Ao tratar da obediência e banalidade do mal em Hannah Arendt, ensejamos discutir o estatuto da obediência e colocar essa em exame via reflexão. Desse modo, entendemos que a obediência sem reflexão pode ser um contra valor capaz de promover o mal. Nessa direção, a resistência pela reflexão e pela ação podem servir de barreiras para obstar esse mal. Elegemos a figura do pária rebelde como paradigma exemplar de resistência pelo que chamamos de uma desobediência ética que se ocupa da (...) responsabilidade pelo mundo. Escolhemos como metodologia a exegese textual já consagrada nos estudos de filosofia. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta a teoria supervalorativista da vagueza e discute a objecção, que frequentemente lhe é dirigida, segundo a qual essa teoria não consegue dar conta do fenómeno da vagueza de ordem superior.

The semantic paradoxes are a family of arguments – including the liar paradox, Curry’s paradox, Grelling’s paradox of heterologicality, Richard’s and Berry’s paradoxes of definability, and others – which have two things in common: first, they make an essential use of such semantic concepts as those of truth, satisfaction, reference, definition, etc.; second, they seem to be very good arguments until we see that their conclusions are contradictory or absurd. These arguments raise serious doubts concerning the coherence of the concepts (...) involved. This article will offer an introduction to some of the main theories that have been proposed to solve the paradoxes and avert those doubts. Included is also a brief history of the semantic paradoxes from Eubulides to Tarski and Curry. (shrink)

Most words in natural language are vague, that is to say, they lack sharp boundaries and, hence, they have (actual or potential) borderline cases, where the word in question neither definitely applies nor definitely fails to apply. Vagueness gives rise to paradoxes, the best known of which is the sorites (concerned with how many grains of sand are needed to make a heap). Besides offering a solution to such paradoxes, a theory of vagueness should systematically describe how the truth conditions (...) of sentences with vague terms are determined; and it should also define the right logical principles for reasoning with such sentences. This article offers an introduction to the main theories of vagueness and to the problems they have to face. (shrink)

El presente trabajo explora la concepción del hombre sobre la cual reposan la Ética de la Empresa (EE) y la Responsabilidad Social de la Empresa (RSE). Según el resultado de esta investigación, dicha noción es una concepción mixtificada del hombrela cual puede funcionar como ideología en el sentido de Marx y Engels (1982). Así la vocación humanística de la EE, la RSE, está confrontada a su carácter de útil de la administración bajo la égida del modo de vida burgués. Esta (...) contradicción se expresa en la práctica que busca el ejercicio de la honestidad, la justicia y la responsabilidad por parte de los líderes de las empresas privadas, frente a los objetivos económicos, morales y sociales de éstas. Así por un lado, existe la aspiración universal y humanista (igualdad, fraternidad, seguridad, justicia y respeto al hombre y su medio ambiente) de la empresa; y por el otro, el primado del trabajo alienado capitalista. Esta contradicción fundamental origina del problema moral de la empresa y los negocios de nuestra época, el cual aparece como irresoluble dentro del contexto del modo de vida capitalista. (shrink)

The awareness of educators in the health sciences with respect to promoting ethical conduct when instructing dental students is reflected in the undergraduate curriculum. This study is intended to discover the different ways these subjects are taught. A manual review of the literature published in databases indexed in SciELO during the years from 1999 to 2014 was done to that end, under the heading health sciences, humanities, applied social sciences, specifically literature that can be accessed in full, free of charge (...) and anonymously. Also reviewed was the literature in two specialized journals in the area of health education; namely, the Journal of Dental Education and the Journal of Medical Education, with the same titles, during the same period, and through the PubMed search engine, via Medline. The results show 43 articles of thematic relevance. The conclusion is that education in bioethics, as part of the undergraduate curriculum at dental schools, is increasing and differs according to the educational and cultural environment where it is imparted. Case-based learning and problem-based learning are mentioned as being the most efficient methods of instruction. Training dentists to be well-rounded professionals requires these subjects to be taught by interdisciplinary teams that are sufficiently prepared to do so. (shrink)

Learning equivalence classes of acyclic models with latent and selection variables from multiple datasets with overlapping variables is discussed. The problem of inferring the presence of latent variables, their relation to the observables, and the relation among themselves, is considered. A different approach for identifying causal structures, one that results in much simpler equivalence classes, is provided. It is found that the computational cost is much higher than the procedure implemented, but if datasets are individually of modest dimensionality, it might (...) be doable in practice. From the point of view of search algorithms for optimizing structure, much of the machinery of combinatorial optimization could optimize the penalized composite likelihood score by enforcing constraints such that the independence models over different subsets of variables agree on the overlapping sets. (shrink)

En este trabajo me propongo desarrollar un estudio crítico de la concepción mecanicista de la explicación científica. En primer lugar, argumento que la caracterización mecanicista de los modelos fenoménicos (no explicativos) es inadecuada, pues no ofrece un análisis aceptable de los conceptos de modelo científico y similitud, que son fundamentales para la propuesta. En segundo lugar, sostengo que la caracterización de los modelos mecanicistas (explicativos) es igualmente inadecuada, pues los análisis disponibles de la relación explicativa de relevancia constitutiva implican una (...) tesis metafísica que es rechazada por los mismos mecanicistas. Concluyo que el mecanicismo no ofrece todavía una elucidación aceptable de la explicación científica. In this paper, I offer a critical assessment of the mechanicist approach to scientific explanation. Firstly, I argue that the mechanicist characterization of (non explanatory) phenomenological models is inadequate, since it does not develop an explication of the concepts of scientific model and similarity, which are indispensable to the approach. Secondly, I claim that the mechanicist conception of (explanatory) mechanicist models is inadequate as well, since all the available analices of the explanatory relation of constitutive relevance imply a metaphysical thesis that is rejected by the mechanicists themselves. I conclude that mechanicism needs to be emended if it aims to be considered as a genuinely illuminating approach to scientific explanation. (shrink)

Science fiction has been an inexhaustible source for the creation of technoscientific imaginary that has marked certain historical periods and influenced the production of subjectivity. This imaginary evokes complex ontological, epistemological, political, social, environmental and existential questions on the present and the future. The aim of this study was to identify and characterize the cultural productions accessed by the public to form an opinion about the genetic manipulation of human beings. A survey about sources of information that influence opinions on (...) the genetic manipulation of human beings was applied to 360 medical students (70.8% female). Movies were the most commonly mentioned source of information, followed by books, documentaries, news programs, television series, informational videos, soap operas and videogames. Science fiction was the most frequent genre and dystopian views of the future of humanity predominated. (shrink)

Title in English: "Being a certain way without being definitely that way: a problem for supervaluationism". I argue that the supervaluationist theory of vagueness, in its most common version, is committed to a thesis – viz., the incompatibility between being-F and not-being-definitely-F – which is doubtful, unjustified and in conflict with the definition of super-truth as truth in all admissible precisifications of a vague language.

Estamos inmersos en un contexto de utilidad donde no se le encuentra un sentido funcional al saber filosófico, motivo por el cual se ha intentado desplazar de la formación educativa. Es ahora cuando es más urgente defender la importancia que la filosofía sigue teniendo en la vida diaria, demostrar a las personas el papel tan relevante que desempeña en sus vidas, que estén convencidos de que no es una materia prescindible en la actualidad, sino que ante los problemas que se (...) nos presentan, filosofar se hace cada vez más necesario.La presente investigación tiene como hipótesis que la filosofía es un saber esencial que el ser humano tiene que seguir cultivando a pesar de los cambios que la ciencia y la tecnología han traído a nuestra cotidianidad. Se centra en analizar cuáles han sido las barreras que le han impedido al saber filosófico dar a conocer a la sociedad en general su objetivo y relevancia de ser estudiada. (shrink)

Marsílio de Pádua foi um pensador da Idade Média que escreveu duas obras de filosofia política que influenciaram a modernidade. Este estudo analisa o capítulo 17 da primeira parte do Defensor Pacis, onde se trata da unidade do governo ou do principado. Se houver muitos em número ou espécie, tal como acontece nas grandes cidades e, em particular, em um reino, aí deve haver então um supremo governante, a quem os demais estejam subordinados e por quem sejam dirigidos. Trata-se de (...) uma unidade de ordem, não de uma unidade absoluta, ou seja, de muitos homens considerados ou de um conjunto de pessoas, que se afirma constituir algo único quantitativa- mente. (shrink)

Porventura, o principal problema a enfrentar em Filosofia Normativa é aquele que designarei de ‘problema da compatibilidade’: as normas têm duas características essenciais, a necessidade e a violabilidade, que parecem ser incompatíveis. De acordo com a primeira das características intrínsecas das normas, se p é obrigatório, então p tem de ser verdadeira. De acordo com a segunda das características intrínsecas das normas, mesmo sendo p obrigatório, p pode não ser verdadeira. A capacidade para acomodar esta aparente natureza paradoxal das normas (...) constitui o teste derradeiro de verdade de uma tese em Filosofia Normativa. Defendo que só uma tese passa este teste: a semântica condicional, fortemente inspirada no que Husserl diz nas Investigações Lógicas. Esta tese rivaliza directamente com a semântica dos mundos ideais, surgida a par do desenvolvimento da Lógica Deôntica no século XX. Para a semântica dos mundos ideais, ‘p é obrigatório’ significa ‘p é uma verdade em todos os mundos possíveis que são os ideais’. Como o mundo atual não é um mundo ideal, fica explicado o facto de p poder não ser verdadeira no mundo atual, mesmo havendo necessidade. E se o mundo atual for um mundo ideal? Continua a não haver violabilidade: a verdade de ‘p é obrigatório’ no mundo atual garante a verdade de ‘p’ no mundo atual. Seguindo a semântica dos mundos ideais, as normas são invioláveis em todos os mundos ideais. Nesta dissertação, defendo que o termo ‘necessário’ é ambíguo e que, no contexto normativo, é usado de um modo particular: não designa o conceito modal de necessidade mas o conceito de indispensabilidade. Dizer que p é normativamente necessário é o mesmo que dizer que p é indispensável (para alguma coisa). Ora, é possível que ‘p’ seja indispensável e falsa simultaneamente. (shrink)

La cultura de la sociedad global habitualmente asocia la palabra animal con vertebrados. Paradójicamente, la mayor parte de la diversidad animal está compuesta por pequeños organismos que permanecen invisibles en la cultura global y están sub-representados en la filosofía, las ciencias y la educación. La ciencia del siglo veintiuno ha desentrañado que muchos invertebrados tienen conciencia y capacidad de sentir dolor. Estos descubrimientos apelan a los filósofos de la ética animal a ser más inclusivos y reevaluar la participación de los (...) invertebrados en la comunidad moral. La ciencia también ha advertido sobre la desaparición de los pequeños co-habitantes animales en medio de la sexta extinción masiva. Esta extinción “invisible” apela a los filósofos ambientales a visibilizar a los invertebrados, cuya existencia es preciosa en sí misma y para el funcionamiento de los ecosistemas de los cuales dependen la biodiversidad y las sociedades humanas. Con un enfoque biocultural que integra dimensiones biofísicas y culturales de la biodiversidad, investigo las raíces del chovinismo taxonómico asociado con la sub-representación y la subordinación de los invertebrados en la filosofía y las ciencias modernas. Las malas noticias son que constatamos un marcado vertebratismo en el imaginario animal. Las buenas noticias son que David Hume, Charles Darwin y la ética biocultural proporcionan bases conceptuales para cultivar un aprecio por los pequeños co-habitantes con quienes compartimos nuestros hábitats locales y la biosfera global. (shrink)

In this paper I explore whether three different approaches to connexivity – namely, Lewis and Langford’s, Wansing’s and Egré and Politzer’s – can be non-trivially related. Lewis and Langford’s approach consists of the definition of the conditional in terms of consistency via the definition of possibility in terms of consistency and Lewis’ definition of the (strict) conditional in terms of possibility; Wansing’s approach is based on his definition of the falsity condition for the conditional as “if A is true then (...) B is false”; Egré and Politzer’s approach relies on the modalization of the falsity condition for the conditional in its conditional form (A→◇~B). With this background in mind, I build upon Estrada-González’s work relating connexivism and possibilism, the thesis according to which everything is possible. Estrada-González’s work relates Lewis and Langford’s connexive approach with Nelson’s idea that every proposition is self-consistent. He does so using a fragment of LP augmented with a special conditional. This relation has resulted in the study and postulation of several truth-functional modalities, some of which have already been discussed elsewhere. I employ several truth-functional modalities to evaluate Egré and Politzer’s falsity conditions for the conditional. I show that in using Béziau’s truth-functional modality ◇B, definable in Estrada-González’s framework, one can retain in a single framework the three different approaches. More specifically, distinguishing the notion of logical equivalence from the notion of interderivability and these two from the notion of coimplication, it is possible to relate ~(A→B) and (A→◇~B) as interderivable schemas and in a valid biconditional. I also show some consequences of this for Béziau’s negative appraisal of three-valued truthfunctional modalities. (shrink)

En el presente artículo estudiaremos el contacto fecundo entre la ontología del cuerpo y la religión en el pensamiento del joven Michel Henry entre 1946 y 1949, tiempo durante el cual escribió su Philosophie et Phénoménologie du Corps. La elaboración sistemática de las intuiciones biranianas le sirvió a Henry para elaborar una original ontología del cuerpo como ciencia primera de la que la religión no sería sino una producción humana simbolizadora de los caracteres esenciales de la vida subjetual corporalizada. Así (...) pues, la religión manifiesta de modo existencial la eidética corporalizada, en especial con el concepto de pecado, el cual no pertenece a la esencia de la vida del cuerpo sino a su caída, apuntando a la salvación como su propia superación. En el joven Henry, la religión, en especial la cristiana con la doctrina del pecado, es útil porque expresa en un lenguaje simbólico que la vida del cuerpo, vivido subjetivamente, es el poder principal tanto de la condenación como de la salvación. (shrink)

'Estética da contradição' tem como objetivo constituir o corpo crítico da contradição no seio da história da estética em seus mais significativos momentos. O conceito de contradição estética é um universo autônomo, simultaneamente constituído e integrado.

The ability to identify the mineral composition of rocks and softs is an important tool for the exploration of geological sites. For instance, NASA intends to design robots that are sufficiently autonomous to perform this task on planetary missions. Spectrometer readings provide one important source of data for identifying sites with minerals of interest. Reflectance spectrometers measure intensities of light reflected from surfaces over a range of wavelengths. Spectral intensity patterns may in some cases be sufficiently distinctive for proper identification (...) of minerals or classes of minerals. For some mineral classes, carbonates for example, specific short spectral intervals are known to carry a distinctive signature. Finding similar distinctive spectral ranges for other mineral classes is not an easy problem. We propose and evaluate data-driven techniques that automatically search for spectral ranges optimized for specific minerals. In one set of studies, we partition the whole interval of wavelengths available in our data into sub-intervals, or bins, and use a genetic algorithm to evaluate a candidate selection of subintervals. As alternatives to this computationally expensive search technique, we present an entropy-based heuristic that gives higher scores for wavelengths more likely to distinguish between classes, as well as other greedy search procedures. Results are presented for four different classes, showing reasonable improvements in identifying some, but not all, of the mineral classes tested. (shrink)

Resenha ao livro "Maquiavelianas: lições de política republicana", do professor Sérgio Cardoso (USP).

Comparação entre as duas versões da dedução kantiana dos conceitos puros do entendimento, a da 1ª edição de 1781 e a de 1787. Focam-se aqui principalmente as discrepâncias referentes à dedução objetiva, isto é, aquela encarregada de demonstrar que as categorias são as condições de possibilidade dos objetos de experiência.

This article proposes a perspective in which everything that contacts a human being has for him (or her) a message. At the same time, it states that every message is co-created; this means that each single message evolves to a new one once it reaches its receptor.

During our current free market era, a prevailing utilitarian ethics centered on monetary cost benefit analyses continues overriding incessantly a plethora of diverse forms of ecological knowledge and ethics present in the communities of South America, and other regions of the world. For the first time in human history, more than 50% of the world’s population lives in cities, and speaks only one of eleven dominant languages, loosing contact with the vast biodiversity and the 7,000 languages that are still spoken (...) around the planet. This global urban enclosure and biocultural homogenization generates physical barriers and conceptual barriers that hinder the understanding of the inextricable links between the habitats of a region, the inhabitants and their habits. However, these vital links are acutely recognized in at least three families of worldviews: contemporary ecological sciences, ancestral Amerindian ecological knowledge, and Western pre-Socratic philosophical roots expressed in the archaic meaning of ethos, and ethics. South American post-Columbian history shows that large-scale exploitation, as well as monocultures that replace native habitats, have been repeatedly associated with ephemeral economic booms that left behind degraded social and ecological environments. A historical analysis of post-Columbian Chile illustrates how a unique mosaic of ecosystems and biological species, cultures, and languages have been progressively replaced by a few biological species and a uniform language and culture. These biocultural homogenization processes are the outcome of a violent conquest, overpowering the resistance of local inhabitants, and today’s scale of violent suppression of biological and cultural diversity is greater than ever. Instead of a post-colonial period we are living in the middle of an ultra-colonial era. To counterbalance these trends, at the southern end of the Americas, through inter-institutional and international collaborations led by the Chilean University of Magallanes and the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity and the University of North Texas in the US, we developed a methodological approach that we call “field environmental philosophy.". (shrink)