Ethical, Religious and Legal Arguments in the Current Debate over Euthanasia in Spain In the last ten years, there have been several cases in Spain (Ramón Sampedro, Leganés, Jorge León that have led to an intense social debate on euthanasia. The recent case of Inmaculada Echevarría, a woman suffering from a serious disease that kept her immobilized in bed, has revived the debate on euthanasia in Spain. On 18 October 2006 she held a press conference and publicly asked to be (...) disconnected from the ventilator that kept her alive. After a long ethical, religious, legal, and social debate, the patient was disconnected on 14 March 2007 after being adequately sedated. As a consequence, the patient died. In our paper we defend the need for a radical and intercultural democracy and present the main ethical, religious and legal arguments on euthanasia that are being posed in Spain and in Europe as a debate that should help to build a radical and intercultural democracy at a European level. (shrink)

Though laughter and smiles are a part of our everyday lives, they are not always used appropriately. We need to learn how to laugh, to educate our sense of humor. This book is a meditation on humor in general, the humor we deploy and perceive on a day-to-day basis, and on the ethical dimensions that underpin it. It puts forward a new ethical theory, placing humor at the Archimedean point from which to further our understanding as moral subjects, offering explanations (...) as to our moral conduct and pointing the way towards ethical improvement as both individuals and as a group. After defining what humor is and portraying the current state of play among experts on the subject, the author sets out based on the major contributions made by the great philosophers. Then, taking in such fundamental ethical categories as moral sentiment, virtue, duty, capacity and responsibility, he puts forward his own ethical theory (what he refers to as the ethics of humor), based on both linguistic and biological rational. He unveils a new medical/philosophical method: clinical ethics, capable of interpreting humor as a point where ethics and health intersect. This volume also points out various means by which this ethical theory might be brought to bear on fields such as healthcare, business, education, politics, the mass media and everyday life. Above all, it discovers the role that good humor has to play in health and the instruments used to measure it. Juan Carlos Siurana argues that good humor gives expression to freedom, is universal, and contains within itself the basis of a cross-cultural ethical approach, one that is well worth understanding and teaching. Given that humor crosses over into every dimension of our personal and professional lives, the book is aimed at a broad, multidisciplinary public (philosophers, medical practitioners, nurses, company executives, teachers, politicians, psychologists, journalists, etc.), as well as anyone with an interest in the various registers of humor. He offers both theoretical and practical tools for the ethical improvement of professions, organizations and the public at large. (shrink)

Reseña de: Arenas-Dolz, Francisco y Gallegos Salazar, Daniela (eds.) (2009), El ciudadano democrático. Reflexiones éticas para una educación intercultural, Madrid, Plaza y Valdés.

En este trabajo me concentro en el hecho de la argumentación en Karl-Otto Apel, para intentar comprender, según este autor, en qué consiste, por qué es tan importante para la fundamentación de la ética y qué significa argumentar racionalmente. A partir de ahí camino con Apel más allá de Apel mostrando la importancia de incorporar la dimensión del humor para que la argumentación realmente avance hacia la verdad y la justicia. In this paper I concentrate on the fact of arguing (...) in Karl-Otto Apel, to try to understand, according to this author, what it is, why it is so important for the foundation of ethics and what it means to argue rationally. From there I walk with Apel beyond Apel showing the importance of incorporating the dimension of humor so that the argumentation really advances towards truth and justice. (shrink)

Destaco algunas de las aportaciones de autores contemporáneos que han abordado el tema del humor desde un punto de vista ético, principalmente: Ronald de Sousa, Joseph Boskin, John Morreall, Simon Critchley y Vittorio Hösle. Partiendo de su pensamiento, defiendo que la «ética del humor» tiene, al menos, las siguientes características: nos ayuda a reconocer los valores éticos en los que realmente creemos, detecta el humor éticamente incorrecto que mantiene estereotipos, fomenta el desarrollo de virtudes, critica los vicios de la sociedad (...) contribuyendo a construir una sociedad más ética, y justifica con razones adecuadas la risa que trata de mejorar éticamente a la sociedad. I emphasize some of the contributions of contemporary authors that deal with the issue of humor from an ethical perspective, mainly: Ronald de Sousa, Joseph Boskin, John Morreall, Simon Critchley and Vittorio Hösle. Starting from their thoughts I defend that the «ethics of humor» has, at least, the following features: it helps us to recognize the ethical values in which we really believe, it detects the ethically incorrect humor that maintains stereotypes, it promotes the development of virtues, it criticize the vices of the society contributing to build a more ethical society, and justifies with adequate reasons the laughing that tries to improve ethically our society. (shrink)

Destaco algunas de las aportaciones de autores contemporáneos que han abordado el tema del humor desde un punto de vista ético, principalmente: Ronald de Sousa, Joseph Boskin, John Morreall, Simon Critchley y Vittorio Hösle. Partiendo de su pensamiento, defiendo que la «ética del humor» tiene, al menos, las siguientes características: nos ayuda a reconocer los valores éticos en los que realmente creemos, detecta el humor éticamente incorrecto que mantiene estereotipos, fomenta el desarrollo de virtudes, critica los vicios de la sociedad (...) contribuyendo a construir una sociedad más ética, y justifica con razones adecuadas la risa que trata de mejorar éticamente a la sociedad. I emphasize some of the contributions of contemporary authors that deal with the issue of humor from an ethical perspective, mainly: Ronald de Sousa, Joseph Boskin, John Morreall, Simon Critchley and Vittorio Hösle. Starting from their thoughts I defend that the «ethics of humor» has, at least, the following features: it helps us to recognize the ethical values in which we really believe, it detects the ethically incorrect humor that maintains stereotypes, it promotes the development of virtues, it criticize the vices of the society contributing to build a more ethical society, and justifies with adequate reasons the laughing that tries to improve ethically our society. (shrink)

One of the major arenas for debate within generative grammar is the nature of paradigmatic relations among words. Intervening in key debates at the interface between syntax and semantics, this book examines the relation between structure and meaning, and analyses how it affects the internal properties of words and corresponding syntactic manifestations. Adapting notions from the Evo-Devo project in biology (the idea of 'co-linearity' between structural units and behavioural manifestations) Juan Uriagereka addresses a major puzzle: how words can be (...) both decomposable so as to be acquired by children, and atomic, so that they do not manifest themselves as modular to adults. (shrink)

Este volumen estudia el papel de Cristo en el dinamismo teológico de la acción. Lo hace a través de un análisis de los comentarios al Nuevo Testamento de Santo Tomás de Aquino. Con ello se pretende contribuir a la elaboración de un cristocentrismo moral dentro del proceso de renovación de la teología moral que se ha llevado a cabo en todo el siglo XX.

Revolución Conservadora Y Conservación Revolucionaria Juan Mayorga Ruano La memoria de las víctimas, nos dice Walter Benjamín en el conjunto de su obra, es la única base sobre la que se puede construir una política no reaccionaria. Una política para la humanidad. El presente trabajo se enmarca en el campo de la consideración filosófica de la historia. Se trata de una reflexión sobre el concepto de la historia según Benjamin.

Las guerras centroamericanas de la década de 1980 provocaron giros analíticos en las agendas intelectuales. En este trabajo estudio el caso de Ignacio Martín-Baró, psicólogo social y sacerdote jesuita de la Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) de El Salvador. Postulo que su propuesta de imprimir una perspectiva latinoamericana al pensamiento psicosocial derivó de la necesidad de comprender las crisis sociales surgidas con la guerra. Martín-Baró se interesó por el ‘mundo desgarrado de la vida cotidiana’ como lugar de análisis de los principales conflictos (...) sociales, entre los que destacó la tortura y la alta dosis de crueldad manifestada en el ejercicio de la violencia. Por último, analizo sus reflexiones sobre los impactos de la guerra en la salud mental, especialmente en la niñez, y subrayo su llamado de atención sobre el carácter cultural de la violencia y los desafíos que ello implicaba para la imaginación de un nuevo futuro de convivencia. Si bien fue un pensador en constante alerta sobre la importancia del análisis históricamente sustentado para comprender las crisis sociales, sus intervenciones intelectuales imaginaron un futuro de viabilidad histórica y de sostenibilidad de la vida para las mayorías con las que comprometió su quehacer. (shrink)

This edition is designed to open the enchanting book to all readers of modern Spanish. Raymond Willis has regularized and brought the medieval text as close as possible, without falsification, to modern canons. The text is printed integrally, without annotation. Mr. Willis' English paraphrase, printed on facing pages, is written in syntactical constructions that exactly parallel the Spanish verses, and thus functions as both a glossary and a key to puzzling constructions. Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library uses (...) the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

This book studies the notions of order and universe in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. It provides an overview of an array of metaphysical concepts in Aquinas such as relation, proportion, types of order, composition, whole and part. It is claimed that Aquinas' metaphysics is mainaly a metaphysics of the order of the universe.

Functionalism as a philosophical position has been recently applied to the case of emotion research. However, a number of objections have been raised against applying such a view to scientific theorizing on emotions. In this article, I argue that functionalism is still a viable strategy for emotion research. To do this, I present functionalism in philosophy of mind and offer a sketch of its application to emotions. I then discuss three recent objections raised against it and respond to each of (...) them. These objections claim that functionalism is intractable because (i) it does not support a scientifically interesting taxonomy of emotions for experimental settings, (ii) it is inherently teleological, and (iii) it cannot be falsified. I argue that these objections either rely on a simplified version of functionalism as a philosophical position or they pose challenges that functionalists can readily address. Lastly, I conclude by drawing some lessons these objections suggest for a tractable functionalist account of emotions. (shrink)

Intuitively, there is a difference between knowledge and mere belief. Contemporary philosophical work on the nature of this difference has focused on scenarios known as “Gettier cases.” Designed as counterexamples to the classical theory that knowledge is justified true belief, these cases feature agents who arrive at true beliefs in ways which seem reasonable or justified, while nevertheless seeming to lack knowledge. Prior empirical investigation of these cases has raised questions about whether lay people generally share philosophers’ intuitions about these (...) cases, or whether lay intuitions vary depending on individual factors (e.g. ethnicity) or factors related to specific types of Gettier cases (e.g. cases that include apparent evidence). We report an experiment on lay attributions of knowledge and justification for a wide range of Gettier Cases and for a related class of controversial cases known as Skeptical Pressure cases, which are also thought by philosophers to elicit intuitive denials of knowledge. Although participants rated true beliefs in Gettier and Skeptical Pressure cases as being justified, they were significantly less likely to attribute knowledge for these cases than for matched true belief cases. This pattern of response was consistent across different variations of Gettier cases and did not vary by ethnicity or gender, although attributions of justification were found to be positively related to measures of empathy. These findings therefore suggest that across demographic groups, laypeople share similar epistemic concepts with philosophers, recognizing a difference between knowledge and justified true belief. (shrink)

The use of black box algorithms in medicine has raised scholarly concerns due to their opaqueness and lack of trustworthiness. Concerns about potential bias, accountability and responsibility, patient autonomy and compromised trust transpire with black box algorithms. These worries connect epistemic concerns with normative issues. In this paper, we outline that black box algorithms are less problematic for epistemic reasons than many scholars seem to believe. By outlining that more transparency in algorithms is not always necessary, and by explaining that (...) computational processes are indeed methodologically opaque to humans, we argue that the reliability of algorithms provides reasons for trusting the outcomes of medical artificial intelligence. To this end, we explain how computational reliabilism, which does not require transparency and supports the reliability of algorithms, justifies the belief that results of medical AI are to be trusted. We also argue that several ethical concerns remain with black box algorithms, even when the results are trustworthy. Having justified knowledge from reliable indicators is, therefore, necessary but not sufficient for normatively justifying physicians to act. This means that deliberation about the results of reliable algorithms is required to find out what is a desirable action. Thus understood, we argue that such challenges should not dismiss the use of black box algorithms altogether but should inform the way in which these algorithms are designed and implemented. When physicians are trained to acquire the necessary skills and expertise, and collaborate with medical informatics and data scientists, black box algorithms can contribute to improving medical care. (shrink)

In this paper I will critically assess a very popular interpretation of Heidegger’s early thought, according to which meaning (Bedeutung) is conceived as ontologically dependent on human existence (Dasein). In order to criticize this subjectivist understanding of meaning, I will offer an interpretation of Heidegger’s analysis of signs in Being and Time (§17). This will reveal two main things: first, that the ubiquity of sign-phenomena is founded on the universality of the structure known as reference (Verweisung); second, that Heidegger’s idea (...) of reference offers a non-substantialist understanding of meaning and its relation to the world. (shrink)

The De concordia, published by Juan Luis Vives in 1529 and dedicated to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, is a comprehensive analysis of the social and political problems which were then afflicting Europe. It is the only such analysis undertaken by any of the Renaissance humanists. The De concordia merits a much more important place in Vives' oeuvre than scholars have hitherto given it. It is structured around the Augustinian concept of concordia and its antithesis, discordia. As such, (...) it is an explicit attempt to understand current history in metaphysical terms. Vives' intention is not to give strategic or tactical advice to Charles V, but to examine the general disorder of Europe with a view to determining its fundamental nature and significance. This is the first critical edition of the De concordia and the first English translation. (shrink)

Selección de artículos de varios autores, cuya intención común es contribuir a la elaboración de una filosofía que esté pensada desde América Latina, su historia, su situación social y su cultura, para responder a los acuciantes problemas teóricos y prácticos del continente.

This article highlights two possible unnoticed acrostics in Ovid's Metamorphoses concerning the predictions of Calchas and Helenus.

La posmodernidad es una tendencia emergente a lo largo del siglo XX, un proceso general de la cultura occidental que fue aglutinando síntomas contrapuestos, y que acabó por dominar la escena filosófico-cultural a medida que avanzaba el siglo. En la época de la multiplicación de los discursos y del triunfo universal del mercado, y tras la pérdida posmoderna de los horizontes totalizantes de la civilización, se impone cartografiar de nuevo nuestra comprensión de la realidad. Índice: Prólogo de Miguel Morey.- Introducción.- (...) Notas para una genealogía de la posmodernidad.- De la crítica de la alienación a la fragmentación de la subjetividad.- Últimas tribulaciones (¿la decadencia de la posmodernidad?).- Cronología filosófica del siglo posmoderno.- Bibliografía. (shrink)