This article summarily describes the arrival and establishment of Analytic Philosophy [= AP] in Spain. It first expounds the role played in that process by philosophers such José Ferrater Mora, exiled alter the Spanish Civil War, and by Manuel Garrido, Jesús Mosterín, Javier Muguerza, Josep Blasco y José Hierro, the proper introducers of AP in the Spanish university. Secondly, the article refers to the work developed by the introducers’ former students and disciples, and holds that this second wave of AP (...) in Spain largely helped to its consolidation. Finally, the current situation–a third wave of analytic philosophers in action–is reviewed. Its most actives centres are identified, the main changes in the national scientific policy, its profound effects on academic activities for the last twenty years, and the high degree of internationalization reached by Spanish AP from the 1990s, after the founding of the Sociedad Española de Filosofía Analítica (S.E.F.A.), are concisely pointed out. (shrink)

La Lógica y la Filosofía de la ciencia constituyen disciplinas centrales en la filosofía de nuestro siglo. Y, aunque insuficientemente divulgadas entre el gran público en nuestro país, su peso específico en los ambientes académicos e investigadores va aumentando de día en día. Este volumen de homenaje a R. Carnap y H. Reichenbach, figuras centrales en la conformación de la filosofía de la ciencia, recoge las principales intervenciones de investigadores españoles y extranjeros en un encuentro que, en su honor, se (...) celebró a finales del año 1991. Incluye asimismo muestras significativas de investigaciones que se están realizando en España en la actualidad en los campos de la lógica clásica y multivariada. La teoría de la argumentación, la teoría de la probabilidad, la filosofía de la ciencia en general y en particular, la filosofía de la economía. Finalmente, debido al fallecimiento en aquel año de una de las personalidades más importantes de la filosofía española, J. Ferrater Mora, se incluye un pequeño homenaje que recuerda tanto el talante del filósofo como su obra. (shrink)

Information can be public among a group. Whether or not information is public matters, for example, for accounts of interdependent rational choice, of communication, and of joint intention. A standard analysis of public information identifies it with (some variant of) common belief. The latter notion is stipulatively defined as an infinite conjunction: for p to be commonly believed is for it to believed by all members of a group, for all members to believe that all members believe it, and so (...) forth. This analysis is often presupposed without much argument in philosophy. Theoretical entrenchment or intuitions about cases might give some traction on the question, but give little insight about why the identification holds, if it does. The strategy of this paper is to characterize a practical-normative role for information being public, and show that the only things that play that role are (variants of) common belief as stipulatively characterized. In more detail: a functional role for “taking a proposition for granted” in non-isolated decision making is characterized. I then present some minimal conditions under which such an attitude is correctly held. The key assumption links this attitude to beliefs about what is public. From minimal a priori principles, we can argue that a proposition being public among a group entails common commitment to believe among that group. Later sections explore partial converses to this result, the factivity of publicity and publicity from the perspective of outsiders to the group, and objections to the aprioricity of the result deriving from a posteriori existential presuppositions. (shrink)

Ned Block argues that the higher-order (HO) approach to explaining consciousness is ‘defunct’ because a prominent objection (the ‘misrepresentation objection’) exposes the view as ‘incoherent’. What’s more, a response to this objection that I’ve offered elsewhere (Weisberg 2010) fails because it ‘amounts to abusing the notion of what-it’s-like-ness’ (xxx).1 In this response, I wish to plead guilty as charged. Indeed, I will continue herein to abuse Block’s notion of what-it’s-like-ness. After doing so, I will argue that the HO approach accounts (...) for the sense of what-it’s-like-ness that matters in a theory of consciousness. I will also argue that the only incoherence present in the HO theory is that generated by embracing Block’s controversial notion of what-it’s-like-ness, something no theorist of any stripe ought to do. Block is famous for (among other things) having introduced the notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ into contemporary philosophy of mind (Block 1995). This term is widely employed in the philosophical literature and it even appears in the empirical literature. But wide-speared usage has brought about divergent interpretations of the term. We can distinguish a ‘moderate’ and a ‘zealous’ reading of ‘phenomenal consciousness’. On the moderate reading, ‘phenomenal consciousness’ just means ‘experience’. Many people have embraced this sense of the term and use it to roughly pick out conscious experience involving sensory quality (states like conscious visual experiences or conscious pains, for example).2 On the zealous reading, however, phenomenal consciousness is held to be ‘distinct from any cognitive, intentional, or functional property’ (Block 1995: 234). That is, any explanation of phenomenal consciousness in exclusively cognitive, intentional, or functional terms will fail to capture, without remainder, what is really distinctive about phenomenal consciousness. Block, of course, is fully clear about embracing the zealous reading; indeed, his initial introduction of the notion is in those terms. The same ambiguity occurs with the much-used (and abused) idea of ‘what-it’s-like-ness’.. (shrink)

El pensamiento de Kierkegaard impide de suyo el acercamiento a la realidad del ser humano desde una actitud meramente especulativa; puesto que el hombre es espíritu, la libertad está siempre presente, haciendo inadecuado cualquier acercamiento que ignore dicha condición. El ser humano no es una realidad estática, y por ello, para comprender su dinamismo propio, es necesario adentrarse en la aparente contradicción de ser misterio y tarea para sí mismo. El presente artículo seguirá esa misma dirección, a partir de las (...) descripciones recogidas en El concepto de angustia y La enfermedad mortal. (shrink)

This paper aims to portray the human being as spirit, in dialogue with Levinas’ first philosophy. The relation between time and eternity is addressed in the work of both Kierkegaard and Levinas. However, in Kierkegaard’s notion of spirit there lies a discernible further development of the relation between the subject and that which transcends it. In Kierkegaard’s authorship, the absolute exteriority of the eternal does not break or suspend the finite structure of the subject. Contrary to Levinas’ critique of the (...) Danish philosopher, the possibility of a life is opened in which neither the external world nor the relation with the others is disdained. (shrink)

Telling a patient that the outcome of his illness is not good, or even hopeless, requires sensitivity and the ability to communicate with him in the setting of a hospital which is an unnatural environment divorced from family and friends. It is a task which must be taught and learned by doctors and nurses.

The existential analysis -- The death of dasein -- The timeliness of dasein -- The derivation of time -- The time of being.

The achievements of the textile industry in Roman Britain are often underestimated as a result of the meagreness of our available evidence. The Edict on maximum prices issued by Diocletian in A.D. 301 shows that British capes commanded high prices on the markets of the Empire, and that in the late third century A.D. British rugs were the best in the world. In view of the competition from the traditional centres of rug manufacture in the East, this is an astonishing (...) achievement. (shrink)

The received translation and interpretation of many of the technical terms current in the textile industry of the Roman Empire are inaccurate, because lexicographers have either fought shy of being precise, or have thought that they recognized in the ancient world technical processes which originated at a much later date. The evidence is often equivocal or insufficient, but may still yield details that have been overlooked. The textile expression scutulatus, to take an example, deserves more attention than Blümner has devoted (...) to it. When it refers to the appearance of a garment, Lewis and Short, s.v. scutulatus, translate ‘diamond or lozenge-shaped, checkered’. It seems worth while to attempt a more precise translation, and, if possible, to estimate the significance in context of the goods so designated. (shrink)

Living out of silence, out of a fully functioning, lovingly attentive mind, and not just out of thought, out of a partially functioning mind, is requisite for depth or profundity in living or relating. A fully attentive, truly silent or meditative mind sees that there is real dualism of time and the timeless and that time and the timeless each has its own unique value. The timeless, or real silence, that which alone can make for depth in one's living and (...) relating, can be there only when, in one's awareness, time and all that is related to time, have come to an end. An examination of a wide variety of statements made by writers, both past and present, shows that these understandings are seldom there in contemporary writings, just as they were not there in writings that have come down to us from the past. 'Living beyond the One and the Many' invites readers to consider the possibility that what is presented in it can bring deep meaning to one's way of living in the world"--Publisher's description, back cover. (shrink)

If the world itself is metaphysically indeterminate in a specified respect, what follows? In this paper, we develop a theory of metaphysical indeterminacy answering this question.

Jeffrey Collins’ new book aims to presents Locke’s views on religious toleration in the light of Thomas Hobbes’ political philosophy. At first blush, Hobbes seems an unusual choice as a point of co...

Este escrito recoge algunas de las reflexiones que surgieron en torno a una investigación sobre el fenómeno del suicidio llevada a cabo en la localidad de San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Pueblo Mágico de Chiapas, de los años 2016 a 2018. Este trabajo fue posible gracias a una beca del CONACYT, destinada a cursar una maestría en Antropología Social en el CIESAS-Sureste. Durante este período de tiempo se realizó trabajo de campo en el seno de un grupo autogestionado y de (...) ayuda mutua para afectados por suicidio, así como entrevistas a profundidad con algunos de sus participantes. Ambas experiencias se relatan en las páginas siguientes. La estructura del escrito se da en tres niveles. Como nivel macro e introducción al fenómeno en cuestión, presentamos algunos conceptos propuestos por sociólogos y antropólogos contemporáneos, así como por algunos de sus primeros estudiosos dentro de la tradición occidental. En el nivel meso se relata la experiencia del trabajo de campo en el grupo autogestionado de ayuda mutua para supervivientes de suicidio en San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Finalmente, nos adentramos en el nivel micro en los entresijos de la experiencia del fenómeno de puertas adentro, recorriendo con tiento el camino propuesto por las voces recogidas en las entrevistas a profundidad. En las conclusiones se ofrecerán las reflexiones fruto de todas estas vivencias. (shrink)

Doctors’ strikes are legally permissible in the UK, with the situation differing in other countries. But are they morally permissible? Doug McConnell and Darren Mann have systematically attempted to dismiss the arguments for the moral impermissibility of doctors’ strikes and creatively attempted to provide further moral justification for them. Unfortunately for striking doctors, they fail to achieve this. Meanwhile, junior doctors’ strikes have continued in the UK through 2023 and have now extended into 2024. In this response, which focuses on (...) the UK situation and specifically junior doctors’ strikes in the National Health Service (NHS) in England, I will demonstrate a central problem with their arguments—namely that they underplay the harms caused by prolonged doctors’ strikes by ignoring the harms to patients with cancer. This weakens their conclusion that strikes are morally permissible in terms of the conditions and thresholds they set. I then provide a psychological critique of their justification for strikes in terms of the interests of the public. It follows that invoking the controversial concept of supererogatory action is ungrounded but also absurd when you consider time-critical cancer care. If those representing striking doctors wish to maintain a modicum of moral respectability, they should mitigate for patients with cancer and negotiate reasonably and with urgency. (shrink)

Stereological techniques allow biologists to create quantitative, three-dimensional descriptions of biological structures from two- dimensional images of tissue viewed under the microscope. For example, they can accurately estimate the size of a particular organelle, the total length of a mass of capillaries, or the number of neurons or synapses in a particular region of the brain. This book provides a practical guide to designing and critically evaluating stereological studies of the nervous system and other tissues. It explains the basic concepts (...) behind design-based stereology and how to get started. Also included are detailed descriptions of how to prepare tissue appropriately, perform pilot studies and decide on the appropriate sampling strategy, and account for phenomena such as tissue shrinkage. Numerous examples of applications of stereological methods that are applicable to studies of the central system and a wide variety of other tissues are explained. The book is therefore essential reading for neurobiologists and cell biologists interested in generating accurate representations of cell and tissue architecture. (shrink)