No soy periodista. Debo confesar que tampoco he buscado, para mi primera ocasión como entrevistadora, ninguna información acerca de los procedimientos aceptados como válidos para esta forma de comunicación. Y menos aún, no pensaba saber cómo se hace una entrevista de corte académico o científico. Pero las cosas pasan por algo y no todo se resuelve dominando pasos o procedimientos. Dejarme llevar por la fluidez de verbo y pensamiento de mi entrevistado, me ha hecho sentirme muy cómoda. El tiempo transcurrió (...) de manera tan natural que mi guión prestablecido fue desdibujándose. Fue un pasear por las vivencias y asombrosos pensamientos de un sabedor y aprendiente, infinito. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es investigar la relación entre el uso de Internet, la motivación y la participación política. En concreto nos interesa descubrir si el uso de Internet cambia la importancia que se da a la motivación política en las explicaciones clásicas de la participación. Para examinar esta cuestión, se ha empleado la encuesta 2736 del Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS) que versa sobre participación política y usos de Internet. Los análisis muestran que el uso de Internet tiene (...) un efecto positivo sobre la participación, independientemente del interés por la política, y que los usuarios de Internet que son habilidosos con este medio no necesitan estar motivados o interesados en la política para participar al menos en una actividad política por Internet. (shrink)

O presente artigo busca traçar um estudo político-filosófico e se dedica a articular as nuances do conceito arendtiano de ação, sobre o entendimento do agir humano dentro do espaço público. Observar as nuances e a imprevisibilidade pela qual a ação humana é expressa frente à convivência entre iguais e diferentes no espaço público é enxergar a forma com a qual as singularidades humanas e o fenômeno da revelação das identidades se tornam evidentes. Dessa maneira, o objetivo geral do presente trabalho (...) se perfaz em analisar como a dimensão política do conceito arendtiano de ação está ligada à busca da liberdade do indivíduo no espaço público. Dessa forma, busca-se entender as interações interpessoais em meio a pluralidade humana e a procura pela liberdade frente ao mundo das aparências. (shrink)

O ensaio propõe a leitura de duas estórias de Guimarães Rosa, “A terceira margemdo rio”, de Primeiras estórias, e “Desenredo”, de Tutameia, as quais, em algum momento, serãocotejadas com Bartleby, o escrivão, de Melville. Partindo dos títulos rosianos, deduzir-se-ãoduas potências, uma neutralizadora que abdica de tudo, a outra, também neutralizadora, quequer tudo, propondo, por fim, uma ideia de leitura que se encerra nas estórias.

In this article, I first address the ethical considerations about football and show that a meritocratic-fairness view of sports fails to capture the phenomenon of football. Fairness of result is not at centre stage in football. Football is about the drama, about the tension and the emotions it provokes. This moves us to the realm of aesthetics. I reject the idea of the aesthetics of football as the disinterested aesthetic appreciation, which traditionally has been deemed central to aesthetics. Instead, I (...) argue that we should try and develop an agon aesthetics where our aesthetic appreciation is understood as involving and being embedded in our engagement in the game. The drama of football is staged but not scripted. The aesthetics of competitions like football matches—the agon aesthetics—lies in engaging in the conflict that a competition is, while being aware that the conflict is not over ordinary world or everyday life issues, but unnecessary and invented for the very purpose of having a conflict to enjoy. (shrink)

Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, Volume 6, Issue 3, Page 401-406, August 2012.

In this paper I address the topic of sport records and concentrate on the ontology of sport records. I argue that sport records are social facts in the sense that sport records not only depend on the physical facts of sport competitions, but also on the attitude we take towards the phenomenon—our attitude is partly constitutive of the phenomenon of sport records. In particular, the Mieto–Wassberg incident and the Larsson–McKee incident show that performance records should also be regarded as social (...) facts. Lastly, I show how my view sits with the view that sports are response-sensitive. I argue that the latter gives us further reason to believe that sport records, in particular performance records, are social facts. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo analizamos críticamente el modo en que el Estructuralismo Empirista de van Fraassen caracteriza la relación de representación entre las teorías y los fenómenos. Nuestro objetivo es ofrecer argumentos que destaquen el papel del objeto en la construcción de modelos de datos. Asimismo, nos proponemos mostrar que la opción metodológica sugerida en su obra reciente resulta insuficiente para recuperar un vínculo plausible entre los modelos de datos y los fenómenos.

Alfred Archer recently argued that there is good reason to think that sporting supererogation exists. In the present paper, I take a closer look at Archer’s two key cases from association football...

Las teorías de la referencia puramente descriptivistas o causales fracasan a la hora de dar cuenta del modo en que se fija y puede rastrearse la referencia de los términos teóricos. Psillos propuso dos versiones del descriptivismo causal que recogen argu-mentos presentes en defensas previas de dicha posición. Se trata de una teoría mixta que pretende solucionar el problema y acomodarse a intuiciones presentes en enfo-ques alternativos, como el que apela a oraciones de Ramsey. El artículo se propone mostrar la (...) insuficiencia del descriptivismo causal como solución al problema de la referencia de los términos teóricos. (shrink)

Tanto le debo a Lelio Fernández... La enumeración incompleta de esa deuda me lleva a mis años de filosofía en Cali, Colombia, de 1985 a 1989. En sus clases, gracias al placer por la lectura en detalle, Lelio contagiaba con la emoción de querer entender; lograba conectarnos con la historia de la cultura sin desplegar ninguna ayuda “audio-visual”; transmitía su deseo de estar siempre saboreando las obras de Baruch Spinoza (1632‒1677) y de Jorge Luis Borges (1899‒1986); se limitaba a sentarse (...) detrás de un escritorio en los salones de clase, hablando bajo y con precisión y con emoción contenida; era necesario llegar casi dos horas antes a ese salón de clase en la Universidad del Valle para no estar obligado a medio-escuchar sus pensamientos en el corredor; me ayudó en la traducción de los apartes en latín, y aún no publicados en castellano, que Umberto Eco (1932‒2016) incluyó en El nombre de la rosa; y tradujo al castellano, con Jean-Paul Margot, el Breve tratado de la reforma del entendimiento también de Spinoza. (shrink)

In the paper, I present Christopher Gauker's critique of the view that we talk to each other as a way to make ourselves understood (the received view of linguistic communication) and his alternative theory. I show that both his critique and his alternative fail, and defend the received view of linguistic communication.

Kripke complained that counterpart theory makes modal claims be about counterparts and not about us, and that it is a misguided model of modality since we do not care about counterparts in the same way we care about ourselves. The first part of the complaint, I argue, has been met by Hazen and Lewis, while the second can be countered by observing that most of our modal concerns are about role‐fillers and that counterparts are well‐suited to such concerns. The role‐filler (...) analysis of modal concerns, however, does not seem to capture certain attitudes ‐ especially that of regret. Regret, however, I will argue, is not intrinsically modal and thus is no challenge to my general analysis of modal concerns. (shrink)

Resumen Un diagnóstico más que difundido acerca de la obra de Lakatos señala que su proyecto soslayó por completo la cuestión de la verdad como parte central del análisis del conocimiento científico. En una línea semejante, Hacking afirma que Lakatos encontró en la metodología un sustituto para la verdad. Incluso quienes descreen de estas interpretaciones acuerdan respecto de que Lakatos falla en dar cuenta de la relación entre el desarrollo del conocimiento y el aumento de la verosimilitud. En el presente (...) trabajo argumento que el problema de la verdad es central al proyecto filosófico de Lakatos, y es posible construir una interpretación alternativa en la que su proyecto de establecer un vínculo entre método y verdad pueda tenerse como exitoso. Propongo una lectura davidsoniana que adjudica a Lakatos un realismo epistémico.A widespread interpretation of Lakatos’ work says his project completely sidestepped the question of truth as a central part of the analysis of scientific knowledge. In a similar vein, Hacking states that Lakatos found in methodology a substitute for truth. Even those who are skeptical of these interpretations agree that Lakatos failed to give an account of the relation between the growth of knowledge and increasing verisimilitude. In this paper I maintain that the problem of truth is central to Lakatos’ philosophical project, and it is possible to develop an alternative interpretation in which his project to establish a link between method and truth can be seen as successful. I put forward a Davidsonian interpretation that ascribes to Lakatos an epistemic realism. (shrink)

Resumen En la filosofía de Lakatos existe una tensión entre falibilismo y optimismo epistemológico. En el presente artículo propongo la reconstrucción de dos elementos clave para resolver positivamente esa tensión: una noción de verdad empírica, que neutralice el convencionalismo, y una noción de verdad parcial, que dé cuenta de la creciente verosimilitud de los programas de investigación. Para esto último, reviso un aspecto de la obra de Lakatos frecuentemente ignorado por los críticos: su posición en el debate acerca de las (...) leyes de la naturaleza.There is a tension between fallibilism and epistemological optimism in Lakatos’s philosophy. This article proposes the reconstruction of two key elements to positively resolve such tension: a notion of empirical truth that could neutralize conventionalism, and a notion of partial truth, capable to account for the increasing verisimilitude of research programs. For the latter, I review one aspect of Lakatos’s work often ignored by the critics: his position on the debate regarding laws of nature. (shrink)

The Chomskian holds that the grammars that linguists produce are about human psycholinguistic structures, i.e. our mastery of a grammar, our linguistic competence. But if we encountered Martians whose psycho-linguistic processes differed from ours, but who nevertheless produced sentences that are extensionally equivalent to the set of sentences in our English and shared our judgements on the grammaticality of various English sentences, then we would count them as being competent in English. A grammar of English is about what the Martians (...) and we share. In this note, I argue that a recent attack on the Martian Argument by Laurence fails to mitigate its force. (shrink)

Disagreements about scientific ontology have frequently been reconstructed as the result of a dispute between rival epistemic stances. In this paper, (i) we characterize some of these disagreements as deep disagreements. In addition, we show that deep disagreements about scientific ontology can arise not only from the adoption of different epistemic stances, but also between positions that fall within the same stance. The development of this point allows us, in turn, to establish a distinction between types of deep disagreement and (...) to explore the possibility that there are differences of degree between them. (shrink)

RESUMO Os debates sobre o Realismo Científico não só tiveram um começo e um desenvolvimento contemporâneos aos do Realismo Modal e Realismo Nomológico, mas suas temáticas estiveram também profundamente entrelaçadas. Certa atitude realista em relação às teorias científicas tem sido muitas vezes acompanhada pela adoção de compromissos com a modalidade objetiva e as leis naturais. No entanto, as relações entre estas três posições têm sido pouco exploradas. Neste artigo defendo que manter o RC indiretamente envolve assumir compromissos com o RM (...) e o RN. No primeiro caso, por causa dos argumentos que dão suporte ao RC; no segundo, uma vez que, dentro das alternativas disponíveis no debate sobre as leis, o RN é comparativamente melhor para o realista científico. ABSTRACT Debates on scientific realism not only had a beginning and contemporary developments before those on Modal Realism and on Nomological Realism, also their thematics were deeply entangled. Some realist attitude regarding other scientific theories has many times been followed by the adoption of commitments with an objective modality and the natural laws. Nevertheless, the relations among these three positions have been little explored. In this article I hold that keeping SR indirectly means committing to MR and NR. In the first case, because of the arguments supporting SR, in the second case, once within the options available in the debate on the laws, NR is - by comparison - better for the scientific realism. (shrink)

I propose a new interpretation of Spinoza’s obscure but important concept of ‘expression’. Any account of Spinozistic expression must be able to fulfil two principal requirements. First, it must be...

There is empirical evidence suggesting a positive link between direct experiences in nature and people’s environmental attitudes (EA) and behaviors (EB). This has led researchers to encourage more frequent contact with nature, especially during childhood, as a way of increasing pro-environmentalism (i.e., pro-EA and pro-EB). However, the association between experiences in nature and EA/EB is complex, and specific guidelines for people’s everyday contact with nature cannot be provided. This article offers an overview of the research conducted until know about the (...) relation between experiences in nature and pro-environmentalism, and opens up new inquiries for future research. We begin with an introduction to people’s current tendency toward an alienation from the natural world and set out the objectives of the article. It is followed by three main sections. The first one reports on what experiences in nature refer to, how and where they occur. The second section describes the different approaches used to investigate and interpret the experiences in nature-EA and EB relation. The last section provides suggestions for future research. We close by making some final remarks about the importance of (re)stablishing a greater interaction with nature for people’s pro-EA and EB. (shrink)

El problema de cómo un modelo teórico —i.e., una entidad matemática—puede representar algo en la naturaleza es central para el EstructuralismoEmpirista (EE) de van Fraassen. Su solución consiste en identificar unelemento indexical presente en toda aserción de la forma “X representa aY”. El presente trabajo pretende mostrar que: (a) dicho problema no es unobstáculo para el realismo más de lo que lo es para el EE; (b) la soluciónde van Fraassen deja al defensor del EE ante un dilema fatal: o (...) bien nopuede dar cuenta de algunos de los supuestos más básicos de su posición,o bien debe conceder demasiado al realismo. (shrink)

John Searle has argued that the aim of strong AI to create a thinking computer is misguided. Searle's "Chinese Room Argument" purports to show that syntax does not suffice for semantics and that computer programs as such must fail to have intrinsic intentionality But we are not mainly interested in the program itself, but rather the implementation of the program in some material. It does not follow by necessity from the fact that computer programs are defined syntactically that the implementation (...) of them cannot suffice for semantics. Perhaps our world is a world in which any implementation of the right computer program will create a system with intrinsic intentionality, in which case Searle's "Chinese Room Scenario" is empirically impossible. But perhaps our world is a world in which Searle's "Chinese Room Scenario" is empirically possible, and the silicon basis of modern-day computers is one kind of material unsuited to give you intrinsic intentionality. The metaphysical question turns out to be a question of what kind of world we are in, and I argue that in this respect we do not know our model address. The "Model Address Argument" does not ensure that strong AI will succeed, but it shows that Searle's challenge to the research program of strong AI fails in its objectives. (shrink)

RESUMEN Un experimento mental en ciencias fácticas consiste en la representación de un escenario imaginario. A partir de la presentación de condiciones iniciales y la postulación de una situación hipotética o contrafáctica, se solicita al lector que realice mentalmente alguna operación, manipule ciertas variables o ponga en funcionamiento algún aparato o instrumento. En virtud de este ejercicio sería posible, en principio, obtener nuevo conocimiento acerca de algún aspecto del mundo natural. El debate acerca de las funciones de los experimentos mentales (...) en las ciencias fácticas está centrado en establecer la validez del conocimiento acerca del mundo empírico que estos dispositivos son capaces de proporcionar. La propuesta interpretativa de Brown da sustento a la idea de que, en casos excepcionales, los experimentos mentales pueden cumplir funciones probatorias. Los denominados “experimentos mentales platónicos” permiten intuir leyes de la naturaleza y justificar a priori las hipótesis propuestas. Sostenemos que la conexión trazada por Brown entre los experimentos mentales y leyes naturales exhibe un aspecto problemático de su filosofía: el compromiso injustificado con una metafísica inflacionaria. Mostramos que es posible explicar el mecanismo a través del cual estos dispositivos proporcionan conocimiento nuevo y dar cuenta tanto de su poder heurístico cómo de su valor evidencial a partir compromisos metafísicos más modestos. ABSTRACT Thought experiments in factual science consists on the representation of an imaginary scenario. Starting with the presentation of a hypothetical or counterfactual situation and the description of initial conditions, the reader is asked to mentally perform some operation, to manipulate certain variables or to put into operation some apparatus or instrument. In virtue of this exercise, it would be possible to obtain new knowledge about the natural world. The debate on the functions of thought experiments in physics is focused on determining the validity of the empirical knowledge that these devices are capable of providing. Brown supports the idea that, in exceptional cases, thought experiments can perform probative functions. The so-called “Platonic Thought Experiments” allow us to intuit laws of nature and provide an a priori justification of the proposed hypotheses. We hold that Brown's connection between thought experiments and laws of nature exhibits a problematic aspect of his philosophy: the unjustified commitment with an inflationary metaphysics. We show that it is possible to explain the mechanism through which these devices provide new knowledge and give an account of both their heuristic power and their evidential value from modest metaphysical commitments. (shrink)

It has been argued that philosophers that base their theories of meaning on communicative intentions and language conventions cannot accommodate the fact that natural languages are compositional. In this paper I show that if we pay careful attention to Grice’s notion of “resultant procedures” we see that this is not the case. The argument, if we leave out all the technicalities, is fairly simple. Resultant procedures tell you how to combine utterance parts, like words, into larger units, like sentences. You (...) cannot have that unless you have R-correlations (reference) and Dcorrelations (denotation). These in turn, the argument goes, depend on communicative intentions, since without communicative intentions any attempt to R-correlate or D-correlate a word with an object or sets of objects would inevitably result in correlation-relations between that word and everything that exists. In other words, without communicative intentions in the equation it would turn out that every time we speak, we inevitably speak about everything, but clearly we do not. So communicative intentions, instead of being nebulous things that are in possible conflict with the Principle of Compositionality, are in fact a prerequisite for that very principle. (shrink)

In this paper I address the topics of the pragmatics of rumours and gossip, on the one hand, and the question of unwarranted questions, on the other. I briefly introduce the case of Bill Clinton who got asked by the press about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, before I turn to an analysis of rumours and gossip. Sometimes lack of openness gives rise to rumours and gossip, while other times it is enough that something is mentioned for it to give (...) rise to rumours and gossip. In the last part of the paper I show that the press’s questions about Monica Lewinsky were unwarranted, unwarranted questions understood as questions about topics you are not in a position to inquire about. I argue that since merely mentioning something can give rise to rumours and gossip, for example by asking a unwarranted question, and the questions about Lewinsky were unwarranted, it would have been permissible for Clinton to lie to the press regarding his affair with Monica Lewinsky. (shrink)

"Examines the processes of acceleration in politics, economic, culture, and society at large.

In the first part of this paper, we argue that the claim that a subject S believes that ϕ on the basis of good reasons cannot be the only type of explanation why S rationally believes that ϕ. Explaining attributions of rationality only by means of the notion of a belief being based on good reasons generates one version of the problem of regress of reasons. In the second part we flesh out a hypothesis according to which some beliefs are (...) rationally held by a subject S in virtue of the fact that S knows how to produce good reasons for holding them. In the third part we offer reasons for accepting the relevant hypothesis, and we argue that it is more successful than foundationalist, coherentist and infinitist theories in explaining the truth of some attributions of epistemic rationality. In the last part we address the problem of the regress of reasons and sketch a solution for it based on our hypothesis. (shrink)

This paper advances the view that the history of philosophy is both a kind of history and a kind of philosophy. Through a discussion of some examples from epistemology, metaphysics, and the historiography of philosophy, it explores the benefit to philosophy of a deep and broad engagement with its history. It comes to the conclusion that doing history of philosophy is a way to think outside the box of the current philosophical orthodoxies. Somewhat paradoxically, far from imprisoning its students in (...) outdated and crystallized views, the history of philosophy trains the mind to think differently and alternatively about the fundamental problems of philosophy. It keeps us alert to the fact that latest is not always best, and that a genuinely new perspective often means embracing and developing an old insight. The upshot is that the study of the history of philosophy has an innovative and subversive potential, and that philosophy has a great deal to gain from a long, broad, and deep conversation with its history. (shrink)

Natura 2000 is a network of natural sites whose aim is to preserve species and habitats of relevance in the European Union. The policy underlying Natura 2000 has faced widespread opposition from land users and received extensive support from environmentalists. This paper addresses the ethical framework for Natura 2000 and the probable moral assumptions of its main stakeholders. Arguments for and against Natura 2000 were analyzed and classified according to “strong” or “weak” versions of the three main theories of environmental (...) ethics – anthropocentrism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism. Weak (intergenerational) anthropocentrism was found to underlie the Natura 2000 network itself and the positions of environmentalists, while strong (traditional) anthropocentrism pervaded the positions of economic developers. Land users seemed to fall somewhere between weak and strong anthropocentrism. The paper discusses the relation between ethics and different attitudes towards Natura 2000, highlighting some of the implications for the network’s ongoing implementation. It is shown that Natura 2000 achieves a strong reversal of the burden of proof from conservation to economic development and land use change under anthropocentrism. It is argued that the alleged theoretical divide between anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism in relation to the burden of proof does not seem to hold in practice. Finally, it is predicted that the weak versions of anthropocentrism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism, are likely to converge extensively in respect to nature conservation policy measures. (shrink)

Drawing inspiration from a well-attested historical tradition, I propose an account of cognition according to which knowledge is not only prior to belief; it is also, and crucially, not a kind of belief. Believing, in turn, is not some sort of botched knowing, but a mental state fundamentally different from knowing, with its own distinctive and complementary role in our cognitive life. I conclude that the main battle-line in the history of epistemology is drawn between the affirmation of a natural (...) mental state in which there is a contact between ‘mind’ and ‘reality’ (whatever the ontological nature of this ‘reality’) and the rejection of such a natural mental state. For the former position, there is a mental state which is different in kind from belief, and which is constituted by the presence of the object of cognition to the cognitive subject, with no gap between them. For the latter position, all our cognition is belief, and the question becomes how and when belief is permissible. (shrink)