The present article commences analyzing the origins and influences of the religious discourse on the configuration of the modern constitutional discourse and the contributions of the jus-positivism in the consolidation of this sacred-civil language. The second issue is the definition of the U.S. Constitution as a mixed and not as a democratic constitution, with regard to the influences of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Polybius to the Drafters of the first modern constitutional text; stability and equilibrium took preference over democracy in (...) a wide sense. I also analyze how the Drafter’s decision has conditioned the modern constitutional system up to the present. (shrink)

The first segment starts with a definition of two dimensions of the concept of rule of law; related to the notion of sovereignty and as a concept to control arbitrariness on the part of the ruler. The segment proceeds to give a historical account of the notion and the different stages of its epistemological configuration, from the ancient Greek notion of Eunomia and its incompatibility with the popular rule to the current notion, where the rule of law has become fused (...) with democracy and human rights. The first segment also focuses on the relation between the concept of the rule of law and other principles, such as proportionality, neutrality, and effectiveness. The second segment of the paper analyses the phenomenon of juridification of the rule of law in international treaties and domestic constitutions. It pays particular attention to the role that constitutional accommodation plays in the process of rationalization of the rule of law as a prerequisite to its idealization and mystification. It analyses the reason why this principle is an essential feature of the constitutionalism despite the inner plurality of legal systems. The next aspect, analysed in the third segment of this paper, is the messianic use of the concept of the rule of law. The paper performs a critical definition of messianic, covering a theological perspective and the different theories and concepts that go hand in hand with the idea of the Messiah, such as the “coming”, prophetical and apocalyptical messianism, the phenomena of eschatology, expiation and redemption pictured in Judaism. The segment also covers the secular transplantation of the messianic thought. The last segment is a conclusion returning to the themes identified in the paper and summarises how the messianic thought is applied in the realm of the rule of law. (shrink)

Este artículo se ocupa del problema de cuál pueda ser la naturaleza de la creencia y cuál la mejor explicación de su normatividad. Se analizan diversas teorías que desarrollan el modelo ¿estado más contenido¿, y se presenta como alternativa una concepción de filiación wittgensteiniana que entiende la creencia como acción simbólica y expresiva.

The present article commences analyzing the origins and influences of the religious discourse on the configuration of the modern constitutional discourse and the contributions of the jus-positivism in the consolidation of this sacred-civil language. The second issue is the definition of the U.S. Constitution as a mixed and not as a democratic constitution, with regard to the influences of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Polybius to the Drafters of the first modern constitutional text; stability and equilibrium took preference over democracy in (...) a wide sense. I also analyze how the Drafter’s decision has conditioned the modern constitutional system up to the present. (shrink)

En este artículo se propone una interpretación no paradójica de la defensa que hiciera Hobbes del realismo científico de corte materialista. Se trata de explicar cómo este autor pudo defender la verdad del materialismo y, a la vez, negar que ello pudiera ser demostrado metafísicamente. La clave de su posición depende del uso metafórico del concepto de 'imitación' y del tratamiento del poder infinito e irresistible de dios como su atributo filosóficamente relevante. Así, la intención de Hobbes consistiría en decir (...) que la explicación, que no demostración, de la verdad del materialismo depende de la paridad y continuidad ontológica entre el mundo y el ser humano, tal y como éstas son explicadas por la ciencia empírica. En este sentido el proyecto de Hobbes, bien distinto al de Descartes, sería un intento de naturalizar la epistemología que, no obstante, es consciente de los límites metafísicos que afectan a las propuestas naturalizadoras de la filosofía. (shrink)

Previous studies on body ownership illusions have shown that under certain multimodal conditions, healthy people can experience artificial body-parts as if they were part of their own body, with direct physiological consequences for the real limb that gets ‘substituted’. In this study we wanted to assess (a) whether healthy people can experience ‘missing’ a body-part through illusory ownership of an amputated virtual body, and (b) whether this would cause corticospinal excitability changes in muscles associated with the ‘missing’ body-part. Forty right-handed (...) participants saw a virtual body from a first person perspective but for half of them the virtual body was missing a part of its right arm. Single pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied before and after the experiment to left and right motor cortices. Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were recorded from the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) and the extensor digitorum communis (EDC) of each hand. We found that the stronger the illusion of amputation and arm ownership, the more the reduction of MEP amplitudes of the EDC muscle for the contralateral sensorimotor cortex. In contrast, no association was found for the EDC amplitudes in the ipsilateral cortex and for the FDI amplitudes in both contralateral and ipsilateral cortices. Our study provides evidence that a short-term illusory perception of missing a body-part can trigger inhibitory effects on corticospinal pathways and importantly in the absence of any limb deafferentation or disuse. (shrink)

La meva intenció en les pàgines següents és analitzar la teoria del llenguatge que es troba en el Cràtil de Plató. D'una banda, s'analitza la concepció del significat de les paraules quePlató sembla defensar en aquest diàleg; de l'altra, s'ocupa del problema dels orígens delllenguatge. Aquestes qüestions s'estudien en relació amb la perspectiva ontològica i epistemològicade Plató: essencialisme, teoria de la reminiscència i les tesis dels sofistes sobre laimpossibilitat de parlar amb falsedat. La conclusió és que en el Cràtil podem (...) trobar ja la preparació de la teoria del llenguatge que Plató necessitarà per a la seva ulterior teoria de les idees. (shrink)

La meva intenció en les pàgines següents és analitzar la teoria del llenguatge que es troba en el Cràtil de Plató. D'una banda, s'analitza la concepció del significat de les paraules quePlató sembla defensar en aquest diàleg; de l'altra, s'ocupa del problema dels orígens delllenguatge. Aquestes qüestions s'estudien en relació amb la perspectiva ontològica i epistemològicade Plató: essencialisme, teoria de la reminiscència i les tesis dels sofistes sobre laimpossibilitat de parlar amb falsedat. La conclusió és que en el Cràtil podem (...) trobar ja la preparació de la teoria del llenguatge que Plató necessitarà per a la seva ulterior teoria de les idees. (shrink)

The present article commences analyzing the origins and influences of the religious discourse on the configuration of the modern constitutional discourse and the contributions of the jus-positivism in the consolidation of this sacred-civil language. The second issue is the definition of the U.S. Constitution as a mixed and not as a democratic constitution, with regard to the influences of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Polybius to the Drafters of the first modern constitutional text; stability and equilibrium took preference over democracy in (...) a wide sense. I also analyze how the Drafter’s decision has conditioned the modern constitutional system up to the present. (shrink)

A key aim in biology and psychology is to identify fundamental principles underpinning the behavior of animals, including humans. Analyses of human language and the behavior of a range of non-human animal species have provided evidence for a common pattern underlying diverse behavioral phenomena: Words follow Zipf's law of brevity (the tendency of more frequently used words to be shorter), and conformity to this general pattern has been seen in the behavior of a number of other animals. It has been (...) argued that the presence of this law is a sign of efficient coding in the information theoretic sense. However, no strong direct connection has been demonstrated between the law and compression, the information theoretic principle of minimizing the expected length of a code. Here, we show that minimizing the expected code length implies that the length of a word cannot increase as its frequency increases. Furthermore, we show that the mean code length or duration is significantly small in human language, and also in the behavior of other species in all cases where agreement with the law of brevity has been found. We argue that compression is a general principle of animal behavior that reflects selection for efficiency of coding. (shrink)

Este artículo se ocupa del problema de cuál pueda ser la naturaleza de la creencia y cuál la mejor explicación de su normatividad. Se analizan diversas teorías que desarrollan el modelo ¿estado más contenido¿, y se presenta como alternativa una concepción de filiación wittgensteiniana que entiende la creencia como acción simbólica y expresiva. This paper is devoted to the question of the nature of belief, and what the best explanation of its normativity is. Several theories based on the model "state (...) plus content" are analysed, and is presented a wittgensteinianan conception which understands belief as symbolic and expressive action. (shrink)

In this paper a non-paradoxical interpretation of Hobbes’s defence of scientific realism of materialistic type is proposed. It attempts to explain how this author was able to defend the truth of materialism and at the same time to deny that it could be demonstrated in a metaphysical way. The key to his position depends on the metaphorical use of the concept of ‘imitation’ and the treatment of the infinite and irresistible power as the philosophically relevant attribute of God. So Hobbes’s (...) intention would consist of saying that the explanation, but not the demonstration, of the truth of materialism depends on the ontological parity and continuity between the world and the human being, in the way in which they are explained by empirical science. In this sense Hobbes’s project, very different to Descartes’s one, would be an attempt to naturalise the epistemology that yet is conscious of the metaphysical limits affecting the naturalistic proposals of philosophy. (shrink)

Suarez's psychology starts from the triple Aristotelian distinction of the soul: vegetative, sensitive and rational. Having appreciated the need and function of the agent and possible intellects in the human knowledge, especially in the universal ones, we have proceeded to analyse its essential characteristics. The agent intellect is presented as a noncognizant faculty limited to the lighting of images and the production of species.

This book is a unique exploration of the idea of the "second person" in human interaction, the idea that face-to-face interactions involve a distinctive form of reciprocal mental state attributions that mediates their dynamical unfolding. Challenging the view of mental attribution as a sort of "theory of mind", Pérez and Gomila argue that the second person perspective of mental understanding is the conceptually, ontogenetically, and phylogenetically basic way of understanding mentality. Second person interaction provides the opportunity for the acquisition of (...) concepts of mental states of increasing complexity. The book reviews the growing interest in a variety of second person phenomena, both in development and in adulthood, presenting research that shows how participants in human interaction attribute psychological states of a referentially transparent kind to each other. This review documents the spontaneous preference for face-to-face interaction, from eye contact to joint attention, from forms of vitality to communicative intentions, from interaction detection to joint action, and from synchrony to interpersonal coordination. Also looking at the implications and applications of the second person perspective within fields as diverse as art and morality, this book is fascinating reading for students and academics in social and cognitive psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and philosophy. (shrink)

In this article we consider certain elements of the normative theory of Jürgen Habermas in the light of the proposals of Bruce Ackerman, with a view to strengthening a concept of deliberative democracy applied to the legitimation of juridical rules. We do not construct a hierarchy of the two positions, but seek to bring together certain elements to achieve a common project. As the starting point for examining the work of the two authors, we take the scheme proposed by Habermas (...) in Faktizität und Geltung. In this connection, through the work of Ackerman, we intend to fill in some of the gaps that Habermas appears to have left in the theory of radical democracy applied to the law. The work of Ackerman can make a significant contribution to deliberative democracy, to the discourse principle that Habermas defines, and to the contractualist theories from a liberal perspective. The study of these contributions makes possible a critical judgment that enables the legitimation of juridical rules carried out by Habermas to acquire greater practicity. In examining the epistemological status of juridical science and law, we attempt to determine the weight and the performance of normative democracy. In Tarr's view, it is a matter for philosophers to examine direct democracy and its desirability. (shrink)

Se presentan las ideas centrales y la estructura del libro de Diana I. Pérez y Antoni Gomila Social Cognition and the Second Person in Human Interaction (Routledge, 2021).

Abordamos aquí los diferentes comentarios críticos sobre las ideas centrales del libro Social Cognition and the Second Person in Human Interaction. En primer lugar, aclaramos algunos aspectos de la propuesta: la relación entre las interacciones de la segunda persona y las expresiones corporales de los estados psicológicos atribuidos y el papel que éstas tienen en la adquisición de los conceptos psicológicos más básicos. A continuación precisamos el sentido en que las atribuciones de la segunda persona son prácticas y transparentes. Por (...) último, destacamos el papel ubicuo de la normatividad en las interacciones de la segunda persona, enfatizando las asimetrías que existen en estas relaciones y mostramos por qué sostenemos que no hay interacciones desprovistas de normatividad a las que ésta posteriormente se les añade. (shrink)

Utilizing the film I, Robot as a springboard, I here consider the feasibility of robot utilitarians, the moral responsibilities that come with the creation of ethical robots, and the possibility of distinct ethics for robot-robot interaction as opposed to robot-human interaction. (This is a revised and expanded version of an essay that originally appeared in IEEE: Intelligent Systems.).

Recently, many philosophers have been interested in using locative relations to clarify and pursue debates in the metaphysics of material objects. Most begin with the relation of exact location. But what if we begin instead with the relation known as weak location – the relation an object x bears to any region not completely bereft of x? I explore some of the consequences of pursuing this route for issues including coincidence, extended simples, and endurance, with an eye to evaluating the (...) prospects for taking weak location as our fundamental locative relation. (shrink)