This essay presents a model of a scientific field, as constituted by a domain of objective phenomena and a community of practitioners, interfaced by laboratory instrumentation and machinery. The relations between items in the domain, as well as those between the cognitive tools that shape the practices of the community are postulated to be relations of exteriority, that is, relations that do not determine the identity of what they relate. This move allows the model to avoid holism. The essay then (...) goes on to contrast the proposed model with Kuhn holistic theory of paradigms to highlight its advantages. (shrink)

The growing use of genetic tests in medical practice has a strong influence on some widespread notions of health and unhealth. Two consequences of this phenomenon are: (i) important changes in the meaning of these current notions and, therefore, (ii) the arrival of a new taxonomy or rearrangement for the so-called “health-concepts”. This paper attempts to demonstrate that both facts fuel a theoretical change that might be considered a model of scientific Kuhnean change in a fundamental aspect. On the other (...) hand, this theoretical shift process offers the basis for approaching a present-day controversy, i.e. whether Western society is going through a period of geneticization or not, from a new perspective. (shrink)

El problema de la inconmensurabilidad y, en particular, el del progreso científico, está asociado a -dos nombres: Kuhn y Feyerabend, cuyas propuestas hicieron que muchos pusieran en duda la aparente evidencia del llamado “progreso científico, relativizando su validez a cada escuela o paradigma. En este escrito mostraremos que este tipo de relativismo epistémico — al igual que la teoría convergentista de la verdad — carecen de validez filosófica e histórica y de qué modo la idea de “progreso científico es compatible (...) con la tesis de la inconmensurabilidad más allá de las dificultades onto-semánticas que ella implica. Esto supone abandonar el llamado punto de vista enunciativo de las teorías científicas (centrado sobre sentencias o enunciados) y adoptar un punto de vista no-enunciativista (centrado sobre estructuras o sistemas donde la relación interteórica de aproximación permite subsumir diferentes casos de inconmensurablidad no triviales y validar en ellos la noción de progreso científico. (shrink)

Normative research has nearly vanished from the academic ‘mainstream’ in accounting. Due to its prescriptive and value-driven approach, normative accounting research has been stigmatized as being unscientific and largely replaced by positive studies. We put this stigma into perspective. We first conceptualize the ‘positive-normative’ distinction and identify this dichotomy in accounting research history. We then challenge the dogmatic confinement of science to descriptive (positive) approaches. Moreover, we debate the basic conditions for normative accounting research and conclude that methodological and epistemological (...) pluralism in accounting research may help address a wide range of potential research questions. We point out that normative research approaches are essential in an applied science such as accounting, lest practical implications and prescriptions are to be the exclusive domain of accounting practice. (shrink)

From the standpoint of the theory of medicine, a formulation is given of three types of reasoning used by physicians. The first is deduction from probability models (as in prognosis or genetic counseling for Mendelian disorders). It is a branch of mathematics that leads to predictive statements about outcomes of individual events in terms of known formal assumptions and parameters. The second type is inference (as in interpreting clinical trials). In it the arguments from replications of the same process (data) (...) lead to conclusions about the parameters of a system, without calling into question either the probabilistic model or the criteria of evidence. The third is illation (as in the elucidation of symptoms in a patient). It is a process whereby, in the light of the total evidence and the conclusions from the other types of reasoning, one may modify, expand, simplify or demolish a conceptual framework proposed for deductions, and modify the nature of the evidence sought, the criteriology, the axioms, and the surmised complexity of the scientific theory. (The process of diagnosis as applied to a patient may in extreme cases lead to the discovery of an entirely new disease with its own, quite new, set of diagnostic criteria. This course cannot be accommodated inside either of the other two types of reasoning.) Illation has something of the character of Kuhn's scientific revolution in physics; but it differs in that it is the nature, not the degree or frequency of change that distinguishes it from Kuhn's normal science. (shrink)

This paper reports on a study of the largest Spanish corporations concerning the status of corporate ethics policies. The research project, the first of its kind in Spain, has two parts. First, the types of formal documents the companies use are analysed, including those dealing with ethical values or norms. Three groups of companies are distinguished: the first group has no formal documents dealing with ethical values, and the reasons given for not having any ethical statement are discussed. A second (...) group has one document mentioning ethical values (generally the vision and/or mission statement), and a third group has in place two or more documents (one generic and the other more detailed, such as a code of conduct). The findings show that the latter group is more proactive than the former in implementing measures for promoting business ethics throughout the organisation. In the second part of the research, the study analyses the differences between companies whose headquarters are in Spain, Europe and USA regarding the arguments, the focus and the practices used to formalise business ethics. (shrink)

A good book may have the power to change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once were—and still are. _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions _is that kind of book. When it was first published in 1962, it was a landmark event in the history and philosophy of science. Fifty (...) years later, it still has many lessons to teach. With _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, _Kuhn challenged long-standing linear notions of scientific progress, arguing that transformative ideas don’t arise from the day-to-day, gradual process of experimentation and data accumulation but that the revolutions in science, those breakthrough moments that disrupt accepted thinking and offer unanticipated ideas, occur outside of “normal science,” as he called it. Though Kuhn was writing when physics ruled the sciences, his ideas on how scientific revolutions bring order to the anomalies that amass over time in research experiments are still instructive in our biotech age. This new edition of Kuhn’s essential work in the history of science includes an insightful introduction by Ian Hacking, which clarifies terms popularized by Kuhn, including paradigm and incommensurability, and applies Kuhn’s ideas to the science of today. Usefully keyed to the separate sections of the book, Hacking’s introduction provides important background information as well as a contemporary context. Newly designed, with an expanded index, this edition will be eagerly welcomed by the next generation of readers seeking to understand the history of our perspectives on science. (shrink)

Unser aller Alltag ist in der Zwischenzeit stark von den Dienstleistungen und Plattformen der Technologiekonzerne durchdrungen. In der politischen Kommunikation sind Twitter, Facebook, Instagram und Konsorten nicht mehr wegzudenken. Die veränderten Bedingungen, unter denen politische Kommunikation stattfindet, haben nicht zu einer Machtnivellierung, sondern vielmehr zu einer verschiebung geführt. Politische Kommunikation ist für uns unentbehrlich, um unsere politischen Meinungen zu bilden, unsere Positionen zu artikulieren und politische Fragen zu diskutieren. Daraus ergeben sich zwei zentrale Fragen für die Politische Bildung: Welche Fähigkeiten (...) benötigen autonome und medienkundige Bürger*innen? Und wie erlernen wir diese Fähigkeiten? Dieser Beitrag skizziert eine mögliche Antwort darauf. (shrink)

Frente a las concepciones del Derecho como norma, como hecho o como valor , se propone aquí un cuarto enfoque que consiste en ver el Derecho como argumentación . Sin embargo, no hay una única forma de entender la argumentación jurídica. Aunque conectadas entre sí, en el trabajo se distinguen tres concepciones: la formal, la material y la pragmática o dialéctica; muchas cuestiones que se plantean en el ámbito de la teoría de la argumentación jurídica pueden resolverse -o aclararse- teniendo (...) en cuenta esa triple perspectiva. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is the method for assessing and improving our representational devices. On its ‘broad‐spectrum’ version, it is expected to be appropriately applicable to any of our representation‐involving cognitive activities, with major consequences for our whole cognitive life. This paper is about the theoretical foundations of conceptual engineering thus characterised. With a view to ensuring the actionability of conceptual engineering as a broad‐spectrum method, it addresses the issue of how best to construe the subject matter of conceptual engineering and successively (...) defends the theses that conceptual engineering should be: (i) About concepts, (ii) psychologically theorised, (iii) as multiply realised functional kinds. Thereby, I claim to theoretically secure and justify the maximum scope, flexibility, and impact for the method of conceptual engineering on our representational devices in our whole cognitive life—in other words, a broad‐spectrum version of conceptual engineering. (shrink)

The past few years have seen the opening of several antitrust investigations against some of the most dominant and powerful companies in the world—e.g., the U.S. Department of Justice, numerous states, and the Federal Trade Commission have sued Google, Facebook, and Amazon, and the E.U. has launched additional proceedings against Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. This paper looks at the latest trends and developments in the E.U. and the USA and analyzes the different regulatory approaches taken from a distinct business (...) ethics, that is, ordoliberal perspective. The paper aims to derive ordoliberal-inspired antitrust principles and apply them to the current antitrust proceedings and investigations, thereby assessing their strengths and weaknesses. It also aims at developing ordoliberal-inspired reform proposals which might help to strengthen and “harden” modern-day antitrust regimes. (shrink)

The way digital information technologies work and, more specifically, the possibilities for action that technological devices offer to us affect our processes of political belief formation. In particular, there seems to be a close connection between our digital affordances and the increase of the sort of polarization that threatens the proper functioning of democracy. In this paper, we analyze whether the type of polarization linked to the use of digital technologies, and which endangers the health of public deliberation, has to (...) do with the adoption of beliefs whose contents are increasingly extreme—extremism—or, on the contrary, has more to do with increasing our credence in the core beliefs of our political identity—radicalism. (shrink)

There are important cases where properties not referred to by expressions from the languages of physics are enabled in certain times and circumstances to get causal control over some kinds of physical events. I will argue that in those cases we would have to transfer to those properties the causal sufficiency to bring about these events. This would offer a principle of causal inheritance in sharp contrast with the inheritance principle for the causal sufficiency of second order properties defended by (...) Jaegwon Kim in his recent discussion of the causal exclusion problem concerning mental properties. The two principles would be very different. Their domains of application would be distinct. Kim's principle would transfer causal sufficiency to the more "concrete" physical properties able to realize mental properties understood as second order properties. Our principle would transfer causal sufficiency to the more "general" properties able to cause the relevant physical effects in the times and circumstances in question. That way, it would be possible to give a quite simple answer to the problem of causal exclusion posed by Kim in relation to mental properties. Our approach also would have very important consequences in relation to ordinary macrophysical causation. (shrink)

Our perceptual experience is largely based on prediction, and as such can be influenced by knowledge of forthcoming events. This susceptibility is commonly exploited by magicians. In the Vanishing Ball Illusion, for example, a magician tosses a ball in the air a few times and then pretends to throw the ball again, whilst secretly concealing it in his hand. Most people claim to see the ball moving upwards and then vanishing, even though it did not leave the magician’s hand (Kuhn (...) & Land, 2006; Triplett, 1900). But what exactly can such illusions tell us? We investigated here whether seeing a real action before the pretend one was necessary for the Vanishing Ball Illusion. Participants either saw a real action immediately before the fake one, or only a fake action. Nearly one third of participants experienced the illusion with the fake action alone, while seeing the real action beforehand enhanced this effect even further. Our results therefore suggest that perceptual experience relies both on long-term knowledge of what an action should look like, as well as exemplars from the immediate past. In addition, whilst there was a forward displacement of perceived location in perceptual experience, this was not found for oculomotor responses, consistent with the proposal that two separate systems are involved in visual perception. (shrink)

In this work we provide a new topological representation for implication algebras in such a way that its one-point compactification is the topological space given in [1]. Some applications are given thereof.

Our democracies presently face a set of unique challenges. In this article we argue that the current crisis needs to be understood as resulting from the convergence of two historical transformations: the paradigm of boundlessness; and what we term “endividualismo”, a novel mutation of individualism in the context of the financial age. The result is a novel political reality where individual rights are ever-expanding and the opportunities for collective action have shrunk to the point of impossibility. The resulting powerlessness of (...) the polity demands new answers: we need to reconfigure the relationship between citizens and political power. (shrink)

E l auto r , a pa r ti r de l análisi s d e un a seri e d e ejemplo s d e ponderació n judicial , trat a de contesta r la s cuestione s centrale s de l debat e enta b lad o e n l a teorí a de l derech o contemporánea entr e pa r tidario s y crítico s d e est e pa r ticula r procedimient o a r (...) gumentat i vo qu e po r l o demás e s d e u n us o frecuent e e n nuestro s tribunales , especialment e e n lo s tribunale s supremos y constitucionales . E n prime r luga r , tomand o com o punt o d e pa r tid a la s apo r tacione s de Al e x y , trat a d e responde r a la s cuestione s d e e n qu é consist e l a ponderación , cuále s son su s característica s y e n qu é s e diferenci a d e l a subsunción . E n s e gund o luga r , abord a el pro b lem a d e cuánd o h a y qu e pondera r y cuánd o est á justi f icad o hacerlo . F inalmente , trata d e responde r a l a cuestió n d e s i l a ponderació n e s u n procedimient o raciona l y e n qu é consist e es a racionalida d , mostrand o frent e a su s crítico s cóm o lo s criterio s d e l a ponderación utilizado s e n la s decisione s d e lo s tribunales , y e n concret o de l T ribuna l Constitucional, puede n se r considerado s u n bue n ejempl o d e cóm o pued e opera r l a racionalida d práctica e n e l ámbit o de l derecho. (shrink)

En este trabajo se trata de contestar a la cuestión de cómo evaluar los argumentos judiciales de carácter justificativo. Se precisa para ello el sentido de la tesis de la única respuesta correcta; se identifican diversos criterios de corrección y se presta una atención particular a los criterios de universalidad, coherencia, adecuación de las consecuencias, moralidad social y crítica, y razonabilidad. This article deals with the question of how to evaluate justificatory judicial reasoning. To this end, the author clarifies the (...) meaning of the one-right-answer thesis, identifies a variety of criteria of correctness, and gives special attention to the ideas of universality, coherence, (good) consequences, social and critical morality, and reasonability. (shrink)

Las herramientas teóricas destinadas a señalar las injusticias que sufren ciertos grupos socialmente oprimidos pueden acabar siendo utilizadas con propósitos completamente opuestos a los iniciales. Modificar el alcance de una herramienta teórica no es necesariamente problemático: la popularización de un concepto abre las puertas a que se utilice estratégicamente para diferentes fines. La tesis que defendemos en este artículo es que algunos personajes públicos cultivan una imagen particular de sí mismos que parece satisfacer los requisitos de la noción de injusticia (...) testimonial y utilizan esta situación como medio para obtener beneficio político de ella. Más concretamente, estos personajes públicos se benefician de esta condición para generar situaciones de desacuerdos cruzados, que están estrechamente relacionados con el aumento de la polarización. (shrink)

Die Philosophie der Lebenskunst begnügt sich nicht nur mit abstrakten Begründungen, sondern widmet sich praktischen Aspekten, die für ein gelungenes Leben entscheidend sind. Sie greift auf eine lange Tradition zurück, die bei Sokrates beginnt und bis zu Foucault und Wilhelm Schmid reicht. Bei den neueren Vertretern bildet die Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsche und seiner Thematisierung der Selbstsorge einen zentralen Fokus. Als philosophischer Arzt suchte Nietzsche herauszufinden, was für den einzelnen Menschen und die Kultur im Gesamten förderlich oder schädlich sei. Das Handbuch (...) stellt Nietzsches Kontexte und Konzepte der Lebenskunst übersichtlich und polyphon dar. Mit Beiträgen von: Eike Brock, Almuth Bruder-Bezzel, Tobias Brücker, Marco Brusotti, Mirella Carbone, Gaia Domenici, Ferdinand Fellmann, Günter Gödde, Helmut Heit, Beatrix Himmelmann, Kristina Jaspers, Joachim Jung, Hans-Per Klie, Manuel Knoll, Rolf Kühn, Torsten Lerchner, Roman Lesmeister, Kevin Liggieri, Diana Lohwasser, Nikolaos Loukidelis, André Martins, Martin Morgenstern, Jörn Müller, Nicola Nicodemo, Johannes Oberthür, Manos Perrakis, Martin Poltrum, Birgit Recki, Renate Reschke, Pia Daniela Völz, Hans Gerd von Seggern, Werner Stegmaier, Michael Steinmann, Barbara Straka, Paul von Tongeren, Vivetta Vivarelli, Robert Zimmer, Jörg Zirfas. (shrink)

Kalinowski conceives metaphysics as a set of propositions which can be axiomatized. This paper exposes the typical rules of an axiomatic system comparing them with the metaphysical system developed by Kalinowski. These rules are linguistic rules, but also admission-rules and transformation-rules. They always refer to the metaphysical propositions (wich are first or second propositions, as it is usual in logical systems). This paper tries to evaluate Kalinowski's attempt.

Este texto describe y analiza el estatus social, político y económico de la mujer durante la dictadura de Franco. Las leyes impuestas por la dictadura, con el amparo moral de la Iglesia española, provocaron un fuerte retroceso en los derechos de las mujeres. La llegada de la democracia y el auge de los diversos movimientos feministas, unidos a los cambios de mentalidad que se habían ido produciendo, hicieron que poco a poco la discriminación se fuera erradicando y la situación se (...) encamine hacia la igualdad.This text describes and analyzes the social, political and economic status of the woman during the dictatorship of Franco. The laws imposed by the dictatorship, with the moral protection of the Spanish Church, provoked a strong setback in the rights of the women. The arrival of the democracy and the summit of the diverse movements feminists joined the changes of mentality who had been taking place, they did that little by little the discrimination was eradicating and the situation intends towards the equality. (shrink)

Uno de los acontecimientos teóricos más importantes, ocurridos en la filosofía política de las últimas décadas, es la reformulación del paradigma republicano. Este neorrepublicanismo pretende hacer frente a la profunda crisis de la democracia liberal (corrupción, insolidaridad, apatía ciudadana, etc.), en nuestra época de predominio neoliberal. En el presente artículo desarrollo principalmente su visión de la ética ciudadana; es decir, la importante idea de que la república necesita formular un cierto bien común y promover la virtud cívica de sus ciudadanos, (...) si aspiramos a una sociedad libre de dominación, más justa y solidaria. (shrink)

Au terme des Prolégomènes, Husserl formule son idée de la logique pure en la structurant sur deux niveaux: l'un, supérieur, de la logique formelle fondé transcendantalement et d'un point de vue épistémologique par l'autre, inférieur, d'une morphologie des catégories. Seul le second de ces deux niveaux est traité dans les Recherches logiques, tandis que les travaux théoriques en logique formelle menés par Husserl à la même époque en paraissent plutôt indépendants. Cet article est consacré à ces travaux tels que recueillis (...) dans les appendices VI-X du volume 12 des Husserliana. Mettant en évidence la théorie de la signification qui les sous-tend par le biais d'une analyse de la question dite de l'extension des systèmes d'axiomes et de sa résolution au moyen d'une notion de complétude, son objectif est d'expliciter les modalités de l'intégration de la logique formelle dans l'idée husserlienne de la logique pure au tournant du xx siècle.When formulating his idea of pure logic in the Prole.. (shrink)