One of the essential distinctions in action theory is that between activity and passivity. I address this distinction in this article.

In an explanation, what does the explaining and what gets explained? What are the relata of the explanation relation? Candidates include: people, events, facts, sentences, statements, and propositions.

The aim of this series is to bring together important recent writings in major areas of philosophical inquiry, selected from a variety of sources, mostly periodicals, which may not be conveniently available to the university student or the general reader. The editor of each volume contributes an introductory essay on the items chosen and on the questions with which they deal. A selective bibliography is appended as a guide to further reading. This volume presents a selection of the most important (...) recent writings on the nature of explanation. It covers a broad range of topics from the philosophy of science to the central philosophical terrain of the theory of knowledge. The distinguished contributors include Peter Achinstein, Wesley C. Salmon, Carl G. Hempel, Philip Kitcher, Bas C. van Fraassen, Jaegwon Kim, B. Brody, Timothy McCarthy, Peter Railton, David Lewis, Peter Lipton, James Woodward, and Robert J. Matthews. (shrink)

This book introduces readers to the topic of explanation. The insights of Plato, Aristotle, J.S. Mill and Carl Hempel are examined, and are used to argue against the view that explanation is merely a problem for the philosophy of science. Having established its importance for understanding knowledge in general, the book concludes with a bold and original explanation of explanation.

A discussion of three central ideas in action theory; trying to act, doing or acting, one's action causing further consequences.

Much progress has been made in the Soviet Union and a number of other socialist countries in studying and advancing the heritage of Marx and Engels in esthetics. The enrichment of our notions of the views of the founders of Marxism with respect to esthetics and literary criticism has promoted the further development of the discipline of esthetics. The progress achieved is the result and continuation of the work done by the older generation of Soviet philosophers, critics, and students of (...) literature fully thirty and thirty-five years ago in studying and elaborating the heritage of Marx and Engels. (shrink)

Talion and the Golden Rule are usually considered expressions of successive historical stages in the development of morality. The conventional wisdom is that talion-lex talionis-is a form of social control corresponding to a fairly early stage of the development of human communities. From a purely historical point of view, talion is a rule of punishment for crime according to which the retribution should strictly correspond to the harm inflicted. The rule goes back to the archaic custom of blood vengeance which (...) it supplanted. In contemporary normative research, talion is frequently interpreted more broadly as a rule of equal recompense. This is historically incorrect, but in theoretical analysis it is permissible as a general idea of a special type of control of human interrelations. It is precisely in this context that we understand the accepted opinion that as social relations develop and become richer talion is pushed to the periphery of human relations by another, more refined normative form, the Golden Rule, the appearance of which marks the emergence of morality in the contemporary sense of the word. Thus, talion is seen as a premoral form of social control, although if it is taken in the indicated strict sense then, historically, it antecedes not so much morality as institutionalized law. (shrink)

El presente artículo explora la apropiación discursiva que el poder contemporáneo hace del concepto “terrorismo”. A partir de algunas indicaciones de las filosofías políticas de Platón y de Hobbes, similares en cuanto a su encomio de la violencia como herramienta del poder, se defiende que abusar del concepto “terrorismo” sirve al poder como mecanismo de autolegitimación y autoafirmación. Esto es así porque el poder, a través de sistemas doctrinales muy diseminados, presenta los actos terroristas como una muestra del hipotético estado (...) de caos total que surgiría si se modificara su actual configuración. (shrink)

What should be news in a democracy? This article offers a deliberative answer to this question by developing a deliberative account of newsworthiness. Drawing from the deliberative theory of democracy, I define the general criterion of deliberative newsworthiness as a mandate that commands journalists to seek, select, and report the contents that are most capable of stimulating high-quality deliberation. I then develop a two-step process through which journalists may apply this criterion. First, journalists should select the most newsworthy issues, which (...) are those that most profoundly affect (or are likely to affect) how just our society is. Second, journalists should select the most newsworthy facts and the most newsworthy arguments, both of which are to be chosen on the basis of their capacity to promote quality deliberation about the newsworthy issues. Ultimately, what should be news is a context-dependent issue that only journalists can decide, but deliberative newsworthiness is the normative criterion that journalists should follow when making these decisions – at least, if they want to produce the news that deliberative democracy needs. (shrink)

The idea that citizens have a right to receive information that is relevant for their suitable exercise of political rights and liberties is well established in democratic societies. However, this right has never been systematically analyzed, thus remaining a blurry concept. This article tackles this conceptual gap by conceptualizing citizens’ right to information. After reviewing previous approaches to this idea, I locate citizens’ right to information on the map of communication rights, and put forward a systematic framework for both justifying (...) and analyzing it. This framework focuses on this right’s grounds, its function, its holders, its content, and its correlative duties. Although the conceptualization offered here will be incomplete, it will be enough to distinguish the general concept of citizens’ right to information from both its specific conceptions and from the other two best-known rights of the public: freedom of information and the public’s right to know. (shrink)

The authors of this volume discuss the relevance and influence of various Old and New Testament documents, and early Christian and Jewish texts in terms of their impact in shaping the moral character, identity, and behaviour of the specific communities in which they were produced as well as their ethical application throughout the centuries. Against a narrow understanding of ethics, the term "application" is not used to analyse the texts of the Bible as step-by-step manuals for moral conduct. Rather, the (...) contributors engage with biblical texts within the framework of a complex hermeneutical process of application of the relevance of these texts in contemporary ethical discourse. Contributors: Paul N. Anderson, Robert L. Brawley, Cilliers Breytenbach, Ulrich Busse, R. Alan Culpepper, Jan Willem van Henten, Rainer Hirsch-Luipold, Stephan Joubert, Craig R. Koester, Bart J. Koet, Michael Labahn, Tobias Nicklas, Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte, Udo Schnelle, Michael Theobald, D. Francois Tolmie, Joseph Verheyden, Ben Witherington, III, Ellen van Wolde, Michael Wolter, Mirjam Zimmermann, Ruben Zimmermann. (shrink)

Ruben Berrios Queen’s University Belfast Anti-realism and Aesthetic Cognition Abstract At the core of the debate between scientific realism and anti-realism is the question of the relation between scientific theory and the world. The realist possesses a mimetic conception of the relation between theory and reality. For the realist, scientific theories represent reality. The anti-realist, in contrast, seeks to understand the relations between theory and world in non-mimetic terms. We will examine Cartwright’s simulacrum account of explanation in order to (...) illuminate the anti-realist position. Science consists of phenomenological and theoretical laws. The former are concerned with appearances, or those phenomena that can be directly observed; the latter involve the unobservable reality that is alleged to underlie appearances, and are capable only of indirect confirmation. Phenomenological laws are said to be descriptive, whilst theoretical laws are understood as explanatory. Cartwright is concerned with the theoretical. She claims that the standard realist account of the explanatory efficacy of theoretical laws is faulty. The explanatory power of theoretical laws consists in their ability to provide an explanation of physical phenomena. According to Cartwright, the realist claims that laws explain phenomena by providing an abstract description of them, in terms of their micro-structural features, that is alleged to be true. On this view, explanatory power is entirely dependent on descriptive adequacy. As phenomenological laws describe appearances, so theoretical laws describe the fundamental reality that governs appearances. Cartwright rejects the preceding view and in its place proposes a simulacrum account of explanation. According to Cartwright, the explanatory power of theoretical laws is related not to descriptive adequacy, but rather to the construction of adequate models. To explain a phenomenon is to construct a model which best or most adequately accommodates the phenomenon to a theory. The model will consist of various posited objects that serve to explain the phenomena in terms that are consistent with a set of theoretical laws. Cartwright claims that theoretical laws are true of, or describe, the objects of the model. The objects of the model, however, are not descriptive of reality. They are simulacra. They have, that is, the form or appearance of things, without possessing their substance or proper qualities. In light of the foregoing account we can summarise the distinction between scientific realism and anti-realism as follows. The realist claims that theoretical laws literally represent real objects. The anti-realist claims that laws represent objects of a model that are simulacra of reality. Anti-realism has an aesthetic dimension. The movement from realism to anti-realism is also the movement from the mimetic conception of the scientist as holding a mirror to nature to the constructionist view of the scientist as engaging with nature through invention. There is a lot of the artist in the anti-realist’s view of the scientist. This is true for Cartwright as well as, for example, Van Fraassen in his doctrine of constructive empiricism. It would appear, then, that the philosophy of science has absorbed some concepts that are ordinarily housed in aesthetics. And it has done so profitably. The aim of this paper is to reverse the direction of disciplinary influence. Can art, in relation to its status as a cognitive enterprise, be illuminated by scientific anti-realism? I will argue that it can. In an unexpected reference to the Nicomachean Ethics, Cartwright draws a suggestive parallel between theoretical laws and general moral principles, on the one hand, and physical phenomena and everyday moral conduct, on the other hand. If we add to this the claim that a central component of art’s value is cognitive, then we have the basic materials with which to flesh out a broadly anti-realist view of art. In the production of art, artists can construct models that mediate between everyday ethical phenomena and general ethical tendencies. These models reveal the ways in which there are implicit consistencies or inconsistencies, conflicts or congruences and so forth, between the phenomena and the tendencies. On this basis art can contribute to the reflective understanding of ethical life. This constitutes to a large degree art’s status as a cognitive enterprise. To apprehend art cognitively as artist or critic is to engage in aesthetic cognition. (shrink)

NOTA DEL EDITOR: Bioética en práctica incluye también el texto “Criterios para la asignación de asistencia mecánica respiratoria en pacientes con Covid 19, un mirada bioética” del P. Rubén Revello, del Instituto de Bioética de la Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina, quien amablemente autorizó su reproducción para esta sección de la revista. El Dr. Carlos A. Gómez Fajardo, docente de Bioética de la Facultad de Medicina de la Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana y miembro del Comité editorial de la revista Persona y Bioética (...) agradece y comenta brevemente el texto: “Agradezco y recibo con gran atención sus valiosos contenidos. Son pertinentes y acertados los principios mencionados sobre el bien global del paciente y el respeto a la vida de toda persona, sin discriminación, como parte esencial del ethos hipocrático. Es innegable la necesidad del uso de criterios objetivos en la asignación de asistencia mecánica respitatoria. Para ello, en la disciplina de los cuidados críticos se dispone de las herramientas soportadas en la evidencia, de gran valor práctico y como es obvio en el uso de elementos de diagnóstico y terapia, también con sus limitantes, como sucede con las limitaciones de valores predictivos de las mismas. Encuentro que el uso del concepto “preservar la mayoría de los años de vida”, por parte de Jakie Powder del Jhon Hopkins Center of Bioethic, se puede prestar a equívocos, pues podría entenderse como un intento de reducción de criterios utilitaristas para la asignación de recursos de ARM; el autor se hace cargo del tema e indica que “cabe aclarar que ‘preservar la mayoría de los años de vida’ no significa hacer un triage que excluya de la AMR a pacientes que sobrepasan una cierta edad, sino que no se incluya a pacientes cuya prolongación de la vida solo resulte precaria y penosa”. En el ámbito académico-filosófico de la disciplina de la bioética se encuentran en contradicción esencial dos visiones: la utilitarista materialista y la realista; es de difícil conciliación racional el intento de cuantificación objetiva de “calidad de vida”, pues ello conduciría a posibles decisiones injustas. Creo que es pertinente reconocer que el ejercicio práctico de la medicina se enmarca, generalmente -no solo en situación de pandemia- en un entorno de escasez de recursos. Estos, por supuesto, siempre han de asignarse dentro del marco de la racionalidad, la proporcionalidad terapéutica y la justicia, pero es pertinente reconocer que existen variables que determinan resultados fatales y que no pueden ser atribuibles a los procesos de decisión del clínico, quien no ha de ser obligado a lo imposible cuando el volumen y complejidad de las circunstancias de triage son apremiantes. Ello no deroga el imperativo racional hipocrático del respeto a la vida de todos como inspiración del quehacer”. Este escrito fue publicado por el Centro de Bioética: Persona & Familia, en su portal web, el 22 de abril de 2020. El autor autorizó a la revista Persona y Bioética publicarlo en su sección de Bioética en práctica. Se hicieron modificaciones ortotipográficas leves al texto y una adaptación de las referencias para hacerlo compatible con las pautas editoriales de la revista. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Call for Proposals:The Seventh International Buddhist-Christian Conference, "Hear the Cries of the World"Ruben HabitoThe Society for Buddhist Christian Studies will hold the Seventh International Buddhist-Christian Conference at the Loyola Marymount University campus, Los Angeles, California, 3-8 June 2005. (This conference was earlier posted to take place in August 2004, but was postponed for various reasons.) The overall theme will remain as previously announced: "Hear the Cries of the (...) World: Buddhism and Christianity in Dialogue Toward Global Healing."The program committee welcomes proposals for working groups, scheduled to meet in three successive morning sessions for two hours each, addressing a specific theme or issue, with one or two coordinators and five or more core-group members; full panels, to be presented in one two-hour session, on a specific theme, with a moderator, three to four speakers, and one or two respondents; and individual papers on a specific topic related to an issue or issues in Buddhist-Christian dialogue.Proposals for working groups on themes such as religion and ecology, human rights and social justice, women and religion, toward a global ethic, practice across traditions, Catholic-Buddhist relations, religious responses to violence, religion and globalization, and other relevant themes, are welcomed. Working group proposals should include the title or theme of the working group, a short 200-300 word description of the goal(s) of the working group, and the names and contact information (including address, phone, fax, and e-mail) of the coordinator(s) and at least five other core-group members.Proposals for full panels for a two-hour time slot, addressing specific themes, including issues in doctrine and theory, ritual, religious practice, methodology, and others, are encouraged. Full panel proposals should include the title of the panel, a short 100-200 word description of the theme and intent of the panel, and the names and contact information of the moderator and three or four panel participants.Individual paper proposals for a 30-minute presentation on various themes, including doctrinal, ritual, practical, ethical, and other issues relevant to Buddhist-Christian dialogue are also encouraged. [End Page 245]In addition to the working groups, panel, and individual paper sessions, there will be opportunities for participation in various forms of meditative practice, prayer, and/or ritual in the morning before breakfast and early evening before dinner. These will be led by spiritual leaders and teachers of various Buddhist and Christian traditions.Further, because Los Angeles is known to be one of the most religiously diverse cities in the world, there will be opportunities to visit religious sites in the area and meet with leaders and members of different Buddhist and Christian communities.Proposals preferably should be sent by e-mail to, with a copy to, or by postal mail to Prof. Ruben Habito, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75225, USA. The deadline for submission of proposals is 31 January 2005, but early submissions are encouraged.Lodging and meals will be available at the Loyola Marymount University campus in Los Angeles, as well as in hotels nearby. Registration fees and costs for lodging and meals will be announced at a later date. For queries regarding site facilities and registration, please email the conference director, Prof. James Fredericks, at.Copyright © 2004 The University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

A publicidade tem um papel fundamental na divulgação e legitimação da identidade brasileira. Ela se encarrega de mostrar e reforçar atributos que são facilmente identificáveis pela população e que essa se veja como possuidora de uma identidade única por causa da imensidão do país, das riquezas naturais e das várias culturas que aqui se hibridizam formando uma colcha de retalhos rica em costumes e tradições próprios de um país miscigenado. Neste trabalho, pretendemos analisar como a imagem da identidade brasileira é (...) percebida pela publicidade como um grande potencial gerador de significações que levam para a aquisição do produto. Através da produção de sentido buscaremos analisar as peças publicitárias que reúnam a brasilidade como um signo a ser consumido pelo público. (shrink)

El presente ensayo aborda, en seis argumentos, las implicancias de la teoría de los imaginarios sociales en la comprensión del fenómeno comunicativo y su papel en el proceso de la semiosis. Se describe la directa relación existente entre las tres facultades que hacen del hombre un ser simbólico..

Book synopsis: David-Hillel Ruben's new book pursues some novel and unusual standpoints in the philosophy of action. He rejects, for example, the most widely held view about how to count actions, and argues for what he calls a 'prolific theory' of act individuation. He also describes and argues against the two leading theories of the nature of action, the causal theory and the agent causal theory. The causal theory cannot account for skilled activity, nor for mental action. The agent (...) causalist theory unnecessarily reifies causings. He identifies an assumption that they share, and that most action theorists have assumed to be unproblematic and uncontroversial, that an action is, or entails the existence of, an event. Several different meanings to that claim are disentangled and in the most interesting sense of that claim, Ruben denies that it is true. His own alternative is simple and unpretentious: nothing informative can be said about the nature of action that explicates action in any other terms. Ruben sketches a theory of causal explanation of action that eschews the requirement for laws or generalisations, and this effectively quashes one argument for the oft-repeated view that no explanations of action can be causal, on the grounds that there are no convincing cases of laws of human action. He addresses a number of questions about the knowledge an agent has of his own actions, looking particularly at examples of pathological cases of action in which, for one reason or another, the agent does not know what he is doing. Inspiring and enlightening in its challenge to received wisdom, and in its convincing defence of some unfashionable positions, Action and its Explanation will be required reading for anyone working in this field. (shrink)

Happy cow messages are instances of commercial speech by the animal industry which, by action or by omission, mislead consumers about the harmful effects that the industry has for nonhuman animals, the environment, or human health. Despite their ubiquity, happy cow messages have received little philosophical scrutiny. This paper aims to call attention to this form of speech, and to make the case for its restriction. To do so we first conceptualize happy cow messages. Second, we argue that they encroach (...) upon individual autonomy in two particularly objectionable ways: by impairing our ability to behave according to our moral convictions, and by thwarting our capacity to identify and reason about our moral duties. This, we hold, grounds a pro tanto case for stricter and more comprehensive regulations of commercial speech by the animal industry. Third, and against the objection that restricting happy cow messages would violate freedom of speech, we contend that none of the most influential arguments for free speech grants them protection. Indeed, we suggest, those rationales seem to call for their restriction. Fourth, and finally, we review some possible ways to defuse the misleading potential of happy cow messages through commercial speech regulations. (shrink)

Moral Constraints on War offers a principle-by-principle presentation of the transcultural roots of the ethics of war in an age defined by the increasingly international nature of military intervention.

En este trabajo el autor rastrea la influencia de Aristóteles en Vico, especialmente en el plano de la ética y en el de la política, donde la felicidad de la comunidad se realiza a través de la amistad de los individuos.In this work the author seeks the influence of Aristotle in Vico, particularly in the field of ethics and politics, where happiness of the community is achieved through friendship among individuals.

A careful elaboration and defence of holism in the philosophy of the social sciences, with regard both to particulars and properties. The last chapter addresses the issue of the irreducibility of holistic explanation in the social sciences.

Se enseña que Inglaterra y Estados Unidos se convirtieron en referentes para el primer periódicoy el primer curso de educación superior en el área de la prensa, y que el periodismo resultade los impulsos de las Revoluciones Industrial, Americana y Francesa. Hay quienes cuestionanesto señalando otros datos sobre la historia de la prensa escrita y la educación superiorde los periodistas como hechos cercanos a la Reforma protestante. Este artículo resulta de un levantamiento bibliográfico en Jorge Pedro Sousa (2008) y Wilson (...) Martins (1996), apartir del video documental histórico “Las verdades sobre la Corte de Enrique VIII” (2015),de Philos TV, y de los conceptos de teoría de la ingeniería del discurso. (shrink)

This book is about some topical philosophical and methodological prob lems that arise in the study of behavior and mind, as well as in the treatment of behavioral and mental disorders. It deals with such questions as 'What is behavior a manifestation of?', 'What is mind, and how is it related to matter?', 'Which are the positive legacies, if any, of the major psychological schools?', 'How can behavior and mind best be studied?', and 'Which are the most effective ways of (...) modifying behavioral and mental processes?' These questions and their kin cannot be avoided in the long run because they fuel the daily search for better hypotheses, experimental designs, techniques, and treatments. They also occur in the critical examination of data and theories, as well as methods for the treatment of behavioral and mental disorders. All students of human or animal, normal or abnormal behavior and mind, whether their main concern is basic or applied, theoretical or em pirical, admit more or less tacitly to a large number of general philosophi cal and methodological principles. (shrink)

Se explora el desarrollo del campo de la Alfabetización Mediática y Digital en México, entre 2000 y 2021, mediante el análisis bibliométrico de publicaciones en Scopus y Web of Science, a partir del uso de frases sinónimas. Se observa una incipiente y dispersa producción científica en dicha área del conocimiento para el periodo de estudio.

Este trabajo aborda la relación entre el populismo y los discursos del odio. Tomando como referencia la visión favorable del populismo teorizada por Laclau y Mouffe, desarrollaré un concepto de discurso populista formado por tres subtipos de discurso: el agonista, el solidario y el movilizador. Tras contrastar este concepto con el de discurso del odio, concluyo que ambos son independientes y que por tanto el populismo no necesita recurrir a discursos del odio, al menos en teoría. Sin embargo, advierto, la (...) naturaleza del populismo le hace propenso a caer en ese tipo de discursos, lo cual sugiere que la praxis populista difícilmente podrá evitarlos. Dada la inmoralidad del discurso del odio, esta afinidad ofrece una razón _pro tanto_ para abstenerse de prácticas populistas. (shrink)

La Monadología expone la metafísica más madura de Leibniz de una forma sintética y concentrada. Se propone una lectura sistemática a partir de los principios implicados en la metafísica leibniziana, que muestra la analogía entre el conocimiento humano y el divino, así como la peculiar manera que tiene Leibniz de construir su sistema. La imagen del universo del hombre se emplea para explicar la imagen del universo de Dios y cómo influye en la creación.

Ten years ago National Geographic magazine reported that the Loma Linda Seventh-day Adventist population is one of the communities in the world that lives longer and with a higher quality of life thanks in part to the biological benefits of a vegetarian diet. Along with National Geographic, other media outlets have reported since then that the Adventist religious community considers a plant-based diet a very important factor for a healthy lifestyle. Adventists have been promoting this type of diet worldwide for (...) more than 150 years. This article is an attempt to understand from a social-scientific perspective the origin of the importance they lend to diet and see whether this helps explain why approximately 150 years after the founding of the church, diet remains crucial for Adventists around the world. The conclusion proposed is that Adventists understood the adoption of a plant-based diet as a special divine instruction in order to nourish their new identity as a special people differentiated from the rest of society. This was possible through a desecularisation of diet that placed food in the moral category of the Adventist belief system.Keywords: Seventh-day Adventist Church; vegetarian diet; religion; health; desecularisation; identity. (shrink)