudanza para poder explorar todo lo que acontece en ese traslado. Con esa misma ambigüedad escribe Gerber, componiendo textos a medio camino entre la literatura, el ensayo, la autobiografía, la escritura visual. Este artículo indaga en la pregunta por aquello que acontece cuando las imágenes y las palabras salen de sí mismas, perfilando lo que podríamos llamar una escritura figural que hace del intervalo el lugar de una potencia que trabaja en contra del estereotipo y el sentido unívoco. (shrink)

Apoyándonos en la rehabilitación por Antoni Domènech del concepto de fraternidad, pretendemos señalar la necesidad de reintepretar hoy a la luz del mismo el pensamiento político de Marx. Tanto sus escritos de juventud como los de madurez brindan una teoría crítica del Estado y del Derecho que estaría animada por una insobornable inspiración ética. Esta nada tendría que ver con la tan denostada “moralización” de la política. Más bien, en la estela de Levinas, tenderemos a leerla como una an-arquía de (...) lo político que nos obligaría a complementar la tradición histórica del republicanismo. (shrink)

In the present work I am interested in addressing a specific aspect within the conceptual problem that poena naturalis implies. In other words, here I will answer the question about what is the poena naturalis. We can be recognized three theories: one that affirms that the poena naturalis is a compensation for culpability, another according to which the poena naturalis is the product of clemency or compassion, and the last that defends that the principles of legality, proportionality and rationality allow (...) justifying the poena naturalis. I will stop at each one of them in order to carry out a critical examination that will allow me to conclude which is the conception that best supports natural punishment. (shrink)

The two leading theoretical approaches to tort law — economic analysis and corrective justice — are blind to distributive considerations. Moreover, even the main distributive approaches to tort law — loss-spreading and fairness — fail to emphasize egalitarianism as a distributive consideration. This article argues that egalitarianism should influence the normative evaluation of one’s conduct as negligent or not. It first explains why normatively negligence law should be sensitive to the egalitarian concern, suggesting three different accounts for this claim, based (...) on needs, equality, and desert as criteria for distribution. Second, it argues that egalitarianism is commensurate with the basic understanding of negligence law as reflecting corrective justice and notions of fault. The notion of fault is, therefore, reformulated from within, in order to accommodate egalitarianism. Third, I maintain that in order for egalitarianism to accommodate notions of corrective justice, egalitarian concerns should matter also at the stage of the standard of care. While the egalitarian concern can and should be integrated into the duty stage, I argue that such integration is insufficient. A correct and full understanding of the egalitarian concern and the tort of negligence requires a conclusion that the normative evaluation of one’s action as negligent or not cannot be separated from the distributive results that this action entails. The egalitarian concern works at the duty stage as an excuse for not imposing liability for wrongful activity. In contrast, at the standard stage, it works as a justification that turns an otherwise wrongful activity into a legitimate one. My claim is that morally we should usually expect more care from the better-off than from the disadvantaged. Findings of negligence are based on the failure to balance properly between one’s interests and those of another. In deciding to what extent the defendant should burden herself in order to prevent a loss to potential victims, one morally relevant criterion is the relative ability of the injurer and victim to bear precaution costs and expected accident loss, respectively. (shrink)

The present study intended to investigate, first, the impact of semantic clustering on the recall and recognition of incidentally learned words in a new language, and second, how the interaction between semantic clustering and frequency of occurrence may modulate learning. To that end, Spanish university students watched an intentionally created video which contained Spanish target words that were either semantically related to others of the set, or not semantically linked at all. Furthermore, frequency of appearance changed among target words (1|4|8). (...) All these words were paired with pseudowords that appeared as on-screen text during the videos. Participants were completely naive to the phases and the procedure of the experiment. After viewing the video, participants completed a recall test and a recognition test. Results showed that words presented in semantically unrelated categories were better recalled and better recognized than those presented in semantic clusters, especially when the words were presented more often. (shrink)

This study examines to what extent perceived corporate social responsibility reduces employee cynicism, and whether trust plays a mediating role in the relationship between CSR and employee cynicism. Three distinct contributions beyond the existing literature are offered. First, the relationship between perceived CSR and employee cynicism is explored in greater detail than has previously been the case. Second, trust in the company leaders is positioned as a mediator of the relationship between CSR and employee cynicism. Third, we disaggregate the measure (...) of CSR and explore the links between this and with employee cynicism. Our findings illustrate that the four distinct dimensions of CSR of Carroll are indirectly linked to employee cynicism via organizational trust. In general terms, our findings will help company leaders to understand employees’ counterproductive reactions to an organization, the importance of CSR for internal stakeholders, and the need to engage in trust recovery. (shrink)

There is a close relationship between education and citizenship. Liberal political theorists tend to spend much of their work justifying the role of educational institutions in political communities. However, the development of these proposals is usually thought for subjects who do not have disabilities, arbitrarily excluding a significant proportion of society. This not only happens at an educational level, it is replicated in various areas of social life. In this sense, in the present work I am going to propose that (...) the adequacy approach proposed by Debra Satz is extremely valuable to think about the educational equity of people with disabilities. The choice is not accidental or arbitrary. Satz is a renowned philosopher whose interest in education and its importance in forming citizens for diverse and plural societies. To do this, I will begin by presenting three possible models of special education: the special school, integration and inclusion. Then the two paradigms that prevail in the characterization of disability will be addressed: the social model and the medical model. Instead, I will reconstruct the third proposal elaborated by Satz in order to evaluate with which inclusive education model and disability paradigm it is compatible and why it is presented as a valuable proposal in this field. (shrink)

ResumenEn el presente artículo se pretende sacar a la luz los presupuestos filosóficos e ideológicos que subyacen a la teoría del pastiche postmoderno del pensador norteamericano Fredric Jameson. Pese a que las descripciones que se encuentran en La lógica cultural del capitalismo tardío son breves y escuetas, los fundamentos marxistas y estructuralistas que las ahorman ayudan a entenderla. En paralelo, se explica una de sus tesis más desconocidas, la relativa a la llamada «película nostálgica», y se explica su actitud ante (...) otras manifestaciones artísticas postmodernas como la arquitectura historicista.Palabras clavePostmodernismo, pastiche, Fredric Jameson, arquitectura postmoderna, película nostálgicaAbstractThis paper intends to clarify the philosophical and ideological backgrounds that underlie the North American thinker Fredric Jameson’s theory of the postmodern pastiche. Despite the fact that the descriptions provided in Postmodernisms, Or the Cultural Logic of Capitalism are brief and succinct, the Marxist and Structuralist foundations that form them can help understand thistheory. In parallel, we explain one of his lesser known theses, the so called «nostalgic movie», and his attitude towards other artistic postmodern manifestations as the historicist architecture.KeywordsPostmodernism, pastiche, Fredric Jameson, postmodern architecture, nostalgic movie. (shrink)

Contra el prejuicio que ve en la deconstrucción a una «enemiga» de las ciencias, este texto pretende exponer cómo la obra de Derrida tuvo siempre presente el conocimiento científico, y más aún, en qué sentido constituye una poderosa perspectiva para su «crítica y rectificación», eminentemente en el ámbito de las ciencias de la vida. Se intenta igualmente mostrar cómo la economía general de la deconstrucción tiene problemas para adecuarse al marco del neo-darwinismo imperante, y cómo una deconstrucción efectiva de la (...) biología actual, urgente y necesaria, deberá contar con las propuestas más «heterodoxas» que en el terreno biológico han ido surgiendo en los últimos cuarenta años, como las de Máximo Sandín o de Eric D. Schneider.  . (shrink)