El objetivo de este artículo consiste en dialogar con los discursos universitarios de Peter Hans Kolvenbach, superior general de la Compañía de Jesús entre 1983 y 2008. En particular analizamos la dimensión “iustitia” como elemento distintivo del paradigma de la educación superior jesuita y todo ello lo contextualizamos, a la vez, en su tradición histórica. La apuesta por la promoción de la justicia social, en el entramado universitario de la orden de Ignacio de Loyola, responde asimismo a las opciones que (...) la Compañía de Jesús ha tomado, a raíz del Concilio Vaticano II, y se posiciona como una alternativa a la óptica utilitarista. (shrink)

This paper presents a graffito written after firing on a Samian-ware bowl dated to the turn of the first and second centuries c.e., which seems to contain part of a hexameter included in the well-known anthology Carmina XII sapientum, the composition of which has recently been attributed to the Christian author Lactantius.

Hospitality can be considered a key institution in the social relationships in the ancient Mediterranean. To identify the people involved in a hospitality agreement, in certain contexts small objects were used in a similar way to a password, which the Greeks called symbolon and the Romans tessera hospitalis. We know how the latter were used thanks to Plautus' Poenulus. At least 64 pieces are currently known which may be identified as tesserae hospitales. All come from the Western Mediterranean. The majority (...) contain brief inscriptions, written in Etruscan, Latin, Greek, or Celtiberian. They share a series of common features, which impart a clear family resemblance beyond geographic, cultural, or linguistic borders. (shrink)

'Memoria' is the collection of lectures by different authors, with the occassion of the 50th Aniversary of the "Centro de Estudios Filosóficos Adolfo García Díaz" of the Faculty of Humanities and Education of the University of Zulia. -/- As Director of that Research Center, I was also the editor of 'Memoria'. -/- PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF "MEMORIA" BUT ITS EDITOR.

This chapter analyses the prospects of using neuroimaging methods, in particular functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), for philosophical purposes. To do so, it will use two case studies from the field of emotion research: Greene et al. (2001) used fMRI to uncover the mental processes underlying moral intuitions, while Lindquist et al. (2012) used fMRI to inform the debate around the nature of a specific mental process, namely, emotion. These studies illustrate two main approaches in cognitive neuroscience: Reverse inference and (...) ontology testing, respectively. With regards to Greene et al.’s study, the use of Neurosynth (Yarkoni 2011) will show that the available formulations of reverse inference, although viable a priori, seem to be of limited use in practice. On the other hand, the discussion of Lindquist et al.’s study will present the so far neglected potential of ontology-testing approaches to inform philosophical questions. (shrink)

An important question in the debate regarding the nature of politically significant human kinds, such as gender, race, and sexual orientations, is concerned with the question of whether these human kinds are socially constructed (Stein 1999; Root 2000; Haslanger 2012; and Ásta 2013). In order to settle this debate, a more fundamental question needs to be answered: what does it mean to say that a category is socially constructed? -/- Recently, many philosophers have become interested in this issue (Hacking 1999; (...) Stein 1999; Haslanger 2003; Mallon 2007; Diaz-Leon 2015; Ásta 2015). They all seem to agree that there is not a single notion of social construction, but rather, there are different notions of social construction for different purposes. The important question in order to formulate a useful notion of social construction, then, is which project is at issue, and which notion of social construction is more useful for the purposes of that project. In this chapter I will focus on two projects that social constructivists are often interested in, namely, (i) the project of arguing against the inevitability of a trait, that is, to show that those features are not determined by human nature; and (ii) the project of arguing against the universality of a trait, that is, to show that a certain human category or kind is not a universal, transcultural, culture-independent property and that it cannot be applied to other cultures, places, and times; and I will discuss which notion of social construction is more useful with respect to each project. -/- My main questions, then, will be the following: (a) Is there any notion of social construction that entails that if X is socially constructed, then X is not inevitable, that is, X is not determined by human nature? (b) Is there any notion of social construction that entails that if X is socially constructed, then X is not transcultural or universal? (shrink)

In this paper, I focus on an influential account of phenomenal concepts, the recognitional account, and defend it from some recent challenges. According to this account, phenomenal concepts are recognitional concepts that we use when we recognize experiences as “another one of those.” Michael Tye has argued that this account is viciously circular because the relevant recognitional abilities involve descriptions of the form “another experience of the same type,” which is also a phenomenal concept. Tye argues that we avoid the (...) circularity worry if we explain the reference-fixing of phenomenal concepts in terms of dispositions to re-identify tokens of the same type without appealing to any further phenomenal concepts. However, he argues, this account is incompatible with the intuitive claim that phenomenal concepts seem to involve rich modes of presentation of their referents. Philip Goff and others have similarly argued that a recognitional account of phenomenal concepts would make phenomenal concepts opaque, that is, unable to reveal anything about their referents, which seems problematic. In this paper, I present a new version of the recognitional account that avoids the circularity worry without entailing that phenomenal concepts are opaque. (shrink)

Are feelings an essential part or aspect of emotion? Cases of unconscious emotion suggest that this is not the case. However, it has been claimed that unconscious emotions are better understood as either (a) emotions that are phenomenally conscious but not reflectively conscious, or (b) dispositions to have emotions rather than emotions proper. Here, I argue that these ways of accounting for unconscious emotions are inadequate, and propose a view of emotions as non-phenomenal attitudes that regard their contents as relevant (...) to one's motivations. (shrink)

The aim of this writing is to show the similarities between the philosophy of a modern author, like Leibniz, and the philosophy of a medieval jewish author, like Maimonides. I am going to write about the concept of "substance" in both authors, looking into the similarity between the "monad" of Leibniz and the idea of "angel" of Maimonides. Both of them, "monad" and "angel", settle, not only the concept of "substance", but also the concept of "Structure of living" besides some (...) more interesting cognitive notions which I am going to inguire into. (shrink)

In 2016, Béziau introduces a restricted notion of paraconsistency, the so-called genuine paraconsistency. A logic is genuine paraconsistent if it rejects the laws $\varphi,\neg \varphi \vdash \psi$ and $\vdash \neg (\varphi \wedge \neg \varphi)$. In that paper, the author analyzes, among the three-valued logics, which of them satisfy this property. If we consider multiple-conclusion consequence relations, the dual properties of those above-mentioned are $\vdash \varphi, \neg \varphi$ and $\neg (\varphi \vee \neg \varphi) \vdash$. We call genuine paracomplete logics those rejecting (...) the mentioned properties. We present here an analysis of the three-valued genuine paracomplete logics. A very natural twist structures semantics for these logics is also found in a systematic way. This semantics produces automatically a simple and elegant Hilbert-style characterization for all these logics. Finally, we introduce the logic LGP which is genuine paracomplete is not genuine paraconsistent, not even paraconsistent and cannot be characterized by a single finite logical matrix. (shrink)

La pregunta por el sentido de la filosofía ha sido un denominador común desde sus inicios, cobrando una fuerza inusitada con la expansión omnímoda del capitalismo en el «mundo de la vida», hasta el punto de «naturalizarse» como el único mundo posible. Reducida a la mera función de legitimar el imperativo de la equivalencia/acumulación, se impone la necesidad de elevar la filosofía a la altura del acontecimiento, en el afán por vislumbrar e implementar modos de vida alternativos a la dictadura (...) del capitalismo absoluto. En este contexto, exploramos el potencial emancipatorio del «_ethos_ barroco» en el pensamiento de Bolívar Echeverría, con el objeto de mostrar, desde esta perspectiva, las condiciones y los límites actuales para transcender lo que denominamos «capitalismo neobarroco», implantando en su lugar una suerte inaudita de «neobarroco postcapitalista». (shrink)

El Espacio Ultraterrestre está cobrando más importancia que nunca no solamente como dominio operacional, sino también por sus vulnerabilidades intrínsecas. La OTAN no busca una confrontación directa en el Espacio Ultraterrestre, sino garantizar el acceso a las capacidades espaciales necesarias para que pueda seguir cumpliendo con el mandato encomendado por sus Estados Miembros. Para ello, tanto el fomento de la interoperabilidad como de la arquitectura jurídica de la Alianza serán fundamentales. La Inteligencia Artificial supone un desafío importante en el marco (...) de las relaciones internacionales no solamente por la posible asimetría entre Estados, sino también por el riesgo de impunidad y falta de atribución de posibles comportamientos “autónomos” que puedan resultar perjudiciales tanto en objetos como personas. (shrink)

Are emotions bodily feelings or evaluative cognitions? What is happiness, pain, or “being moved”? Are there basic emotions? In this chapter, I review extant empirical work concerning these and related questions in the philosophy of emotion. This will include both (1) studies investigating people’s emotional experiences and (2) studies investigating people’s use of emotion concepts in hypothetical cases. Overall, this review will show the potential of using empirical research methods to inform philosophical questions regarding emotion.

Este artículo pretende mostrar la lectura política que hace Miguel Abensour de Lévinas cuando analiza el sentido del eje conceptual levinasiano de la responsabilidad-para-elotro y sus vinculaciones ético-políticas. Así, podemos redescubrir la irreductibilidad de lo político como una dimensión que requiere de lo humano, todo esto bajo el lema de la extravagante hipótesis. Lo humano –a la luz de Lévinas y en lo cual Abensour se ancla– instala su propia irreductibilidad que hace renovar lo político y deja aparecer una filosofía (...) política crítica que quiere pensar de otro modo el Estado y la justicia. (shrink)

The metaphysics of gender and race is a growing area of concern in contemporary analytic metaphysics, with many different views about the nature of gender and race being submitted and discussed. But what are these debates about? What questions are these accounts trying to answer? And is there real disagreement between advocates of differ- ent views about race or gender? If so, what are they really disagreeing about? In this paper I want to develop a view about what the debates (...) in the metaphysics of gender and race are about, namely, a version of metaphysical deflationism, according to which these debates are about how we actually use or should use the terms ‘gender’ and ‘race’ (and other related terms), where moral and political considerations play a central role. I will also argue that my version of the view can overcome some recent and powerful objections to metaphysical deflationism of- fered by Elizabeth Barnes (2014, 2017). (shrink)

There is a broad consensus on the legitimacy of states to control immigration. However, this belief has recently been questioned, among other reasons, due to the contradiction with current practices in emigration and internal mobility. The principle of symmetry states that any restriction on immigration should also apply to emigration; or that, to the contrary, if there is a right to emigrate, there should be a corresponding right to immigrate. The principle of coherence posits that every reason one might have (...) for moving within a country also counts for moving between countries. This article proposes to extend the coherence principle from external to internal migration, arguing that the same reasons that justify restrictions on mobility across borders justify restrictions on mobility within borders too. Therefore, either freedom of movement is a fundamental right or the right of the political community to control mobility prevails. The interests at stake are in both cases the same, so asymmetry is not warranted. This leads us to an apagogical argument for open borders. (shrink)

COVID-19 is unique in that it is the first global pandemic occurring amidst a crowded information environment that has facilitated the proliferation of misinformation on social media. Dangerous misleading narratives have the potential to disrupt ‘official’ information sharing at major government announcements. Using an interrupted time-series design, we test the impact of the announcement of the first UK lockdown on short-term trends of misinformation on Twitter. We utilise a novel dataset of all COVID-19-related social media posts on Twitter from the (...) UK 48 hours before and 48 hours after the announcement. We find that while the number of tweets increased immediately post announcement, there was no evidence of an increase in misinformation-related tweets. We found an increase in COVID-19-related bot activity post-announcement. Topic modelling of misinformation tweets revealed four distinct clusters: ‘government and policy’, ‘symptoms’, ‘pushing back against misinformation’ and ‘cures and treatments’. (shrink)

A recent quarrel over faultless disagreements assumes that disputes over evaluative sentences should be understood as regular, factual disagreements. Instead, I propose that evaluative disagreements should be understood in Lewisian terms. Language use works like a rule-governed game. In it, the assertion of an evaluative sentence is an attempt to establish one value as default in the conversation; its rejection, in turn, is in most cases the refusal to accept this move.

El cometido del presente trabajo es examinar la actualidad del “ethos barroco” en nuestro mundo histórico, concebido como un mundo “neobarroco”. Para ello, comenzaremos indagando en perspectiva histórica los rasgos esenciales del “ethos barroco”, por oposición al “ethos protestante” que se impone en la modernidad capitalista, en relación al proyecto de Restauración católica de la Compañía de Jesús y su política cultural. En segundo lugar, desarrollaremos a grandes rasgos la imagen del mundo como representación (theatrum mundi) en el Barroco histórico, (...) haciendo especial hincapié en su dimensión sociológica (a tenor de la importancia crucial de “saber aparecer”), pero también en el plano ontológico (en relación a la dialéctica ser/apariencia). A continuación, probaremos la hipótesis de un “capitalismo neobarroco” en el presente, a la luz del actual fenómeno de “estetización social” (del mundo y de la vida humana). El objetivo último de la investigación es caracterizar desde una perspectiva eminentemente crítica la “vida en la imagen” que se deriva de este proceso planetario, en la medida en que se constituye como una impostura radical y ontológica, consistente en negar el carácter onírico de la vida, escapando a la conciencia del sueño. (shrink)

El principal cometido del presente trabajo es examinar el nivel productivo-infraestructural y subjetivo del régimen neoliberal, en contraste con la lógica puramente económica-empresarial del modo de producción capitalista en la era industrial y disciplinaria. En primer lugar, examinamos la noción foucaultiana de “biopolítica” y su recepción en el pensamiento de Deleuze, analizando el papel pretendidamente esencial que juegan los deseos humanos para el funcionamiento del capitalismo de consumo. A la luz de las averiguaciones logradas, indagamos en perspectiva histórica las principales (...) tecnologías donde se cifra la eficacia del “psicopoder” emergente, con el objeto de dilucidar, a la luz de las nuevas formas de producción inmateriales y en red, su sentido y sus efectos en las subjetividades y las formas de vida. (shrink)

The beating heart of democratic politics is a set of paradoxes revolving around the issues of popular identity and sovereignty. Populist ideology appeals to the sovereign people, consequently engaging the democratic paradox in a manner akin to either moving an immoveable object or catching something in constant flux. Marginal consideration has been given by scholars to populism’s relationship with the democratic paradox, with current notions of the former seeing it more as a result of the latter. Thus, by recasting the (...) democratic paradox as a question and analysing its relationship with populist ideology, this article seeks to clarify the supposedly ambiguous relationship between populism and democracy. In analysing the transformative processes within populism by using early Peronism and Italian Fascism as case studies, it argues that as the ideological embodiment of the democratic paradox populist ideology preserves and expresses the paradox in the public sphere. (shrink)

Sally Haslanger is concerned with the debate between social constructionists and error theorists about a given category, such as race or gender. For example, social constructionists about race claim that the term “race” refers to a social kind, whereas error theorists claim that the term “race” is an empty term, that is, nothing belongs to this category. It seems that this debate depends in part on the meaning of the corresponding expression, and this, according to some theorists, depends in turn (...) on our intuitions as competent speakers. But then, what should we say if competent users of the expressions “race” and “gender” understand the terms so that being a natural or biological property is a necessary condition in order to fall under the term? If that were the case, then it would seem that a social constructionist view would be out of the question. Haslanger has argued that a social constructionist view could still be defended in that situation. In order to argue for this, she draws on the classical arguments for semantic externalism, which show that the intuitions of competent speakers concerning the nature of a given category, and the objective type that actually unifies the instances of that category, may come apart. In this paper I will argue that the arguments for semantic externalism concerning natural kinds do not really offer support for Haslanger’s claim that ordinary intuitions concerning social kinds are not relevant. (shrink)

Christopher Hom has recently argued that the best-overall account of the meaning of pejorative terms is a semantic account according to which pejoratives make a distinctive truth-conditional contribution, and in particular express complex, negative socially constructed properties. In addition, Hom supplements the semantic account with a pragmatic strategy to deal with the derogatory content of occurrences of pejorative terms in negations, conditionals, attitude reports, and so on, according to which those occurrences give rise to conversational implicatures to the effect that (...) the pejorative terms are non-empty, which explains the offensiveness of those occurrences. In this paper, I aim to defend this semantic strategy from several recent objections, and I will also present a novel objection, which in my view shows that we should understand the semantic account as a version of inferentialism, rather than radical externalism. (shrink)

Despite the promises made by molecular evolutionists since the early 1960s that phylogenies would be readily reconstructed using molecular data, the construction of molecular phylogenies has both retained many methodological problems of the past and brought up new ones of considerable epistemic relevance. The field is driven not only by changes in knowledge about the processes of molecular evolution, but also by an ever-present methodological anxiety manifested in the constant search for an increased objectivity—or in its converse, the avoidance of (...) subjectivity.This paper offers an exhaustive account of the methodological and conceptual difficulties embedded in each of the steps required to elaborate molecular phytogenies. The authors adopt a historical perspective on the field in order to follow the development of practices that seek to increase the objectivity of their methods and representations. These include the adoption and development of explicit criteria for evaluation of evidence, and of procedures associated with methods of statistical inference, quantification and automation. All these are linked to an increasing use of computers in research since the mid 1960s. We will show that the practices of objectivity described are highly dependent on the problems and tools of molecular phylogenetics. (shrink)

La emigración es un derecho humano, eso nadie lo discute. Ahora bien, que la emigración sea un derecho humano no significa que la decisión de emigrar escape a la crítica moral. El presente trabajo evalúa los argumentos esgrimidos en contra de la llamada deslocalización fiscal, que consiste en trasladar la actividad profesional a otro país con el objetivo de pagar menos impuestos. En concreto, se analizan los argumentos de la justicia distributiva, la reciprocidad y la solidaridad. Para ello, se compara (...) el caso de los _youtubers_ españoles con el del trabajador a jornada parcial, el graduado universitario que no ejerce de aquello para lo que ha estudiado y el rico hedonista, y se concluye que la única diferencia moralmente significativa es que los primeros se trasladan a otro país para pagar menos impuestos, mientras que los demás no. Sin embargo, esto presupone precisamente aquello que pretende demostrar, a saber, que la deslocalización fiscal es moralmente reprobable. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

El presente trabajo propone tres principios de justicia en la política migratoria. En primer lugar, el principio de asistencia plantea que los Estados ricos tienen la obligación primaria de asistir a las personas pobres en sus países de origen, y solo una obligación secundaria de acoger a aquellas que no puedan ser asistidas donde viven. En segundo lugar, el principio de contención sostiene que el empleo de la coacción debe ser proporcional al fin perseguido, de manera que solo en situaciones (...) de riesgo inminente, directo y grave estarían justificadas las restricciones a la inmigración. Por último, el principio de restitución requiere que, cuando sea necesario restringir la inmigración, dicha restricción sea parcial y temporal; los Estados deben procurar vías de tránsito alternativas y restablecer la libertad de circulación lo antes posible. Además, el artículo considera algunas objeciones a los principios propuestos y concluye con una defensa de la gobernanza internacional de las migraciones. (shrink)

This paper examines two alleged limitations in the use of formal languages: on the one hand, the trade-offs between expressive and inferential power, and on the other, the phenomenon of system imprisonment. After reconceptualizing the issue, we consider the role played by modality in the understanding of certain aspects of mathematical structures and argue for its centrality.

Según nuestra hipótesis, la physis cultural sufre un desfallecimiento por razón del cual se muestra incapaz de generar sentido y fuerza intensiva en aras de su autocrecimiento ilimitado. Desde esta perspectiva, nos proponemos examinar la vigencia de semejante “agenesia” en el incipiente capitalismo flexible, con el objeto de dilucidar sus expresiones mórbidas a la luz de los mecanismos ciegos que vertebran actualmente la esfera laboral; en la medida en que nos arrebata nuestras potencias creativas, la organización social de la intelectualidad (...) de masas termina generando, en efecto, una especie de locura carencial entregada a la aporética autófaga de la organización del vacío, por concurso de la cual buscamos saldar compulsivamente la deuda infinita contraída con la cultura. Por último, apuntamos contra la necedad concomitante a la pérdida del autoextrañamiento como principal inductor de la crisis, en un mundo histórico que acepta con indiferencia la dictadura invisible del Capital, sumido en una “ilusión de autonomía” que identifica libertad y flexibilidad. (shrink)

Some proponents of global justice question that opening borders is an effective strategy to alleviate global poverty and reduce inequalities between countries. This article goes a step further and asks whether an open borders policy is compatible with the objectives of global distributive justice. The latter, it will be argued, entails the ordering of needs, the assignment of priorities and the preference or subordination of some interests over others. In other words, global justice requires the establishment of conditions and restrictions (...) on mobility. On the contrary, open borders claim an unrestricted and unconditional (not unqualified) freedom of movement, limited only by public health considerations, serious threats to national security or democratic institutions, but not by an aspiration for maximizing global redistributive utility. The main point is that not only would freedom of movement be instrumentalized, losing its presumptive moral force, but ultimately open borders as a remedy of global justice are an oxymoron. The article concludes with an alternative defence of freedom of international movement. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the consolidation of Molecular Evolution, a field originating in the 1960s at the interface of molecular biology, biochemistry, evolutionary biology, biophysics and studies on the origin of life and exobiology. The claim is made that Molecular Evolution became a discipline by integrating different sorts of scientific traditions: experimental, theoretical and comparative. The author critically incorporates Timothy Lenoir’s treatment of disciplines , as well as ideas developed by Stephen Toulmin on the same subject. On their account disciplines (...) are spaces where the social and epistemic dimensions of science are deeply and complexly interwoven. However, a more detailed account of discipline formation and the dynamics of an emerging disciplinary field is lacking in their analysis. The present essay suggests focusing on the role of scientific concepts in the double configuration of disciplines: the social/political and the epistemic order. In the case of Molecular Evolution the concepts of molecular clock and informational molecules played a central role, both in differentiating molecular from classical evolutionists, and in promoting communication between the different sorts of traditions integrated in Molecular Evolution. The paper finishes with a reflection on the historicity of disciplines, and the historicity of our concepts of disciplines. (shrink)

A widespread need to explain the behavior and outcomes of AI-based systems has emerged, due to their ubiquitous presence. Thus, providing renewed momentum to the relatively new research area of eXplainable AI (XAI). Nowadays, the importance of XAI lies in the fact that the increasing control transference to this kind of system for decision making -or, at least, its use for assisting executive stakeholders- already affects many sensitive realms (as in Politics, Social Sciences, or Law). The decision-making power handover to (...) opaque AI systems makes mandatory explaining those, primarily in application scenarios where the stakeholders are unaware of both the high technology applied and the basic principles governing the technological solutions. The issue should not be reduced to a merely technical problem; the explainer would be compelled to transmit richer knowledge about the system (including its role within the informational ecosystem where he/she works). To achieve such an aim, the explainer could exploit, if necessary, practices from other scientific and humanistic areas. The first aim of the paper is to emphasize and justify the need for a multidisciplinary approach that is beneficiated from part of the scientific and philosophical corpus on Explaining, underscoring the particular nuances of the issue within the field of Data Science. The second objective is to develop some arguments justifying the authors’ bet by a more relevant role of ideas inspired by, on the one hand, formal techniques from Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, and on the other hand, the modeling of human reasoning when facing the explanation. This way, explaining modeling practices would seek a sound balance between the pure technical justification and the explainer-explainee agreement. (shrink)

The use of molecules and reactions as evidence, markers and/or traits for evolutionary processes has a history more than a century long. Molecules have been used in studies of intra-specific variation and studies of similarity among species that do not necessarily result in the analysis of phylogenetic relations. Promoters of the use of molecular data have sustained the need for quantification as the main argument to make use of them. Moreover, quantification has allowed intensive statistical analysis, as a condition and (...) a product of increasing automation. All of these analyses are subject to the methodological anxiety characteristic of a community in search of objectivity. It is in this context that scientists compared and evaluated protein and nucleic acid sequence data with other types of molecular data – including immunological, electrophoretic and hybridization data. This paper argues that by looking at long-term historical processes, such as the use of molecular evidence in evolutionary biology, we gain valuable insights into the history of science. In that sense, it accompanies a growing concern among historians for big-pictures of science that incorporate the fruitful historical research on local cases of the last decades. (shrink)

Between December 14 and 20, 1965, the World Health Organization Scientific Group on Haemoglobinopathies and Allied Disorders metatthe Geneva agency's headquarters. The group comprised eight well-known physicians including Tulio Arends, a leading Latin American human geneticist from the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Investigations. Others came from North America, Northern and Southern Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia, an array that reflected the delicate geopolitical equilibriums of postwar international health programs, but also the development of highly specialized biomedical research (...) around the globe. They elected Herman Lehmann, from the Abnormal Haemoglobin Research Unit of the Medical Research... (shrink)