The presentation of the “dual picture of vagueness” in my earlier work is supplemented here with a number of additional considerations. I emphasize how the picture lends itself naturally to treatments of the contribution of a typical degree adjective to propositional content and to truth conditions. A number of reasonable refinements of the picture are presented, especially concerning occasions of use of a degree adjective in which a class containing a sorites series is somehow involved in content fixing, but in (...) such a way that an extension ultimately gets fixed for the predicate. I also develop the observation that standard theories of the logical and semantic paradoxes rely on the idea that the content-fixing mechanisms for the paradoxical expressions work well in general but fail in some localized cases, and that while standard theories of the sorites paradox are clearly not based on this idea at all, the dual theory is fully based on the idea. Next, I offer a few remarks on some recent theories of vagueness and the sorites that are broadly in the spirit of the dual picture, emphasizing the aspects where the latter compares favorably against those recent theories. Finally, the question whether the dual theory is statable with truth according to the theory itself is considered in more detail than in my earlier presentation. (shrink)

BackgroundSafeguarding the right to die according to the principles of autonomy and freedom of each person has become more important in the last decade, therefore increasing regulation of Euthanasi...

In March 2021, the Spanish Congress approved the law regulating euthanasia, that regulates both euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS). In this article, we analyse the Spanish law regulating euthanasia and PAS, comparing it with the rest of the European laws on euthanasia and PAS (Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg). Identified strengths of the Spanish law, with respect to other norms, are that it is a law with many safeguards, which broadly recognises professionals’ right to conscientious objection and the specification that it (...) makes on the prior comprehensive care of the patient, including the approach to care dependency. Regarding its shortcomings, the law does not differentiate well between euthanasia and PAS; it barely assigns a role to the healthcare team as a whole (similar to other regulations); it does not clarify the functions of the different professionals involved; it does not detail the specific composition and duration of theevaluation commission; it has not been accompanied by a prior or simultaneous regulation of palliative care; and, lastly, the period of time to implement the law is too short. (shrink)

In this article, I claim that the treatise known as περὶ πνεύματος/De spiritu (481a-486b Bekker) was written by Theophrastus. My overall argument unfolds in three stages: first, I briefly summarize the arguments against De spiritu’s authenticity in Aristotle’s corpus. This summary will lead to my first argument which uses the very same reasons that prove the non-Aristotelian authorship to claim the Theophrastean one, in particular linguistic aspects of the text (§2). Next, I will focus on chronology, by discussing the mention (...) of one Aristogenes to show that Aristotle could not have known this individual (§3). Third and last, I will examine various aspects of the work that demonstrate stylistic and argumentative connections (§4), as well as doctrinal affinities with the works of Theophrastus, although some have attributed it to Strato (§5). On the basis of these arguments, I conclude that the weight of the evidence makes On Breath a work by Theophrastus (or his circle) rather than one composed by Aristotle. (shrink)

According to some authors, Latour’s attention to politics during the last decades is the result of his proposing a different approach to politics that entails, with respect to his overall project, one of two situations. Either his epistemological proposal has suffered a “normative turn”—which necessarily breaks with the previous assumptions of Actor-Network Theory (ANT); or, if ANT’s view on technosciences remains valid, his political proposal becomes not possible as a new normative approach. In this paper, I will focus on the (...) critique voiced by John Law, as well as Graham Harman. I will argue that this is a false dilemma because there has not been a change in Latour’s conceptual basis, nor a lack of coherence within his thought that would undermine the democratic commitment of his Political Epistemology. I will justify this by exposing the fact that Latour’s overall project, as part of Science Studies, has not lately followed a “political” but an “ontological” turn, which has been underling his works since the very beginning of ANT. (shrink)

This paper examines from a historical perspective Tarski's 1936 essay, "On the concept of logical consequence." I focus on two main aims. The primary aim is to show how Tarski's definition of logical consequence satisfies two desiderata he himself sets forth for it: (1) it must declare logically correct certain formalizations of the -rule and (2) it must allow for variation of the individual domain in the test for logical consequence. My arguments provide a refutation of some interpreters of Tarski, (...) and notably John Etchemendy, who have claimed that his definition does not satisfy those desiderata. A secondary aim of the paper is to offer some basic elements for an understanding of Tarski's definition in the historical logico-philosophical context in which it was proposed. Such historical understanding provides useful insights on Tarski's informal ideas on logical consequence and their internal cohesion. (shrink)

Tarski implicitly postulated that a certain pre-theoretical concept of logical consequence and his technical concept of logical consequence are co-extensional. This chapter makes explicit a few theses about logical consequence or logical truth that sound Tarskian somehow, including one that most deserves the name ‘Tarski's Thesis’. Some of these theses are probably true or close to true but weaker than Tarski's. Some are false but stronger than Tarski's. Tarski's Thesis plausibly postulated that a sentence of a classical language possibly extended (...) with non-traditional extensional logical constants is logically true, if it is true in all classical interpretations of all its non-logical constants. But it is noted that this thesis turns out to be false on most conceptions of logical truth, for some sentences of a classical language extended with extensional logical constants are true in all classical interpretations of all its non-logical constants, but are not necessary. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine some passages of Tarski‘s paper ’On the concept of logical consequence’ and to show that some recent readings of those passages are wrong. John Etchemendy has claimed that in those passages Tarski gave an argument purporting to show that the notion of logical consequence defined by him (as opposed to some pretheoretic notion of logical consequence) possesses certain modal properties. Etchemendy further claims that the argument he attributes to Tarski is fallacious. Some (...) of Etchemendy’s critics have granted him that Tarski did give an argument purporting to show that the defined notion possesses certain modal properties ; but they have claimed that Tarski’s argument was not a fallacious one. I will show that both Etchemendy and his critics are wrong; in the relevant passages, Tarski did not offer (nor did he intend to offer) an argument that the defined notion of logical consequence possesses any modal properties. (shrink)

A combination of spiritual insight and outrageous behavior, wisdom and childishness, joyous high spirits and deep loneliness, Alan Watts (1915-1973) touched the lives of many with his teachings. In this penetrating biography, Furlong reveals how Watts was instrumental in introducing Eastern philosophy and religion to Western minds.

Este trabajo esboza un programa de investigación que anuda la fenomenología del cuerpo con la paleontología humana y con la antropología filosófica, a fin de examinar si y en qué medida los vínculos existentes entre la experiencia corporal, la imaginación y la memoria pueden formalizarse en términos geométricos tales como la verticalidad y, en ese sentido, constituir una base para la determinación simbólica de fenómenos orgánicos.

In this chapter, we offer a reconstruction of the evolution of Leibniz’s thought concerning the problem of the infinite divisibility of bodies, the tension between actuality, unassignability, and syncategorematicity, and the closely related question of the possibility of infinitesimal quantities, both in physics and in mathematics.Some scholars have argued that syncategorematicity is a mature acquisition, to which Leibniz resorts to solve the question of his infinitesimals – namely the idea that infinitesimals are just signs for Archimedean exhaustions, and their unassignability (...) is a nominalist maneuver. On the contrary, we show that syncategorematicity, as a traditional idea of classical scholasticism, is a feature of young Leibniz’s thinking, from which he moves away in order to solve the same problem, as he gains mathematical knowledge.We have divided Leibniz’s path toward his mature view of infinitesimals into five phases, which are especially significant for reconstructing the entire evolution. In our reconstruction, an important role is played by Leibniz’s text De Quadratura Arithmetica. Based on this and other texts, we dispute the thesis that fictionality coincides with syncategorematicity, and that unassignability can be bypassed. (In this chapter, we employ “syncategorematic” as a shorthand for “eventually identifiable with a procedure of exhaustion” and, as a consequence, “involving only assignable quantities.” We also identify syncategorematicity with potentiality, as suggested by some part of the scholastics, and in Sect. 2.2, we show that the two characterizations are equivalent, provided that “potentiality” is intended in the correct way: namely as in the unending iterative procedures of Greek mathematics.) On the contrary, we maintain that unassignability, as incompatible with the principle of harmony, is the ultimate reason for the fictionality of infinitesimals. (shrink)

La mal llamada “Conquista del Desierto” constituyó una serie de campañas militares ocurridas en el actual territorio patagónico argentino entre los años 1878 y 1885 cuyo resultado fue el asesinato, la violación y sometimiento a la esclavitud de diversos pueblos y comunidades indígenas. Este no fue un caso aislado, sino que se suma a una serie de ataques sistemáticos que han sufrido los indígenas en la Argentina. En los últimos años, a raíz del reclamo y las luchas de los pueblos (...) y comunidades indígenas, así como también de las organizaciones de derechos humanos, se han comenzado a juzgar algunos de estos hechos. En particular, la Masacre de Napalpí (1924) y la Masacre de La Bomba (1947) fueron los primeros que lograron respuestas judiciales favorables. En ambos se determinó que el accionar estatal era constitutivo de un genocidio y, por lo tanto, se debía resarcir a las comunidades actuales. Ahora bien, la Campaña del Desierto, al día de hoy, no tiene respuesta por parte del Estado. Teniendo presente este panorama, nuestro objetivo en este trabajo es reconstruir los diferentes problemas que enfrenta la posibilidad del reclamo judicial. Para ello, comenzaremos describiendo en qué consistió la Campaña del Desierto. Luego, explicaremos la noción de genocidio aplicado a hechos de injusticias históricas. Como tercer paso, reconstruiremos los casos jurisprudenciales que se han preocupado por genocidios indígenas ocurridos en el pasado. Con este panorama revelado, nos enfocaremos en los diferentes problemas jurídicos y políticos que surgen en los reclamos de justicia. (shrink)

Este trabajo se ocupa de una interpolación textual transmitida por sólo dos manuscritos altomedievales en el capítulo que Isidoro de Sevilla dedica al libro de Job en sus Prooemia: Città del Vaticano, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana Vat. Barberini 505 y Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek Cod. Augiensis Perg. 229. A partir de la transcripción del texto de ambos manuscritos y de la identificación su fuente (un pasaje de los Moralia in Iob de Gregorio Magno), ofrece una reflexión acerca de la semejanza entre los (...) procedimientos exegéticos de Gregorio e Isidoro como elemento que pudo motivar la redacción interpolada del capítulo. (shrink)

Since March 14, 2020, Spanish citizens have been confined to their homes due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Participating in musical activities has been associated with reduced anxiety and increased subjective wellbeing. The aim of this study is to analyze how Spanish citizens used music during the lockdown period. We also study perceptions of the impact music has in everyday life, in particular examining the respondents’ insights into the effects of listening to music in situations of isolation. The (...) study was conducted using the MUSIVID19 questionnaire administered to a total of 1868 Spanish citizens. The results indicate that during lockdown, respondents perceived an increase in the time they devoted to musical activities such as listening, singing, dancing or playing an instrument. The participants also reported using music to cope with the lockdown, finding that it helped them to relax, escape, raise their mood or keep them company. The findings suggest an improvement in their perception of the value of music in personal and social wellbeing during the lockdown. However, the study reveals significant differences in the use and perceptions of music according to respondents’ personal situations. Age and feelings of vulnerability may lead to more conservative uses of musical practice and to more moderate perceptions of the positive values of music. (shrink)

In this article I reconsider the issue of ?transfer? in education. Received views of learning transfer tend to rely upon a version of representation in which the world and the learner are held apart. The focus falls on how this gap can be closed; how learning can be transferred. A sociomaterial perspective, by contrast, puts learner and world back together, making each available to the other. Bringing the materialist sensibility of actor-network theory to bear and drawing on empirical data collected (...) as part of a small-scale qualitative study of the experience of graduate teachers when moving from education into work, it is argued that transfer, and by implication, learning, primarily concerns the practical and takes multiple forms: contingently composed of social, textual and material practices of knowledge production, learning transfer is a relational effect of the intersection of these practices. Empirical analyses point to the practice of two broad patterns of learning transfer, termed here the representational and the relational. Thinking learning transfer as performed through disparate agencies and practices challenges the self-evidences of perspectives on learning which characterize contemporary education. Here, learning is primarily seen in terms of the intrinsic capabilities of people, regardless of the object-dependent qualities of their learning and lives. This human-centricity raises significant epistemological and ethical issues which are addressed by way of a discussion of the embedded normativities and politics of the practices of representational and relational transfer. (shrink)

El artículo sugiere algunas observaciones sobre una antropología darwinista planteada a partir del conocimiento científico disponible. Al efecto, señala la importancia del estudio del genoma humano como fundamento de una reflexión filosófica de segundo grado sobre la naturaleza del ser humano, subrayando las grandes similitudes entre el Homo sapiens y las especies evolutivamente más próximas. Además, a partir del estudio del ADN mitocondrial y del cromosoma Y, centra la atención en el principio de coalescencia evolutiva entre seres humanos, gracias al (...) cual es posible afirmar que todos ellos son miembros consanguíneos de un mismo linaje. Concluye proponiendo algunas inferencias que muestran analogía entre determinados mythos y el logos científico actual. (shrink)

ResumenEl artículo presenta una sucinta exposición de las principales aportaciones sobre Filosofía Biológica realizadas por diversos autores al desarrollo del pensamiento evolucionista, durante el período histórico transcurrido entre el medievo y la articulación de la teoría darwinista. En particular, expone las contribuciones de diversa índole realizadas por Andrés Vesalio, Andrew Battell, Jacobo Bondt, Nicolás Tulp, Edward Tyson, John Ray, Benoit de Maillet, Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, Karl von Linneo, Georges Louis Leclerc, Félix de Azara y Jean Baptiste Lamarck.Palabras claveHistoria (...) de la ciencia, historia de la filosofía biológica, evolucionismo predarwinista, orígenes de la primatologíaAbstractThis paper presents a brief exposition of the main contributions about Philosophy of Biology provided by several authors for the development of evolutionist thought, during the historical period elapsed from the Middle Ages to the beginning of Darwinian theory. It particularly presents different kinds of contributions made by Andreas Vesalius, Andrew Battell, Jacob Bondt, Nicolaes Tulp, Edward Tyson, John Ray, Benoit de Maillet, Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, Karl von Linneo, Georges Louis Leclerc, Félix de Azara and Jean Baptiste Lamarck.KeywordsHistory of science, history of philosophy of biology, predarwinian evolutionary theory, origins of primatology. (shrink)

In recent years, there have been concerted efforts to ensure that the different components of the international response to crisis-affected countries, whether conducted under the banner of the United Nations or not, are integrated in pursuit of a stated goal of comprehensive, durable, and just resolution of conflict. This includes a drive to purposefully make humanitarian assistance to victims, one of the principal forms of outside involvement in crisis situations, supportive of the “international community's” political ambition. The implication of the (...) coherence agenda is that meeting lifesaving needs is too limited in scope, and that the principles of impartiality, neutrality, and independence that have typically characterized humanitarian action should be set aside in order to harness aid to the “higher” goals of peace, security, and development. (shrink)

Innovation in medieval studies is the creative ability to go back to sources. Digging, exploring, and connecting material pieces of evidence, facts, and individuals uncover new knowledge. One of the most significant sources for the medieval textual production is the university. Understanding the writings stemming from different faculties of medieval universities requires skills, curiosity, and tools. Among such instruments, the statutes of universities help researchers not only to decipher the organization of the academic institutions and interpret the rules that apply (...) to scholars and to their professors, but also to decode how and why texts were produced. The faculty of theology represents the highest level where education led during the Middle Ages and delivers the highest degree such as the master in theology. All over Europe, such faculties become the impetus that drives the intelligentsia to produce a textual heritage that today generates inspiration for magisterial carriers. Among them, Professor Maarten Hoenen is one to praise today. Taking as a point of departure a recent publication of Maarten Hoenen, 1 I will propose to investigate the relation between the statute of universities and of intellectual practices within medieval academia-more precisely, how a researcher should dig for complementary sources when the main documentation depicting an intellectual practice, such as the protestatio and gratiarum actio, is missing. I do not intend to be exhaustive, but simply to focus on how we should understand these two actions, protestatio and gratiarum actio, in connection with the Sentences commentaries. 2 The paradox is that we have traces of these two practices in the surviving manuscripts stemming from the university, but we do not always have a description of these actions in their statutes. Protestatio represents an oath that bachelors take at the beginning of an academic exercise, and the gratiarum actio is the final paragraph that closes the same exercise by thanks addressed to the public. The span of time I will focus on is between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, since this is the period from which some testimonies survived that today help to better clarify how these actions were performed in medieval academia. It is also the period of naissance of the new faculties of theology all around Europe, as it is the case with Bologna, Vienna, Cracow, or Prague. They all embraced the model disseminated in Paris and Oxford on reading on the Sentences of Peter Lombard to obtain the degree of doctor in theology, and they contribute to building tradition, and therefore to produce sources for us today. (shrink)

This text, commissioned by the OSUN Global Observatory of Academic Freedom, discusses how the concept of academic freedom is codified in Colombian Law and regulations of public and private higher education institutions. It also explores common conceptions of academic freedom among Colombian scholars, as well as commonly observed threats to it.

Este artículo es producto de una reflexión etnográfica sobre el proceso de cambio sufrido por una cultura del trabajo asociada a la explotación del carbón y su vinculación con la ciudad de Lota, ubicada en el centro sur de Chile, la que se constituye comohabitacional y de servicios junto con el desarrollo de la monoindustria desde la segunda mitad del siglo XIX. Por una parte, se analiza cómo, desde la condición laboral, social y de vida de los trabajadores y la (...) población, se configura un sujeto histórico con identidad laboral y de clase, el que genera un discurso teleológico que da paso a una visión utópica durante el ciclo de vida de la explotación del mineral. Por otra, se analiza cómo el fin de la explotación del mineral en 1997, tras el cierre de los yacimientos, hace que los sujetos transformen su utopía en ucronía; es decir, cómo el fin de la narrativa que movilizaba las acciones genera una temporalidad alternativa que no tiene tiempo real, lo que revela las dificultades para reestructurar la biografía y memoria de una comunidad especializada. This article is the result of an ethnographic observation of the process of change undergone by a labor culture associated to the coal mining and its relationship with the city of Lota, located in the center South of Chile a city that has been constituted as a residential and services center along with the development of the monoindustry, from the second half of the nineteenth century. On one hand, it analyzes how this has shaped an historical subject with labor and class identity considering the working, social and living conditions of the mining workers and the population. This historical subject generates a teleological discourse that leads to a utopianist vision during the service life of the mineral´s exploitation. On the other hand, we analyze how the end of the mining activity in 1997, after the coal mine´s closing, causes the subjects to transform their utopia into uchronia; that is to say, how the aim of the narrative that addressed the actions generates an alternative temporality that has no real time, which reveals the difficulties to reconstruct the biography and memory of a specialized community. (shrink)

Ethical leadership matters in the context of organizational change due to the need for followers to trust the integrity of their leaders. Yet, there have been no studies investigating ethical leadership and organizational change. To fill this gap, we introduce a model of the moderating role of involvement in change. Organizational change and involvement in change are proposed as context-level moderators in the relationships of ethical leadership and work-related attitudes and performance. We employ a sample of 199 supervisor–subordinate pairs from (...) a wide variety of organizations. Results support a three-way interaction (ethical leadership, organizational change, and involvement in change) for performance and OCBs. Our results have important implications for organizational change since ethical leadership appears to complement follower involvement when change is happening. (shrink)

"This book gathers together eighteen of the most important and influential scholarly articles of the last 60-70 years (three of which are translated into..

This article has, as an end in itself, the latent and pulsating objective of serving as a tool for introductory awakening to the process of racial literacy. As a further objective, I seek to point out the importance of this process in the family, institutional and social spheres, in order to minimally incite people to an anti-racist education. To this end, I start from the precision of concepts related to literacy and literacy systems, working with some concepts that are part (...) of this literacy repertoire such as race, racism and racial discrimination, in order to clarify them, so that they can be better understood in their applicability. In the second moment, to address the literacy, I start from a first question: who are the literate? Responding to this implies recognizing the place of white privilege with its implications. The other steps that make up this process are investigated throughout the article. I mainly use the elaborations of the Martinican philosopher, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon, from the work Pele Negra, Máscaras Brancas (1952), in order to, with this resumption, enter into the theme of the book by the New Zealand philosopher Annette Baier, Reflections On How We Live (2009) as a way of thinking about its feasibility, with a view to anti-racist education through racial literacy. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es describir la percepción de riesgo y los factores de protección y de riesgo frente al consumo de sustancias psicoactivas legales e ilegales en estudiantes de la Universidad de Boyacá. Es un estudio cuantitativo y descriptivo de corte transversal, para el cual se tomó una muestra de 573 estudiantes que fueron seleccionados mediante muestreo estratificado probabilístico. El instrumento utilizado fue la encuesta sobre consumo de drogas, factores y percepción de riesgo en estudiantes universitarios (CODEU) diseñado (...) por Beverido, Salas, De San Jorge, Pavón, Blázquez, Gogeascoechea y Cruz (2012), que consta de 73 preguntas. Este instrumento fue validado y obtuvo un alpha de Cronbach de 0.787. Los hallazgos muestran que entre los factores protectores se encuentran: adecuadas relaciones familiares y practicar un deporte, como factores de riesgo se identifican principalmente: la permisividad social y las construcciones de reconocimiento social presentes ante el consumo de sustancias legales. De las sustancias ilegales, la marihuana es la que se percibe como de menor riesgo frente a la cocaína, el bazuco, los inhalantes y la heroína. (shrink)

Through cultural transmission, repeated learning by new individuals transforms cultural information, which tends to become increasingly compressible . Existing diffusion chain studies include in their design two processes that could be responsible for this tendency: learning and reproducing . This paper manipulates the presence of learning in a simple iterated drawing design experiment. We find that learning seems to be the causal factor behind the increase in compressibility observed in the transmitted information, while reproducing is a source of random heritable (...) innovations. Only a theory invoking these two aspects of cultural learning will be able to explain human culture's fundamental balance between stability and innovation. (shrink)

As a neonatal neurologist, I serve families facing tragic decisions in which they must balance trade-offs between death and life with profound disability. I often find myself in complex discussions about future outcome, in which families sort through in real-time what information they value most in making such a choice. Will he laugh? Will he be in pain? Will he know how much he’s loved? In this month’s feature article, Brick et al share the results of an online survey aimed (...) at assessing public views on when a life is not worth living, in an effort to inform ongoing legal and clinical debates about withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment for children. These findings raise important questions about how we define and measure outcomes that matter to parents as they make these tragic decisions. It is challenging to interpret these findings in the absence of context of how decision-making for infants occurs in real-time. The nature of this study and its objective required that cases be substantially simplified. As the authors acknowledge, the prognoses and function of the children involved in these cases were often deeply contested. Prognostic uncertainty is common for children with significant …. (shrink)