El artículo estudia el significado de la ley y el papel que juega en la filosofía política de Marsilio de Padua, un autor interesado, por encima de todo, en la institución del Estado, que considera a la ley el fundamento de la civitas. Su énfasis en la ley significa que la cuestión principal es qué es lo que hace que una ley lo sea; y más que el contenido de justicia, es el precepto coactivo del legislador, que tiene la autoridad (...) de establecer la ley y de sancionar su incumplimiento, ya que una ley es una orden cuya desobediencia lleva su castigo. Por tanto, esa definición de ley desemboca en la pregunta por el legislador: es el conjunto de los ciudadanos o su parte prevalente ”, es decir, la legítima representación de toda la comunidad, pero nunca otra parte de la comunidad, ni siquiera los sacerdotes o los doctores. La definición de ley, que implica la unidad de la comunidad y la exclusividad del legislador, es el fundamento filosófico para rechazar todo poder político del Papa y de los sacerdotes para legislar. (shrink)

ResumenEl artículo estudia el significado de ‘paz’ en El defensor de la paz, la principal obra de Marsilio de Padua y, probablemente, del pensamiento político de la Baja Edad Media. Marsilio considera la ley el fundamento de la civitas y la paz el objetivo de su institución; y sitúa en el poder temporal del sacerdocio –del Papa en particular–, la causa de la guerra civil que dividía la sociedad cristiana y azotaba, en especial, el Imperio y el norte de Italia. (...) Analizamos el vocabulario de la paz en los textos mismos del Defensor Pacis; reconstruimos su historia conceptual desde el latín clásico hasta su dimensión teológica; y examinamos cómo opera dentro de la teoría racional del poder que defiende Marsilio el concepto de paz civil, muy diferente del ideal de paz espiritual propio de la tradición medieval. El propósito es demostrar la coherencia de este concepto con un nuevo paradigma político que excluye al sacerdocio del poder secular.Palabras clave:Paz, civitas, poder, papadoThe paper explains the meaning of ‘peace’ in The Defender of Peace, the main Marsilius of Padua’s work and, probably, one of the most outstanding political theories in the Later MThis thinker considers law as the base of civitas and peace as the aim of its creation; and he thinks that the temporal power of priesthood, especially of the Pope, is the cause of the civil war that was dividing christian society and devastating, in particular, the Empire and Northern Italy Middle Ages. We analyze the vocabulary of peace in the own texts of Defensor Pacis and we reconstruct its conceptual history from classical latin to its theological approach; then, we examine how the concept of civil peace, very different from the spiritual ideal of peace in the medieval tradition, works inside the rational theory of power advocated by Marsilius. The purpose is to show the coherence of this concept with a new political paradigm, which rejectes any secular power for the Pope or priests.Key words:Peace, civitas, power, papacy. (shrink)

Resenha do livro de Maglio, Gianfranco, Autonomia della città dell’uomo e religione in Marsilio da Padova. S. Pietro in Cariano: Il Segno dei Gabrielli editori, 2003, 226 páginas.

The paper explains the meaning of law and its political function in Marsilius of Padua’s philosophy. This thinker is interested, above all, in statehood and he points out that law is the ground of civitas (polis or political community). His emphasis on law means that the main question is what makes law, law. It isn’t the content of justice, but the coercive command of the legislator, who has the authority to give law and to punish its transgression, because a law (...) is a command whose disobedience leads to punishment. Therefore such definition of law runs into the question for the law-giver: it is “the whole corporation of citizens or its weightier part (valentior pars)”, that is to say, the rightful representation of the whole community, but never any other part of community, not even priests or doctors. The definition of law, which involves the unity of community and the sole legislator, is the philosophical ground to refute any political power for the Pope or priests to make laws. (shrink)

A principios del siglo XIV algunos autores, como Juan de París y Dante, se apoyaron en el aristotelismo para defender la separación del poder religioso y del poder secular. Marsilio de Padua, en cambio, combatió el supremo poder del Papa sobre la base de que no existe poder religioso, porque no hay más que un solo poder: el gobernante civil. El artículo muestra las principales diferencias entre la concepción dualista de los primeros y el monismo marsiliano.

Marsilius of Padua’s thinking represents an unprecedented attempt to base power on rational grounds. Two centuries earlier than Machiavelli, Marsilius had developed a political theory that was very different from traditional medieval thought and had offered for the first time an autonomous explanation of power, without referring to a higher order or law to justify its existence. These two Italian writers were passionate about politics and, touched by the political instability in their motherland, sought to maintain peace. They held that (...) the State does not have a moral purpose, only a political one, and that the prince’s or ruler’s task is to guarantee that it functions, making use of coercion or force as necessary. This article deals with the main commonalities and differences between the two philosophers. (shrink)

Los esfuerzos por demostrar la influencia de la filosofía nominalista en la teoría política de Marsího de Padua no han tenido éxito. Otras corrientes de pensamiento y escuelas filosóficas, como el aristotelismo heterodoxo, el corporativismo medieval e incluso la concepción orgánica de la sociedad tienen más influencia en el Defensor pacis, concebido y escrito varios años antes de ser compañero de Ockham en la Corte imperial de Luis de Baviera. El artículo examina los textos en los que se ha basado (...) la interpretación nominalista del pensamiento de Marsilio. La conclusión es que la teoría de la civitas que expone Marsilio no está basada en la concepción nominalista de la sociedad. En su lucha contra la plenitud o potestatis del Papado, Marsihio construye una civitas, en la que no cabe el poder eclesiástico diferente del secular. El resultado son dos modelos de sociedad distintos: dualista el de Ockham; mucho más monolítico el de Marsilio, que no reconoce a los ciudadanos individuales ni a las partes de la civitas capacidad para actuar autónomamente. (shrink)

The paper explains the meaning of law and its political function in Marsilius of Padua’s philosophy. This thinker is interested, above all, in statehood and he points out that law is the ground of civitas (polis or political community). His emphasis on law means that the main question is what makes law, law. It isn’t the content of justice, but the coercive command of the legislator, who has the authority to give law and to punish its transgression, because a law (...) is a command whose disobedience leads to punishment. Therefore such definition of law runs into the question for the law-giver: it is “the whole corporation of citizens or its weightier part (valentior pars)”, that is to say, the rightful representation of the whole community, but never any other part of community, not even priests or doctors. The definition of law, which involves the unity of community and the sole legislator, is the philosophical ground to refute any political power for the Pope or priests to make laws. (shrink)

El trabajo expone el significado de la obra de Marsilio de Padua, la primera teoría medieval no clerical del Estado. Marsilio se propone combatir la doctrina de la plenitudo potestatis papal, porque la considera causa de la guerra civil en Italia a principios del siglo XIV. Se basa para ello en la unidad de la soberanía, frente al dualismo que caracteriza a otros defensores del poder secular, como Juan de Paris, Ockham o Dante. Sostiene que no existe fundamento espiritual para (...) un poder diferente del poder del legislador humano y que el único poder supremo o plenitudo potestatis no corresponde al Papa sino al gobernante secular. De lo cual se sigue la completa absorción de la Iglesia por el Estado y la atribución al gobernante temporal de toda la organización eclesiástica. La filosofía marsiliana representa un esfuerzo sin precedentes por dar al poder un fundamento racional, pero está lejos de la idea moderna de soberanía, así como del liberalismo y de la voluntad general de Rousseau. No tuvo éxito en su tiempo, pero influyó en la reforma anglicana y en el erastianismo de Hobbes. (shrink)

Political theory is a field that finds nourishment in others. From economics, history, sociology, psychology, and political science, theorists have drawn a rich repertoire of schemas to parse the social world and make sense of it. With each of these encounters, new subjects are brought into focus as others recede into the background, ushering a change not only in how questions are tackled but also in what questions are thought worth asking.

La obra reúne un conjunto de textos de diversos especialistas en teoría y práctica artística que abordan asuntos recurrentes en el arte de las últimas décadas: desde la posición del espectador ante el arte actual y sus instituciones hasta la construcción del sujeto moderno y sus crisis; las cuestiones de género; el arte en un mundo global o las conexiones entre la estética y la política. Los temas centrales del libro se presentan a través de textos introductorios acompañados de reflexiones (...) de artistas, estudios de caso, entrevistas, glosarios de términos e imágenes seleccionadas para reforzar, alterar o contradecir el discurso de la palabra. (shrink)

Em um dos vários encontros mundiais sobre a obra do filósofo tcheco-brasileiro Vilém Flusser, os autores deste livro decidem escrever juntos uma introdução a seu pensamento que ao mesmo tempo homenageie o pensador. Nasce daí 'Vilém Flusser - uma.

Las inquietudes cotidianas particulares -- Las inquietudes cotidianas fundamentales.

El artículo a partir de fuentes iconográficas, estudia la sustitución de los símbolos imperiales españoles por nuevos símbolos republicanos a principios del siglo XIX, destacando obras como las alegorías de la libertad y la patria para el caso colombiano. Estos emblemas tuvieron su origen en las representaciones de América del siglo XVI, pero con las autonomías y las posteriores independencias se convierten en los primeros símbolos de identidad de las nacientes repúblicas. The article, based on iconographic sources, studies the substitution (...) of imperial Spanish symbols by new republican symbols at the beginning of the 19th century, emphasizing some works as the allegories of Freedom and the Mother land in the case of Colombia. These emblems had their origin in the representations of America of the 16th century, however, initially, with their autonomies and later independences they turn into the first symbols of identity of the blossoming republics. (shrink)

In the last decades, Hegel’s mature political philosophy has come to be associated with some form of social or welfare liberalism. Challenging this line of interpretation, this study aims to show that his work harbours a more ambitious philosophical programme, grounded in a different vision of the modern state. However, this programme is only partly spelled out in the Philosophy of Right. While the conceptual logic that guides Hegel’s dialectical progression points beyond the modern liberal standpoint, some of his concrete (...) political choices are more conservative, and some are even opposed to the change of perspective I claim to be at stake in his work. In response to this tension, I undertake a systematic reconstruction of his social and political views, divided into two main parts. First, I highlight the critical dimension I take to be explicitly present in the Philosophy of Right but neglected or misrepresented in the secondary literature. I argue that the different stages of Hegel’s progression are not merely added to one another, but qualitatively transformed, and hence that his account of the state should not be read as a mere complement to the stage of civil society, but as a direct challenge to its underlying logic. Second, I draw the political and economic conclusions implicit in this line of approach. Shifting the focus from Hegel’s interpreters to Hegel himself, I show that the conscious pursuit of the common good he regards as essential to a rational state is not compatible with a capitalist production system nor with the constitutional monarchy he proposes. A true dialectical synthesis of the particular interests of individuals and the general interests of society entails nothing less than a comprehensive democratization of the economic and the political spheres. And the need for this transformation holds the key to Hegel’s enduring political relevance. (shrink)

Turing’s much debated test has turned 70 and is still fairly controversial. His 1950 paper is seen as a complex and multilayered text, and key questions about it remain largely unanswered. Why did Turing select learning from experience as the best approach to achieve machine intelligence? Why did he spend several years working with chess playing as a task to illustrate and test for machine intelligence only to trade it out for conversational question-answering in 1950? Why did Turing refer to (...) gender imitation in a test for machine intelligence? In this article, I shall address these questions by unveiling social, historical and epistemological roots of the so-called Turing test. I will draw attention to a historical fact that has been only scarcely observed in the secondary literature thus far, namely that Turing’s 1950 test emerged out of a controversy over the cognitive capabilities of digital computers, most notably out of debates with physicist and computer pioneer Douglas Hartree, chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi, and neurosurgeon Geoffrey Jefferson. Seen in its historical context, Turing’s 1950 paper can be understood as essentially a reply to a series of challenges posed to him by these thinkers arguing against his view that machines can think. Turing did propose gender learning and imitation as one of his various imitation tests for machine intelligence, and I argue here that this was done in response to Jefferson's suggestion that gendered behavior is causally related to the physiology of sex hormones. (shrink)

Why it is increasingly evident that ideas, not matter, are the sole object of all sciences.

I propose an idealist ontology that makes sense of reality in a more parsimonious and empirically rigorous manner than mainstream physicalism, bottom-up panpsychism, and cosmopsychism. The proposed ontology also offers more explanatory power than these three alternatives, in that it does not fall prey to the hard problem of consciousness, the combination problem, or the decombination problem, respectively. It can be summarized as follows: there is only cosmic consciousness. We, as well as all other living organisms, are but dissociated alters (...) of cosmic consciousness, surrounded by its thoughts. The inanimate world we see around us is the extrinsic appearance of these thoughts. The living organisms we share the world with are the extrinsic appearances of other dissociated alters. (shrink)

Several alternatives vie today for recognition as the most plausible ontology, from physicalism to panpsychism. By and large, these ontologies entail that physical structures circumscribe consciousness by bearing phenomenal properties within their physical boundaries. The ontology of idealism, on the other hand, entails that all physical structures are circumscribed by consciousness in that they exist solely as phenomenality in the first place. Unlike the other alternatives, however, idealism is often considered implausible today, particularly by analytic philosophers. A reason for this (...) is the strong intuition that an objective world transcending phenomenality is a self-evident fact. Other arguments—such as the dependency of phenomenal experience on brain function, the evidence for the existence of the universe before the origin of conscious life, etc.—are also often cited. In this essay, I will argue that these objections against the plausibility of idealism are false. As such, this essay seeks to show that idealism is an entirely plausible ontology. (shrink)

The Turing test has been studied and run as a controlled experiment and found to be underspecified and poorly designed. On the other hand, it has been defended and still attracts interest as a test for true artificial intelligence (AI). Scientists and philosophers regret the test’s current status, acknowledging that the situation is at odds with the intellectual standards of Turing’s works. This article refers to this as the Turing Test Dilemma, following the observation that the test has been under (...) discussion for over seventy years and still is widely seen as either too bad or too good to be a valuable experiment for AI. An argument that solves the dilemma is presented, which relies on reconstructing the Turing test as a thought experiment in the modern scientific tradition. It is argued that Turing’s exposition of the imitation game satisfies Mach’s characterization of the basic method of thought experiments and that Turing’s uses of his test satisfy Popper’s conception of the critical and heuristic uses of thought experiments and Kuhn’s association of thought experiments to conceptual change. It is emphasized how Turing methodically varied the imitation game design to address specific challenges posed to him by other thinkers and how his test illustrates a property of the phenomenon of intelligence and suggests a hypothesis on machine learning. This reconstruction of the Turing test provides a rapprochement to the conflicting views on its value in the literature. (shrink)

Drawing upon a distinction between epistemically and metaphysically motivated notions of a concept, I consider the insurmountable problems of theories that appeal to our epistemic capacities to address the problem of the nature of concepts satisfactorily. Prominent theories of concepts hold that primitive concepts must have internal structure if they are to account for the explanatory functions that cognitive scientists have attributed to such constructs as prototypes, exemplars, and theories. Vindicating the role of non-experimental philosophy in the critical examination of (...) empirical theories, I argue that the explanatory effectiveness of those constructs is orthogonal to an argument concerning the structure of primitive concepts. Conceptual atomism provides an alternative approach to individuating primitive concepts the precise formulation of which has yet to be worked out. Despite its unpopularity, the atomist alternative is still in a better position to face the question of what concepts are than its competitors. (shrink)