En estas líneas se quiere mostrar que la obra de Feijoo puede interpretarse en su conjunto como un proyecto político-científico. Para Feijoo, el escepticismo científico es la clave para la construcción de una comunidad ilustrada que, al dedicarse al verdadero conocimiento del mundo físico, no amenaza la religión católica ni el incipiente despliegue del Estado moderno. La ciencia (o filosofía natural) se presenta como el antídoto de las fuerzas centrífugas del error y la disgregación, en todas sus formas. Feijoo no (...) tiene reparo en recibir y propagar las aportaciones de científicos protestantes y sí intención de generar una cultura científica que constituya un cimiento sólido para una sociedad bien organizada. Feijoo promueve la formación científica porque es útil para el _progreso_ social, para la fundación de una comunidad propiamente católica, que incluya a todas las personas cultivadas, al margen de las incipientes unidades nacionales y de los distintos bandos confesionales. (shrink)

Phillips & Silverstein (P&S, 2003) propose that NMDA-receptor dysfunction may be the fundamental neurobiological mechanism underlying and associating impaired holistic perception and cognitive coordination with schizophrenic psychopathology. We discuss how the P&S hypothesis shares different aspects of the weak central coherence account of autism from both theoretical and experimental perspectives. Specifically, we believe that neither those persons with autism nor those with schizophrenia integrate visuo-perceptual information efficiently, resulting in incongruous internal representations of their external world. However, although NMDA-hypofunction may be (...) responsible for perceptual impairments in schizophrenia and possibly autism, we suggest that it is highly unlikely that NMDA-hypofunction is specifically responsible for the autistic behavioral symptomology, as described by P&S in their target article. (shrink)

In this essay, a brief analysis of the diplomatic efforts to achieve an accord in re- lation to the climatic change process is made. Particularly, it will analyze the two past Climate Summits (Copenhagen and Cancun). It emphasizes the growing social articulation of climatic politics. Finally, it aims to the birth of a new global responsibility of societies in relation to the human relation towards the planet. Also, it explores the impact of this responsibility on the environment global changes.

I argue contra Larry Laudan and Robert Nozick that valuable goals that are impossible (i.e., ideal goals) can be rational, if they are approachable without a known limit. It is argued that Laudan proscribes as irrational impossible goals because he holds a confused scheme for means/ends rationality. Moreover it is argued that it is counterintuitive to hold ideal goals to be irrational. On the other hand I argue that Nozick's generalization of utility theory so as to admit symbolic utilities will (...) allow the characterization of ideal goals as rational. (shrink)

The target article by Alexander Kon (2009) offers an excellent conceptual toolkit to analyze the current literature on empirical bioethics, a topic which has attracted so much attention in the bioe...

Sartre fits fully within the phenomenological tradition inaugurated by Husserl, although he somewhat reelaborates it in an original way, on the basis of Heidegger’s philosophy, with the aim of outlining, in a first stage of his thoughts dating back to the publication of Being and Nothingness, the features stemming from his peculiar atheistic existentialism. Subsequently, in the mature stage of his intellectual itinerary, Sartre will attempt to combine the existentialist ideas with the basic principles of Marxism, a synthesis that will (...) create important works such as Search for a Method and Critique of Dialectical Reason. This chapter analyses time from the phenomenological perspective of the Sartrean ontology of temporality. This analysis allows to conceive the typically human “existential time” as a permanent existence out of oneself. For this purpose, we will retrace the fundamentals of Sartre’s phenomenological ontology outlined in his most important work of 1943, Being and Nothingness, focusing in particular on the structures of consciousness understood as “être-pour-soi”, i.e. the conditions of man’s “absolute freedom”, which Sartre refers to when he shows the one “pour-soi” as the being who is pure nothingness. (shrink)

Se muestra la necesidad de replantear la unidad teórico-práctica de la concepción aristotélica, desde la "crisis" actual del sentido de la existencia humana, atestiguada por el pensamiento posmoderno. Concepción especulativa hegeliana: éste es un hito que permite diferenciar entre modernidad y contemporaneidad, limitando el alcance de la crítica posmoderna. La realización especulativa de la libertad del espíritu en su autonomos y en su autos-arché es planteada como la nueva formulación de la "vida virtuosa" y de la unidad intrínseca entre theoria (...) y praxis en el pensamiento aristotélico. (shrink)

A sociedade não se iniciou com a civilização grega, porém fundamentou a civilização ocidental. Pretende-se fazer uma reflexão sobre as questões econômicas do mundo antigo, quando Aristóteles anteviu crescente inserção mercantilista na sociedade e tratará a polis com uma grande autonomia humana. A sociedade grega clássica está centrada na cidade-estado, a polis, a qual era, para os gregos, o estágio final e completo da vida social, a única forma possível de existência civilizada. O conceito aristotélico de economia como ação/política do (...) “cuidar”, como a ciência que busca o melhor uso das riquezas destinadas a manutenção e aperfeiçoamento da vida social, auxilia o mundo moderno à construção de um pensamento econômico. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza la relación entre dos autores, Lord Acton y Balmes, en lo que entendemos que ha sido la gran cuestión de la política moderna: la nación y el problema del nacionalismo. Se citan los textos estrechamente relacionados con el tema y se han descartado aquellos más generales o, en el caso de Balmes, de carácter más dogmático o teológico. En el caso del autor español se han seleccionado sus escritos políticos aparecidos en los diferentes medios de prensa en (...) los que colaboró a lo largo de su prolífica carrera. Ambos autores trataron de superar por elevación la dialéctica absolutismo-liberalismo, y propusieron, cada uno a su manera, un modelo de Monarquía Constitucional que no cediese ni al nacionalismo, ni al autoritarismo. Asumieron como propias ideas renovadoras acerca de la libertad política, adaptaron a sus circunstancias las formas políticas propias del federalismo estadounidense, y defendieron la tradición, la religión y el Estado frente a los que ellos entendían que eran las dos grandes amenazas de su época que crecían al amparo del nacionalismo: el individualismo racionalista y el autoritarismo estatalista. (shrink)

This article aims to highlight the theoretical and philosophical debate on hospitality underlining the normative elements of framing migrants and refugees as individual agents in the light of hospitality theory and migration governance. It argued the critiques of the neo-Kantian hospitality approach and the EU welcome culture with regard to refugees in the EU from a philosophical perspective. The “No human being is illegal” motto is proposed to be conceived as a principle of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The (...) cosmopolitan right to visit and the universal right to reside were discussed in the context of human rights and co-responsibility. Linking the hospitality approach with migration governance enables the reconstruction of reception policies and practices, diversification of non-state actors that engage in migration governance mechanism, and polarization of political initiatives (e.g., politics of allocation and dispersal, readmission negotiations, convergence/divergence of priorities and strategic interests). The research findings highlight that the EU adopted a neo-Kantian hospitality approach that combines both “co-responsibility” and “vertical/heterarchical relations.” The EU’s “New Pact on Migration and Asylum” was considered proof of how the EU follows neo-Kantian hospitality that is manifested in dualism and contradictory approach. The study presents a typology that splits co-responsibility into individual/institutional actions and human rights/migration governance. (shrink)

The concept of “self-realization” plays a central role in philosophy, since it summarizes the idea that a good life is a flourishing life, that is, an existence in which a person makes the best of what she is. A long tradition has understood this in terms of actualizing one’s potential or fulfilling one’s highest and most worthy aspirations. The aim of this paper is to analyze Hegel’s Logic and Philosophy of Right, in order to show that they outline an alternative (...) and valuable account of self-realization that conceives of human flourishing as tied to the flourishing of the world. (shrink)

O recrutamento de diplomatas pelo Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros português é levado a cabo por intermédio de um concurso público. O formato desse concurso tem variado ao longo do tempo. Muito pouco é conhecido quanto à progressão diacrónica desse formato. Parece, no entanto, haver um consenso geral tácito de que os Concursos não são transparentes, e um artigo recente assevera-o explicitamente no que diz respeito ao período do Estado Novo. O presente estudo mostra que, pelo contrário – pelo menos ao (...) nível do enquadramento legal a que estão sujeitos – os concursos têm vindo a evoluir lentamente na direcção de uma cada vez maior abertura. Mostra também em que sentido tais representações são compreensíveis, uma vez que o design geral do concurso mantém claros traços que apontam claramente na direcção de uma “reprodução simples” do “corpo” de funcionários que visa recrutar. Os concursos são assim encarados enquanto um rito cívico complexo de iniciação que tem sobrevivido tant bien que mal no quadro de um Estado moderno. (shrink)

In the first part of the article the author explains the importance of Peirce's reflection about the index as a crucial point of the reformulation of his entire philosophical system that took place around 1885. Then he examines the role of the index in Peircean semiotics and linguistics, where the index clearly shows -in spite of the difficulties deriving from Peirce's acceptance of some Kantian gnoseological thesis- the necessary and close connexion between language and reality.

This article undertakes a deconstructive reading of astrobiology’s search for extraterrestrial life. Taking its lead from Derrida’s ‘White Mythology’, it explores ‘metaphor in the text of astrobiology’—and includes within the astrobiological ‘text’ not only scientific publications and work on astrobiology in the philosophy of science, but also ‘life detection technologies’. I situate astrobiology in the tradition of a metaphysical analogy that goes back through the enlightenment and early modern astronomy to the ancient Atomists’ notion of the ‘plurality of worlds’. This (...) analogy, which constitutes an identification of life with being and therefore serves as the conceptual basis for the notion that life must exist on other worlds, experiences a mutation in the middle of the twentieth century when molecular biology refigures life in terms of a scriptural metaphor as text. The result is an aporia whose logic Derrida formalised in ‘White Mythology’. (shrink)