En este artículo, se aborda, desde una óptica Spinoziana, el problema de la libertad. Spinoza rechaza la libertad como el libre albedrío. Sin embargo, considera que podemos tener agencia (libertad) en tanto, guiados por el conocimiento de las causas de nuestros afectos, actuemos en favor de nuestro conatus. Esta investigación está dividida en tres capítulos: En el primero, se reconstruye, someramente, la posición de Spinoza sobre el libre albedrío; en el segundo, se desarrolla su propuesta de agencia; finalmente, en el (...) tercero, se busca reactualizar las consideraciones de Spinoza en torno a la discusión contemporánea sobre problema de la libertad. (shrink)

The use of human biological materials involves a number of issues from both an ethical and a legal point of view. In recent decades, the purposes for which this material has been used have i...

Databases play a fundamental role in today’s world, being used by most companies, especially those that offer services through the Internet. Today there is a wide variety of database models, each adapted for use according to the specific requirements of each application. Traditionally, the relational models with centralized architectures have been used mostly due to their simplicity and general-purpose query language, which made relational systems suitable for almost any application. However, with the growth of the Internet in recent decades, both (...) in the number of users and in the amount of information, those centralized models began to suffer availability and scalability issues. To address those issues, the use of decentralized architectures and alternative database models began to arise, eventually replacing relational databases and centralized architectures when the requirements on availability and scalability are high. Those database models alternative to the traditional relational model are grouped under the name of NoSQL. In this article, we present a NoSQL database developed as an end of degree work, with a flexible data model based on documents and a fully decentralized architecture based on the Gossip protocol for node discovery and a distributed hash table, in particular the rendezvous hashing algorithm, used to distribute and replicate the data across all the nodes. The main goals of the system are to achieve high availability and high scalability. High availability is achieved thanks to the replication of the data, while high scalability is achieved by its decentralized architecture, which allows multiple entry points from the requests, and the data distribution, effectively increasing the database capacity by increasing the number of nodes. (shrink)

Although in Italy there is currently no effective law on physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia, Decision No. 242 issued by the Italian Constitutional Court on September 25, 2019 established that an individual who, under specific circumstances, has facilitated the implementation of an independent and freely-formed resolve to commit suicide by another individual is exempt from criminal liability. Following this ruling, some citizens have submitted requests for assisted suicide to the public health system, generating a situation of great uncertainty in the application (...) processes. As a matter of fact, shared and defined procedures are lacking as Decision 242/2019 merely added some principles on which the legislature will have to base its future intervention. This paper analyses the advisory role that the Decision attributes to territorial ethics committees with the aim of stimulating discussions on their role in oversight mechanisms. The proposed conclusion is that the envisaged role does not appear consistent with the functions of these bodies and is ultimately substantially undefined and unjustified. (shrink)

We argue that, in certain circumstances, doctors might beprofessionallyjustified to provide abortions even in those jurisdictions where abortion is illegal. That it is at least professionally permissible does not mean that they have an all-things-considered ethical justification or obligation to provide illegal abortions or that professional obligations or professional permissibility trump legal obligations. It rather means that professional organisations should respect and indeed protect doctors’ positive claims of conscience to provide abortions if they plausibly track what is in the best (...) medical interests of their patients. It is the responsibility of state authorities to enforce the law, but it is the responsibility of professional organisations to uphold the highest standards of medical ethics, even when they conflict with the law. Whatever the legal sanctions in place, healthcare professionals should not be sanctioned by the professional bodies for providing abortions according to professional standards, even if illegally. Indeed, professional organisation should lobby to offer protection to such professionals. Our arguments have practical implications for what healthcare professionals and healthcare professional organisations may or should do in those jurisdictions that legally prohibit abortion, such as some US States after the reversal ofRoe v Wade. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue against the received view among Unamuno scholars that Miguel de Unamuno was defending a sort of pragmatic argument for religious faith and that his notion of religious faith as “querer creer” (“wanting to believe”) is to be identified with William James’s “the will to believe”. As I will show in this paper, one of the aspects that makes Unamuno’s reasoning philosophically relevant is his ability to formulate a non-pragmatist defense of religious faith (...) without a prior commitment to the truth of any religious or theological statement and grounded in our longing for an endless existence through God’s Salvation. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to analyse the concept of love —understood in the broad and Christian-inspired sense of love as agape-charis love— in relation to the animes Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. I first comment on the character of Piccolo —and how his friendship with Son Gohan— leads to him losing all his original villainous traits. I argue that the evolution of the character of Piccolo through his friendship with Son Gohan illustrates the philosophical claim that a (...) loving and giving of oneself to the other —far from being a sign of weakness— is a courageous and self-affirming exercise. The result may move the individual to an inner transformative experience that leads to the enjoyment of a renewed and authentic life that is worth living. I then argue that Son Goku’s respectful attitude towards his opponents is ultimately a loving attitude. Last, I argue that it is the inspiring and loving example of Son Goku that ultimately explains why characters such as Vegeta —who are at first presented as villains— end up losing their villainous traits after fighting against Son Goku. (shrink)

This book provides a detailed account of Julián Marías’s metaphysical anthropology with the ultimate aim of offering a coherent and systematic analysis of Marías’s argumentation for claiming that the conscious hope for Christian salvation through resurrection — and with it the hope that Jesus Christ did actually resurrect, and more generally the hope that Christian revelation is true — is justified not because the certainty or the likelihood that this salvation will, as a matter of fact, actually occur, but because (...) this hope amounts to a self-affirming exercise, a conscious endorsement of human reality, and as such a sign of authenticity. -/- . (shrink)

Most of the existing studies on Bourdieu and the digital regards the social and class distinctions in the use of digital technologies, thus presupposing a certain transparency of technologies themselves. Our proposal is to refer to this attitude as “Bourdieu outside the digital.” Yet in this paper, another perspective called “Bourdieu inside the digital” is developed, which moves the focus on the effects of some emerging technologies on social distinctions and discrimination. The main hypothesis is that algorithms of machine learning (...) are producers and reproducers of habitus. Although their results present a greater granularity with respect to the standard techniques of the past, these algorithms still reduce individuals to categories, general trends, classes, and behaviors. Such a reduction has flattening effects on the individuals’ self-understanding, especially in terms of identity and interaction with the social world. This is the phenomenon described in the article as the “personalization without personality,” whose consequences are both existential and social-political. This idea will be illustrated through qualitative and comparative analysis between the correspondence analysis and the multiple correspondence analysis used by Bourdieu in his works and some of those techniques that are performed today in big data analytics. (shrink)

Introduction: Jai Mata Di (praise the mother goddess) -- Sutra 1: Samadhi, or yogic ecstasy -- Sutra 2: realization, or the practice of yoga -- Sutra 3: the Siddhis, or the magical powers -- Sutra 4: absolute freedom.

This book develops a novel theory of intentionality. It argues that intentionality is an internal essential relation of constitution between an intentional state and an object or between such a state and a possible state of affairs as subsisting. The author's main claim is that intentionality is a fundamentally modal property, hence a non (scientifically) natural property in that it does not supervene, either locally or globally, on its nonmodal physical basis. This is the property, primarily for an intentional mental (...) state, to be constituted by the entities it is about. In the case of intentionality of reference, such constituents are objects, in the sense of individuals; in the case of intentionality of content, such constituents are possible states of affairs as subsisting. Constitution is meant in a mereologically literal sense: those constituents are essential parts of the relevant states. As a result, the theory claims not only that intentionality is relational, but also that is an internal, essential relation holding between an intentional state and its object or proposition-like content. Intentionality as Constitution will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and cognitive science. (shrink)

El principal objetivo de este estudio consiste en dar cuenta de cómo se enmarca la forma de tratamiento nominal marico en el habla de jóvenes universitarios de Caracas, Venezuela, dentro de la Teoría de la cortesía, según la perspectiva ofrecida por los hablantes. Igualmente, se busca documentar qué cambios está presentando en los contextos de uso así como en sus funciones pragmáticas. Los participantes fueron 60 estudiantes universitarios, 30 mujeres y 30 hombres, de 17 a 21 años. Tradicionalmente, la palabra (...) marico se ha usado como agresión verbal vulgar y ha sido, generalmente, considerada un insulto. Luego del análisis cualitativo de los datos, se plantea que esta FTN se halla en una fase de transición de insulto a marcador pragmático anticortés que indica solidaridad dentro de un grupo etario específico y está perdiendo su carácter agraviador. En la actualidad, la juventud caraqueña emplea esta FTN no solo para implicar lazos de amistad, sino para expresar emociones como sorpresa y enojo, crear efectos de intriga, hacer bromas, abrir y cerrar oraciones e, incluso, sustituir otras FTN que nunca han sido consideradas insultos en el español de Venezuela. La metodología empleada fue el cuestionario y el análisis cualitativo de reportes en primera persona. Las variables de edad y sexo son factores determinantes, puesto que parece haber tendencia entre los jóvenes entrevistados a no emplear esta forma nominal con hablantes que están fuera de su grupo etario y las mujeres siguen siendo conservadoras al restringir, más que los hombres, el uso de este vocablo. (shrink)

La relación entre lengua y sexualidad recién ha comenzado a cobrar importancia dentro de los estudios socioculturales. Este trabajo explora las distintas pistas lingüísticas encriptadas en el cuento La búsqueda de Elizabeth, de Marta Pessarrodona, para desenmascarar la velada identidad sexual del personaje central. Un análisis referente al proceso de reconocimiento, búsqueda y aceptación de una identidad sexual no canónica de la protagonista validará los cuatro principios propuestos por Bucholtz y Hall : afloramiento, indexicalidad, relacionalidad y parcialidad.

This article explores the elaboration of differences through the use of concepts of categories and policies with regard to the Other in France, Germany and the United States. It analyses three approaches in the definition of Otherness: The first one is interactive, that is the interaction between states and groups in search of political recognition. Through interactions one can measure the dynamics and the mechanisms of boundary construction and justify its legitimacy The second approach is normative. It is based on (...) justice and equality as means of recognition. And the third approach is political. It is based both on empirical reality and normative perception and leads to institutional adjustments. All the three approaches come to show how explicitly or implicitly how an element of identity becomes a "permanent difference", and is perceived ad the main source of cleavage in one society; and how this difference change from one society to another but also it switches over the time within one society. (shrink)

The question of immigration and its corollary community and minority formation has always been analysed in relation to states. However, the increasing importance of solidarity beyond national borders on the grounds of one or several identities – national, religious, ethnic, regional – removes the claim of recognition of a collective identity from a national level to an international level and, in the European Union, to a supranational level. Such an evolution places territory at the core of the analysis of citizenship (...) and nationhood, for communities as well as states. This article will attempt to show that in this new configuration, negotiations between states and immigrants are brought beyond borders in order for states to maintain the ‘power’ of incorporation and citizenship while expanding their influence beyond their territories and to compete with transnational communities in their engagement in the process of globalization. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es ofrecer una exposición sistemática de la propuesta filosófica de Joaquim Xirau (Figueras, 1895 – Ciudad de México, 1946), señalando así su interés filosófico al tiempo que se vinculan sus dos grandes obras ensayísticas de madurez, Amor y mundo (1940) y Lo fugaz y lo eterno (1942).

Martin Heidegger and Immanuel Kant - two important pillars of contemporary philosophy-were proficient critics of traditional metaphysics in their time. They were known to be critical of a sort of metaphysical striving predisposed to grounding or representing an elusive concept of the universal.. Kant had earlier deconstructed a pre-eminent feature of Western metaphysics, namely, the socalled essence of thing, had it consigned to the noumenon evocative of the paradoxical nature of human knowing: it regulates the boundaries according to which any (...) notion of the infinite, the universal or the absolute can be reflexively thematized, or, thus strategically said, problematized. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that Unamuno was conceiving of God (and ordinary, non-religious fictional characters more generally) in realist, though non-evidentially grounded, terms. I will point out that this way of conceiving of God allowed Unamuno to claim the actual existence of God (though as a fictional, purely humanly created character) and, with this, the possibility of there being an actual relationship between the concrete religious person and God without having to dispense with his own core claim that (...) religious faith is just a subjective, though natural and thus inevitable, human reaction. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to analyze the movie Fight Club, directed by David Fincher, written by Jim Uhls, and first released in the fall of 1999. The movie is based on the homonym novel by Chuck Palahniuk, published in 1996. I will argue that Fight Club is to be understood in primarily existentialist, nonethical, and nonevidential terms, showing the struggle felt by each and every one of us to find a convincing answer to the question of what (if (...) anything) counts as an authentic life that is worth living. Moreover, I will argue that the movie does not merely illustrate the struggle and the existential angst it engenders; it also advances, if not strictly speaking a theoretical answer grounded in an indisputable philosophical reasoning, then at least a practical way to face it. It is only after positively endorsing the claim that absolutely nothing (whatever it may be) externally imposed on a person can give their life ultimate meaning that a person is free to engage in a conscious, laborious, and exhausting attempt at self-affirmation, a full and positive endorsement of one’s own authenticity. (shrink)