Are we Human Beings Unable of God? José Cobo maintains that the worldview of contemporary man does not allow him to believe in the sense that the first Christians believed. And he argues that the main cause of that vision has been the development of empirical science. Here I argue that in reality the cause can best be described as an anthropological error, which carries with it a metaphysical deficit. On the other hand, we rectify certain intellectual resources with which (...) we intend to get out of this situation. (shrink)

Science and Religion: Methodology, History and Prospects in Latin America.

From Analytic Philosophy to Theism: Antony Flew After the great idealistic systems, the advent of nihilism and the formulation of pragmatism, philosophy restarts again creatively. To understand this rise, I will argue about the essential relationship that philosophy should have with science. Then I will delineate, in line with Antony Flew’s history, the main philosophical arguments atheists present in analytic philosophy, and the characteristics that take the old arguments. Finally, I try to formulate as accurately as possible the main arguments (...) for the existence of God being discussed right now within the analytic tradition. (shrink)

The criticism of Bernstein on the encyclical Fides et ratio, claiming that it does not take into account the progress made by the best philosophies of this Century on the analysis of truth, is false. This paper show that the encyclical does take into account the achievements of analytical epistemology. Also it says that the even challenges analytical philosophy to deal with even more important issues such as the role of metaphysics in the analysis of human knowledge and conceptual language.

A partir del desafío que los ejemplos formulados por Gettier presentan a la habitual definición del conocimiento, se ofrece una comparación de la epistemología contemporánea con la teoría del conocimiento desarrollada por Polo. La crítica a la definición del conocimiento se articula en torno a la profundización en cada uno de los tres elementos que la componen y se muestra cómo pueden articularse internamente entre sí, profundizando en el valor ontológico del conocimiento, insistiendo en una comprensión más completa de la (...) verdad y su valor antropológico y avanzando en el valor científico de la justificación. (shrink)

En la filosofía actual hay dos discusiones en curso en torno a la libertad: la contraposición entre compatibilismo e incompatibilismo y el sentido de la libertad, es decir de la subjetividad. He escogido el hilo conductor el concepto de posibilidad y el pensamiento de Harry Frankfurt para clarificar los puntos nodales de las discusiones y poder iluminarlos desde la antropología transcendental de Leonardo Polo para atenuar las contraposiciones y resolver las aporías a las que se enfrenta el pensamiento actual sobre (...) la libertad. (shrink)

The current appeal of non-standard economic alternatives is backgrounded against the vulnerability of mainstream capitalism to meltdown and crisis as shown in recent times. There is an increasing number of governments, institutions, and civil societies (NGOs) that have been advocating economic systems, structures, or dynamics that would promote the good of the human person (dignity, personhood, values, and worth). People have started to realize that doing economics is not always within the realm of rationalized judgments and mathematized calculations (highly impersonal) (...) but must look after the human person, at all costs. This paper attempts to contribute to this agendum by employing an interdisciplinary dialogue between theology and economics; drawing a moral-cultural framework towards a compassion-based economics. Together with the positive traits of today’s economic alternatives and the salient features of Jesus’ praxis of compassion, this paper would offer fourteen (14) criteria as basis for what could be the most feasible base/locus for an economics of compassion. Eventually, what has been considered as the suitable base/locus is the Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs). Hence, a BEC-based Economics of Compassion or BEC-EC. (shrink)

Esta investigación pretende aportar novedades sobre la filosofía de la educación a partir de la antropología trascendental desarrollada por Polo. Se usa un camino descendente: desde el carácter personal del hombre hasta las manifestaciones esenciales. Se parte del carácter filial y se advierte la crisis de autoridad provocada en la educación por su rechazo. Se delinea un orden educativo de acuerdo con el carácter sistémico y perfectivo de la esencia humana desde la radicalidad de la persona. Finalmente se presenta la (...) explicación poliana de la sindéresis como modelo para el educador. De este modo se puede superar el estancamiento que la libertad entendida como independencia supone para la educación. (shrink)

Is a naturalistic world view coherent? Plantinga’s argumentation against naturalism from Artigas’ perspective In this paper, I examine the critique of the naturalistic world view that Plantinga exposes based on the concept of world view formulated by Artigas. The analysis of the results of contemporary science carried out by the American thinker, stemming from his epistemological investigations, is largely coincident and convergent with that of Artigas, developed almost a decade in advance. The impossibility of sustaining a naturalistic belief, in keeping (...) with the developments of contemporary science, contrasts with the success of the new atheists’ popular diffusion, which Artigas thoroughly studied in Oracles of Science. Both philosophers, Artigas and Plantinga, are examples of how philosophical excellence allows a more attentive interdisciplinary world view and a more extensive and precise knowledge. (shrink)

Dios es el Ser. A partir de esta afirmación tomista clásica se estudia la nueva forma de plantear la teología natural como consecuencia del abandono del límite mental en cuanto método de la metafísica. Dicho abandono permite pensar los primeros principios en su carácter existencial y en su mutua vigencia. Se descubre que el carácter existencial de Dios es el primer principio de identidad. A partir de ahí se estudia a Dios como Incausado. Se reflexiona sobre el alcance de la (...) demostración de la existencia de Dios y se desarrollan las nociones de Origen, ámbito de la máxima amplitud y reserva originaria. De esta manera se delinea la arquitectura de una teología natural novedosa y con grandes posibilidades especulativas. (shrink)

In this paper I analyse an argument for God's existence from the liberty proposed by Prof. Polo. I think that an examination of his transcendental antropology wild yield some important insights concerning of person and liberty. I argue this argument is sound and illuminating of our concept of God.

In this paper a comparison is made between the notion of truth as offered by Thomas Aquinas and John McDowell’s reflections on knowledge and truth. We suggest that some correspondences can be drawn between the thomist idea of trascendental truth and McDowell’s proposal of the unboundedness of the conceptual, and between the realist thesis that truth of things measure our understanding and McDowell’s defense of objectivity, understood as the constraint exerted by external reality on our thinking, which makes possible a (...) free and responsible exercise of conceptual capacities. In order to highlight those correspondences, we analyse two essays of McDowell, in which, by examining some aspects of Rorty’s position regarding knowledge and truth, the southafrican professor offers a defense of objectivity that, far from being an obstacle for the characteristic freedom of our rational capacity, is a condition for it. (shrink)

In this article the chief lines of current American epistemological thought are outlined, as are the criticisms which each of these perspectives has received. A special emphasis is placed on the distinction between internalism and externalism. Mutual criticisms are made between the foundationalists and the coherentists, and the reliabilist standpoint is developed in detail in order to show that Virtue Epistemology is able to capture some of the best intuitions arising from the justification of belief.

La educación tiene un objetivo principal según las principales regulaciones educativas estatales e internacionales: la consecución de una serie de competencias. Aunque quepa piensar de competencias sociales, cívicas o éticas, la idea central de esta perspectiva es que la educación debe servir en primer lugar para el desempeño de una profesión, que definirá el éxito social de los educandos. El objetivo principal de este artículo es cuestionar filosóficamente la validez de ese objetivo. Sostenemos que la adquisición de competencias debe permanecer, (...) pero basarse y quedar supeditada a la adquisición de las virtudes. Esta respuesta remite al pensamiento de Leonardo Polo y permite una comprensión de la educación basada en su cultivo. (shrink)

This investigation intends to provide new features in the philosophy of education from the ideas developed by Polo on transcendental anthropology. It uses a descending approach: from the personal character of man to his essential manifestations. It begins with the filial character and it examines the crisis of authority provoked in the rejection of education. It formulates an informative order in accordance with the sistematic character and perfection of human essence from the person’s radicalism. Finally, it presents Polo’s explanation of (...) synderesis as a model for the educator. In doing so, it can exceed the stagnation that freedom —understood as independence— assumes for education. (shrink)

The following article is a response to the position paper of the Hastings Center, “Ethical Challenges of Chronic Illness”, a product of their three year project on Ethics and Chronic Care. The authors of this paper, three prominent bioethicists, Daniel Callahan, Arthur Caplan, and Bruce Jennings, argue that there should be a different ethic for acute and chronic care. In pressing this distinction they provide philosophical grounds for limiting medical care for the elderly and chronically ill. We give a critical (...) survey of their position and reject it as well as any attempt to characterize the physician-patient relationship as a commercial contract. We emphasize, as central features of good medical practice, a commitment to be the patient's agent and a determination to acquire and be guided by knowledge. These commitments may sometimes conflict with efforts to have the physician serve as an instrument of social and economic policies limiting medical care. (shrink)

There are many real-world applications like healthcare systems, job monitoring, well-being and personal fitness tracking, monitoring of elderly and frail people, assessment of rehabilitation and follow-up treatments, affording Fall Detection (FD) and ADL (Activity of Daily Living) identification, separately or even at a time. However, the two main drawbacks of these solutions are that most of the times, the devices deployed are obtrusive (devices worn on not quite common parts of the body like neck, waist and ankle) and the poor (...) battery life. Thus, this work proposes a low-power classification algorithm based on an Ensemble of KNN and K-Means algorithms (EKMeans) to identify Falls and High-Intensity ADL events such as running, jogging and climbing up stairs. The input of EKMeans are triaxial accelerometer data gathered from wrist-wearable devices. The proposal will be validated on the Fall&ADL publicly available datasets UMAFall, UCIFall and FallAllD, considering two kinds of activity labelling: Two-Class and Multi-Class. An exhaustive comparative study between our proposal, and the baseline algorithms KNN and a feed-forward Neural Network (NN) is deployed, where EKMeans outperformed clearly the Specificity (ADL classification) of the KNN and NN for the three datasets. Finally, a comparative battery consumption study has been included deploying the analyzed algorithms in a WearOS smartwatch, where EKMeans drains the battery from 100% to 0% in 27.45 hours, saving 5% and 21% concerning KNN and NN, respectively. Keywords: Human Activity Recognition, ADL Identification, Fall Detection TS Clustering, TS Classification, Wearable Devices, Low-Power HAR. (shrink)

We recently examined gene expression during Xenopus tadpole tail appendage regeneration and found that carbohydrate regulatory genes were dramatically altered during the regeneration process. In this essay, we speculate that these changes in gene expression play an essential role during regeneration by stimulating the anabolic pathways required for the reconstruction of a new appendage. We hypothesize that during regeneration, cells use leptin, slc2a3, proinsulin, g6pd, hif1α expression, receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) signaling, and the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) to (...) promote glucose entry into glycolysis and the pentose phosphate pathway (PPP), thus stimulating macromolecular biosynthesis. We suggest that this metabolic shift is integral to the appendage regeneration program and that the Xenopus model is a powerful experimental system to further explore this phenomenon.Also watch the Video Abstract. (shrink)