According to the cohabitation account, all the persons that result from a fission event cohabit the same body prior to fission. This article concerns a problem for this account. Suppose Manuel and Jimena are suffering from an equally painful migraine. Unlike Jimena, however, Manuel will undergo fission. Assuming you have a spare painkiller, whom should you give it to? Intuitively, you have no more reason to give it to one or the other. The problem is that the cohabitation account suggests (...) otherwise. According to the account, there are two persons cohabiting Manuel’s body, in which case you should arguably give them the pill, since doing so alleviates the pain of more beings. One response argues that the two persons cohabiting Manuel’s body share one pain. Thus, giving them the pill alleviates no more pain than giving it to Jimena, and therefore you have no more reason to do one or the other. The goal of this article is to show that this response fails. (shrink)

Kris McDaniel has recently defended a criterion for being an ontological pluralist that classifies the quantifier variantist as one. In this paper, I argue that this is a mistake. There is an important difference between the two views, which is sometimes obscured by a common view in the metaphysics of fundamentality. According to the simple analysis, a language is ideal—it allows for a maximally metaphysically perspicuous description of reality—just in case all its primitives are perfectly natural. I argue that this (...) analysis struggles to distinguish quantifier variance from ontological pluralism, and then I discuss various accounts that can do better. I then propose a criterion for being an ontological pluralist that does not misclassify the quantifier variantist. Finally, I discuss some additional advantages of my proposal. (shrink)

According to the cohabitation account, all the persons that result from a fission event cohabit the same body prior to fission. This article concerns a problem for this account. Suppose Manuel and Jimena are suffering from an equally painful migraine. Unlike Jimena, however, Manuel will undergo fission. Assuming you have a spare painkiller, whom should you give it to? Intuitively, you have no more reason to give it to one or the other. The problem is that the cohabitation account suggests (...) otherwise. According to the account, there are two persons cohabiting Manuel’s body, in which case you should arguably give them the pill, since doing so alleviates the pain of more beings. One response argues that the two persons cohabiting Manuel’s body share one pain. Thus, giving them the pill alleviates no more pain than giving it to Jimena, and therefore you have no more reason to do one or the other. The goal of this article is to show that this response fails. (shrink)

El profesor F. Javier Elizari ha dedicado mucho esfuerzo y muchos años a investigar sobre aspectos muy diversos de la Bioética y la Teología Moral. Muchos de sus trabajos han sido publicados en revistas y, por ello, los que nos hemos sentido deleitados con sus agudas reflexiones y puntualizaciones veíamos necesario recoger en un único volumen varios de sus estudios más importantes. La obra actual intenta cumplir este cometido para que muchos de los estudios del profesor Elizari no quedaran (...) difuminados en la propia periodicidad de las publicaciones. De ahí nuestro intento de rescatarlas y formar con ellas un cuerpo único. Todos los trabajos recopilados se han sistematizado y estructurado en cuatro grandes ejes: La Bioética y la vida; El inicio de la vida humana; El final de la vida humana; y Cuestiones sociales. (shrink)

Jonathan Schaffer has provided three putative counterexamples to the transitivity of grounding, and has argued that a contrastive treatment of grounding is able to provide a resolution to them, which in turn provides some motivation for accepting such a treatment. In this article, I argue that one of these cases can easily be turned into a putative counterexample to a principle which Schaffer calls differential transitivity. Since Schaffer's proposed resolution rests on this principle, this presents a dilemma for the contrastivist: (...) either he dismisses the third case, which weakens the motivation for accepting his treatment of grounding, or else he accepts it, in which case he is faced with a counterexample to a principle that his proposed resolution to the original cases depends on. In the remainder of the article, I argue that the prima facie most promising strategy the contrastivist could take, which is to place some restriction on which contrastive facts are admissible so as to rule out the purported counterexample to differential transitivity, faces some important difficulties. Although these difficulties are not insurmountable, they do pose a substantial challenge for the contrastivist. (shrink)

Given one conception of biological individuality (evolutionary, physiological, etc.), can a holobiont – that is the host + its symbiotic (mutualistic, commensalist and parasitic) microbiome – be simultaneously a biological individual and an ecological community? Herein, we support this possibility by arguing that the notion of biological individuality is part‐dependent. In our account, the individuality of a biological ensemble should not only be determined by the conception of biological individuality in use, but also by the biological characteristics of the part (...) of the ensemble under investigation. In the specific case of holobionts, evaluations of their individuality should be made either host‐relative or microbe‐relative. We support the claim that biological individuality is part‐dependent by drawing upon recent empirical evidence regarding the physiology of hosts and microbes, and the recent characterization of the ‘demibiont’. Our account shows that contemporary disagreements about the individuality of the holobiont derive from an incorrect understanding of the ontology of biological individuality. We show that collaboration between philosophers and biologists can be very fruitful in attempts to solve some contemporary biological debates. (shrink)

1. Categories and the Scientific Turn of Metaphysics: The Notion of World-Fundamentality What are the fundamental inhabitants of the world? This question, as old as it is new, is about the fundamental structure of our world. Is our world a world of Aristotle's ordinary substances, Locke's physical substances, Husserl's wholes, Wittgenstein's facts, Sellars's processes, or Quine's sets? In order to distinguish the sort of metaphysical fundamentality at stake in this discussion from other possible types of fundamentality, I shall call it (...) from now on "world-fundamentality." In this article I want to make a proposal in the context of this metaphysical dispute. The proposal is the addition of a new criterion of world-fundamentality to the existing catalog of independence and simplicity, among some other prominent classical examples. I call this criterion "the materialist criterion of world-fundamentality" because it states that metaphysicians should not decide the question of whether our world is a world of facts rather than a world of sets or other categories without considering the explanatory power of such categories to account for the relation between "the manifest image" and "the scientific image," to use the words of Wilfrid Sellars. (shrink)

Durante las cuatro últimas décadas, Javier Muguerza ha contribuido como nadie a la modernización del pensamiento español, dando a conocer y comentando lo mejor que se publicaba en otras lenguas, particularmente a lo tocante a la filosofía analítica, a la teoría crítica y a las corrientes morales y políticas anglosajonas y alemanas, además de tener muy en cuenta todo lo que se escribía en español y prestar una especial atención al espíritu del pensamiento práctico kantiano. La deuda que con (...) él tiene contraída la filosofía en castellano es muy difícil de calcular. En el libro Disenso e incertidumbre. Un homenaje a Javier Muguerza, un grupo de importantes filósofos analiza su obra en profundidad ofreciendo al lector la oportunidad única de conocerla desde múltiples puntos de vista. (shrink)

This study aims to find out whether speakers of different language backgrounds (English, French, Spanish, and Macedonian) are sensitive to semantic associations (‘fluid’ and ‘forcible contact’) attached respectively to two purported phonaesthemes (/fl-/ and /tr-/). Participants completed the task in oral and written conditions. They had to match phonaestheme-related definitions with either of two non-words (one phonaestheme-bearing and the other containing a distractor). The results obtained indicate that participants significantly chose non-words beginning with /tr-/ when the definition activated a meaning (...) related to forcible contact, and non-words starting with /fl-/ when the definitions made reference to fluids in the four languages. The results point to the existence of non-arbitrary sound-meaning relations. A corpus-driven study of frequencies of lemmas and word tokens starting with the purported phonaesthemes also sheds light on the possible origin of the phonaesthemic associations, suggesting that both iconicity and systematicity motivate such associations. The results obtained are interpreted in the context of a functional, usage-based model of language, which can accommodate the existence of iconic tendencies, the role of learning and linguistic experience in language, and arbitrariness. (shrink)

The hologenome concept of evolution is a hypothesis about the evolution of animals and plants. It asserts that the evolution of animals and plants was partially triggered by their interactions with their symbiotic microbiomes. In that vein, the hologenome concept posits that the holobiont (animal host + symbionts of the microbiome) is a unit of selection. -/- The hologenome concept has been severely criticized on the basis that selection on holobionts would only be possible if there were a tight transgenerational (...) host-genotype-to-symbiont-genotype connection. As our current evidence suggests that this is not the case for most of the symbiont species that compose the microbiome of animals and plants, the opportunity for holobiont selection is very low in relation to the opportunity for selection on each of the species that compose the host microbiome. Therefore, holobiont selection will always be disrupted ‘from below’, by selection on each of the species that compose the microbiome. -/- This thesis constitutes a conceptual effort to defend philosophically the hologenome concept. I argue that the criticism according to which holobiont selection requires tight transgenerational host-genotype-to-symbiont-genotype connection is grounded on a metaphysical view of the world according to which the biological hierarchy needs to be nested, such that each new level of selection includes every entity from below. Applied to hologenomes, it entails that the hologenome is a collection of genomes, and selection of hologenomes is assumed to entail cospeciation of the host with the species that constitute its microbiome. -/- Against that interpretation, I propose the ‘stability of traits’ account, according to which hologenome evolution is the result of the action of natural selection in a non-nested hierarchical world. In that vein, hologenome evolution does not entail cospeciation, and thus it does not require tight transgenerational host-genotype-to-symbiont-genotype connection. By embracing a multilevel selection perspective, I argue that hologenome evolution results from the simultaneous action of natural selection on each of the lineages that compose the microbiome, and on the assemblage composed by the host genome plus the functional traits of its microbiome. Hologenome selection occurs when the evolution of the traits of the microbiome result from their effects on the fitness of the host, and it can take the form of multilevel selection 1, or multilevel selection 2. In both cases, hologenome selection entails the evolution of microbiome traits, as well as evolution of the host genome, rather than cospeciation of lineages. (shrink)

Holobionts are symbiotic assemblages composed by a host plus its microbiome. The status of holobionts as individuals has recently been a subject of continuous controversy, which has given rise to two main positions: on the one hand, holobiont advocates argue that holobionts are biological individuals; on the other, holobiont detractors argue that they are just mere chimeras or ecological communities, but not individuals. Both parties in the dispute develop their arguments from the framework of the philosophy of biology, in terms (...) of what it takes for a “conglomerate” to be considered an interesting individual from a biological point of view. However, the debates about holobiont individuality have important ontological implications that have remained vaguely explored from a metaphysical framework. The purpose of this paper is to cover that gap by presenting a metaphysical approach to holobionts individuality. Drawing upon a conception of natural selection that puts the focus on the transgenerational recurrence of the traits and that supports the thesis that holobionts are units of selection, we argue that holobionts bear emergent traits and exert downward powers over the entities that compose them. In this vein, we argue, a reasonable argument can be made for conceiving holobionts as emergent biological individuals. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive guide to reading and understanding the development of Mills's sociological ideas, placing them in the context of his life and his position in American sociology.

Javier Muguerza’s Ethics and Perplexity makes a highly original contribution to the debate over dialogical reason. The work opens with a letter that establishes a parallel between Ethics and Perplexity and Maimonides’s classic Guide of the Perplexed. It concludes with an interview that repeatedly strikes sparks on Spanish philosophy’s emergence from its “long quarantine,” as Muguerza puts it. These informal pieces—witty, informative, conversational—orbit the nucleus of the work: a formidable critique of dialogical reason. The result is a volume by (...) turns vivid and profound. (shrink)

Contemporary biological research has suggested that some host–microbiome multispecies systems (referred to as “holobionts”) can in certain circumstances evolve as unique biological individual, thus being a unit of selection in evolution. If this is so, then it is arguably the case that some biological adaptations have evolved at the level of the multispecies system, what we call hologenomic adaptations. However, no research has yet been devoted to investigating their nature, or how these adaptations can be distinguished from adaptations at the (...) species-level (genomic adaptations). In this paper, we cover this gap by investigating the nature of hologenomic adaptations. By drawing on the case of the evolution of sanguivory diet in vampire bats, we argue that a trait constitutes a hologenomic adaptation when its evolution can only be explained if the holobiont is considered the biological individual that manifests this adaptation, while the bacterial taxa that bear the trait are only opportunistic beneficiaries of it. We then use the philosophical notions of emergence and inter-identity to explain the nature of this form of individuality and argue why it is special of holobionts. Overall, our paper illustrates how the use of philosophical concepts can illuminate scientific discussions, in the trend of what has recently been called metaphysics of biology. (shrink)

This article develops a dilemma for Buddhist Reductionism that centers on the nature of normative reasons. This dilemma suggests that Buddhist Reductionism lacks the resources to make sense of normative reasons and, furthermore, that this failure may cast doubt on the plausibility of Buddhist Reductionism as a whole.

The aim of this paper is to defend a naturalistic approach to instantiation and the Principle of Instantiation. I argue that the instantiation of an ordinary property F consists of two coordinated relationships at the levels of the manifest and scientific images, namely, constituency and entailment. Also, I offer an account of the Principle of Instantiation related to this conception of instantiation based on the notion of scientific prediction.

El cosmopolitismo, esto es, la representación del conjunto de los seres humanos como una sociedad universal, tiene una larga historia: las doctrinas y propuestas cosmopolitas atraviesan lo siglos. Pero hoy el cosmopolitismo suscita un renovado e intenso interés, debido tanto a la intensificación de la comunicación e interdependencia económica, cultural y política entre los habitantes y pueblos de la Tierra como a los presupuestos universalistas de los principales planteamientos morales y políticos actuales. Este libro examina los variados aspectos y expresiones (...) del cosmopolitismo -cultural, económico, moral, jurídico, político-, atendiendo siempre a su relación, explícita o implícita, con la política. Trata igualmente de hacerse cargo de las principales críticas a las que se enfrenta, ya se trate de las que lo consideran una fantasía bienintencionada, ajena a la realidad conflictiva y plural de la política, y por tanto de imposible realización, o bien de aquellas que ven en el cosmopolitismo una máscara ideológica que encubre la dominación y la represión de las diferencias por parte de los poderosos. Teniendo en cuenta todo eso, aquí se concluye sin embargo que la política del siglo XXI ha de ser comprendida necesariamente desde un punto de vista cosmopolita, es decir, teniendo en cuenta el horizonte mundial de los problemas y propuestas de cualquier signo. Al mismo tiempo, se sostiene que el cosmopolitismo ha de ser concebido como un proyecto político para ser real y eficaz, por difícil o lejana que nos parezca su realización. Javier Peña Echeverría (San Sebastián, 1951) es catedrático de Filosofía Moral de la Universidad de Valladolid. Sus líneas de investigación fundamentales son la historia del pensamiento político moderno, la ciudadanía, el republicanismo y el cosmopolitismo, temas sobre los que ha publicado varios libros, artículos y contribuciones a obras colectivas. Cabe destacar los libros La filosofía política de Espinosa (1989) y La ciudadanía hoy. Problemas y propuestas (Universidad de Valladolid, 2000). (shrink)