Este trabajo presenta y analiza dos posturas acerca de las representaciones y clasificaciones científicas que Ian Hacking en ¿La construcción social de qué? denomina realismo o estructurismo inherente y nominalismo. La primera sostiene que las divisiones del conocimiento científico expresan o reflejan divisiones estructurales de la realidad a la que se refieren, en tanto que la segunda considera que toda división o estructura atribuida por la ciencia a la realidad se encuentra sólo en las representaciones mismas. Se sostiene que tal (...) criterio clasificatorio resulta pertinente y fructífero para las discusiones actuales acerca de la naturaleza del conocimiento científico, que pone de relieve diversas cuestiones profundas e intensamente debatidas a lo largo de la historia de la filosofía, y que el empleo del término “nominalismo” –a pesar de su polisemia y de ser poco utilizado actualmente en la filosofía de la cienciaes acertado por cuanto la discusión es en gran medida semántica, ya que se basa en dos concepciones contrapuestas acerca de la naturaleza del lenguaje humano. (shrink)

In chapter one I will try to reconstruct a plot, or a hidden agenda, in the discussion in ethics between the beginning of the twentieth century and 1958, the year of a decisive turning point in ethics, both Anglo-Saxon and Continental, and strangely enough also the year of the beginning of the end of the Cold War, of post-Tridentine Catholicism, and perhaps something else. My hypothesis will be that there are two similar starting points for the Anglo-Saxon and the Continental (...) twentieth-century discussion, the philosophies of Henry Sidgwick and Friedrich Nietzsche, both expressions of some kind of ethical scepticism, and that a third, somewhat analogous starting-point could be found in Émile Durkheim, the proponent of the dream of the morale laïque. I will discuss how far the diagnosis formulated by Karl-Otto Apel of a kind of ‘parallel convergence' between existentialism and analytic philosophy, based on the shared division of facts and values that eventually justified two kinds of 'decisionism' is useful in making sense of the agenda of the discussion. In the second chapter I will discuss the reasons for two parallel U-turns around 1958 which brought back traditional schools of normative ethics, 'deontologism' and utilitarianism, as well as the reasons for criticism to both schools from the heterogeneous alignment of virtue ethics. In the third chapter I will discuss the remarkable phenomenon of the emergence, starting with the Sixties or the early Seventies, of ‘applied’ ethics. I examine the reasons, both theoretical and political, for the revival, the point to which applied ethics may look as a grand return of a casuistic and natural law way of thinking, or in Alan Donagan’s words a case of “reverse subversion” of the modern secular world by traditional Scholastic ways of thinking, and the difficult coexistence between general normative ethics and procedures for settling issues in a ‘reasonable’ way while dissent on issues of principle is as alive as ever. Then I try to draw a provisional moral. My suggestions are that (i) casuistry is more alive than ever; (ii) natural law thinking is more alive than ever; (iii) moral dilemmas never arise; (iv) moral dissent is treatable, with the right strategy; (v) practical philosophy does not need the same degree of exactness as the theoretical sciences but this is no obstacle to its working in practice. (shrink)

Dawn. Aeneas has just left. As soon as Dido notices that the Trojan fleet is sailing far away from Carthage she is overcome by despair and launches into an enraged monologue , which climaxes in her curse against Aeneas and all of his descendants . In the first part of the monologue Dido reproaches herself for how she has dealt with Aeneas.

Tarski algebras, also known as implication algebras or semi-boolean algebras, are the \-subreducts of Boolean algebras. In this paper we shall introduce and study the complete and atomic Tarski algebras. We shall prove a duality between the complete and atomic Tarski algebras and the class of covering Tarski sets, i.e., structures \, where X is a non-empty set and \ is non-empty family of subsets of X such that \. This duality is a generalization of the known duality between sets (...) and complete and atomic Boolean algebras. We shall also analize the case of complete and atomic Tarski algebras endowed with a complete modal operator, and we will prove a duality for these algebras. (shrink)

A short discussion of the origins and nature of the notion of metaethics.

A reconstruction of the notion of Market in the history of economic ethics and economic theory.

A discussion of the birth and adventures of a concept created by Marxist authors at the time of the Russian revolution, sometimes under the term 'economic materialism' and the subsequent discussion by Polanyi of Marx's own economicist fallacy.

The unresolved dilemma of Marxian theory is whether the overall social constellation may legitimately be called 'mode of production' because mono-causal economic explanations are acceptable or whether there is instead a more complex causality at the level of the 'ökonomische Gesellschaftsformation', i.e. the social constellation as a whole.

A short reconstruction of the discussion on the genesis of Western Modern individualism, of the arguments advanced by its critics and by recent vindications of ethical and political individualism.

In the fourth line of her first speech in Book 1, to Ilioneus and the Trojan castaways, Dido quotes the first word of the first line of Lucretius’ De rerum natura, and in the fourth line of her second speech, to Aeneas, she quotes the first words of the second line of the De rerum natura. This is not a coincidence but a signal of the importance of Lucretius and Epicureanism for the characterization of Dido in the Aeneid.

The objective of this paper is to identify, from a historical perspective, the presence of elements of the protagorean thought in the Herodotus’ Histories. I realize an analysis of the passages in which Herodotus refers to νόμος and φύσις, which constitute a conceptual antithesis within the framework of the fifth century a.C. From this analysis I will try to show that Herodotus retakes the intellectual discussions of the fifth century BC, but makes a controversial reception of these concepts highlighting the (...) climate of conflict on the level of the symbolic. (shrink)

Reseña bibliográfica de LAKS, André & MOST, Glenn W.: Early Greek Philosophy, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2016, 9 vols.

Este artículo presenta las principales constataciones del informe "La situación social de los inmigrantes acompañados por Cáritas", trabajo de investigación elaborado por el Observatorio de la Realidad Social de Cáritas, con la información recibida de las 54 Cáritas Diocesanas (CCDD) que participaron en el estudio y que representan un 80 % de la Confederación de Cáritas Española.

En el presente artículo se revisa un tema correspondiente a la filosofía política del siglo XVI que se dio bajo la forma de la antinomia Virtud Política – Virtud Confesional. Maquiavelo no es un pensador político sistemático; sin embargo, es necesario afirmar que al menos identifica dos elemento..

This paper examines the explanatory distinctness of wiring optimization models in neuroscience. Wiring optimization models aim to represent the organizational features of neural and brain systems as optimal (or near-optimal) solutions to wiring optimization problems. My claim is that that wiring optimization models provide design explanations. In particular, they support ideal interventions on the decision variables of the relevant design problem and assess the impact of such interventions on the viability of the target system.

Rencontrer Dieu en Jésus Christ et vivre de la relation avec lui est ce que prétend faire tout chrétien, c'est ce qui fonde son identité. Mais quelle figure d'humanité propose celui qui déclare vivre en Jésus Christ ? Comment rencontrer le Seigneur, le connaître, le comprendre ? Est-il possible d'espérer une humanité meilleure que celle que nous connaissons ? Nous pouvons trouver les réponses à ces questions dans les textes bibliques, en particulier dans les récits évangéliques qui témoignent de l'expérience (...) des disciples de Jésus, qui abordaient des questions sensiblement analogues à celles que nous nous posons. (shrink)

The death penalty raises ethical questions at a minimum of two levels: regarding the persons directly involved in the events and penal procedures, and regarding the life and structures of society. The issue lies within the wider question of punishment, which calls into question 'justice' in personal and social life, the idea of the common good, finality and shared logics. As understood ethically, the common good indicates, in the sharing of existence, the meaning and purpose of every form of social (...) life. The human quality of relations is relevant to matters concerning the victims, the perpetrators and the responsibilities of society. (shrink)

Realism and utopia usually represent antithetic political perspectives. In this essay I argue that these might find some common points by overtaking the secular interpretation they usually place on themselves.

As jornadas de junho de 2013 se constituíram espontaneamente nas ruas de todo o Brasil, iniciando uma era de intensa polarização política e gerando todo um legado social e cultural nos anos seguintes. O objetivo do presente artigo é compreender e analisar o cenário da poesia nacional desde então, buscando rastros daqueles acontecimentos nos poemas recentemente produzidos. Para tal, buscou-se aprofundar dois universos poéticos distintos e muito pouco relacionados: o slam e a chamada “poesia tradicional”, a partir da leitura de (...) autores como Luz Ribeiro, Paulo Ferraz e Pádua Fernandes. (shrink)

The June/2013 protests happened spontaneously all over Brazil, starting an era of deep political polarization and creating a social and cultural legacy in the following years. This article aims to comprehend and analyze the national poetry scene since then, searching traces of those events in recently published poems. To do so, it sought to dive into two different unrelated universes: slam poetry and the so-called “traditional poetry”, using as a resource the work of poets such as Luz Ribeiro, Paulo Ferraz (...) and Pádua Fernandes. (shrink)

This article analyses the Italian philosopher and anthropologist Ernesto De Martino’s The Land of Remorse from a philosophical viewpoint. After having presented the main Demartinian concepts (e.g. ‘presence’ and ‘crisis of presence’) and examined the phenomenon of ‘tarantism’ (that is a magical-religious ritual practiced in southern Italy), the author interprets ‘ritual symbols’ as useful ‘fictions,’ which permit to resolve the problem of ‘indeterminacy’ (that refers to vague objects and unknown events), and rescue the human Self from psychological and existential crisis.