The past two decades have witnessed a resurgence of populist politics across the globe. The early 21st century saw the pink tide of left wing populism in Latin America, the Southern European populisms that rejected the politics of austerity after 2013, and the right wing populisms that now dominate not only European but global polities. Although each instance of populist politics is distinct, all share an appeal to the people, to the true people, who both oppose and are dominated by (...) the political elite. The nature of this elite also varies – in some cases it is predatory capital; in other cases it is the multicultural left; in yet others the anonymous bureaucrats in Brussels undermining national sovereignty. This special issue of RECERCA poses one question: how does populism relate to democracy? Is it democracy’s other face? (shrink)

Las democracias representativas parecen estar en la actualidad ante tendencias divergentes. Por un lado, se dan síntomas de declive tales como el descenso generalizado del número de votantes en los días de eleciones o el creciente distanciamiento entre los políticos y los ciudadanos. Por otra parte, existen ocasiones en los que el público parece adquirir un creciente papel político como resultado de un nuevo escenario mediático que ofrece oportunidades para la participación política. Estas tendencias heterogéneas han llevado a interpretar de (...) forma diferente la situación actual de la democracia: una que apunta a su declive y otra que señala los procesos de transformación democrática. Dos comprensiones opuestas de entender el presente que nos plantea el reto de preguntarnos por cual de los dos esta más cerca de esbozar un boceto arquitectónico certero de la democracia hoy. Este artículo trata de resolver esta cuestión prestando especial atención al papel que desempeña la nueva galaxia mediática en promocionar nuevas formas de participación ciudadana. (shrink)

Economic growth as we know it today cannot persist indefinitely if it entails continuous degradation of natural resources and the environment. While in a few countries around the world it appears that environmental degradation has been the result of rapid economic growth, in the vast majority of the developing countries the environment has been equally spoiled despite slow or even negative economic growth. This book provides new insights on the common roots of economic stagnation, poverty and environmental degradation which, unfortunately, (...) generally reside in misguided government policies and priorities. By doing this, the volume seeks to provide a broader policy option framework than those found in conventional policy analyses, mainly dominated by the "Washington Consensus". It shows that a major omission of the conventional view is that governments tend to allocate government expenditures in a biased way favouring subsidies to the economic elites to the detriment of investments in public goods, including human capital, R&D, as well as the development of institutions, which are vital for long run growth, poverty reduction and environmental sustainability. (shrink)

We calculate the mixing of real and imaginary components of space and time under the influence of superluminal boosts in thex direction. A unique mixing is determined for this superluminal Lorentz transformation when we consider the symmetry properties afforded by the inclusion of three temporal directions. Superluminal transformations in complex six-dimensional space exhibit unique tachyonic connections which have both remote and local space-time event connections.

Hilbert algebras provide the equivalent algebraic semantics in the sense of Blok and Pigozzi to the implication fragment of intuitionistic logic. They are closely related to implicative semilattices. Porta proved that every Hilbert algebra has a free implicative semilattice extension. In this paper we introduce the notion of an optimal deductive filter of a Hilbert algebra and use it to provide a different proof of the existence of the free implicative semilattice extension of a Hilbert algebra as well as a (...) simplified characterization of it. The optimal deductive filters turn out to be the traces in the Hilbert algebra of the prime filters of the distributive lattice free extension of the free implicative semilattice extension of the Hilbert algebra. To define the concept of optimal deductive filter we need to introduce the concept of a strong Frink ideal for Hilbert algebras which generalizes the concept of a Frink ideal for posets. (shrink)

Essays by some of the world's leading educators provide a revolutionary portrait of new ideas and developments in education that can influence the possibility of social and political change. The authors take into account such diverse terrain as feminism, ecology, media, and individual liberty in their pursuit of new ideas that can inform the fundamental practice of education and promote a more humane civil society. The book consolidates recent thinking just as it reflects on emerging new lines of critical theory.

_Confines of Democracy_ is a collection of critical assessments and interpretations of Richard J. Bernstein’s extensive and illuminating work on pragmatism, epistemology, hermeneutics, and social and political theory, including Bernstein’s replies to the contributors.

While Gabriel Watts and Ainsley Newson argue that diagnostic laboratories do not have a general duty to routinely reinterpret genomic variant classifications, they do formulate several restricted duties to actively reinterpret specific types of classifications.1 They place these duties with laboratories, acknowledging that they are setting aside any responsibilities that might arise for clinicians. Here, we will discuss the implications of this obligation for clinicians and the moral tension it may confront them with. We focus in particular on the consequences (...) of the proposed moral obligation to actively reinterpret variant classifications that carry a higher risk of being false positives. Such reclassification is likely to result in ‘downgrades’: previously pathogenic variants (pathogenic/likely pathogenic, P/LP) reclassified to benign (likely benign/benign, LB/B) or uncertain variants (variant of uncertain significance, VUS). Any laboratory policy to actively reinterpret (specific sets of) classifications will confront the clinician with the question whether the person tested should be recontacted on a reinterpretation of previously reported results. As others have pointed out, recontacting in general comes with challenges, since patients may not want to be recontacted or have forgotten about their genetic test.2 3 Recontacting in case of a downgrade, however, is particularly impactful. Previous studies on the psychosocial impact of reclassification on patients …. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Artificial Intelligence and the many data science methods associated with it, such as machine learning and large language models, are first and foremost epistemic technologies. In order to establish this claim, I first argue that epistemic technologies can be conceptually and practically distinguished from other technologies in virtue of what they are designed for, what they do and how they do it. I then proceed to show that unlike other kinds of technology (_including_ other (...) epistemic technologies) AI can be uniquely positioned as an epistemic technology in that it is primarily designed, developed and deployed to be used in _epistemic contexts_ such as inquiry, it is specifically designed, developed and deployed to manipulate _epistemic content_ such as data, _and_ it is designed, developed and deployed to do so particularly through _epistemic operations_ such as prediction and analysis. As has been shown in recent work in the philosophy and ethics of AI (Alvarado, AI and Ethics, 2022a), understanding AI as an epistemic technology will also have significant implications for important debates regarding our relationship to AI technologies. This paper includes a brief overview of such implications, particularly those pertaining to explainability, opacity, trust and even epistemic harms related to AI technologies. (shrink)

The rapid development of large language models (LLM’s) and of their associated interfaces such as ChatGPT has brought forth a wave of epistemic and moral concerns in a variety of domains of inquiry...

It is widely supposed that evolutionary debunking arguments against morality constitute a type of epistemological objection to our moral beliefs. In particular, the debunking force of such arguments is not supposed to depend on the metaphysical claim that moral facts do not exist. In this paper I argue that this standard epistemological construal of EDAs is highly misleading, if not mistaken. Specifically, I argue that the most widely discussed EDAs all make key and controversial metaphysical claims about the nature of (...) morality or the possibility of moral truth that belie their apparently epistemological character. I show that the debunking force of these EDAs derives largely from metaphysical claims about morality and their implications for the possibility of moral reduction, rather than from epistemological worries associated with the existence of an causal/non-moral explanation of our moral judgments. The paper briefly concludes with a dilemma that I believe confronts all EDAs such as those discussed in this paper: either such arguments are unsound, or else they prove too much, debunking our knowledge of science and the external world, as well as morality. (shrink)

A ‘companions in guilt’ strategy against moral error theory aims to show that the latter proves too much: if sound, it supports an implausible error-theoretic conclusion in other areas such as epistemic or practical reasoning. Christopher Cowie [2016 Cowie, C. 2016. Good News for Moral Error Theorists: A Master Argument Against Companions in Guilt Strategies, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94/1: 115–30.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar]] has recently produced what he claims is a ‘master argument’ against (...) all such strategies. The essence of his argument is that CG arguments cannot work because they are afflicted by internal incoherence or inconsistency. I argue, first, that Cowie's master argument does not succeed. Beyond this, I argue that there is no good reason to think that any such argument—one that purports to identify an internal incoherence in CG arguments—can succeed. Second, I argue that the main substantive area of disagreement between error theorists and CG theorists essentially concerns the conceptual profile of epistemic reasons—specifically, whether they are strongly categorical—not the ontological question of whether such reasons exist. I then develop an argument in favour of the CG theorist's position by considering the moral error theorist's arguments in support of the conceptual claim that moral reasons are strongly categorical. These include, notably, criticisms made by Joyce [2011] and Olson [2014] of Finlay's [2008] ‘end relational’ view of morality, according to which moral reasons are relative to some end or standard, hence not strongly categorical. Examining these criticisms, I argue that, based on what moral error theorists have said regarding the conceptual profile of moral reasons, there is a strong case to be made that moral reasons are strongly categorical if and only if epistemic reasons are. (shrink)

The rapid expansion of computational tools and of data science methods in healthcare has, undoubtedly, raised a whole new set of bioethical challenges. As Laacke and colleagues rightly note,...

Within the climate justice debate, the ‘beneficiary pays’ principle holds that those who benefit from greenhouse emissions associated with industrialization ought to pay for the costs of mitigating and adapting to their adverse effects. This principle constitutes a claim of inter-generational justice, and it is widely believed that the non-identity problem raises serious difficulties for any such claim. After briefly sketching the rationale behind ‘beneficiary pays,’ this paper offers a new way of understanding the claim that persons in developed societies (...) have benefited from industrialization. It argues that when we think of the claim in this new way, it evades the non-identity problem entirely. Some objections to this approach are then considered and rebutted. The paper concludes by comparing the present, relatively modest solution to the nonidentity problem with a much more ambitious attempt from the recent literature. (shrink)

While questions about the environmental sustainability of contemporary farming practices and the socioeconomic viability of rural communities are attracting increasing attention throughout the US, these two issues are rarely considered together. This paper explores the current and potential connections between these two aspects of sustainability, using data on community members’ and farmers’ views of agricultural issues in California’s Central Valley. These views were collected from a series of individual and group interviews with biologically oriented and conventional farmers as well as (...) community stakeholders. Local marketing, farmland preservation, and perceptions of sustainable agriculture comprised the primary topics of discussion. The mixed results indicate that, while many farmers and community members have a strong interest in these topics, sustainable community development and the use of sustainable farming practices are seldom explicitly linked. On the other hand, many separate efforts around the Valley to increase local marketing and agritourism, improve public education about agriculture, and organize grassroots farmland preservation initiatives were documented. We conclude that linking these efforts more explicitly to sustainable agriculture and promoting more engagement between ecologically oriented farmers and their communities could engender more economic and political support for these farmers, helping them and their communities to achieve greater sustainability in the long run. (shrink)

Aworkshop was held August 26–28, 2015, by the Earth- Life Science Institute (ELSI) Origins Network (EON, see Appendix I) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. This meeting gathered a diverse group of around 40 scholars researching the origins of life (OoL) from various perspectives with the intent to find common ground, identify key questions and investigations for progress, and guide EON by suggesting a roadmap of activities. Specific challenges that the attendees were encouraged to address included the following: What key (...) questions, ideas, and investigations should the OoL research community address in the near and long term? How can this community better organize itself and prioritize its efforts? What roles can particular subfields play, and what can ELSI and EON do to facilitate research progress? (See also Appendix II.) The present document is a product of that workshop; a white paper that serves as a record of the discussion that took place and a guide and stimulus to the solution of the most urgent and important issues in the study of the OoL. This paper is not intended to be comprehensive or a balanced representation of the opinions of the entire OoL research community. It is intended to present a number of important position statements that contain many aspirational goals and suggestions as to how progress can be made in understanding the OoL. The key role played in the field by current societies and recurring meetings over the past many decades is fully acknowledged, including the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (ISSOL) and its official journal Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, as well as the International Society for Artificial Life (ISAL). (shrink)

A logic is selfextensional if its interderivability (or mutual consequence) relation is a congruence relation on the algebra of formulas. In the paper we characterize the selfextensional logics with a conjunction as the logics that can be defined using the semilattice order induced by the interpretation of the conjunction in the algebras of their algebraic counterpart. Using the charactrization we provide simpler proofs of several results on selfextensional logics with a conjunction obtained in [13] using Gentzen systems. We also obtain (...) some results on Fregean logics with conjunction. (shrink)

El presente ensayo reconsidera las críticas de John Dewey a Walter Lippmann tomando como eje los argumentos esgrimidos en las sucesivas reseñas que Dewey fue haciendo de las obras de Lippmann. Se sostiene que las críticas que Dewey lanzó en estas reseñas, así como luego en The Public and its Problems (1927) ya apuntaban en una dirección que quedó más explícita en los años treinta, cuando Dewey respondió con lenguaje socialista a un Lippmann que apelaba a algo más que a (...) la autoridad de expertos para contrarrestar las derivas de la democracia. En el debate que mantuvieron, no solo se pusieron en juego dos visiones de la relación entre democracia y voluntad popular, sino dos concepciones discrepantes sobre las bases económicas de una sociedad abierta y las condiciones necesarias para el ejercicio de la libertad. (shrink)

Carnéades es un escéptico académico y un pragmático que quiere fundamentar la ética no en la idea de Bien o Valor, sino en la noción de bien útil, convincente y conveniente. Una noción basada no tanto en hacer algo grande que merezca la admiración o el elogio de las personas, sino en no hacer mal a nadie y extender el bienestar personal a la mayoría. Para ello creó una norma o guía, una regla de conducta probable o persuasiva que invitaba (...) a actuar sin pretensiones ni orgullo, decidiendo en cada momento lo que parece más probable o persuasivo en cada ocasión para evitar la apraxia en la acción moral. Además, fue el primero en distinguir entre seguir una acción moral con la pauta de la probabilidad, y la imposibilidad de asentir a ella con seguridad de no equivocarnos. (shrink)

Siempre se ha reconocido en Pirrón de Élide el inicio puntual del escepticismo griego. Sabemos ya hoy que esta información, sesgada, proviene más de la necesidad de Enesidemo de refundar el movimiento, que de la realidad filosófica. En este artículo demostramos que Pirrón, ni tuvo consciencia de ser un escéptico, ni, en rigor, inició ninguna nueva corriente. Su deslizamiento, y posterior reconocimiento, hacia el escepticismo, debe más bien encuadrarse en el natural desarrollo de la filosofía abderita, a través de Metrodoro (...) de Quíos, discípulo de Demócrito, Anaxarco maestro de Pirrón y Nausífanes su discípulo. Y todo debido al afán aventurero del personaje de Élide al enrolarse en el séquito de Alejandro Magno. (shrink)

En este artículo se exponen las principales ideas de Hans Kelsen y Carl Schmitt en torno a la guerra y la paz en las relaciones internacionales a partir de la idea de ‘pacif is- mo jurídico’ y se valora su sentido a la luz del debate contemporáneo sobre las lamadas “guerra humanitaria” y “guerra contra el terrorismo”.

ABSTRACT We consider in this work the problem of iterated belief revision. We propose a family of belief revision operators called revision with memory operators and we give a logical (both syntactical and semantical) characterization of these operators. They obey what we call the principle of strong primacy of update: when one revises his beliefs by a new evidence, then all possible worlds that satisfy this new evidence become more reliable than those that do not. We show that those operators (...) have a satisfying behaviour concerning the iteration of the revision process. Then we provide four particular operators of this family. (shrink)

A logic in a finite language is said to be finitely presentable if it is axiomatized by finitely many finite rules. It is proved that binary non-indexed products of logics that are both finitely presentable and finitely equivalential are essentially finitely presentable. This result does not extend to binary non-indexed products of arbitrary finitely presentable logics, as shown by a counterexample. Finitely presentable logics are then exploited to introduce finitely presentable Leibniz classes, and to draw a parallel between the Leibniz (...) and the Maltsev hierarchies. (shrink)

RESUMEN: Trata este trabajo de la actitud del presidente Barack Obama en relación con las rebeliones de la denominada Primavera Árabe, desvelando si los criterios de la guerra justa por él señalados y defendidos en sus discursos se compaginan con la real política bélica de Estados Unidos. Se insertan ambos planos en el escenario de las rebeliones acaecidas en tres países: Libia, Egipto y Túnez. La conclusión principal es que hay un largo, además de irregular, distanciamiento entre la teoría y (...) la práctica del presidente Obama, prevaleciendo los intereses de Estados Unidos por encima de la protección de los derechos humanos, que es uno de los vectores principales de su concepto de guerra justa.ABSTRACT: This work refers the attitude of the President Barack Obama concerning the rebellions of the so-called Arab Spring, revealing if the criteria of the just war defended in his speeches correspond to the real policy of the United States. Both planes are included in the scene of rebellions occurred in three countries: Libya, Egypt and Tunisia. The main conclusion is that there is a long, as well as irregular, distance between theory and practice of president Obama, prevailing the interests of United States respect to the protection of human rights, which is one of the main vectors of their concept of just war.PALABRAS CLAVE: primavera árabe, guerra justa, rebeliones árabes, Obama y política exterior, Obama y filosofía bélica.KEYWORDS: Arab spring, just war, Arab revolts, Obama and foreign policy, Obama and war philosophy. (shrink)

Conventional accounts of epistemic opacity, particularly those that stem from the definitive work of Paul Humphreys, typically point to limitations on the part of epistemic agents to account for the distinct ways in which systems, such as computational methods and devices, are opaque. They point, for example, to the lack of technical skill on the part of an agent, the failure to meet standards of best practice, or even the nature of an agent as reasons why epistemically relevant elements of (...) a process may be inaccessible. In this paper I argue that there are certain instances of epistemic opacity— particularly in computational methods such a computer simulations and machine learning processes—that do not arise from, are not responsive to, and are therefore not explained by the epistemic limitations of an agent. I call these instances agent-neutral and agent-independent instances of epistemic opacity respectively. As a result, I also argue that conventional accounts of epistemic opacity offer a limited understanding of the full spectrum of kinds and sources of epistemic opacity, particularly of the kind found in computational methods. In particular, as I will show below, the limitations of these accounts are reflected in the way they fail to provide satisfactory explanations when faced with certain instances of opacity. (shrink)

El tratamiento dispensado al hecho religioso en nuestro país y en general en las sociedades avanzadas es discriminatorio respecto a otros colectivos y grupos sociales. Discriminatorio en una dimensión interna y externa. Internamente, porque no todos los grupos religiosos reciben el mismo trato jurídico. Externamente, porque otros grupos sociales distintos a los religiosos, que buscan otros fines, no reciben el mismo trato que los grupos religiosos, sino más desfavorable. Junto a una primera discriminación en el ámbito extraeclesial -el de las (...) confesiones religiosas en su relación con las demás asociaciones del país-, hay otros dos supuestos en el ámbito intraeclesial -el de las relaciones de los grupos religiosos entre sí-, el contraste de las opciones fideístas y las no fideístas críticas y el de las confesiones religiosas mayoritarias y minoritarias. En uno y otro caso, interna y externamente, el hecho religioso se convierte en un criterio de discriminación, sin que en mi opinión existan razones objetivas suficientes. (shrink)

E l auto r de f iend e un a democraci a a r mónica , qu e n o e s u n model o nu ev o d e democracia sin o l a relació n equilibrad a d e la s do s modalidade s clásica s d e democracia , l a representat iv a y l a directa , a la s qu e s e añadirí a l a democraci a pa r ticipat iv (...) a prom o vid a po r lo s ciudadanos, ind i vidualment e o e n gr upo , a l ma r ge n d e lo s pa r tido s políticos . L a resultant e serí a un nu evo marc o polític o co n meno s democraci a representat iva (l a d e lo s pa r tido s político s y lo s representante s electos) , q u e actualment e e s l a democraci a e xclus iva y e xclu y ent e en la s sociedade s política s a v anzadas , má s democraci a direct a (l a d e lo s ciudadano s qu e sin inte r mediario s v otaría n política s y n o sól o a su s representantes ) y u n nu evo espaci o polític o ocupad o po r lo s ciudadanos-actore s político s si n militanci a pa r tidista . E n cad a uno d e esto s tre s modelo s democrático s s e analiz a l a de f inició n de l modelo , e l escenari o que actualment e atr a vies a y la s propuesta s concreta s d e cambio. (shrink)

La crítica de los valores ejercida por Nietzsche problematiza el origen de los valores. La filosofía tradicional considera que éstos tienen un origen privilegiado, ya sea de naturaleza teológica o metafísica. Este origen supremo es lo que les otorga una validez incuestionable. El pensador alemán se opone a esta convicción y propone la tesis contraria: los valores provienen, no de una región plena de realidad, sino de un ámbito sujeto al cambio, al azar y a la contingencia. Esto posibilita concebir (...) los valores sumos como creaciones humanas susceptibles de examen. La crítica de los valores suscita así un extrañamiento ante lo familiar, pues los valores heredados se tornan ajenos. De igual forma, conlleva un ejercicio de remoción de máscaras encubridoras que busca exhibir aquello que se oculta en los valores heredados, a saber, el carácter nihilista de los principios fundamentales de la cultura occidental. (shrink)

A review of research addressing correlates of attitudes toward social responsibility of business leads to the conclusion that little can currently be confidently stated concerning such correlates and that progress toward the understanding of relevant linkages is largely dependent on the development of psychometrically adequate indices of social attitudes. Using a sample of high level executives from a large number of industries, this paper examines various psychometric properties of an index of social attitudes, the Social Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ) (Aldag and (...) Jackson, 1977) and considers relationships of SAQ subscale scores to multiple measures of firm size and economic performance and to managerial demographic and social psychological characteristics. Results of this study reflect favorably on psychometric integrity of the SAQ and reveal a complex set of correlates of its subscales. (shrink)